Petitioner

Petitioners are the souls of mortals brought to the Outer Planes after death in order to experience their ultimate punishment, reward, or fate. A petitioner retains fragments of its memories from life, and its appearance depends not only upon the shape it held in life but also upon the nature of the Outer Plane to which it has come. The stat block detailed above presents a typical petitioner formed from the soul of an average human—it does not include any of the plane-specific abilities or features a petitioner gains, and should be modified as appropriate depending on the plane to which the petitioner is assigned.

Creatures who die, become petitioners, and then return to life retain no memories of the time they spent as petitioners in the afterlife. A petitioner who dies is gone forever—its “life force” has either returned to the Positive Energy Plane or, in some cases, provided the energy to trigger the creation of another outsider. Petitioners who please a deity or another powerful outsider can be granted rewards—the most common such reward manifests as a transformation into a different outsider, such as an archon, azata, demon, or devil, depending upon the petitioner's alignment. In rare cases, a creature can retain its personality from life all the way through its existence as a petitioner and into its third “life” as an outsider, although such events are rare indeed.

A petitioner gains additional traits based on its home plane.

petitioner traits

Toughness

Craft (any two) +5, Knowledge (planes) +5, Perception +5, Sense Motive +5, Stealth +5