Cadence of the Last Breath (3.5e Power)

''The visage of the butterfly emerges from your chest as the sound of a doomed woman's desperate gasping fills the area. The butterfly alights on your target, who doubles over, then collapses into the fetal position and remains perfectly still, no longer inhaling...''

With a soul-crushing remark, you destroy the diaphragm(s) of up to ten creatures, dooming them to a slow death by suffocation. However, this power comes with a quirk; its strength stems from the loneliness and existential despair of its victim. Thus, the save DC of this power is influenced by how many creatures you choose to target:

* If you target a single creature, and that creature has no conscious allies capable of making their presence and moral support known to it (being in line of sight, shouting, touching it, etc.), the save DC is increased by +5. This replaces the modifier for targeting a single creature &mdash; the modifiers do not stack.

All creatures targeted by this power must make a Fortitude save; on a failure, the creature's diaphragm is utterly destroyed, and it loses the ability to breathe. Regardless of a creature's success on the Fortitude save against this power, it must also make a Will save against the same DC. Failure on the Will save causes the target to be consumed by despair, and it simply lies down and waits for its demise, convinced that its life is no longer worth living. This despair robs the subject of the ability to act, or to even defend itself at all, much like a solipsism, except as a permanent curse. (The subject won't even bother to eat, so it'll eventually starve to death even if it doesn't suffocate.) Only remove curse, break enchantment, limited wish, wish, miracle, or analogous effects can remove this despair and enable the affected creature to act on its own. Regardless of whether or not the Will save is successful, victim(s) who fail the Fortitude save can only be saved by remove curse, break enchantment, heal, restoration, greater heal, greater restoration, epic heal, complete restoration, limited wish, wish, miracle, or an analogous effect. Without such magic to restore their diaphragms, they will suffocate and die, deprived of the ability to breathe. Remove curse and break enchantment cannot save a victim whose diaphragm has been destroyed on their own; either of these two spells must be followed up with remove disease. However, a single remove curse or break enchantment can both lift the despair and prep the subject to have their diaphragm restored by remove disease. The exact time until death depends on a victim's Constitution score and Fortitude saving throws. (See the DMG rules on suffocation.)

A creature under the effects of crushing despair automatically fails its saving throws against this power. A creature under the effects of good hope automatically succeeds on its saving throws against this power.

This power has only a partial effect against creatures that do not need to breathe or have an Intelligence score less than 3. Creatures that don't need to breathe can't be suffocated and killed by this power (and thus have no need to make a Fortitude save), while creatures with an Intelligence score less than 3 can't be robbed of their will to live (and thus don't need to make a Will save). Creatures with immunity to mind-affecting effects are immune to the despair aspect of this power (and thus have no need to make a Will save), but not necessarily the respiratory failure aspect.

The auditory display of this power is the voice of a human or elven woman desperately gasping for air. The visual display is a butterfly, which flies from the manifester's chest into the chest of each target.

Augment: You may spend 2 additional power points to improve the range from medium to long, and another 2 additional power points to extend the range to 600 ft./level.

You may spend an additional 4 power points to remove the maximum distance between targets, allowing you to affect multiple creatures within any distance of each other, as long as all are within the power's range. You still cannot affect more than 10 creatures with this power.

You may spend an additional 4 power points to actively drive the air from a victim's lungs when the power takes hold, causing the victim to suffocate twice as quickly and take a &minus;4 penalty to Fortitude saves to continue holding her breath once her time runs out. For each additional 4 power points spent in this way, you may affect another victim in this way or accelerate the rate of suffocation of the same victim by another 100% and increase the penalty to Fortitude saves against suffocation by 4.

You may spend an additional 6 power points to allow this power to override immunity to mind-affecting effects, though creatures with such immunities still get a +4 bonus on their saving throws. If you do so, you may then spend an additional 8 power points to allow no saving throw at all for this power when you use it on a solitary target; the victim automatically loses the use of her lungs and cannot breathe, and also loses the will to live. For every 4 additional power points spent after this, you may deny an additional victim a saving throw, up to the maximum of 10.

For every 2 power points spent augmenting this power, the save DC is increased by 1. You are allowed to spend additional power points purely to increase the DC, but given the range of augmentation options described above and the fact that the DC can be increased by affecting a small number of targets, this is a waste of power points.