The Burning Line
The Grave Line

The Inheritance

Blood is a will, and a child is where two wills go on arguing after the wedding. Most people inherit a nose, a temper, a debt. A few inherit the argument itself — one line that burns and one that does not die, both still fighting over the body they were left in. The body has only so many rooms, and neither line has ever shared anything in its life.

[The Inheritance]

Cost: 27,000 Experience

You were born to two bloods that do not mix, and both of them kept the receipt. When you take this power, choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. That is your legacy ability, and your legacy DC is 10 + 1/2 your character level + your legacy ability modifier. The choice is permanent.

Also settle with the GM your two lines: the burning line (the parent whose blood carries a dragon's) and the grave line (the parent who does not die). Both are alive, in whatever sense applies, and both know of you.

Seats

2 + half your character level

Seats. Your body holds a number of seats equal to 2 + half your character level. Every Embering you embrace and every Marrow rung you take fills one seat. Only two feats raise the count: One Body, More Room and Hoardkeeper.

The Heart Su

Your mother's argument is an organ, and it keeps its own time. The heart grants, without filling a seat: a +2 racial bonus to Constitution (+4 while you hold five or more Emberings), fire resistance 5, immunity to magical sleep, and a +2 bonus on saves against paralysis.

You may embrace Emberings from the list below, one per open seat, each over a night's rest. An Embering is permanent until evicted (see The Marrow). While you hold three or more Emberings, you count as a dragon for effects and prerequisites, though your type does not change.

Emberings

  • Scales

    +2 natural armor bonus, +1 per 4 character levels, and a +2 resistance bonus on saves against spells.

  • Claws

    Two claw attacks, one size category larger than you, counting as magic and adamantine, always primary, crit 19–20/×2.

  • Minor Magic

    Two cantrips at will, and a pool of spell levels equal to your character level, refreshed each day. Choose a number of sorcerer/wizard spells equal to 1 + one per four character levels; you may spend from the pool to cast any of them, of a level no higher than one third your character level (minimum 1st), cast off your legacy ability. You may change one chosen spell over a night's rest. Any spell cast from this pool may deal fire damage in place of its normal energy type; if you also hold Spellfire, its resistance-piercing applies to these spells.

  • Senses

    Darkvision 120 feet and blindsense 30 feet, becoming blindsight 30 feet at character level 13. Within your blindsense range you automatically pinpoint any creature that is undead, that is currently burning, or that has dealt fire damage since the start of your last turn, regardless of concealment, cover, or invisibility.

  • Breath

    A 30-foot cone of fire dealing 1d6 damage per character level, Reflex half against your legacy DC, twice per scene; three times per scene at character level 11. Your Breath ignores an amount of the target's fire resistance equal to twice your character level, and a creature immune to fire takes half damage from your Breath rather than none.

  • Wings

    Requires character level 9. A 60-foot fly speed (average maneuverability).

  • Firesblood

    Your fire resistance becomes 30, and immunity at character level 13. Once per scene, when fire damage is dealt to you, gain a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls for 1 minute.

  • Presence

    Requires character level 11. Frightful presence in a 30-foot radius when you charge or use your Breath, Will negates against your legacy DC, shaken for 1 minute; a creature that saves is immune for 24 hours.

  • Furnace Heart

    Requires character level 15. Once per day, as a swift action, regain hit points equal to half your maximum and end any fatigued or exhausted condition on yourself.

  • Spellfire

    Requires the ability to cast spells. Your damaging spells may deal fire damage in place of their normal type, and your fire spells ignore an amount of the target's fire resistance equal to twice your character level.

  • Wardscale

    Requires the ability to cast spells. Spell resistance equal to 11 + your character level; you may lower it as a swift action until the start of your next turn.

Dragon Blooded Ex

The mother's line does not wait to be asked. Each Tier, you gain one Dragon racial Hit Die, and you may take further Dragon racial Hit Dice as the leveling rules allow. Each Dragon Hit Die you hold grants 1 Essence.

