Sacred Artist (5e Class)

Sacred Artist

That which has meaning can be enshrined to be sacred. The brush we carry within all of us is proof that this is true. Once one sees meaning in all, their brush can draw upon the true and sacred nature inherent in all. It is what we, as artists, are meant to unveil.

A great grandmaster stands alone among the ruins of a ransacked village. All around are the signs of strife and ruination, bought needlessly upon innocents. But his eyes can spot the glimmer of life that once was. Taking out a large brush, he draws a small sapling from a point in the ground. Then another. And another. He does this until the ruined field has been restored. Where his brush touched, the remnants of memory before destruction bubble forth and wash away the horrific scene, bringing back the life that was.

The shadow of a woman dashes through the temple ruin. Her archaeological dive has come to a screeching halt as rabid great apes come to chase her. She turns a quick corner. When the beasts follow, an eruption of stone slams into their faces as a sudden wall appears where there had not been one before. The woman stows away her brush and catches her breath before continuing on her excursion.

Orcs did not care to fight with honor. They edge closer to the little halfling girl, who merely smiles. With a flick of her brush, several orcs fall back, with gashes littering their bodies. A knight had materialized seemingly out of the air in cobalt armor. The color is the same as the paint dripping from the little girl's brush.

Creating a Sacred Artist

By Sucho

Sacred artists are those who have honed their aesthetic senses to the brim. They are essentially illustrators of new and exciting realities that are bought to life within the confines of the world. Their power is constrained only by their creativity as well as their own stamina. It is debatable from where they draw their power. Some think it a divined skill. Others say it is willpower of the self. The most generic answer is magic.

When making a sacred artist character, consider the following questions to flesh them out: What does your character like to draw? Are they drawn to macabre scenes of grim and terror, or to whimsical and even abstract themes? How do they see the world and the meaning behind its visions? In what ways would they like to transform it? Do they want to see a brighter picture at the end, or are their aims to splash crimson on the canvas of the world?

Quick Build

You can make a sacred artist quickly by following these suggestions. First, Dexterity should be your highest ability score, followed by either Charisma or Wisdom. Second, choose the charlatan or cloistered scholar background.

Class Features

As a Sacred Artist you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d8 per Sacred Artist level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + Constitution modifier per Sacred Artist level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: None
Weapons: daggers, darts, improvised weaponss
Tools: Choose one type of artisan's tools
Saving Throws: Dexterity, Charisma
Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Persuasion, History, Insight, Religion, Deception and Stealth

Equipment

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

• Any simple weapon
• (a) a scholar’s pack or (b) a diplomat’s pack
• (a) a brush and foldable easel or (b) a pencil and sketchbook

Table: The Sacred Artist

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Sacred Burst
1st	+2	Essence Burst, Basic Technique, Erasure	2
2nd	+2	Sacred Style	2
3rd	+2	Depiction's Core	2
4th	+2	Ability Score Improvement	2
5th	+3	—	3
6th	+3	Sacred Style feature	3
7th	+3	Depiction's Core feature	3
8th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	3
9th	+4	—	4
10th	+4	Sacred Style feature	4
11th	+4	Depiction's Core feature	4
12th	+4	Ability Score Improvement	4
13th	+5	—	6
14th	+5	Sacred Style feature	6
15th	+5	Depiction's Core feature	6
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	6
17th	+6	—	8
18th	+6	Sacred Style feature	8
19th	+6	Ability Score Improvement	8
20th	+6	Unbridled Artistry	8

Essence Burst

The power you draw from something's essence requires some of your own to push it to fruition. You need to expend your mental and physical energies to bring something to life, like a real artist. This is manifested in the form of bursts where the sacred essence of something is bought forth by your artisan skills. In a way, it is almost like an evocation spell, but your artistic visions can take it to numerous frontiers.

Artists Tools

You use tools to bring your vision from the abstract to the material. To summon the essences for a burst, you must have a drawing/writing utensil as well as a medium to enact the utensil on. Think of these a little as equivalents of an arcane focus.

Sacred Burst

Starting at 1st level, you start with four effects which you can use for your bursts: Minor Sketch, Surface Gloss, Neon Dazzle, and Smudge. You learn more burst features as you gain levels in this class. You start with two burst uses and gain more uses of your bursts at certain artist levels, as shown in the Sacred Burst column. When you use your Essence Burst, you choose which effect to create. Unless specified otherwise, the effects cost one burst to use.
Some burst effects require saving throws. When you use such an effect from this class, the DC equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. When you finish a short or long rest, you regain all your expended uses of burst.

