Ardent

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Empathic Range	Powers Known	Psi Points	Psi Limit
1st	+2	Empathic Range, Invoke Mysticism, Bastion of Resolution	30 ft.	—	—	—
2nd	+2	Expertise, Fighting Style, Psionic manifesting	30 ft.	4	2	1
3rd	+2	Intuitive Mind, Mantle	40 ft.	5	3	1
4th	+2	Ability Score Improvement	40 ft.	5	3	1
5th	+3	Extra Attack	50 ft.	6	8	2
6th	+3	Invoke Mysticism Improvement, Mantle Feature	50 ft.	7	8	2
7th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	60 ft.	7	10	2
8th	+3	Expertise	60 ft.	8	10	2
9th	+4	—	70 ft.	9	16	3
10th	+4	Ability Score Improvement	70 ft.	10	16	3
11th	+4	Mantle Feature	80 ft.	10	19	3
12th	+4	Aura of Lucidity	80 ft.	11	19	3
13th	+5	—	90 ft.	12	23	4
14th	+5	Mantle Feature	90 ft.	13	23	4
15th	+5	Heightened Empath	100 ft.	13	27	4
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	100 ft.	14	27	4
17th	+6	Intuitive Mind	110 ft.	15	36	5
18th	+6	Mantle Feature, Invoke Mysticism Improvement	110 ft.	16	36	5
19th	+6	Ability Score Improvement	120 ft.	16	14	5
20th	+6	Mindflower	1 Mile	17	41	5

Empathic Range

As an ardent, you can sense the feelings of others. You have proficiency in the Insight skill. For all creatures within 30 feet of you, you know their surface feelings—what they are feeling most forefront in their mind at the moment. This 30 feet is your empathic range, and increases as you level up in this class, as shown on the Ardent class table. Unless their emotions are particularly strong, you can't sense them behind walls or other notable obstructions. If an invisible creature is near you, you would be able to sense its basic emotional state, but not its precise location.
Similarly, your emotions spread and catch on to those around you. Creatures within 30 feet of you know your basic emotional state, unless you wish to hide it. If you are attempting to hide your emotions, your passive Charisma (Deception) is used, which must be contested by a successful Wisdom (Insight) check to discover. This will influence them in varying ways — a creature with lower Wisdom would likely share your emotional state, while a creature with higher Wisdom (than your Charisma) would retain theirs. This can also depend on the strength of your current emotions and how emotional any given character is. Talk with your DM about your character's normal emotional state (if they have one) and how it may change, thus changing the state of those surrounding your character.

Bastion of Resolution

Because of this abundant affective sense and substance within you at 1st level, you resist the strikes of foes not only with your physical body, but with your mind in the majority. Your hit points increase by your Wisdom modifier and increases by the same amount again whenever you gain a level in this class. When you spend Ardent hit dice to recover hit points at the end of a short rest, you can roll the die and add either your Wisdom instead of your Constitution modifier to it.

Invoke Mysticism

The ability of this empathy grants you certain powers. You start with two powers, Inspiring Grasp and Spacial Affect, and gain an effect determined by your Mantle at level 3. When you use your Invoke Mysticism, you choose which effect to create. You have a number of uses of Invoke Mysticisms equal to your Charisma modifier, and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Some Invoke Mysticisms require saving throws or attack rolls. When you use such an effect from this class, the DC equals 8 + your Proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier, and the attack your Proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier, the same as your Psionic Save DC and your Psionic attack modifier, which are detailed later in the class description.

INVOKE MYSTICISM: INSPIRING GRASP

You call a creature's basic instincts of survival and recovery to their mind. As a bonus action, you can heal a creature within your empathic range 1d6 hit points. This healing increases to 2d6 at 6th level, 3d6 at 12th level, 4d6 at 15th level, and 5d6 at 18th level.

INVOKE MYSTICISM: SPATIAL AFFECT

You meld and switch the minds and bodies of yourself and a friend. As a bonus action, you can exchange places with one willing ally within your empathic range, and they are teleported to where you previously were.

Expertise

At 2nd level, you gain expertise with Insight and one of the following skills of your choice : Animal Handling, Deception, Intimidation, Performance, or Persuasion. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of these skills.
At 8th level, you can choose another two skills from the list above to gain this benefit.

