Curse of Animation

While still alive, your skeleton was animated with dark magic by a particularly skilled and cruel necromancer. While it doesn’t bear true intelligence or sentience, your skeleton wished to be free of its fleshy prison, rebelling against you. Eventually, it began using its animating magics to grow bone spurs that would calcify your muscles and pierce your flesh, doing anything it could to escape. Before it could cause your death and shed your skin to join its master, you somehow managed to break the necromancer’s control and come to an accord with your bones. It is still animated within you, and you may occasionally still have conflicting interests, but you’ve learned to work together for your mutual survival. After all, they say that two is better than one, and you can use its ability to manipulate calcium to your advantage...

Animation Ailments

As a creature accursed with your skeleton being necromantically animated within you, you suffer the following ailments:

• You count as being undead for the purpose of any effect that detects or turns undead. If you become subject to an effect that would turn undead and fail the saving throw by 5 or more, you are incapacitated until the end of your next turn or until you take damage.

• Your skeleton is restless and always wants to be moving or patrolling, making it difficult for you to rest. You regain half as many Hit Dice (rounded up) when you finish a long rest. Additionally, if you die and aren’t returned to life within 24 hours, your bones burst from your flesh and become a skeleton.

Level 1: Bone Spurring

You can work with your skeleton to form and expel armaments made from your bones. As an action, you can create a tool that weighs 10 lbs or less that you have proficiency with, one martial melee weapon, or a shield. The bone object appears in one of your empty hands, and you have proficiency with weapons and shields you create with this feature. You can have a number of bone objects created with this feature equal to your curse ability modifier (minimum 1). If you attempt to create one beyond this number, your choice of one of the previous bone objects crumbles to powder.

Level 1: Calcifying Strike

You can build up calcium in your victims when you strike them, making them more susceptible to damage. Immediately after you successfully grapple a creature or deal damage to a creature with one of your bone weapons, you can force it to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, the creature becomes cursed for 1 minute. The first time each turn that the cursed target is hit by an attack, it takes an additional 1d4 piercing damage. The cursed creature can repeat the Constitution saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the curse on itself on a success.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your curse ability modifier (minimum once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. If you have no remaining uses of this feature, you can expend a Hit Die to use it again.

The damage changes when you reach certain levels in this class: 5th level (1d6), 11th level (1d8), and 17th level (1d10).

Level 2: Curse Spells

Your increasing mastery of your curse causes you to learn a particular spell when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Animation Curse Spells table. See the Spellcasting class feature for how curse spells work.

Animation Curse Spells

Accursed Level	Spells
2nd	Shield
5th	Skull Servant
9th	Animate Dead
13th	Stoneskin
17th	Danse Macabre

Level 3: Necromantic Spurs

Each weapon you create with your Bone Spurring counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage while you wield it.

Additionally, you can empower the bone objects you create with your curse’s animating energy. When you create an object with your Bone Spurring or as a bonus action while holding one of your bone objects, you can expend a spell slot to empower it until it leaves your hand. The empowered effect depends on the type of bone object.

Shield. You gain an additional +1 bonus to AC while you wield the shield. You can gain this bonus from only one empowered bone shield at a time.

Weapon. You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls you make with the weapon.

Tool. You gain a +1 bonus to ability checks you make using the tool.

The bonus granted by an empowered bone object increases if you expend certain higher level spell slots to use this feature: to +2 if you use a spell slot of 3rd or 4th level, and to +3 if you use a spell slot of 5th level or higher.

Level 3: Fracture Burst

When you take damage other than psychic damage, you can expel a sudden burst of bones from your skin. Each creature of your choice within 5 feet of you must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 1d8 piercing damage and become cursed as though it failed the saving throw against your Calcifying Strike.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. If you have no remaining uses of this feature, you can expend a Hit Die to use it again.

The range increases by 5 feet when you reach certain levels in this class: 11th level (10 feet), and 17th level (15 feet).

Level 5: Extra Attack

You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Level 11: Exoskeleton Armor

Your skeleton grows bone armor over your skin to protect you both. At the start of each of your turns, you gain temporary hit points equal to half your accursed level.

Level 15: Vitality Splint

You can use your skeleton’s animating energy to restore your own vitality. As an action, you can expend a spell slot to regain a number of your expended Hit Dice equal to the slot’s level.

Level 20: Spurred Army

You can use your action to create and expel up to ten skeletons from your body into unoccupied spaces of your choice within 60 feet of you. Each skeleton remains for 1 hour or until it is reduced to 0 hit points, at which point it crumbles into a pile of bones.

The skeletons are friendly to you and your companions and obey your commands. As a bonus action, you can command any or all of them at the same time, issuing the same command to each skeleton. You decide what action they will take and where they will move. If you issue no commands, the skeletons only defend themselves against hostile creatures. Once given an order, the skeletons continue to follow it until their task is complete.

The only attacks the skeletons can make are melee weapon attacks or grapples, gaining a bonus to Strength (Athletics) checks made to grapple and to weapon attack rolls equal to your curse ability modifier (minimum +1). If one of the skeletons hits a creature or successfully grapples it, the target becomes cursed as though it failed its saving throw against your Calcifying Strike.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend ten Hit Dice to use it again.