School of Blood

New Power

Feeling restricted by the limited number of spells per day, some wizards have rediscovered the ancient art of Blood Magic, sometimes referring to themselves as blood mages. These wizards sacrifice their own life force to power their spells, allowing them to cast as many spells as they want per day, as long as they have the health for it.

High Risk, High Reward

Due to the nature of how spellcasting works with a blood mage, it can be very risky. Sacrificing your own health to cast spells allows you to cast more powerful spells per day, but you will slowly kill yourself doing so if you're not careful. You will need to carefully examine how much risk your character is at when deciding on what spell to cast next. If you get power hungry and start throwing high-level spells around, you'll soon find that the next axe swinging at you may just kill you. Once you reach 6th level, you can start to play around with stealing enemy hit points to cast spells. This reduces the risk of taking damage from spells, but increases the risk of the spell failing. When playing as a School of Blood wizard, take notes on how much damage an enemy is dealing, and then consider which spellcasting method is less risky in that scenario.

School of Blood

As a blood mage, your source of magic now comes from your own (or other's) blood. Unlike a sorcerer, this is a literal usage of blood as a material that is consumed when the spell is cast. This means that all spell components are replaced with blood of any kind. The higher the spell level, the more blood you need to cast it. For example, a 1st level spell would only need a single vial of blood to cast, whereas a 9th level spell would require gallons. Your spellcasting modifier is now also based on your Constitution (Con) and you gain the Blood Siphon cantrip.

Blood Magic

Starting at 2nd level when you choose this Arcane Tradition, you lose all spell slots you previously had and now cast spells with your own hit points. Cantrips do not require blood, and can be cast regularly, however, from 1st level spells onward, each spell cast deals 2 + spell level necrotic damage to yourself.  Arcane Recovery no longer restores spell slots, and now instead gives you an additional hit die you can use once per day during a short rest.

Brutal Healing

As an experienced practitioner of blood magic, you have learned how to reduce the risk to yourself when casting blood spells. 

Whenever you cast one of these spells, you may cast Blood Siphon as a bonus action. This only applies to blood spells that are of 1st level or higher.

At 12th level you may cast Blood Siphon as a bonus action after any regular spell that is 5th level or higher.

Fluid Dynamics

At 6th level you may use the blood of enemies, allies, dead bodies, or other sources of blood in order to cast spells. When using the blood of an unwilling creature to cast a spell, you must be within the spell's range in order to do so, and they must make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC. If they succeed, the spell fails and they take no damage. If they fail, they take the necrotic damage of the spellcasting process and the spell then takes effect. When using blood from a dead body you may use half of their max hit points in order to cast spells. If the body does not contain blood, you may not use it to cast spells (like a golem). You must be within 5ft of the body in order to use it.

Greater Sacrifice

At 10th level you can enhance any spell by using double the hit points for that spell's level. Enhancing a spell in this manner doubles a certain aspect of your choice of the original spell. For spells that deal damage, the new enhanced spell will deal double damage. For spells that cover a wide area like fireball, you can choose to double the area covered or double the damage, but not both. For spells like lightning bolt that have a line effect, you may choose to either double the length or width of the area affected. For spells that target multiple creatures, you can target double the amount of creatures, and for spells that last for a certain duration, you may double the duration of the spell.

Sanguine Aura

At 14th level you gain the ability to more effectively use other's blood to cast spells. As long as a creature is within 15 feet of you, they have disadvantage on Constitution saving throws against you whenever you try to use their blood to cast a spell. This only applies to the process of casting the spell, not any Constitution saving throws that are needed as a result of the spell itself. At 17th level this aura increases to 20 feet, and at 20th level it again increases to 25 feet. If the creature for any reason has advantage against Constitution throws against you, the two effects then cancel out, and it is a regular roll.