Fighting Style

At 2nd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose a fighting style from the list of the following options. You can't take the same Fighting Style option more than once, even if you get to choose again.

DEFENSIVE

While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC. While wielding a shield, when a creature you can see attacks a target other than you that is within 5 feet of you, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll.

DUELING

When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.

GREAT WEAPON FIGHTING

When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the two- handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.

TWO-WEAPON FIGHTING

When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.

Psionic Manifesting

Also at 2nd level, you learn spells that allow you to apply your mental powers onto the world. All powers require that you spend psi points to use them, which is the same as the power's level. For example, to manifest mend wounds, a 1st-level power, you would need to spend 1 psi point.
You learn four powers of your choice, detailed in the Ardent power list section at the end of this document. You learn more powers at higher levels, as shown on the Ardent class table. Additionally, when you level up in this class, you can choose one of the powers you know and replace it with another psionic powers, which is also must be of a level you can manifest.

PSI POINTS AND PSI LIMIT

An elf in beautifully crafted plate holds her blade in both hands, focusing her mind and soothing her allies’ pain with the power of her raw emotions. The power from her mind manifesting into energy and giving them a stronger will to fight.
A human wields raises his spear and shield, blasting out mental terror and anguish at his foes, debilitating them and forcing them to give up hope, as his sister races behind them, slashing each one down as she empowers her own blade to cut true and clean.
A halfling unleashes his latent emotional energy, hitting an orc back and stunning them as their mind is overloaded, before rushing in to chop him down with a crystalline blade. All these heroes are ardents, a psionic leader with the ability to manifest the power of their raw emotions. They crush foes under the powerful waves of guilt and make allies stand tall with waves of hope and happiness. All ardents are skilled with their blades and armor, but they truly excel when infiltrating the minds of foes to debilitate and demoralize them, ending a fight before its even started.

Explosive Personalities

Ardents use their emotions to fuel their manifestations, often leading them to have over-the-top or highly dynamic personalities that make it easy to pick them out. They have emotions mostly in extremes, meaning the smallest things can make them ecstatically overjoyed, terribly sad, or furious, but they will rarely just be happy or mad. Emotion over Logic Due to the way ardents experience their emotions, they can have a very hard time thinking through things purely logically, and will almost always fall back on their emotions as a reasoning for why something should be the way it is.

Battle Hardened

Ardents are first and foremost warriors, capable of tearing apart the fiercest monsters from the mind outward. Ardents stride into battle confident they will win, with that belief backed up by their own overwhelming surge of emotions. Ardents will never consider the possibility of failure unless it is beyond obvious, and will walk towards danger all the while making their allies confident enough to do exactly the same. When an ardent succeeds in a vicious battle, they will act as though there was never any doubt that they would come out fine. If an ardent does lose a battle, it can do a great deal of damage to them. Due to their emotions fueling their powers, if their confidence is damaged, they start to doubt themselves, sometimes weakening or even disabling their powers until they can start believing in themselves and their allies again. In a good party though, an ardent is a bastion of resolution and mental fortitude. They overcome seemingly unnatural odds and keep cool over it the entire time. When an ardent feels they are relied on, their powers grow as their confidence and self worth does. When they learn to lean on their party, as well, they can feel at ease and bounce back from even the harshest defeats with relative ease.

Creating an Ardent

Creating an ardent demands a backstory explaining why they are so in touch with their emotions, and how said emotions grew so powerful. Did your character have a traumatic event, bring them to the edge but then someone snapped them back? How did your character learn of their innate psionics, and where did they train? Do you just have a vast amount of powerful innate talent, or did you have to study and learn your emotions to properly control them? Is your teacher an ardent themselves, or perhaps just someone with a good understanding of the emotions of sentient creatures and how to correctly manage them? What drew you into the path of an ardent? Did the control give you a sense of well-being? Do you like to let your emotions run wild and have powerful effects? Do you have someone you could have saved but didn't, and the guilt threatens to crush you if you don't properly manage it?

