Template: Penitent Reborn

Applicable races: Any sentient life form. Rules change slightly for undead, and undead are not exempt from alignment restriction. See below.

Class restriction: No clerics or favored souls, because the Penitent cannot conventionally heal. Paladins/rangers may be allowed with this as “flavor” over the Dolorophage abilities (RP vs. mechanics of the video game Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited).

Alignment restriction: Good alignments only (no Evil, no True Neutral).

You lived a life of deliberate, unrepentant evil, hurting others gladly and without excuse, and were annihilated while committing or plotting evil acts. A deity has found a kernel of your soul and rebuilt you into a new being, with a chance to undo in your next life what you did in the past one. You gain the Vision of Agony and Dolorophage special abilities.

You are able to sense pain in others, whether physical or emotional, and regardless of how effectively they normally conceal it. The normal range of this ability is (radius) 50 yards. The radius increases to five miles when a former victim (that is, someone on whom you inflicted pain in a past life) is involved. The god who changed you has given you the ability to endure the constant awareness of others' pain without going mad. It is a normal part of your environment, and while you must seek out those who are suffering, you are able to bear proximity to them calmly in order to carry out your necessary activities.

This will not be true of anyone who attempts to make telepathic contact with you, however. They are exposed to the full agony that you perceive around you without the buffer of your special ability to endure it. Whether the source is psionic or arcane, the person attempting to read your mind must make a DC 20 will save or be stunned for one round (around six seconds). This does not apply to messages conveyed via the spells Telepathy or Sending, which involves words being told you and no real feedback from your mind to the caster's. If repeated attempts are made, the will save DC increases by five on each attempt that occurs within five rounds of the previous one.

Special Ability: Dolorophage

The Penitent cannot heal as a divine caster does (or repair warforged). You can instead transfer damage from others to yourself by touch. They will be fully healed or repaired while you experience 75% of the damage of their injuries. This does not apply to the conditions poisoned, blind, or diseased, which you will experience in full. It does not work on insanity or on congenital malformations that cause no discomfort (like a sixth finger).

The 75% is calculated as a percentage of their hit points scaled to a percentage of yours. That is, if a wounded fighter has 100 out of 1000 hit points left (has lost 90%), but your total is only 200, you will not die from 675 points of damage (75% of his total loss); you will instead take 75% of the 90% damage the fighter has taken and lose 67.5% of your total hit points, leaving you with 65 hp. If undead, you take damage as if hurt by positive energy; you are not healed by the transfer.

More simply put, if a person has a sword wound that would be fatal to them in ten minutes untreated, you will receive a sword would that would be fatal in twenty to thirty minutes untreated, even if s/he is a large, robust half-orc and you are a small, weak elf.

Transferred injuries may be healed or repaired by any normal means (potion, wand, spell, etc.). Undead are still healed by conventional negative energies such as those of the Inflict and Harm spells.  The Penitent cannot heal himself or herself with spells but can use devices if the class/build has enough UMD for that.

Emotional injuries are merely absorbed; you are aware of what they are but do not experience them. The success of healing an emotional injury depends on the injured person's ability to let go of it. A PTSD episode might be completely stopped, while grief over a loved one's death might simply be alleviated to a bearable level (an ability to remember them and cherish your time together rather than despair over their loss). Clinical depression cannot be sent away at once but might be improved with long-term exposure to the dolorophage.

While you can eat and drink if you choose, you do not require physical sustenance regardless of your species (you require rest or sleep as usual). Instead, you are physically compelled to seek out hurting people and relieve their suffering. If you do not transfer at least 20% hp damage every two days, you will gradually lose constitution at the rate of 1/day until it reaches 1. At a constitution of 1 you will sink into a comatose state until touched by a wounded person. You will then regain constitution even if they have con damage, and injuries will be transferred as normal. You remain in a suspended state without aging/dying until this occurs.

If you successfully transfer more than 60% hp damage in two days, you gain +2 to all saves for a duration of 24 hours starting from the last transfer.