General Prestige Class : Mourner
By Patrick Younts and Jeff Quick, Dragon #311
Mourners use their musical gifts to honor the dead and ease the suffering of the living. Traveling from city to city and trained in all manner of funeral customs, mourners assist, and, when necessary, replace priests in the performance of last rites.
Mourners believe in the sanctity of burial and are sworn enemies of grave robbers and, especially, necromancers. They view non-intelligent undead as victims and use special bardic music abilities to restore their eternal slumber, but they mercilessly hunt and destroy intelligent undead.
All mourners have bardic backgrounds, with multiclass bard/clerics almost as common as single class bards.
Requirements
To qualify to become a Mourner, a character must fulfill all the following criteria:
- Skills: Diplomacy 8 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks, Perform 8 ranks
- Special: The character must have the bardic music ability
Class Skills
The mourner's class skills are Bluff, Concentration, Craft, Decipher Script, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Hide, Knowledge (any), Listen, Move Silently, Perform, Profession, Search, Sense Motive, and Spellcraft.
Skill Points at Each Level: 6 + Int modifier.
Class Features
All the following are class features of the mourner prestige class.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A character becoming a mourner gains no additional proficiency in any weapon or armor for taking levels of the class.
Bardic Knowledge: If the character already has the bardic knowledge ability, her mourner levels stack with the levels of any other classes that grant her that ability for the purpose of determining the bonus, but only when making a bardic knowledge check that deals with funeral rites, undead, necromancy, or items associated with those topics.
Bardic Music: If the character already has the bardic music ability, her mourner levels stack with the levels of any other classes that grant her that ability for the purpose of determining abilities, duration, and so on.
Spells per Day/Spells Known: At each mourner level, the character gains new bard spells per day and spells known as if she had also gained a level in the bard class.
Bright Soul (Su): The mourner adds her Charisma bonus to all saves against necromancy spells and effects and all supernatural and spell-like abilities of undead.
Peaceful Slumber (Su): A 3rd-level mourner can use peaceful slumber to grant a corpse protection against reanimation. Peaceful slumber requires 1 use of the mourner's daily uses of bardic music and a Perform check. The mourner cannot take 20 on this check. The corpse then gains permanent spell resistance equal to the mourner's Perform skill check, but only against spells and spell-like abilities that speak with the dead, create undead, or raise or resurrect the dead. A mourner may grant a corpse spell resistance as many times as he wishes, but each use resets the spell resistance granted to the corpse, regardless of whether the Perform check has a higher or lower result.
Lament (Su): A 4th-level mourner can stir an undead creature's soul with a lament to lost life laced with the magic of necromancy. Peaceful slumber requires a standard action and two uses of the mourner's daily uses of bardic music. All undead within a 30-foot radius centered on the mourner who fail a Will save (DC 10 + mourner level + bard level + Cha bonus) fall prone and are held immobile as by the spell halt undead cast by a cleric of the mourner's class level. This is a sonic effect.
Go Gently (Su): A 5th-level mourner can, in the round immediately following the use of the lament ability, sever the cords of negative energy that bind undead to the material plane. Go gently requires a Perform check and 1 use of the mourner's daily uses of bardic music. Any undead within 30 feet that failed to save against the lament are required to make a second Will save against the same DC. Non-intelligent undead that fail are destroyed, and intelligent undead take damage equal to the Perform skill check. Use of go gently constitutes an attack against the undead and frees them from the effects of lament.
| Mourner | Hit Die: d6 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CL | BAB | Fort | Ref | Will | Special | Spells per Day |
| 1st | +0 | +2 | +2 | +2 | Bardic knowledge, bardic music | +1 level of bard class |
| 2nd | +1 | +3 | +3 | +3 | Bright soul | +1 level of bard class |
| 3rd | +2 | +3 | +3 | +3 | Peaceful slumber | +1 level of bard class |
| 4th | +3 | +4 | +4 | +4 | Lament | +1 level of bard class |
| 5th | +3 | +5 | +4 | +4 | Go gently | +1 level of bard class |
Source: Dragon #311