Quick Build

You can make an ardent quickly by following these suggestions. First, Charisma should be your highest ability score, followed by Constitution or Strength. Second, choose a background that explains how you came upon your powerful emotional connection, such as an Entertainer, Haunted One, or Sage.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d6 per ardent level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 6 + your Constitution modifier + your Wisdom modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d6 (or 4) + your Constitution modifier + your Wisdom modifier per ardent level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: All armor, Shields
Weapons: Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons
Tools: None
Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
Skills: Choose three from Animal Handling, Athletics, Arcana, Deception, Intimidation, Perception, Performance, or Persuasion

Starting Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial weapons
• (a) five javelins or (b) any simple melee weapon
• (a) leather armor or (b) chainmail
• (a) an explorer's pack or (b) a diplomat's pack or (c) a scholar's pack

You have a pool of psionic power that you use to manifest your abilities represented as the Psi Points column of the Ardent table. You can use these points to fuel the psionic powers you know. The maximum number of psi points (its base psi point cost plus any additional points) that you can spend on a discipline's power is 1. This maximum increases to 2 at 5th level, 3 at 9th level, 4 at 13th level, and 5 at 17th level.
When you spend a psi point, it is unavailable to you until you finish a long rest, at the end of which you regain all your expended psi points.
Once you reach 5th level in this class, you can spend additional psi points to increase the level of a power that you manifest, provided that the power has an enhanced effect at a higher level, as bane does. The power’s level increases by 1 for each additional psi point you spend. For example, if you are 5th level and cast bane, you can spend 2 psi points to cast it as a 2nd-level power (the spell's base cost of 1 psi point plus 1).

PSIONIC MANIFESTING ABILITY

Charisma is your psionic casting ability for your spells, so you use your Charisma modifier whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Charisma modifier when setting the saving throw DC for an ardent spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Psionic Save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus +

your Charisma modifier

Psionic attack modifier = your proficiency bonus +

your Charisma modifier

RESOLUTE CONCENTRATION

If any of your powers require concentration, you follow all the normal rules of concentration (in Chapter 10 of the Player's Handbook) except that you can choose to make Wisdom saving throws to maintain your concentration, instead of Constitution saving throws.

Intuitive Mind

Starting at 3rd level, you can add your Wisdom modifier when you deal damage with a weapon once per turn. When you reach 17th level, you can add half of your Wisdom score instead.

Mantle

At 3rd level, you create for yourself a mantle, which is a state of mind you keep consistent as a way of practice for your psionic abilities. Some characters mimic behaviors, thoughts, and feelings of mantles for a while, and choosing that mantle at 3rd level is only a finalization of your process. You choose from the Mantle of Clarity, the Mantle of Elation, or the Mantle of Dread, detailed at the end of the class description.
Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 6th, 11th, 14th, and 18th level. Those features include the Invoke Mysticism feature.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 7th, 10th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Extra Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Aura of Lucidity

Starting at 10th level, you and friendly creatures within your empathic range can't be charmed or be driven to madness while you are conscious unless you allow it. Any friendly creature that enters your empathic range who is charmed, insane, or both loses it while in your range if you wish.

Heightened Empath

Starting at 15th level, you gain a number of improvements to your empath range:

• You can sense the exact location of creatures, invisible or otherwise, within your empathic range.
• You know if a creature succeeds against your passive Charisma (Deception) to determine your basic emotional state.
• Whenever you make an Insight check or another skill you gained expertise with from this class against a creature within your empathic range, the result is raised to 20 if it would be lower.
• As an action, you can attempt to probe deeper into the emotions of a creature's mind within your empathic range. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw, and on a success, you can't use this feature on that creature again until you finish a long rest. On a failure, you learn its complex emotional state—such as what emotions consistently drive it—and you learn the source of it, if any (such as abuse or undeserved success leading to narcissism). Either way, the target knows that you are probing into its mind, and unless you shift your attention to another creature’s emotions, the creature can use its action on its turn to make a Charisma check contested by your Charisma check; if it succeeds, the effect ends.

Mindflower

At 20th level, your soul expands to fill those around you. Your Wisdom and Charisma scores increase by 4. Your maximum for those scores is now 24. Additionally, any creatures within your empathic range of a CR or level half or less of yours always shares your basic emotional state.