Bearer

Those who call themselves bearers are folks with their very essence bound to a magical object. Be it a shield, a blade, a wand, or tome, these individuals have had their being split between two vessels. Forever bound to this magic item, their survival awakens magical abilities within themselves and their relic, with the possibility that they may perhaps rival legendary magical objects.

Relic of Power

A bearer’s relic is often at times a reflection of their very being. No two relics share the same appearance and abilities, as the source of their creation and the decisions of their owner shapes their capabilities. What binds a relic to a person are sources of immense magical power. These binds range from great curses, intense emotional magic, a connection to the owner’s ancestry, or the focal point to a huge event in the owner’s life. Some may even find themselves bound to items of ancient civilizations, or parasitic objects from other worlds. Regardless of the relic’s source, both man and object will change the other for better or worse.

Becoming a bearer is very rarely a willing decision. Many may seek a way to unbind themselves from their relic, but the greatest among them learn how to fully use their second halves to improve their lives.

Art by Maxkayart!

Spirit Housed in Two

Now bound to a magical object, a bearer's life is often stripped of any calm and platitude they may have had before. Their life hangs on the wellbeing of their relic, as its destruction can bring the destruction of their soul. As they grow in power, creatures from across the planes may seek to claim their relic for its power, and so an adventuring bearer is often avoiding capture or seeking power to defend themselves.

With time and experience, a bearer may gain the power to house their spirit within their relic after their death, waiting for an unfortunate soul to relinquish their body to them, or to find themselves a new host through the recently dead.

Creating a Bearer

When creating a bearer, ponder how your character found their soul bound to their relic, and why such an item type in particular. Were they cursed to it? Did they perform a great or miserable act with it, interweaving the two of them forevermore? Did this item come from another plane, binding itself to your character as they were the first to find it?

You choose with your DM how your character came to be a bearer, and can use Bearer Origin table as possible inspirations for your class origins.

Bearer Origin

d8	Origin
1	In your hunger for treasure, you were cursed and had a portion of your soul formed into your relic. Now you wander the world, both to flee and confront those who wish to add you to their own hoard.
2	You were said to be soulmates, a couple with a bond that could triumph over anything. Tragedy struck, your relic forever a reminder of what was lost. Does this love live within it to protect you, or to guide you to avenge them?
3	You were once, or perhaps you still are, a great craftsman, your goods renowned across the lands. Your relic is your finest work, and so you adventure to improve it further.
4	Your relic is a family heirloom, one passed down from a great ancestor. It has bonded itself to you, familiar magic within it beckoning you to finish what your ancestor has started.
5	You were a sworn guard to someone of great importance, having dedicated your whole life for to protect them. Your relic in turn is a symbol to you of your failure in saving them. Does it push you towards redemption, or denial?
6	You committed an act of terrible violence, killing someone not yet fated to die. Their dying breath still hovers around your relic, a drop of blood forever staining it.
7	You seek out immortality, binding your soul to your relic through an act of great terror or curse. No one must know what you have sacrificed for this.
8	Your lust for adventuring and dungeoneering culminated in your discovery of your relic, which at the time appeared as a fragment of a bygone era. You now find yourself forever bound to this lost past, slowly awakening forgotten magic as you continue to wander the world.

Class Features

As a bearer, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d10 per bearer level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per bearer level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: All armors, shields
Weapons: Simple weapons, martial weapons
Tools: None
Saving Throws: Dexterity, Charisma
Skills: Choose two from Arcana, Intimidation, Insight, Perception, Religion, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, and Survival.

