Do blood curses have "components"? There are no Verbal, Somatic, or Material requirements but does that mean no one would ever know you're invoking a blood curse?
7th level feature Brand of Castigation says "whenever you DAMAGE a creature with your Crimson Rite feature, you can choose to sear an arcane brand of hemocraft magic into it" If the target is immune to your rite damage type does that mean they cannot be branded?
Do blood curses have "components"? There are no Verbal, Somatic, or Material requirements but does that mean no one would ever know you're invoking a blood curse?
RAW, no. There's rule mechanically demanding that enemies can see your curse, though an amplified curse that forces you to suffer damage may require you to spill blood, depending on how your DM interprets it.
RAI, Mercer probably didn't intend for Blood Curses to be totally undetectable. Molly never played that way, and given that Matthew Mercer was DMing for the class he created when Mollymauk was a thing and never said otherwise, I can only assume that Molly's usage of blood curses was more or less correct.
7th level feature Brand of Castigation says "whenever you DAMAGE a creature with your Crimson Rite feature, you can choose to sear an arcane brand of hemocraft magic into it" If the target is immune to your rite damage type does that mean they cannot be branded?
That sounds rite to me. If you don't damage a critter with your Rite, you get no Brand. Thus why the Blood Hunter gets multiple types of Rite as they level up.
at a high enough level it gets up to 4 attacks with EB and the bonus. Sure you can't bring them any closer but a 2 level dip in warlock to get some invocations will power you up nicely. Either push them off a cliff or bring them close enough to swipe them with the sword. It's a win win!
k now that i watched a video where a dude reads the pdf.
I heard that the ghostslayer level 11 feature got moved to lvl 7 which sounded like a huge buff but the feature itself was nerfed. Now no longer grants a third attack. This makes it pretty much an out of combat only feature that allows you to phase through creatures and walls. Still not bad and pretty nice but as said it used to give a third attack and was usable more often. Now duration is longer but no more damage boost. Ghostslayer rite also no longer only deals half damage to you. Instead it gives necrotic resistance so i guess a decent trade off. And the light it grants can be nice but can also suck for sneaking. I guess you could cover your weapon. With the level 11 feature you will deal a lot of damage to undead. Tripple your rite dice. But only against branded enemies which you can only do once per SR. Beforehand it was a fixed damage boost against everything. But double rite is better than +Int
Ghostslayer seems kinda worse with the loss of the third attack at 11. But a lot cleaner. You get an additional blood curse (or blood maledict? Why does that feature still have two names. You have the feature blood maledict that gives you blood curses. Thats just confusing)
Not that many changes to profane soul. No longer can put spells into your sword, but that feature was really clunky anyways. The extra spells you get at 7 sadly still require the use of a spellslot.
Mutant: made a lot cleaner. Tacked the advanced mutagens from level 7 unto the original feature which seems more orderly. You can cleanse the negative side effects at level 7 now but only once a long rest. The dex and strenght mutagens which will be your damage buffs are better now since mutagen score is gone and they give a fixated +3 score. Which is a weird number. Why not just +2 so it equals to a +1 modifyer. One could minmax with the +3 i guess, keeping the score uneven to gain a +2 mod from it. Also now instead of lowering your Wisdom by the same ammount it just gives disadvantage on WIS saves, which seems cleaner and better. The flying mutagen got nerfed to have only a 1 hour duration. Dont get why, constant 20 feet fly speed at level 11 with granting disadvantages doesnt seem too OP. The combat heal now doesnt only work in combat but only heals you until you are at 1/2 of your HP. Seems cleaner, because a "when in combat" mechanic is untypical for dnd.
Honestly mutagenist seems like the best one now for an attack based build like PAM or CBE. It still the subclass i am least interested in playing and would probably reflavour.
Lycan now only gets one use per SR but it lasts and hour and is a bonus action. Id call that a buff! Will be easier to pre-use before a fight since longer duration and easier to use in fight since only bonus action. The bad thing is that if you dont use this before combat you also cant use Rite before combat. And if you get forced to use it in combat you can attack first round but dont get your BA attack, then next round you Rite up so no BA attack again. All i all you REALLY wanna use it before the fight and it will suck big time if you miscalculate. It being an action at least made you able to transform and rite in the same round so im not sure it the BA transformation is that huge of a buff actually. Since you wanna use it before initiative anyways.
Lycan also loses the vulnerabilty to silver, silver just bypasses its resistances. Makes sense since MM werecreatures also dont have vulnerability , it just bypasses the immunity. The "going feral" also got changed to now trigger when you are at below half hp. You can also hold back the attacks and forgo extra attack should you see yourself attacking an ally. The save is also harder to make since it is still a WIS save and you no longer gain proficiency with that. Here the change from wis to int seems like a nerf. There is also no benefit for a high INT in this subclass so i would still raise wis instead of it. The wis save still makes sense thematically but less mechanically and i would change it to INT. Or at least make it a concentration save.
