Diminished Lifeforce (3.5e Trait)

Diminished Life Force

The character in question has a very obvious, possibly disfiguring, scar received from an injury involving a large amount of negative-planar energy. Unshielded/inadequately shielded contact with the Negative Plane destroyed a portion of the character's life force, resulting the character being a full size category smaller.

Prerequisite: Any living, mortal, corporeal, non-construct, not of demonic/divine heritage may take this trait at character creation or acquire this trait, pending DM approval.

Benefit: Character's Size category (as listed; SRD: Table of Creature Size and Scale) is reduced one step down from that which their race normally occupies (If the chosen race is Medium size, the character size is reduced to Small, Small to Tiny and so on), including all core stat, save throw, weight allowance, resistance changes or other modifications as indicated by SRD: Table of Creature Size and Scale, and suffers a 10% (rounded up to the nearest whole number where applicable) reduction in their Racial default movement speed before any other movement boosts/penalties are applied. This movement speed reduction is unaffected by spells/abilities which would permanently increase or decrease movement speed beyond that listed for creatures of the to which Character in question currently belongs (temporary increase/decrease is allowed). The character ages/behaves and interacts normally, apart from effects listed in the Drawback(s) section. Though this effect is magical in origin, the persistent nature of the effect is not magical in practice. This means that a objects entering/leaving the character's space/reach are not altered in any way as a result of this trait. Characters with this trait are still susceptible to other spells/abilities which might reduce/increase their size further.

Drawback: As a result of their reduced size, Characters with this trait suffer a -4 to Intimidate checks, and a -2 to diplomacy checks where size or perceived age may be a factor in persuading action (such as attempting to notify city guards of a crime in progress). Due to the damage to the character's life force, a character with this trait may not have his/her size category permanently increased beyond that of their Race's default size category, and can never permanently benefit from the Enlarge Person spell, even when paired with the Permanence spell or similar effects. Further, the effect of the Enlarge Person spell are reduced to 1/2 of those listed in the spell's description. Due to near-fatal contact with the Negative-Planar energies, in the event the Character dies, he/she cannot be resurrected via the Raise Dead spell, only by a full resurrection. A character with this trait may possibly be identified as Undead or Evil for the purposes the Detect Undead, Detect Evil or Detect Alignment spells, but retains classification as Living and selected alignment and for all other spells/effects/gameplay purposes.

Normal: Character meets the normal height/weight/size/AC/save throws/all other aspects of their race.

Roleplaying Ideas: If the player selects this trait at Character creation, the character might be the child, relative, employee/servant of a Wizard/Sorcerer dabbling/specializing in Necromancy or spells of the Necromancy school, and be present when something goes catastrophically wrong. Alternatively, The seasoned Adventurer who acquires this trait might be the recipient of a powerful Negative Energy attack or effect, or been victim of an exceedingly powerful extraplanar entity, the encounter with which he/she may have only very narrowly survived.

---

Back to Main Page → 3.5e Homebrew → Character Options → Traits