Petitioner

Something seems strange and disturbingly familiar about this wispy, ghostly humanoid shape.

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Ecology

Description

Human petitioner

Petitioner Traits A petitioner has additional abilities and features depending upon its home plane. Its alignment matches the alignment of its home plane.

Petitioners are the souls of mortals brought to the Outer Planes after death in order to experience their ultimate punishment, reward, or fate. A petitioner retains fragments of its memories from life, and its appearance depends not only upon the shape it held in life but also upon the nature of the Outer Plane to which it has come. The stat block detailed above presents a typical petitioner formed from the soul of an average human—it does not include any of the plane-specific abilities or features a petitioner gains, and should be modified as appropriate depending on the plane to which the petitioner is assigned.

Creatures who die, become petitioners, and then return to life retain no memories of the time they spent as petitioners in the afterlife. A petitioner who dies is gone forever—its “life force” has either returned to the Positive Energy Plane or, in some cases, provided the energy to trigger the creation of another outsider. Petitioners who please a deity or another powerful outsider can be granted rewards—the most common such reward manifests as a transformation into a different outsider, such as an archon, azata, demon, or devil, depending upon the petitioner’s alignment. In rare cases, a creature can retain its personality from life all the way through its existence as a petitioner and into its third “life” as an outsider, although such events are rare indeed.

Creating a Petitioner “Petitioner” is an acquired template that can be added to any creature whose soul migrates to one of the Outer Planes following its death (henceforth referred to as the base creature). The petitioner uses all of the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted below.

CR: A petitioner’s CR is 1. In some cases, at the GM’s discretion, particularly large or unusual petitioners with higher than normal ability scores may begin with a higher CR; compare the petitioner’s statistics to the values on Table 1–1 on page 293 to help determine an unusual petitioner’s starting CR.

Alignment: A petitioner’s alignment is identical to that of its home plane.

Size and Type: The creature’s type changes to outsider. It loses all subtypes. Its size does not change.

Senses: Petitioners lose any unusual senses they had, but gain darkvision 60 feet.

Armor Class: The petitioner loses all racial bonuses to its Armor Class.

Hit Dice: Petitioners lose all racial and class-based Hit Dice and gain 2d10 racial Hit Dice as outsiders.

Saves: Petitioners have good Fortitude and Reflex saves; a petitioner’s base saves are Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +0. Defensive Abilities: Petitioners lose all the defensive abilities of the base creature. Petitioners are immune to mind-affecting effects.

Attacks: The creature’s BAB is +2, subject to modification for size and Strength. It loses all natural attacks and gains a slam attack as appropriate for a creature of its size.

Special Attacks: Petitioners lose all special attacks. Abilities: Same as the base creature.

Feats: Petitioners lose all feats. As a 2 HD outsider, a petitioner gains one feat—typically Toughness.

Skills: Petitioners lose all skill ranks they possessed as mortals. As a 2 HD outsider, a petitioner has 12 skill ranks it can spend on skills (with a maximum of 2 ranks in any one skill), and gains bonus skill ranks as appropriate for its Intelligence. Unlike most outsiders, petitioners do not gain an additional 4 class skills beyond those available to all outsiders.

Special Qualities: Petitioners lose all special qualities, along with all abilities granted by class levels (including increases on saving throws and to HD and BAB).

Source: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 2, p. 208