• Minor Sketch: You can draw objects to existence from memory, which you have seen. As an action, you create a simple, non-magical object that appears within 5 feet of you. This object cannot exceed a value of 10 gold pieces, a weight of 10 pounds, or take up more than 5 feet in any direction. This object disappears after an hour, until you dismiss it with an action or bonus action, or if you attempt to have more than 10 instances of this spell active at the same time.
• Surface Gloss: You can manipulate essence to give something a stronger surface, like a varnish on wood. As a bonus action, you coat a creature within 30 feet of you with a bolstered smattering of their own essence bought forth. Until the start of your next turn, the target has a +5 bonus to their AC.
• Neon Dazzle: Drawing on the essence of chaos in photons in the air, you amplify them to your advantage. As an action, you summon a burst of colors and wild lights. All creatures in a 15-foot cone originating from you must succeed a Charisma saving throw or be stunned until the beginning of their next turn.
• Smudge: You alter the essence around something to make them harder to perceive. As an action, you can choose one creature within 30 feet of you and turn their image into a blurry mass. For 1 minute or until you dispel this effect with a bonus action, any creature that relies on sight or does not have the ability to see through illusions, blindsight, or truesight has disadvantage on attack rolls against the target.

Basic Technique

There are some things which are foundational to your craft, a staple which you know forever and can always use. Starting at 1st level, while you have a drawing/writing utensil, you can use an action to make minor alterations to essence that don't cost much effort. You can choose which of the following effects to use when you use this feature, and you cannot have more than 3 instances of this feature at a time:

• You make a color, a small mark, or a symbol appear on an object or a surface within 10 feet of you for 1 hour.
• You create an instantaneous, harmless visual effect, such as rose petals, a puff of smoke, or glitter within 30 feet of you. This effect must fit within a 5-foot cube.
• You can make light emit from a point in space up to 60 feet from you. This point emits light up to 60 feet, and dim light for 60 feet after that. It is stationary and lasts for up to 1 hour.

Erasure

You can paint over others to destroy their bodies little by little, but not enough to fully make them nonexistent. Yet. Starting at 1st level, you can use your drawing utensil to send a lash of negative essence at a creature within 60 feet of you as an action. It must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC = 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus) or take 1d4 force damage and have disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn. This feature's damage increases by 1d4 when you reach 5th Level (2d4), 11th level (3d4), and 17th level (4d4).

Sacred Style

The power of the sacred artist lies with the power to draw forth its meaning at its core. But there are multiple ways, multiple meanings, an artist can depict, and this is seen through their distinctly developed styles. You as an artist instead adapt to many aspects of styles to keep fluid and eventually build your own brand. At 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th levels, you can choose two features from the Tenets of Style of the appropriate level.

Depiction's Core

No matter how an artist tries out new things, they will always have some sort of structural signature. It is typically defined by how their art draws and illustrates the subject, in the style of the stroke and intention of the tool. Choose one from the Flourishing Ink, Dour Scratch or Realist's Stain subclass. Your choice grants you features when you choose it at 3rd level and again at 7th, 11th, and 15th level.

Ability Score Increase

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.

Unbridled Artistry

When you reach 20th level, your art capabilities have reached a pinnacle few can ever experience. As an action, you can enter a state of ultra-essence, giving you unlimited access to the substance hidden in everything. For 1 minute, you can expend either your bonus action or action to use any of your Essence Bursts, and you have an unlimited use of them for the duration of this feature. After the duration ends, your sacred burst usage is reduced to 0, as if you've used up all your bursts. You can only use this feature once, regaining use once you finish a long rest

Tenets of Style

Tenets of style are divided up based on your skill as an artist. At 2nd and 6th levels, you may pick two tenets below from the level appropriate to add to your repertoire of sacred art. At 10th, 14th and 18th levels, you may pick 1. If there are any prerequisites for a tenet, you must fulfill it before taking it.

2nd Level Tenets

• Erratic Splash: Your energy is frenetic and it shows not only in the way you paint, but the way your body expresses itself. You gain proficiency in the Acrobatics and Performance skills. If you are already proficient in either skill, you may instead gain expertise.
• Artist's Eye: You have an intense attention to detail. You gain a +5 bonus to your Passive Perception score.
• Scripted Speech: The very essence of you is amplified as you grow stronger, such that it emits with your words. If you choose, you can have your words appear in the air before your lips like floating text in the air. You can activate and turn off this feature with no action necessary. Even if you are rendered mute, this feature can still be used.
• Portrait Expressions: Even as a fledgling artist, you know a little about what lurks beneath the surface of a person's expressions. You can spend up to 1 uninterrupted minute studying a humanoid within 30 feet of you which you can see and hear. After you have scoped them out, you have a limited knowledge of what makes them tick, and you have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) and all Charisma checks against the target for the next hour.
• Blurry Step: You gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

Briefly, as though you momentarily faded into pastel background, you teleport up to Xd10 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see as an action. X is equal to your proficiency bonus

• Edge Maker: You gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

With your drawing utensil, you can using shading to affect the edge of something and make it different. As a bonus action, you change the damage of a nonmagical weapon you can touch to one of the following damage types of your choice: piercing, bludgeoning or slashing.