The Vessels Su

Essence pools in only two rooms, and the rooms do not share. Invest your Essence between the Heart and the Blood; moving a point between vessels takes a week.

The Heart, invested

InvestedThe Heart grants
1 Essence+2 enhancement bonus to Strength, Constitution, and Charisma, and a +1 enhancement bonus to natural armor.
3 Essence+4 Strength, +3 Constitution, +2 Intelligence and Charisma, +2 natural armor, and immunity to paralysis.
6 Essence+8 Strength, +6 Constitution, +4 Intelligence and Charisma, +4 natural armor, and immunity to fire.

The Blood, invested

  • Your effective caster level increases by 1 at the first point and every two points after.
  • Every three points: the dice of fire damage you deal increase by one step, and the caster level of your fire spells increases by a further 1.

The Binding Su

The blood takes the rooms your trinkets lived in. You may bind the Blood into your body's magic item slots; a bound slot can never hold a magic item. Each bind grants one choice from its tier's list, scaling with the Essence invested in the Blood. Each listed effect may be chosen only once across all binds.

Low binds — head, feet, hands

  • Fast healing 1 per 2 Essence (maximum 5). While you are at or below half your hit points, this fast healing doubles.
  • DR equal to your Essence (maximum 10), bypassed only by cold iron and by the weapons of the grave line's parent and his servants.
  • +1 damage per die of fire damage you deal per 3 Essence.

Middle binds — wrists, headband, shoulders

  • An aura of fire: 10 feet, 1d6 fire damage +1d6 per 2 Essence, raised or lowered as a free action.
  • +1 to the save DCs of your spells per 3 Essence.
  • Spell resistance and power resistance equal to 8 + your Essence, or existing spell resistance increases by your Essence.

Greater binds — neck, belt

  • Regeneration 1 per 2 Essence (bypassed by epic weapons and by cold damage); it fails while your negative hit points equal or exceed your maximum hit points.
  • Your Heart vessel counts its invested Essence as 2 higher.

Drakkenization

Cost: 10,000 Experience. Requires: 5 Dragon Hit Dice.

The blood can finish the argument its own way. You gain the half-dragon template, and your Dragon Hit Dice grant sorcerer spellcasting as levels of sorcerer. Dragon Magic: you may spend Stamina to lower the metamagic cost of spells cast from the spellcasting your Dragon Hit Dice grant.

Son of the Hand Ex

The father's house has ranks, and you were born holding one. When you take this power, you gain the first level of the Agent of the Grave prestige class as a bonus level; it does not affect the experience requirements of any other prestige class. Each level you take in Agent of the Grave grants a bonus necrosis feat.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/a-b/agent-of-the-grave/

The Marrow Su

Your father's argument is patience.

The Catch. When you would die, the Marrow offers. If you accept, you do not die: you fall where you are, stable, and you rise at the next nightfall at 1 hit point. The next unfilled rung below then fills, taking a seat — and if no seat is open, it evicts your most recently embraced Embering, which is lost. If no seat is open and you hold no Embering, the Marrow cannot offer, and you die as anyone does. If you decline, you die as anyone does. When you accept, before you fall, a 30-foot burst centered on you deals 1d6 fire damage per character level, Reflex half against your legacy DC. Creatures you choose take no damage from it and instead gain temporary hit points equal to your character level, lasting until the end of the scene.

You may also fill the next rung deliberately, through a month of study of the grave line's art. A rung filled this way takes a seat and evicts exactly as a Catch's does.

The rungs fill in order, each is permanent, and each carries a tell that cannot be hidden or disguised by nonmagical means.

  1. Gravesight

    Deathwatch at will, and you always know the direction of undead within 60 feet. As a swift action you may read a creature within 60 feet, learning its current hit points, its damage reduction and regeneration, and whether any effect is presently keeping it alive. Once per round, when you damage a creature you have read this way, add your legacy ability modifier to the damage.

    Tell: your hands are always cold.

  2. Cold Breath

    Your melee attacks and touch effects deal an additional 1d6 negative energy damage per two filled Marrow rungs. Undead damaged this way are not healed by it. Once per round, a living creature you damage this way cannot regain hit points until the end of your next turn. You may also cast speak with dead once per day (Bone-Read), working on bare bones of any age, caster level equal to your character level.

