The new Ultimate Mercy feat in the UM allows a paladin to use 10 uses of the lay on hands feat to raise someone from the dead. They have the choice of taking a negative level for a day or using the components of a 5000 gp diamond. Since the feat does not have any requirements other than the Greater Mercy feat (and a 19 charisma), which can be taken at 3rd level, the feat itself can be taken at 5th level, but with these two feat slots being used already, the earliest a character can do this is sixth level, with this build...
Start with 19 charisma
Go with the Warrior of the Holy Light Archetype
Any basic race will do, except dwarf and elf
Charisma bump to 20 at level 4
buy headband of Charisma +2 (should be affordable before level 6)
thats +6LOH from charisma +3LOH from levels, and +1 from kit.
It takes a bit less of an investment to be able to do it by level 7, just take the extra lay on hands feat at level 5 and the Ultimate Mercy at level 7. If you go Warrior of the holy light, you can start with a 14 charisma. But its still two levels before any other class can do it.
Broken? Considering it takes two feats and gives you a negative level for a day, and it only comes into play if someone actually dies before the cleric gets the spell at level 9, I don't think so. But it is kinda fun. Which is why I will probably do it. :)
Eh, not really. The negative level is a minor road block with the PF raise dead-type spells.
The saving the 5,000 gp part is close to getting a crafting feat to cut the market cost of an item in half. In fact, it's actually worse because character death is more uncommon than item creation (at least in my games).
So no, I don't think it's outrageous or anything.
Eh, not really. The negative level is a minor road block with the PF raise dead-type spells.
The saving the 5,000 gp part is close to getting a crafting feat to cut the cost of item creation in half. In fact, it's actually worse because character death is more uncommon than item creation (at least in my games).
So no, I don't think it's outrageous or anything.
I agree with you. Not broken, just kinda fun.
Yeah, I don't think it's that bad. You have to really focus on it to be able to do it before a cleric could do it, and even then, you must blow 10 uses of lay on hands on this. That's a lot. It takes a little time to even get 10 uses, and more to get enough uses that you can hold back 10 of them (so you can uses this ability) without robbing yourself of your lay on hands ability (which is very useful for paladins to stay on their feet!)
And it's only raise dead - the least of the back-to-life spells. There are many cases where it won't work, and even if it does, it leaves you with two permanent negative levels. Unless you use greater restoration, you'll be stuck with one for a whole week (you can only remove one permanent negative level per week from a target using restoration).
All in all, it's not bad, and can come in quite handy, but it's not as if because of this, adventuring is now a cake walk.