The Hearthwarden

Plays like: the Druid — the Growing’s healer and green-caller; shapeshifting belongs to no mortal Calling, but the field will fight for you.

The Hearthwarden is the healer who has traded a piece of themselves for every wound they’ve closed. They hold a Reaching into the Growing — green Chaos-fire that mends flesh, coaxes seed into stalk, and knits a dying soldier back onto their feet — but every Working drawn from that well leaves a residue on the caster’s own spirit. Hearthwardens are midwives, medics, grove-priests, and battlefield menders who have learned that life poured out does not return; it only moves from one vessel to another, and they are always the source.

“You ask if it hurts to heal you. It doesn’t hurt. It just costs. There’s a difference, and I stopped explaining it years ago.” — Ossa Ferrn, Hearthwarden of the Ashgate Commune

Quick Build & Core Stats

Quick Build: High Wisdom, then Constitution, then Strength or Dexterity depending on whether you favor the Grove or the Ward. Choose the Herbalism Kit and a shield.

Hit Die: d8
Primary Ability: Wisdom
Saving Throw Proficiencies: Wisdom, Constitution
Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields
Weapons: Simple weapons, plus the scythe, sickle, and spear
Tools: Herbalism kit; choose one of Poisoner’s Kit or Medicine (as a tool proficiency variant your DM allows)
Skills: Choose two from Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Nature, Persuasion, Religion, Survival
Starting Equipment: (a) a sickle or (b) a spear; leather armor or scale mail; a shield; an herbalism kit; a healer’s satchel (functions as a component pouch for Growing Workings); a traveler’s clothes and a seedpod holy symbol of your Covenant

Level Progression

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Vitality Dice	Max Working Tier
1	+2	Reaching: The Growing, Vitality Dice, Green Sight	2d6	1
2	+2	Field Dressing	3d6	1
3	+2	Covenant (Path)	3d6	2
4	+2	Ability Score Improvement	4d6	2
5	+3	Deepening Roots, Warden’s Ground	4d8	3
6	+3	Covenant feature, Rootgrown	5d8	3
7	+3	Weathering	5d8	3
8	+3	Ability Score Improvement	6d8	4
9	+4	Kindred Bloom	6d8	4
10	+4	Covenant feature	7d8	4
11	+4	Unbroken Vine	7d10	5
12	+4	Ability Score Improvement	8d10	5
13	+5	Weight of Seasons	8d10	5
14	+5	Covenant capstone	9d10	5
15	+5	Long Root	9d10	6
16	+5	Ability Score Improvement	10d10	6
17	+6	Evergreen Vessel	10d12	6
18	+6	Fray-Warded Heart	11d12	6
19	+6	Ability Score Improvement	11d12	6
20	+6	The Undying Grove	12d12	6

Class Features

Reaching: The Growing

You hold a Reaching into the Growing, the Chaos discipline of life, healing, and verdant change. You can attempt Workings up to your Max Working Tier (above), spending Fray per the standard magic system. Your eyes flash deep green on every cast — an absorbing, matte green, as Chaos colors do — and enemies who witness it gain advantage on Insight checks to read your intent. Before adding a Working’s Tier to your Fray, roll your Faith Die (set by your Conviction) and subtract it, minimum add 1; roll twice and take the higher if the cast is dead-center of your Tenet. At 75% of your Fray cap, casting triggers a d6 against your Loss Menu; at cap, you Overchannel or you stop. Fray never clears on a short rest — only a long rest of true stillness heals half.

Growing Workings run from minor (spurring a seed to sprout, closing a shallow cut, calming a spooked animal) at low Tiers to profound restoration and communion with living systems at high Tiers — reknitting shattered bone, growing a shelter of living wood in a minute, or speaking briefly with the spirit of a dying grove.

When a Green Working calls for a saving throw, the DC is 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier.

The Growing heals, but it also fights. The following Workings are the codified battlefield craft of the Calling — no negotiation needed at the table; if you can reach the Tier, you can attempt the Working, and the standard economy applies in full (roll your Faith Die, add the remainder to your Fray). Each needs living soil, rootstock, or the seedstock in your healer’s satchel within reach of the effect — a Hearthwarden carries seeds the way an archer carries arrows. Unless noted, an effect persists for 10 minutes or until you dismiss it (no action), then slumps back into ordinary green.