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

(a) a martial weapon and shield or (b) two martial weapons
One ranged, loading weapon and 20 of its ammunition
Any simple weapon
(a) leather armor or (b) scale mail or (c) chain mail
(a) an explorer's pack or (b) a dungeoneer's pack

Table: The Bearer
Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Latent Aspects
1st	+2	Mighty Relic, Soul-Forged	-
2nd	+2	Latent Aspects	2
3rd	+2	Awakened Relic	2
4th	+2	Ability Score Improvement, Merge Wonders	3
5th	+3	Extra Attack, Magical Intuition	3
6th	+3	Relic feature, Ambient Aspect	3
7th	+3	Merge Wonders Improvement	4
8th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	4
9th	+4	Wondrous Resilience	4
10th	+4	Relic feature	5
11th	+4	Empowered Relic	5
12th	+4	Ability School Improvement	5
13th	+5	Merge Wonders Improvement	6
14th	+5	Relic feature	6
15th	+5	Dormant State	6
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	6
17th	+6	Merge Wonders Improvement	7
18th	+6	-	7
19th	+6	Ability Score Improvement	7
20th	+6	Relic feature	7

Quick Build

You can quickly create an bearer by following these suggestions. Make Strength or Dexterity your highest ability score, depending on the kind of item you have found yourself bound to. Your next highest score should be Constitution. Finally, choose the Inheritor or Haunted One background.

Optional Rule: Multiclassing

If your group uses the optional rule on multiclassing in the Player's Handbook, here's what you need to know if you choose the bearer as one of the classes.

Ability Score Minimum. As a multiclass character, you must have at least a 13 Strength or Dexterity to take a level in this class, or to take a level in another class if you are already an bearer.
Proficiencies Gained. If bearer isn't your initial class, you gain proficiency in Light and Medium armor, shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons.

Mighty Relic

^{1st-level Bearer feature}
Starting at 1st level, you have acquired your Relic, a wondrous item bound to your body and soul. Choose a Small or Tiny nonmagical object on your person to be your relic. Your relic possesses the following properties:

It counts as magical when targeted by hostile effects.
It shares your Armor Class and has a number of hit points equal to triple your level in this class.
It has resistance to all damage, immunity to poison and psychic damage, and is immune to all conditions.
Each time it would take damage, you take the damage instead if you are alive.
When it is not on your person, you can spend your bonus action on your turn to teleport it to you. You can have it teleport to your hand or don it if it can be worn.
It cannot be disarmed or removed from you against your will.
You can spend your bonus action on each of your turns to change its color, make it faintly hum, or have it generate a harmless sensory effect.

If you would be brought back to life with your relic destroyed, your hit point maximum is halved. This loss cannot be removed until you spend a long rest performing an 8-hour long ritual to manifest your relic back into a physical form.

Some of your class features require your target to make a saving throw. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:

Relic Save DC = 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Constitution Modifier

Soul-Forged

^{1st-level Bearer feature}
Also at 1st level, the source that binds you to your relic empowers your capabilities. Choose one of the following benefits;

Forged by Violence. You gain a +1 bonus to your attack rolls when your hit points are equal to or less than your hit point maximum.
Forged by Survival. You may use your Constitution modifier, rather than you Dexterity modifier, for initiative. You also gain a bonus to Death Saves equal to your Constitution modifier.
Forged by Destiny. You gain a +1 bonus to saving throws you aren’t proficient with.
Forged by Adaptability. Choose two skills. You gain proficiency in these skills. Each time you finish a long rest, you may change the proficiency of one of these skills to another.
Forged by Doom. You gain an additional hit dice. Your hit point maximum increases by 1, and increases by 1 again each time you gain a level in this class.

Latent Aspects

^{2nd-level Bearer feature}
Upon reaching 2nd level, your relic reflects defining traits of yourself and other magic items. You gain two aspects of your choice, which are detailed in the Latent Aspects page. When you reach certain bearer levels, you gain additional aspects of your choice, as shown in the Latent Aspects column of the Bearer table.

Only one aspect can be active at a time. At the start of each of your turns, you can choose which aspect is active.

Each aspect possesses an Trigger trait. While an aspect is active, you may spend a bonus action to use its trigger. Doing so provides an additional benefit for the next minute.

If your hit points would drop to half your hit point maximum, you can activate one of your aspects as a reaction. Doing so also uses its trigger if any wasn’t used already.

Once you used an aspect’s trigger, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest. You can only regain one expended trigger per short rest.

If an aspect has prerequisites, you must meet them to learn it. A level prerequisite refers to your level in this class.

Each time you reach a level in this class that grants the Ability Score Improvement feature, you can replace an aspect you have with another.