    Tell: your breath carries no warmth.

  3. Grave-Warded

    +4 on saves against death effects, energy drain, and fear; negative levels you take never become permanent; and once per day, as an immediate action, negate one negative level as it is bestowed.

    Tell: your heartbeat slows to one beat in four.

  4. Ghoul's Grip

    Three times per day, a melee touch: Fortitude against your legacy DC or paralyzed for 1d4+1 rounds, as ghoul paralysis. The first use in any scene does not count against this pool.

    Tell: your skin grays.

  5. Half-Alive

    Negative energy heals you half the damage it would deal; positive energy heals you half what it would heal. You are immune to bleed and to nonlethal damage. Mindless undead do not attack you unless you act against them.

    Tell: still water holds no reflection of you.

  6. Dread

    Once per scene as a free action, and automatically the first time each scene you are reduced below half your hit points: 30 feet, Will against your legacy DC or shaken for 1 minute. A creature already shaken when Dread reaches it is frightened for 1 minute instead, and a creature that fails by 5 or more is panicked for 1 round and frightened for the remainder of the minute. A creature that saves is immune to Dread for 24 hours; immunity to Dread and immunity to Presence are tracked separately.

    Tell: candlelight bends away from you.

  7. Deathless Vigor

    You are immune to disease and poison, you do not fatigue or exhaust, and you no longer need to eat or sleep.

    Tell: you cast a corpse's shadow, whatever the light says.

  8. The Last Rung

    The last rung is not playable. When it fills, the character becomes a servant of the grave line's parent and passes to the GM.

Paying It Down. A filled rung can be emptied once, ever, per rung: an undertaking the GM sets, on the scale of what the grave line paid for you. The rung empties, its tell fades over a season, and its seat opens. The Catch that filled it is not refunded.

The Unwritten Name Su

Blood hunts by name before it hunts by scent. While your name is held in the keeping of an eater of seams — swallowed whole, worn or pocketed — the father's eye counts you two steps less familiar, he does not feel your rungs fill, and the name's keeper feels it instead. When the name is returned, the ledger catches up all at once.

If no eater of seams sits at your table, you may instead give your name into the keeping of a place — a grave you dug, a hearth you were fed at, or a hoard you have never spent from. While the name rests there the father's eye counts you one step less familiar and he does not feel your rungs fill, but you take a −2 penalty on Charisma-based checks against anyone who does not already know you, and if the place is destroyed the name returns to you at once and the ledger catches up all at once.

The Archeoplague

The plague you carry can wait, and what it wants is your bones.

The reckoning. Each day after you rest, attempt a Fortitude save against DC 20 + your Hit Dice, to a maximum of DC 40. On a failure, take ability damage equal to 1 point per 5 Hit Dice you hold (minimum 1), distributed among Strength, Constitution, and Wisdom as you see fit. Removing this damage magically deals you 2d6 wound damage.

Eternal Rest. Each time you pass the daily save, you gain one stack of Eternal Rest. You take a −1 penalty on saves against diseases and curses per stack, and this penalty applies to the reckoning itself. You gain no stacks while you hold fewer than 5 Hit Dice. Each time you fill a Marrow rung deliberately, through a month of study of the grave line's art, remove one stack. A rung filled by a Catch removes no stack, and a rung emptied through Paying It Down does not restore one. If your stacks ever equal your Hit Dice, your skeleton erupts from your body — a mindless undead creature with undead Hit Dice equal to twice your level and Tiers equal to yours — killing you instantly.

A stack of Eternal Rest can be removed by a restoration spell cast by a worshipper of a deity of healing, or by a remove curse spell cast with 5,000 sp of materials drawn from two natural treasures of life.

The plague defends itself. Any effect that would cure the Archeoplague forces its caster to attempt a Fortitude save against DC 20 + the afflicted creature's Hit Dice (maximum DC 40) or become afflicted; the caster must then succeed at a caster level check against DC 46 to remove the disease. Immunity to disease, yours included, does not apply against the Archeoplague, and conditional bonuses on saving throws against diseases do not apply to the saves it forces.

