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 the 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.)

The two dice

Every spend uses one of two dice, and the log tracks which (Tempered Soul/Usage Log):

• The standard d4 — usable on any d20 test, always. On the sheets: "Once per Long Rest, immediately after you make a D20 Test, before you learn the outcome, add 1d4 to the roll. Describe to your DM the feeling, memory, or instinct you pour into the moment."
• The Aspect d6 — usable only in your Aspect's domain (below); 3 uses per long rest as currently built. In-domain use is also what grows the Aspect.

(The S52–S53 table sessions described a shared charge pool — 7 + 5 boxes at level 9, d4 = 4 charges, d6 = 6 — with half back on a short rest. The character sheets currently implement the simpler d4 ×1 / Aspect d6 ×3 per long rest; the sheets are the working version, and the pool description is retained in the log's history.)

The Aspects

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." All six party Aspects crystallized during S52 — and Carl, reforged alongside the company, has one too. The canonical names and domains, from the character sheets:

Character	Aspect	Domain (in-domain rolls take the d6)
Shade	Arcane Certainty	Rolls made in unhesitating confidence of her own magical power — spell attack rolls and spell save DCs, especially destructive evocation; saving throws she faces down through sheer self-belief in her craft; Arcana wielded as a flex rather than a question. Out of domain: subtlety, humility, mundane skill, and anything attempted while genuinely unsure of herself.
Baelgrum	Protector's Debt	Anything done to shield, aid, heal, or rescue people under his care — attack or spell rolls that deliver protection or a cure, save DCs of warding spells, saves he must pass so that others stay safe, and checks made to set right a harm he shares responsibility for. Out of domain: plain aggression, self-enrichment, and — pointedly — pure vengeance.
Xanphina	Hellworn Fury	Rolls powered by rage sustained past all reason — attacks and feats of strength while raging, pressing a fight that has already outlasted her, refusing to drop.
Karma	Heartwood Resolve	Rolls where she plants herself and refuses to bend — saves against mental or emotional assault, spell DCs backed by total conviction, holding a form or a position past sense.
Keyleth	The Righteous Hunt	Rolls made against prey she has judged deserving — attacks on marked or hunted quarry, harvesting the deserving dead, acts of retributive judgment.
Gootcha	Raven's Remembrance	Rolls fueled by deliberate memory — of the dead, of dead skills, of moments the Raven Queen marked; acts done in her sight (silencing, stealing back, ending what should have ended).
Carl	Aye Aye, Captain	Any roll made while visibly afraid and doing the thing regardless — following an order or keeping a promise through the fear, staying at his post when leaving is an option, speaking up with the useful thing when silence would be safer. Out of domain: anything done boldly, acts of unrequested initiative, and — by party treaty rather than soul-mechanics — all attack rolls made with his bow.

(The sheet definitions above supersede the looser domain sketches recorded at the S53 table — notably, Karma's finalized domain is stand-firm resolve rather than the harvest-craft reading discussed then, and Keyleth's explicitly includes "harvesting the deserving dead," confirming the S54 ruling.)

Growth

• An Aspect scales d6 → d8 → d10 → d12 → d20 with continued in-domain use — which is why the log tracks Aspect spends explicitly.
• 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.
• 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?"

Rulings

• Any d20 roll is a legal target — including monster-harvesting checks (S54: with a long rest imminent in town, the entire party was allowed to spend on the same carcass).
• 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."
• Camping overnight is a long rest and fully resets the feat.

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 — which die was rolled (standard d4 or the named Aspect d6), what was empowered, the math, the feeling 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 advances — so name your die, narrate the spend, and record both.

Holders

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