Tier 1 — Grasping Roots. Roots and runners erupt across a 10-foot square you can see within 60 feet. Each creature in the square makes a Strength save or is restrained; a restrained creature or one adjacent to it can use an action to tear it free (Strength/Athletics vs. your DC). The roots hold for 1 minute.
Tier 2 — Creeping Vines. A 20-foot-radius patch of ground within 60 feet crawls with clutching vine. The area is difficult terrain for creatures you choose when you cast.
Tier 3 — Bramble Wall. A wall of woven thorn rises along a line up to 40 feet long, 10 feet high, and 5 feet thick, within 60 feet. It blocks line of sight, grants three-quarters cover to creatures behind it, and a creature moving through it takes 2d8 piercing damage and treats it as difficult terrain.
Tier 4 — Spike Ground. The earth in a 20-foot radius within 90 feet sprouts hardened thorn-spikes, indistinguishable from natural growth to any creature that didn’t watch you cast. A creature moving through the area takes 2d4 piercing damage for every 5 feet it moves, and the area is difficult terrain.
Tier 5 — Wake the Grove (Lesser). Every mundane plant in a 40-foot radius within 90 feet turns hostile at once. Each creature of your choice in the area makes a Strength save or is restrained, repeating the save at the end of its turns; the whole area is difficult terrain for 1 minute.
Tier 6 — Wake the Grove. You rouse one Huge or smaller tree within 60 feet into a walking guardian for 1 hour (use awakened-tree statistics; it acts on your initiative and obeys your spoken wishes) — or cast the Lesser working across a 90-foot radius. When the hour ends, the tree roots itself wherever it stands, and it remembers you.

These are Workings, not techniques — every one of them shows in your eyes, and every one of them goes on the ledger.

Vitality Dice

You carry a pool of Vitality Dice, shown on the table, that represents life you can lend without drawing on the Growing’s Fray cost — this is disciplined technique, not raw Working-craft, so it is Fray-free on its own. Your pool refreshes fully on a short or long rest. As an action or bonus action, touching a creature (including yourself), you may spend any number of Vitality Dice at once for one of the following:

Mend the Wound: the target regains HP equal to the dice rolled + your Wisdom modifier.
Sustaining Touch (reaction): when a creature within 30 feet drops to 0 HP, spend 2 dice to stabilize them and heal them for the dice rolled.
Root the Spirit: target gains temporary HP equal to the roll, lasting 1 minute.
Share the Burden: spend 1 die to remove one level of exhaustion from yourself or a creature you touch (usable once per rest per creature).
Quicken Growth: spend 1 die to add the roll to a saving throw a creature you touch is about to make.

Bloodless Mercy

Vitality Dice feel free. They are not. The third time since your last long rest that you use Vitality Dice to heal a creature other than yourself, and every time thereafter, you gain 1 Fray. This is the Growing pulling on you sideways — every gift given outward wears a groove in your own spirit, whether or not you spent a Working to give it. This is the core tax of the class: it makes generosity a resource, not a reflex.

Green Sight

You can see the rough life-force of any creature or plant within 30 feet as a faint green shimmer — you always know a creature’s approximate HP percentage (healthy / wounded / bloodied / dying) and whether a plant is alive, diseased, or dead, without a check.

Field Dressing (2nd level)

During a short rest, you may spend 1 Vitality Die per creature (including yourself) to add its roll to the HP that creature regains from spending its own Hit Dice that rest.

Deepening Roots (5th level)

You gain resistance to poison damage and advantage on saves against being poisoned or diseased — your body has begun to grow a little stubborn about staying whole.

Warden’s Ground (5th level)

The field has learned your name. Once per short rest, you may cast one Green Working of Tier 2 or lower from the Field Menu without adding any Fray — the ground answers before you finish asking, the way a dog rises when its keeper stands. Your eyes still flash, and the Working still needs its soil or seedstock; only the ledger stays quiet.

Rootgrown (6th level)

The Growing no longer just moves through you — it has taken up residence. At the end of each long rest, choose one minor graft; it is Fray-free, always on, and unmistakably green (moss at your collar, seed-burrs in your hair, a thumbnail gone the color of new leaves):

Barkgrip: ivy threads your palms and soles — you have advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks to climb, and on checks to grapple or keep hold of a creature or object.
Thornhide: briar laces your skin — a creature that grapples you, or hits you with an unarmed strike, takes 1d4 piercing damage.
Verdant Breath: green threads your lungs — you can subsist on sunlight and water alone, and you have advantage on Constitution saves against inhaled poisons and gases.

Grove Covenant Hearthwardens note: Wild Grafting is the combat-grade cousin of this feature, and the two stack.

Weathering (7th level)

Your Fray cap increases by 2, and whenever you roll on your Loss Menu, you may reroll once and take either result.

Kindred Bloom (9th level)

Once per long rest, you may cast a non-healing Growing Working of Tier 3 or lower — a sprout, a calming, a communion, a warding of the land — without adding any Fray; the cost is instead paid by the land or by willing bystanders (narrate accordingly: flowers wilt in a 10-foot radius, nearby animals grow briefly lethargic, etc.). Kindred Bloom cannot be used to restore hit points: the mercy of others’ pain never comes free, and any healing you do still runs through Bloodless Mercy below.