6th Level Tenets

• Swift Stroke: You draw incredibly fast, showing your developed reflexes. When a creature enters within 5 feet of you, you may expend your reaction to Dash.
• Still Life Feast: You gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

Drawing nonliving things, like food, is something you do well. As an action, with your drawing/writing utensil, you can formulate up to 50 pounds of food and 50 gallons of water within 30 feet of you from free-floating essence in the ether. The water comes in a container you draw, being either barrels or waterskins. The food can be as exotic in appearance as you make it, but it all tastes bland in the end and will spoil after 24 hours. The water is clean does not spoil.

• Elemental Art: By drawing the lingering essence of the elemental planes with your artist tool, you can infuse it momentarily into other beings. As a bonus action, you can choose a creature within 30 feet of you. They gain resistance to an element of your choice from fire, cold, acid, necrotic, poison, radiant or lightning. This resistance lasts for 1 hour and if they are already resistant to that damage type, they are unaffected. You can target the same creature multiple times with this feature. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and you regain all uses after you finish a long rest.
• Value Study: Normally, value study is the measure of light and dark in a picture's composition. You can take this a step further by observing values within essence. If you spend at least 1 minute observing another creature outside of combat, you learn of up to two of the creature's damage type immunities or vulnerabilities.
• Envision Past: Seeing what is also gives an idea of what it was before. As part of a short rest, you can meticulously study an area no larger than 30 feet on a side within range. You learn about what buildings or plants were on it before, as well as their locations, up to a month's time ago.

10th Level Tenets

• Eternal Essence: There is no end to one's essence. It can be endlessly multiplied so long as it remains even a little intact. Your art gives it that power to replenish itself. You touch a creature within range with your artists utensil. For the next hour, the target regains 1 hit point at the start of each of its turns (10 hit points each minute). The target's severed body members (fingers, legs, tails, and so on), if any, are restored after 5 minutes. If you have the severed part and hold it to the stump, the essence instantaneously causes the limb to mend back to the stump. You must finish a short or long rest to use this feature again.
• Spatial Intuition: An artist is heavily spatially oriented, and you develop this sense to its keenest level. You always have a general sense of what direction you travel in, and you cannot get lost. Additionally, you can accurately recall anything you have seen within the last month.
• Restore Past: Prerequisite: Envision Past tenet

By spending 10 minutes sketching, you can conjure a Large or smaller immobile plant or object which used to be on the terrain you studied.

14th Level Tenets

• Paint Storm: You gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

As an action, you conjure forth the chaotic essences in the world and give them a fluid form in your utensil, allowing you to manipulate them. For 1 minute, your utensil basically becomes a magic item. By pointing it in a direction of your choice as a bonus action, colorful ink, which is actually the condensed form of all the chaos in the atmosphere around you, blasts out in a 30-foot cone in the direction you chose. All creatures in the cone must attempt a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, they take 6d10 damage and are blinded until they use an action to wipe the slurry out of their eyes. On a successful save, they take half damage and are not blinded. The damage type they take is a random one from the table below, due to the chaos embodied in this attack, and it shows in the paint which bursts out.

Paint Storm Damage

1d6	Paint Color	Damage Type
1	Red	Fire
2	Blue	Cold
3	White	Force
4	Green	Acid
5	Violet	Lightning
6	Yellow	Poison

• Caricature: You gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

You can make funny things happen to someone's shape when you draw on their essence and change it. As an action, you can use your drawing utensil to change the form of something within 30 feet of you with the following effects of your choice, depending on if it is a creature or object. These effects last for 1 hour:

• If the target is an object, you can change its surface and properties, affecting up to 30 feet of its material. You can cause it to fold or collapse, as well as change it to difficult terrain, change its shape or its color.
• If the target is a creature, you can choose one of the following effects to utilize:

• Natural Weapons: The target grows fangs, claws, or even actual weaponry from their body, like blades or spikes, as you draw. Their unarmed strikes now deal 1d8 magical bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, as appropriate to the natural weapon you chose for them. The target gains a bonus with these natural weapon attacks and damage equal to your Charisma modifier.
• Aquatic Adaptation: You can draw gills and fins on the creature, granting them amphibious breathing for air and water, as well as a swimming speed equal to their walking speed.
• Aerial Adaptation: You draw wings on the target, granting them a flying speed equal to their walking speed.

