Defensive Fighting 

Each level of this feat gives you +2 bonus to defence. This does not stack with armour. Use your armour bonus or your defensive fighting bonus whichever is higher. Shields do stack with this feat. Anything that would cause you to lose your Dexterity bonus prevents you from using your defensive fighting bonus. This feat can be taken multiple times and stacks with itself. A DM may set a maximum number of times this feat can be taken. The usual limit is three.

Resistant to Taint 

For all purposes, including the unnatural vitality and embrace the darkness feats, the characters taint score is halved (round down). Example. A character with this feat and a taint score of 3 would suffer a -1 penalty to Constitution and Wisdom.

Unnatural Vitality 

Prerequisites: 3 levels of taint (see below), diehard.

You die at 10 + your taint level below zero HP instead of -10 HP. 


Embrace the Darkness 

Prerequisite: 4 taint points.

You have embraced the power of the dark side and learned to use it to your advantage. You get 1 bonus spell slot for casting each day for every spell level you can cast up to your level of taint. So for example 6th level sorcerer with this feat can cast an extra zero, first, second and third level spell per day. He doesn’t get a 4th level bonus spell slot because he cannot cast 4th level spells yet.

Alignment 

The worlds of S&S are usually morally grey. The heroes are often thieves, mercenaries or assassins. They are actions can sometimes be downright wicked. They are often concerned more with vengeance or loot than right. 

For game purposes, alignment does not exist the same way as it does in a conventional D&D world. The only real alignments are what we will call cosmic. These are supernatural forces of good and evil. Forces of cosmic evil include the undead and evil outsiders. These are the things that show up on detect evil spells. It’s these things that protection from evil works against. 

For most characters in a S&S campaign, there is only one real alignment. For the sake of simplicity we shall call it neutral. All humans and most living things fit into this alignment. All extremes of human behaviour from the worst to the best are there. This does not mean your characters can’t behave in a manner that would be described as good or evil in most role-playing games. They can easily. It’s just that they won’t show up on any spells that register or affect alignments. 

Evil exists but it needs to be judged on its actions since it rarely shows up on a detect evil spell. Few spells with any alignment descriptor work normally in a S&S world. 

In most S&S worlds there is no such thing as cosmic good. It just does not exist, and the cosmology is very bleak. If you do want to include it, such things as good outsiders are what show up on detect good spells. 

Why? Spells such as detect evil just don’t fit into the genre as they currently stand. S&S is morally a murky and realistic genre. The hero’s actions are often wrong by our standards both legally and morally.