After the latest character death in my Out of the Abyss D&D 5e campaign, the fallen player decided to come back in as a paladin inspired by Malthael from Diablo 3. Using the Oathbreaker paladin from the Dungeon Master’s Guide as a basis, we mucked around with a couple of rules to add some grim reaper style flavour.

Add these abilities to the class.

Grim Harvester

A soul reaver paladin may use scythes as a martial weapon. Use the rules for glaives.

Life Stealer

Your Lay on Hands ability does not recharge after a long rest. Any creature that dies within 10 feet of you, that you have dealt damage to, replenishes your pool of healing by a number equal to your paladin level to a maximum of 5 times your paladin level.

They’re only small changes but the player feels it’s enough to play out the archetype. The plan is to tweak these further as we see their effectiveness in game. While using scythes as glaives shouldn’t break anything, we want to make sure the healing doesn’t give too much advantage or disadvantage.

I’m interested in opinions. Has anyone tried this before, and what were the results? What further modifications might add further soul reaping flavour?