18th Level Tenets

• Imagination: Your power as an artist is only limited by what you can think to life. As an action, you can essentially stretch the limits of time and space by using your artistic imagination. You can create one of the following effects of your choice:

• You can permanently change the terrain within 100 miles of you any way you wish. Think of it like painting a new landscape.
• You can permanently change the appearance of up to 20 creatures that you can see. You can make them grow new limbs, eyes, among other things.
• You can create a creature in a space you can see. The creature can be up to Huge size, and can either be a creature you have seen or something from your own imagination. It has an ability score total equal to yours, but you can allocate the points how you wish. You can give it up to 5 actions and features. This creature is not automatically friendly towards you or your allies. This creature disappears back into the ether after 8 hours.

You can aim for an effect other than that of the ones above. State your intention to the DM, and the DM shall determine how to interpret your artistic vision. The stress of changing the world so drastically is a toll on you. After you use this feature, you cannot use any more Sacred Bursts until you finish a long rest. In addition, your Strength score drops to 5 for 1d6 days.

You cannot use this feature again until you spend an equal amount of time recuperating from the strain, taking a long rest every day, incurring no stacks of exhaustion.

• Summon Aid: As an artist, you have the incredible power to draw forth a being to help you in your endeavors. Choose a Large or smaller sized creature no higher than CR8. As an action you summon the creature to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you. The creature disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when you dispel it as a bonus action. The creature is friendly to you and your companions. In combat, the creature shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It obeys verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any, it defends itself but otherwise takes no action. You must finish a long rest before using this feature again.

Flourishing Ink

Your colors are vibrant and your strokes show the inner joy of the essence within everything in being. Your art is the definition of rosy, and it brings warmth to others just from being near it. As an artist, you imagine your subject as it could be. Your art reflects the color and light of impressionists like Claude Monet, Mary Cassat, or even post-impressionists like Van Gogh.

Basic Techniques

When you choose this subclass at 3rd level, you gain the following Basic Technique:

• You instantly make a flower blossom, a seed pod open, a nut or fruit ripen, or a leaf bud bloom that is within 100 feet of you.

Empowering Image

Some people say art can improve one's own feeling. Yours, imbued with essence, takes that literally and improves more than just self-esteem. At 3rd level, you can choose a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see. As an action, you use your drawing utensil to send a mental image to their mind, showing a positive form of themselves and sending them encouraging essences. Until the end of their next turn, the target gains a bonus to their attack rolls and saving throws equal to your Charisma modifier. You must finish a short or long rest after you use this feature to use it again.

Life Stimulation

Starting 7th level, your bubbly aura art literally imparts life into your subjects. With your drawing utensil, you can spend 8 hours drawing onto a Huge or smaller beast, plant or inanimate object. The target must have either no Intelligence score or an Intelligence of 3 or less. The target's Intelligence becomes 7 by the end of your drawing session. They gain the ability to speak in an extremely broken manner in one language of your choice, having no concept of syntax, grammar and very limited vocabulary. If the target is a plant, it gains the ability to move its limbs, roots, vines, creepers, and so forth, and it gains senses similar to a human’s. An inanimate object you stimulate with this feature cannot move, but it still gains senses similar to a human's. Your GM chooses statistics appropriate for the awakened plant, such as the statistics for the awakened shrub or the awakened tree. This awakened state lasts for 24 hours, after which, the target reverts to its original form.

Art Heals

With the positive energy you infuse from yourself and essence, you can heal others. Starting at 11th level, you can restore a number of hit points equal to 10 times your Charisma modifier as an action. Choose any creatures within 30 feet of you and divide those hit points among them. As an artist can fix even broken subjects, this feature affects undead and constructs.

Positive Absorption

Starting 15th level, you have the option of reinvigorating yourself by taking some moments to gather the power of essence from the atmosphere into yourself, making yourself your own expression of art. By spending 1 minute doing so, you regain all uses of your Essence Bursts. You must finish a long rest to use this feature again.

Dour Scratch

The colors are a bit darker in your art. They are twisted rather than enhanced in shape. You see simply a different form within something's sacred being. Your depictions can twist it to your will. Artists of this kind tend to be like cubist artist Pablo Picasso, abstract/surrealist Salvador Dali, folk artist Frida Kahlo, or even romantic Francisco Goya.