At 11th level, you can have two aspects active at a time. When you change which are active, you can only deactivate one and activate another.

Awakened Relic

^{3rd-level Bearer feature}
You have awakened specialized abilities in your relic, as well as a defined form. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th level.

Ability Score Improvement

^{4th-level Bearer feature}
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Merge Wonders

^{4th-level Bearer feature}
At 4th level, you gain the ability to fuse your relic with magic items of the same kind. While you have a magic item of the same item type as your relic, you can merge both into one item throughout the course of a long rest.

Your relic can only fuse to one magic item at any given moment. If this magic item requires attunement, it is attuned to you even in death and cannot be attuned to another creature until you fuse your relic to another magic item.

You can merge with magic items of Uncommon rarity or lower. This increases as you progress in this class, increasing at 7th (Rare), 13th (Very Rare), and 18th (Legendary) level.

Extra Attack

^{5th-level Bearer feature}
You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Magical Intuition

^{5th-level Bearer feature}
Upon reaching 5th level, you know the *Identify* spell, and can cast it as a ritual spell.

Moreover, you add half your proficiency bonus, rounded down, to any Intelligence check you make that doesn't already include your proficiency bonus. This check must involve magic items as the subject of the check. If you do include your proficiency bonus, you instead double your proficiency bonus when making this check.

Ambient Aspect

^{6th-level Bearer feature}
At 6th level, your relic naturally enhances objects in your vicinity. Each friendly creature within 10 feet of you or your relic gains the benefits of your active aspect.

You can instead imbue a Tiny object with one of your aspects as an action. Doing so causes any friendly creature wearing or wielding this item to gain the benefits of that aspect. This ends if you change planes of existence, die, imbue a different object, or end the effect (no action required).

At 15th level, this range increases to 20 feet, and you can imbue an aspect as a bonus action.

Wondrous Resilience

^{9th-level Bearer feature}
At 9th level, your relic’s magical aura provides you a higher resilience against harm. When you would be forced to make a saving throw, you can spend your reaction to take no damage on a successful save, and only half damage if you fail. You must spend this reaction before rolling the saving throw.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses after a long rest.

At 15th level, you do not expend a use of this feature on a failed save.

At 20th level, this feature no longer requires a reaction to use.

Empowered Relic

^{11th-level Bearer feature}
At 11th level, your abilities as a bearer allows you to bypass normal restrictions with other magical items.

You ignore all class, race, spell and level requirements on attuning to or using a magic item.
You can attune to a magic item in a 1 minute ritual while it is on your person. This ritual can be done outside of a short rest.
Upon attuning to a magic item, you make a Charisma saving throw if it is cursed (DC = 5, increasing by 5 for each rarity above uncommon, to a maximum of 25 with artifacts). On a success, you can choose to attune to it without suffering the curse. On a failed save, you suffer the curse but know you are cursed.

Dormant State

^{15th-level Bearer feature}
At 15th level, your relic bears your soul in death. Upon dying, you transfer your consciousness into your relic. You are incapable of viewing or sensing the world around you while in this state, but you do know when a creature is holding you or has you on its person. While a creature has your relic on their person, you can telepathically communicate with them, and you choose if they can respond back telepathically. While you reside inside your relic, you can be brought back to life through one of two rituals.

A humanoid creature holding your relic can willingly sacrifice their body to you through a 6-hour long ritual, which can be done during a long rest. If this ritual is completed without interruption, the creature dies, and you take over their body.
Your relic can be placed onto a complete humanoid corpse that has died no less than 7 days ago, at which point it undergoes a 24-hour long ritual. Upon the ritual’s completion, you take over the body. If the body lacks integral body parts or organs, you cannot undergo the ritual to possess it.

In either case, you are treated as having been resurrected by the Raise Dead spell. A creature sacrificing themselves to bring you back to life reduces the spell's penalty to a -2, and you return to life with a number of hit points equal to the amount of the sacrificed creature (maximum amount being your hit point maximum).

You can either reshape this new body into the one you had before death or keep it as is if it is a playable race. Doing so replaces your previous racial features for your new body’s racial features.