Shamanic Calling: Speaker of Ancestors
You have answered the call of the spirits of the ancestors, those bound to the blood or name of a family or clan. Some of these spirits are benign, simply wishing to watch over and protect their people. Others are selfish or jealous, demanding that some task be completed or that a rival of a family member be punished. Yet others are violent, desiring little else but the aggressive expansion of their influence and power.
Obeisance of Ancestors
Shamans who speak for the ancestors walk the line between life and death, mastering necromantic magic that many dare not explore. However, these shamans do not seek to exploit the dead in the way of many necromancers, and view life and death as inseparable halves of a single cycle. Theirs is a path of balance and understanding, not desecration and malice.
Family. Above all else, ancestral spirits wish to watch over and protect their kin. Shamans who speak for these spirits often recognize the importance of family and cherish their relationships with those that share their blood. Such shamans are often quick to mediate in disputes between family members, hoping to keep such relationships from falling apart.
Acceptance. Ancestral spirits do not attempt to fool themselves: they recognize and accept that every member of their families must someday die. Of those that once lived as mortals, few seek a return to life, content instead to watch over the world and influence it through the shamans that serve them. Shamans who are called to the ancestors are regularly confronted by their own mortality. Those who can accept this inevitability rarely attempt to avoid other unpleasant truths, accepting them for what they are and speaking of them bluntly.
Tradition. Spirits of the ancestors can be born of many different eras, and many hold strongly to the way things were in their times. In many cases, traces of these old ways persist in traditions that have been passed down since those days. Ancestral shamans often express their reverence for the spirits by embracing traditions and helping to keep them alive. While such shamans may acknowledge the need for change in day-to-day affairs, they are often passionate about the need to preserve rituals and formalities from ages past.
Balance. Ancestral spirits occupy a strange place, as they accept death but are still drawn to the living. No longer alive, but unwilling or unable to pass on to the realms of the dead, they exist in a precarious balance between life and death. The shamans of these spirits often see the point of balance in any situation as having special significance, and seek balance in all things. In some cases, balance may come in the form of a natural cycle: from the shadow of death, new life can emerge.
Speaker of Ancestors Calling Spells
| Shaman Level | Calling Spells |
|---|---|
| 1st | inflict wounds, unseen servant |
| 3rd | blindness/deafness, gentle repose |
| 5th | speak with dead, revivify |
| 7th | banishment, blight |
| 9th | antilife shell, legend lore |
Blessing of the Ancestors
When you choose this calling at 1st level, you gain the chill touch, spare the dying, and thaumaturgy cantrips and learn one language of your choice. You also become proficient in the History skill.
Channel Divinity: Turn Undead
Also at 1st level, you gain the ability to channel divine energy from the ancestral spirits that you serve, using that energy to fuel magical effects. You start with one such effect: Turn Undead.
When you use your Channel Divinity, you choose which option to use. You must then finish a short or long rest to use your Channel Divinity again.
Some Channel Divinity effects require saving throws. When you use such an effect from this class, the DC equals your shaman spell save DC.
Turn Undead. As an action, you channel ancestral power to censure the undead. Each undead that can see or hear you within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw. If the creature fails its saving throw, it is turned for 1 minute or until it takes any damage.
A turned creature must spend its turns trying to move as far away from you as it can, and it can't willingly move to a space within 30 feet of you. It also can't take reactions. For its action, it can use only the Dash action or try to escape from an effect that prevents it from moving. If there's nowhere to move, the creature can use the Dodge action.
Channel Divinity: Control Undead
Starting at 6th level, you can use your Channel Divinity to control an undead creature.
Control Undead. As an action, you target one undead creature you can see within 30 feet of you. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target must obey your commands for the next 24 hours, or until you use this Channel Divinity option again. An undead whose challenge rating is equal to or greater than your level is immune to this effect.
Death's Comfort
At 10th level, your position between life and death grants you respite from the weaknesses of the living. You have resistance to necrotic damage, and your hit point maximum can't be reduced. In addition, you no longer need food or water.
Deny the Untimely
Starting at 14th level, your connection to the energies of death allows you to avoid dying before your time. When you finish a long rest, you may state either a specific creature or a set of specific circumstance that you expect will be responsible for your death at some point in the next 24 hours. If you name a creature, that creature does not have to deal the deathblow, but it must play an active part in your demise. If you name a set of circumstances, those circumstances must be reasonably specific or the feature will fail, leaving you well and truly dead. An acceptable set of circumstances would be "I expect energy draining to play a pivotal role in my demise," whereas an unacceptable set would be "I expect to die from loss of hit points." The DM decides whether the terms you state are acceptable.
Whether the subject of your demise is a specific person or a specific source, you must die for this feature to take effect. If you do, and the circumstances of your demise are similar enough to those you described (DM's discretion), you are resurrected, as per the resurrection spell, one minute after your death.
The death must occur within 24 hours of the declaration in order for the resurrection to take place. If you use this feature a second time, the new declaration replaces the old one: you cannot have multiple declarations in effect at one time. Once you have been resurrected by this feature, the magic that brought you back is exhausted. If you die a second time before taking a long rest and making a new declaration, you die permanently, even if the circumstances of your death perfectly match your most recent declaration.