School of Liminality

Liminal spaces are spaces on the boundary, at the edge between what’s real and what’s unreal. A liminal space can be neither here nor there, and yet be both here and there at the same time. Stories of liminal spaces are common across cultures, though their true nature often isn’t recognized by the uninitiated: the stranger who appears suddenly at a lonely crossroads, the troll that snatches at unwary travelers from a hiding spot beneath a bridge where no such hiding spot exists, the strangely familiar yet unsettlingly different scene that’s sometimes glimpsed in a looking glass.

These are only the most obvious encounters with liminal spaces! Most liminalities are more easily overlooked, being as unconscious as the heartbeat between waking and sleeping, as fleeting as drawing in breath as an apprentice and exhaling it as a master, or as unassumingly familiar—and as fraught with potential—as a doorway that’s crossed a hundred times without incident.

Those who specialize in liminal magic are known as liminists. They’ve learned to tap into the mysticism at the heart of spaces between spaces and to bend the possibilities inherent in transitional moments to their own ends. Like filaments of a dream, strands of liminality can be woven into forms new and wondrous—or strange and terrifying.

Liminal Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a liminal spell into your spellbook is halved.

Mulligan

At 2nd level, you can control the moment between an attempt at something and the result of that attempt to shift the flow of battle in your favor. When a creature you can see within 30 feet of you misses with an attack, you can use your reaction to allow that creature to reroll the attack. Similarly, when a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see hits with an attack but hasn’t yet rolled damage, you can use your reaction to force that creature to reroll the attack and use the lower result. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. When you reach 10th level in this class, you can use this feature when a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an ability check or saving throw.

Otherworldly Sense

At 6th level, if you spend 1 minute meditating and expanding your senses outward, you can sense those not of this world—those who slip through the cracks of the in-between to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting. For 10 minutes, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 1 mile of you: aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. As long as you maintain your concentration, you can use an action to change the type of creature you sense. You know the direction to each lone creature or group, but not the distance or the exact number in a group. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Liminal Adept

At 10th level, you add the threshold slip spell to your spellbook, if it isn’t there already. You can cast threshold slip without expending a spell slot. When you do so, you can bring up to two willing creatures of your size or smaller that you’re touching with you. The target junction must have unoccupied spaces for all of you to enter when you reappear, or the spell fails.

You can use this feature twice. You regain all expended uses when you finish a short or long rest. When you reach 14th level in this class, you can use this feature three times between rests.

Forced Transition

At 14th level, your mastery over moments of change is unequivocal. You can use an action to touch a willing creature or make a melee spell attack against an unwilling creature, choosing one of the following effects. The effect lasts for 1 minute. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Rapid Advancement. The target’s ability scores are each increased by 2. An ability score can exceed 20 but can’t exceed 24.

Regression. The target’s ability scores are each reduced by 2. This effect can’t reduce an ability score below 1.

True Self. The target can’t change its shape through any means, including spells, such as polymorph, and traits, such as the werewolf ’s Shapechanger trait.

The target immediately reverts to its true form if it is currently in a different form. This option has no effect on illusion spells, such as disguise self, or a creature that appears changed from the effects of an illusion, such as a hag’s Illusory Appearance.