Unbroken Vine (11th level)

Your Mend the Wound range extends to 30 feet (no touch required), and when you use Sustaining Touch, the stabilized creature also regains HP equal to your Wisdom modifier even before dice are spent.

Weight of Seasons (13th level)

Once per long rest, when you would gain Fray from Bloodless Mercy, you can instead mark it as debt — delay it to the end of the encounter — allowing you to keep healing at full effectiveness through a crisis before the cost lands all at once.

Long Root (15th level)

Your Max Working Tier reaches 6. Once per long rest, when you Overchannel on a Growing Working, you may choose to take the exhaustion-equivalent Chaos cost (name a small permanent loss) as a temporary loss instead — it fades on your next long rest of true stillness rather than being permanent. This does not apply to losses taken while at the Break.

Evergreen Vessel (17th level)

Your Vitality Dice become d12s. Additionally, once per long rest you may spend a bonus action to regain 2d12 Vitality Dice mid-combat, as your body pulls reserves from nowhere it should.

Fray-Warded Heart (18th level)

When you would hit your Fray cap, you may choose to reduce the incoming Fray by half (round down) once per long rest — your identity, thinned as it is, has learned to bend without snapping quite so easily.

The Undying Grove (20th level, Capstone)

Once per long rest, as an action, you become a conduit for the Growing itself. Every creature of your choice within 60 feet regains HP equal to 8d10 + your Wisdom modifier, and each creature below half HP has one exhaustion level removed. You then gain 6 Fray — the price of an Overchannelled Tier-6 Working, the deepest a mortal Reaching goes — and if that would carry you past your cap, you Overchannel it (naming your permanent loss) rather than being able to refuse. This is the closest a Hearthwarden comes to the legendary tiers, and it costs like it.

The Three Covenants

The Hearth Covenant

You tend people — a village, a company, a family of strangers who became kin.

3rd — Keeper of the Threshold: You bind a chosen community, camp, or party as your Hearth. While within it, once per long rest you may cast a Growing cantrip-tier effect as a ritual (no Fray cost) to aid the group — purify a well, calm a crowd, ease a fever. Gain proficiency in Persuasion or Insight if you don’t have it.
6th — Many Hands: When you use Vitality Dice to heal a creature, a second creature within 10 feet of the target may immediately spend one of its own Hit Dice, adding your Wisdom modifier to the roll.
10th — Unyielding Welcome: Once per long rest, you can grant every creature in your Hearth (up to your Wisdom modifier in number) temporary HP equal to your Hearthwarden level during a rest, and remove one shared exhaustion level from the group.
14th — The Hearth Endures: Once per long rest, when a creature bonded to your Hearth would drop to 0 HP anywhere, you may use your reaction regardless of distance, spend 3 Vitality Dice, and set them to 1 HP instead. Gain 1 Fray automatically — the Hearth reaches through you, not around the cost.

The Grove Covenant

You tend wild land and the creatures on it, and it has started tending you back.

3rd — Bonded Bloom: You grow a Verdant Companion (a Tiny beast or plant-spirit, use the Find Familiar-style statistics your DM provides) that can deliver a touch-range Vitality Dice heal on your behalf as a bonus action.
6th — Wild Grafting: As a bonus action, spend 1 Vitality Die to grow claws, thorns, or keen senses for 1 minute — gain a natural weapon (1d6 + Str/Dex, your choice) or advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on smell or hearing.
10th — Thicket Sanctuary: Once per short rest, as an action, grow a 20-foot-radius patch of dense bramble and canopy. It grants three-quarters cover to those inside, and any creature that ends its turn there regains 1d8 HP.
14th — One With the Green: Once per long rest, root yourself for 1 round as a reaction, gaining resistance to all damage; or your Verdant Companion permanently gains a second, more powerful form (DM’s discretion) as the grove itself invests in it.

The Ward Covenant

You tend the line — the shield-wall that keeps everyone else alive long enough to matter.

3rd — Battlefield Bloom: When you use Mend the Wound in combat, the target also gains temporary HP equal to your Wisdom modifier. You gain proficiency with martial melee weapons that lack the heavy property.
6th — Thorned Aegis (reaction): When a creature within 10 feet of you is hit by an attack, spend 1 Vitality Die to reduce the damage by the roll + your Wisdom modifier, and the attacker takes the same amount of piercing damage from lashing thorns.
10th — Stand Fast: Allies within 10 feet of you add your proficiency bonus to death saving throws. Once per short rest, you may spend 1 Vitality Die as a reaction to auto-stabilize a dying creature within 30 feet.
14th — Bulwark of Green: Once per long rest, as a reaction, spend 3 Vitality Dice: you and all allies within 10 feet gain resistance to all damage until the start of your next turn. You automatically gain 1 Fray — holding a line this hard always costs something of you.