Death may not be the end in the New World, but it still sucks. While most tech has a hard time rebuilding a personality engram from old data, even the freshly dead sometimes wind up with parts of their minds jumbled or distorted in the process of being spun back up to life. Outlaws walk the fine line between life and death, so it's not surprising that many of them become fascinated with the engrams of the departed. The Rebooted are outlaws who have experienced death or near-death experiences and have since tuned their implants to capture engrams from the dead and dying they encounter.
Engram Whisper
When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you learn how to collect fragments of dead personalities, known as engrams. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can gain one skill or tool proficiency of your choice, as an engram shares its knowledge with you. You lose this proficiency when you use this feature to choose a different proficiency that you lack.
Engram Wail
At 3rd level, as you nudge someone closer to the grave, you broadcast the pain from their engrams to a nearby foe. Immediately after you deal your Sneak Attack damage to a creature on your turn, you can target a second creature that you can see within 30 feet of the first creature. Roll half the number of Sneak Attack dice for your level (round up), and the second creature takes entropic damage equal to the roll's total as their implants try to replicate the damage the engram says they should be suffering.
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.
Engram Possession
At 9th level, when a life ends in your presence, you're able to permanently download a portion of their digital soul into your memory cache. As a reaction when a sapient creature you can see dies within 30 feet of you, you gain an engram token. This is a digital object that you are considered to always have in your possession unless you are the victim of brain hacking or you store it in a digital crypt.
You can have a maximum number of engram tokens equal to your proficiency bonus, and you can't create one while at your maximum.
You can use engram tokens in the following ways:
- While an engram token is in your possession, you have advantage on death saving throws and Constitution saving throws.
- When you deal Sneak Attack damage on your turn, you can destroy one of your engram tokens that's in your possession and then immediately use Engram Wail without expending a use of that feature.
- As an action, you can destroy an engram token in your possession. When you do so, you can ask the creature associated with the token one question. The creature is under no obligation to be truthful, and it answers as concisely as possible, eager to be free. The creature knows only what it knew in life, as determined by the DM.
You cannot create engrams of non-sapient creatures, such as vermin-type beasts, immobile plants, mindless machines, or similar enemies. The DM has final call on what this ability can and cannot work on.
Engram Self
At 13th level, you can partially digitize yourself, becoming like a ghost. As a bonus action, you assume an incorporeal form. While in this form, you have a flying speed of 10 feet, you can hover, and attack rolls have disadvantage against you. You can also move through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, but you take 1d10 kinetic damage if you end your turn inside a creature or an object.
You stay in this form for 10 minutes or until you end it as a bonus action. To use this feature again, you must finish a long rest or destroy one of your engram tokens as part of the bonus action you use to activate Engram Self.
Death Knell
At 17th level, your knowledge of death has become so deep that you gain the following benefits:
- When you use your Engram Wail, you can now deal the entropic damage to both the first and the second creature.
- At the end of a long rest, an engram token manifests in your mind if you don't have any engram tokens, as your implants are constantly trolling the web for soul downloads. The DM determines what, if any, useful knowledge the engram possesses.