Tempered Soul

Tempered Soul

Tempered Soul is a feat granted to every member of Deez Nuts when their souls were reforged in the Hells and they signed A Compact of restoration and continuance in Session 50. It is as much a roleplaying device as a mechanic.

As of S52 (2026-07-12) the feat has evolved into Tempered Soul Aspects — see Aspects below. On D&D Beyond, the old Tempered Soul feat is deleted and Tempered Soul Aspects added in its place, with your Aspect chosen from the drop-down. (If both feats linger on your sheet you'll see duplicate actions — remove the old feat and refresh.)

Effect (the original form, S50–S52)

Once per long rest, a character may add 1d4 to any d20 test they make (an attack, check, or save) — or raise the DC of a save they are imposing on another by the same amount. To use it, the player must narrate the emotion, memory, or instinct that fuels the surge: the grief, rage, love, or stubbornness their soul has been tempered by.

Aspects (from S52)

Using the feat repeatedly in the same domain tempers the soul in that direction until it crystallizes into an Aspect. The DM: "you have used your tempered soul enough times in a single domain that you have… basically leveled up your soul a little bit."

• In-domain, roll a d6 instead of a d4. The d4 stays available for anything — including in-domain, if you want to spend less.
• Charges replace "once per day." Your pool is the sum of every soul die you hold: base d4 + one d6 Aspect = 10 charges at proficiency +3. A d4 costs 4 charges to roll, a d6 costs 6.
• Pool scales with proficiency bonus (confirmed S53): at level 9 (proficiency +4) the boxes grow to 7 + 5 = 12 charges — enough for, e.g., three d4 spends.
• Recovery: all charges back on a long rest (camping overnight counts), half back on a short rest — this applies to everyone, Aspect or not.
• Growth: an Aspect scales d6 → d8 → d10 → d12 → d20 with continued in-domain use. Spreading across several Aspects makes any one of them harder to push high — "do you want to focus in one area, or do you want to branch it out so that you have broader domains?"
• One Aspect equipped. The character sheet shows three Aspect drop-down slots, but only one may be filled until a soul evolution (timing: the DM's call) unlocks the second. You can learn additional Aspects before you can equip them.

Rulings:

• Any d20 roll is a legal target.
• It may raise a save DC you impose on others — but (S53) a save-DC boost applies to only ONE creature of a multi-target spell (Baelgrum's Fireball d4+1 raised the DC for the dragonborn alone).
• The die may be added to damage (official ruling, 2026-08-09) — a legal, if less efficient, use of the surge (established by Keyleth's spends in S52 and S53).
• It may be applied to a check already rolled (retroactively), and you may spend it after you learn what you are facing — "the whole point is, like, you know whether or not you need to go bigger."

The Aspects

All six crystallized by the end of S52; the domains were defined at the table in S53 (the DM is finalizing the D&D Beyond drop-downs).

Character	Aspect	Domain (as defined in S53)
Shade	Arcane Certainty	Empowering arcane energy — "throwing fireballs and chromatic orbs, and just the power of the destruction that you're able to wield"
Baelgrum	Protection and Healing	Protection / sacrifice: rolls where he takes, redirects, or discharges harm — interposing, shielding, warding. Spirit Guardians qualifies; a Fireball attack does not.
Xanphina	(name pending)	Past the point of breaking: rolls made past when she should have stopped — continuing while bloodied, raging, or exhausted; feats of strength against what has resisted her; breaking through pressure bearing down on her (e.g. the necromancer's curse).
Karma	(name pending)	Suppression, craft, and the found weakness: harvesting, crafting, nature and medicine; holding or suppressing a foe (the Dragon Turtle); and picking out the precise weakness — the right save, the soft point.
Keyleth	(name pending)	The hunt and the wild: nature, survival, tracking; finding her prey and striking when she has found it.
Gootcha	(name pending)	Name, memory, and what has passed: rolls drawing on memory, past knowledge, or experience — aligned with the Raven Queen's domain, where death and memory keep house. (The DM intends to tighten this definition.)

Intent

The DM (Wes Vaske) framed this as a deliberately open-ended, evolving feature rather than a flat bonus: "this is something that you should try to use every day… it will evolve over time." Each invocation is meant to deepen the character — a small, recurring window into who each survivor became after passing through death and the Hells. The Aspects are that evolution paying out: what you reach for under fire is what your soul becomes. More of the system exists than the players have seen — "there's kind of a bunch of other stuff around it that you don't know yet, that you're gonna find out in-universe."

Usage Log

Every use is recorded on Tempered Soul/Usage Log — what each character empowered, the roll and the die, the feeling they channeled, and a verbatim quote. The log is how the feat's growth is tracked over time, and the DM uses it to decide when an Aspect has been earned, so narrate (and record) every spend.

Holders

All reforged members of Deez Nuts: Shade, Xanphina, Keyleth, Gootcha, Karma, and Baelgrum (the soul bound in Alexios's place).