Transmission. The Archeoplague spreads only through ingestion of bodily fluids. Treat an afflicted creature's blood, spit, and other fluids as an ingested poison.

The Price

Neither line forgot you.

The heart must burn. Each week, the heart requires one of: a fight against a creature of CR at least your character level −4 with the heart's gifts engaged, or an hour immersed in open flame, whether or not you take its damage. At the end of a week in which it got neither, you take a −2 penalty on all d20 rolls, worsening by −2 for each further such week, to a maximum of −6. Feeding it ends the penalty.

The father's eye. For each filled Marrow rung, the grave line's parent counts as one step more familiar with you for the purposes of scrying and teleportation effects. He always knows how many rungs are filled.

The offer stands. Whenever you are at 0 or fewer hit points, the Marrow may speak, in the GM's voice. What it says is always true.

These Feats modify The Inheritance

Both lines

One Body, More Room

Gain one additional seat. You may take this feat multiple times, but not more than once per four character levels.

Rich Blood

Gain 2 Essence. You may take this feat multiple times, but not more than once per four character levels.

Deeper Furnace

Your Breath adds your Constitution modifier to its damage, and you gain one additional use per scene.

Inherited Fire

Requires: Deeper Furnace

The argument itself is fuel. Your Breath adds your legacy ability modifier to its damage as well.

Dragonwrought

Requires: Wings

Your fly speed increases to 90 feet (good maneuverability), and you may carry one willing creature of your size or smaller while flying without penalty.

Hoardkeeper

Gain one additional seat, which may hold only an Embering. Choose one Embering you hold; while you are within reach of a hoard of your own that you have never spent from, its numeric effects increase by half.

Both lines

Alloyed Blood

Requires: Three or more Emberings, three or more filled Marrow rungs

The argument reaches a truce in the fire. Your Breath may deal half fire and half negative energy damage. Undead caught in the cone are not healed by the negative half, and take it as damage as though they lived.

Furnace Everlasting

Requires: Furnace Heart, character level 17

Furnace Heart functions twice per day and is a free action rather than a swift action. For 1 minute after you use it you gain fast healing equal to your Constitution modifier, your Breath's uses for the scene are restored in full, and any creature that strikes you with a melee attack takes fire damage equal to your character level.

Both lines

Two Tongues

You speak Draconic and the tongue of the grave line's house. You gain a +4 bonus on Charisma checks and Charisma-based skill checks against dragons and undead, and you may use your legacy ability modifier in place of Charisma on these checks. You add half your character level on Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (religion) checks concerning dragons or undead, and identifying such a creature's abilities and weaknesses is a free action for you. Once per day you may address a dragon or an intelligent undead and compel it to hear you out for one minute before it acts against you; Will negates, against your legacy DC. A creature that saves against this is immune to it for 24 hours, and this does not stack with Grave-Calm against the same creature.

Speak, Bone

Requires: Bone-Read

Bone-Read functions twice per day, asks two additional questions, and the dead cannot refuse to answer a question about who made them dead.

Grave-Calm

Requires: Half-Alive

Intelligent undead must succeed at a Will save against your legacy DC to attack you before you act against them, and you may pass among undead as one of their own for 1 hour per day.

Marrow Mastery

The save DCs of your Marrow rung abilities increase by 2, and your tells, while never gone, become subtle enough that noticing one requires a DC 20 Perception check.

The Long Refusal

Requires: Having emptied at least one Marrow rung

+4 on saving throws against abilities of the grave line's parent and his servants, and his scrying familiarity from The father's eye is reduced by two steps.

Disinheritance

Requires: Character level 15

Over a quest the GM sets, on the scale of refusing the grave line's parent to his face, the Marrow is sealed: no rung will ever fill again, by Catch or by study, and The Last Rung's clause is struck. Every rung already filled remains, tells and all. The Catch is gone; from now on, you die as anyone does.

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