Basic Techniques

When you choose this subclass at 3rd level, you gain the following Basic Technique:

• With your drawing/writing utensil, you can change the lighting in an area within a 5-foot cube that is within 20 feet of you. You can change bright light to dim light, dim light to darkness, or vice versa.

Manipulate Coat

Like a painting, reality is a matter of layers, with the outermost one being what is recognized and perceived. But you can therefore change that layer. Starting at 3rd level, with your drawing utensil, you may effectively sketch a new appearance for a creature you can touch. You can change the clothing, armor, weapons, items carried, as well as biological features like eye color, height, weight, and even race.
You can also apply this feature to objects you can touch, making them appear mended if broken, or shiny if rusted.
These changes last for up to an hour or until you use an action to dismiss them. These changes are purely cosmetic. Creatures who suspect the disguise have disadvantage in Intelligence (Investigation) checks to discern it.

Assembly

As a practical artist, you can see what something can become as a whole from its parts. Starting 7th level, you can use your drawing utensil to combine raw materials into products that are a sum of their parts. You spend 10 minutes sketching the schematics of the product and choose raw materials within 120 feet of you to be consumed. Given a sufficient supply of material, you can create a product of a Large-sized or smaller object. Creatures or magic items can't be created by this spell. You also can't use it to create items that ordinarily require a high degree of craftsmanship, such as jewelry, weapons, glass, or armor, unless you have proficiency with the type of artisan's tools used to craft such objects.

Wrangle Shape

Starting 11th level, you gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

You can create grotesque shapes which are only misery on those of reality. You choose up to three creatures within 30 feet of you that you can see and force them to make a Constitution saving throw (DC= 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus). On a failed save, they take 6d8 force damage and have their bodies painfully twisted, impeding their actions. Until the end of their next turn, their movement speed is halved and they have disadvantage on attack rolls. On a successful save, they take half damage and are not impeded with any further effects. Humanoids have disadvantage on this saving throw.
This feature can also be used to alter a Large or smaller nonmagical object. For example, you can cause a sword to bend or a stone to crumble. This effect costs 3 bursts to use.

Mental Twist

Starting 15th level, you gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

Your art now can confuse and confound the mind, not just the body. You can use an action to point your drawing utensil at a creature within 150 feet of you that you can see. The creature must make a Charisma saving throw (DC= 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus). On a failed save, you dominate their psyche and their capabilities are reduced significantly. Their Intelligence and Charisma scores become 1. The creature can’t cast spells, activate magic items, understand language, or communicate in any intelligible way. The creature can, however, identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them. These effects persist so long as you remain within 150 feet of them. Once the creature is out of this range, they can repeat the saving throw against this feature with advantage once per every 24 hours. If it succeeds on its saving throw, it regains half its original mental faculties and ability scores, ending the feature's effects with 2 successful saves. This effect costs 4 bursts to use.

Realist's Stain

The world as it is is how you draw it. There is no point for you to improve upon it, since it is fine as it is. Your dedication to depicting things as they are imbues their essence into your art, and gives it definitive form in reality. This style of art is best characterized by classical or neoclassical paintings like that of Jacques-Louis David or high-renaissance style like Albrecht Dürer.

Basic Techniques

When you choose this subclass at 3rd level, you gain the following Basic Technique:

• You touch and make a color, small mark, or symbol on a surface permanent.

Reality's Allure

Rosy images and such hold no value to you over what is true and real. Starting at 3rd level, you gain immunity to being charmed and resistance to psychic damage.

Perceptive

Starting at 7th level, when you make a Wisdom (Perception) check, you can use your bonus action instead of your action. Also, you can roll an additional 1d6 and add the result to your roll. You can use this feature before or after you roll but before the result is determined.

See True

Your artistic vision is not a veil but a lens that augments the way you perceive reality. This skill grants you greater prowess in perceiving. Starting at 11th level, you gain 60 feet of truesight.

Clear Mind

Starting 15th level, you gain the following Essence Burst effect to add to your repertoire:

Your clarity helps others see as well. As an action, you can use your drawing utensil to grant up to three other creatures within 30 feet of you 60 feet of truesight. Additionally, these creatures become immune to being charmed and their emotions and thoughts become inscrutable to all spells, including wish. This effect costs 4 bursts to use.

Multiclassing

Prerequisites. To qualify for multiclassing into the sacred artist class, you must meet these prerequisites: Charisma 13, Wisdom 13

Proficiencies. When you multiclass into the sacred artist class, you gain the following proficiencies: Performance, daggers, darts

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