Wedded to History (3.5e Feat)

Wedded to History

Born in the distant past, you enjoy a special insight or posses uncanny abilities that distinguish you from those for whom the time of your birth is a best nothing but a few memories passed down through countless generations

Prerequisite: Must be taken at character creation.

Benefit: You may choose one of the ancient backgrounds described below gaining any special abilities that accompany it.

Special: This Feat can apply to Player Characters of any Race. However, It can only be gained at 1st level.

Ancient Backgrounds

Apostle of the Forgotten: The temples are ruined, the idols long since gone to dust. Where once a thousand voices cried out, now only one pushes back the tide of darkness; a once mighty deity now resides only within a single soul, one priest or simple believer to hold aside the tide of oblivion. The last servant of a forgotten deity, you possess a profound sense of loss, and a thin sliver of deific power remains, however small, for you to draw upon.

Special Ability: You gain a +1 insight bonus to your initiative checks. Once per day, you can use an effect that duplicates the spell augury, but it can only see one minute into the future.

Elder of Legend: You possess the reputation of a historical figure; you could be a legend among your people, power and influence that has waxed and waned over the years. Even if all power has slipped through your fingers like dust, at least a shard of this respect remains. People who know of you teat you with more respect and at least lend their ears; after all, you have made or buried fortunes and civilizations.

Special Ability: Whenever you make a Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check against someone who knows your name and nature, you gain a +3 bonus.

Golden Ager: Born in an age of glory and wonder, the Golden Ager remembers the mythical past, the power of a civilization resplendent in the awe of magic. Perhaps floating islands dotted the heavens or glittering spires reached toward the stars. Somehow, though, disaster struck, and the wonders crashed back to the soil, but you survived, melting into the background of history. You still possess a startling grasp of magical theory despite this.

Special Ability: You always treat Use Magic Device as a class skill, and can use it untrained. You only suffer a mishap if you fail a check by 15 or more.

Hand of Prophecy: Blessed and cursed by the arbiters of fate, by strange spirit the forces of time itself, or some other esoteric means, you are guided through the ages by a hand that pushes you ever forward. Whether reborn over and over again, memories returned at a special age or simply not allowed to age or die by the cruel whims of life, the Hand of Prophecy drifts through the ages until at last, destiny has been fulfilled.

Special Ability: You are guided by the hand of fate, but you have some small insight to the machinations of your destiny. Once per day, you may designate a creature you oppose in combat as your nemesis, your rival or opposite as a free action. You gain a +2 bonus on attack rolls and skill checks when dealing with that creature.

Survivor: Too weak, too slow, too unfit. You have plowed through the decades or even centuries with an uncanny fortitude that astounded your contemporaries and continues to do so even now. Your outlook is tempered by this survival, beating back time and age through sheer force of will, running on nothing more than mental might alone. You possess a desire to exist that would frighten many.

Special Ability: Whenever you must make a Fortitude or Reflex save, you may make a Will save instead. Each time you use this ability after the first, you suffer a cumulative -1 penalty to all Will saves for the rest of the day.

Throwback: You are the final holdover from the last stage of your race's evolution. You might even be the first of your race, still wandering the world, gaining and losing power as you do. You have lived since time had even yet to make mortality, and so wander from age to age, reinventing yourself as you choose.

Special Ability: You possess strange quirks of mentality and physiology that affect both mundane and magical attempts to disrupt your body. Attacks and effects normally geared toward your creature type have no effect; this includes a Ranger's favored enemy bonus, bane weapons, and spell effects geared to creature types (such as charm person). On the other hand, you are also immune to beneficial effects that affect such types as well, should you run into any.

Wanderer Place to place, horizon to the sea, you've been everywhere and seen it all; you may have even forgotten how you got to live so long. It could have been that night with the goddess of spring, or the mermaid's flesh you ate, the strange spring in the mountains, the unearthly energies from the yawning vortex, or even the crucible of wailing souls you encountered. You are witness to wonders and horrors both, and yet even still perhaps seek the city in you dreams.

Special Ability: You may use any untrained skill, even if you have no ranks in it, but you have a -2 penalty on the check if the skill is one you could not normally use untrained. You may also attempt to communicate in any known language with an Intelligence check (DC 15) to get a statement out correctly.

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