Instead of the "half proficiency" bonus to attacks it now just gets a +1 that becomes a +2 +3 at certain levels. Again a lot cleaner
The biggest buffs id say are that Rites no longer reduce your HP maximum. So you can heal after you take the damage to activate the rite. Also The mark of castigation which allows you to track something perfectly and deal a bit of revenge damage.
Besides that some stuff got cleaned up, features like grim psychometry got the dm fiat removed and some actual mechanical benefits.
The class was rather weak before and these changes gave some rather careful buffs. People say it is overloaded with features but the classes damage doesnt seem that much higher than a Rangers with hunters mark. The blood curses/maledicts are often rather small benefits. Cutting words on ONE attack against you once per short rest? Thats not that much. Blood curses also often use Bonus actions which is heavily valuable on Blood Hunters. Lycan has the bonus action attack, Crossbow mastery and PAM are great for them as said and also have bonus action attacks and Mutagenist also gains a bonus action attack at level 11, profane soul also gets a bonus action attack on cantrip use. And if you cant prebuff Rite is also a bonus action. So often you have to ask yourself "is this better than just making an attack? Take curse of the marked. Double rite damage or an extra attack? Maybe worth it on level 11 ghostslayers against undead. Maybe reducing the enemies movement speed to 0 or making another attack? Bloated agony becomes worth it if the enemy has tripple attack but only if you fear you might miss the attack. Honestly id take the reaction ones here, even if its just a once per SR worse cutting words.
Id say the best way to play the class is cross bow expert to benefit from your on hit rite damage. Because PAM no longer counts as two weapons for both ends PAM becomes a lot better for blood hunter but i dont see much benefit in going melee with this class aside from lycan. You have medium armor which pushes you towards dex and you damage yourself so you dont want to be in melee range necesarily. You also have no features that benefit from you being melee. Also you get archery fighting style which is the best fighting style. Dual wielding is still crap on it, i dont personally see why you shouldnt be able to buff both of your weapons with one rite usage. Not like dual wielding isnt already bad enough.
Id say it is still not that strong of a class. Your damage is higher than rangers since rites are easier to apply than hunters mark and the dice become higher but you too fall behind fighters at level 11.
Still, id like to play one. I had a concept of someone buffing a weapon with magic energy for the artificer, but arcane weapon sadly got removed.
I'm really excited to play the new BH especially the Mutant order now. Sagacity as a potion to give you +3 int is so exciting to me, because taking a potion to buff not only my later class features but also my out of combat options is HUGE. It's effectively a cursed cup of coffee. And it pumps up your hemocraft DC and improves your brand. It's hard to see Sagacity not having huge priority.
So now do I switch Wisdom with Intelligence on my character or not. My character has quite a decent wisdom and I put it there because it was good for Blood Hunters.
So now do I switch Wisdom with Intelligence on my character or not. My character has quite a decent wisdom and I put it there because it was good for Blood Hunters.
A Lycan BH in my group was given the choice to swap them and chose not to. Lycan is already becoming easier to control, and some friendly fire is mitigated, that said Wisdom is still pretty key. You also have to consider that you can use your Dex mod for unarmed strikes and crossbows, so you don't need to be so strength loaded either in Lycan form.
I played a Profane Soul for 13 levels, and the such slow progression of spell levels and slots killed me. I never had instance to really use them for anything fun. I got more use out of my Magic Initiate Warlock feat. My DM had me switch to the usual Warlock spell table (effectively making me a half caster), and we didn't notice anything game breaking. I was finally able to keep up with every other caster and half caster in the party.
Honestly Order of the Lycan will take a huge hit cuz of the Wis to Int change...
I don't think it'll be as bad as you're thinking. The Bloodlust DC is only 8 + 1/3 BH level which is super low for a DC, you can choose to not use the Extra Attack if forced to target an ally (love that flavor of still retaining some modicum of control), and just be mindful of keeping an enemy in between you and your allies.
Daft question but this will replace the old version?
Hey there Mikaos! Adam Bradford confirmed in last week's Dev Update that once the revised Blood Hunter is supported on D&D Beyond that it will be the sole version you can add to a new character.
If your character already has the original Blood Hunter class, they will be unaffected by the change -- you just won't be able to add it later.
The question was more to figure out DnDB's response seeing as it's less official than UAs I could imagine them leaving both up but I suppose it's a similar situation as with the Eberron changes.
What are all of your thoughts on a bloodhunter subclass based on a order of bloodhunter based solely around warriors who wished to be paladins but due to a flaw in themselves, being denied by a order due to their race or background, prejudice, or they themselves not feeling worthy to take up the mantle of the god's champion but rather accept a less praised, respected, and loved path of goodness and become and combination of a bloodhunters dark nature and having one foot in the darkness, and a palading unflinching faith and trust in the god they swore allegiance to basically a palain/bloodhunter variant like having access to some palain abilitys, like imagine a paladin who fell from grace and was cast out of his order due to breaking his oath becoming a oathbreaker and finally finding redemption in the sacred bloodhunter Order Of The Redeemed, not feeling worthy to return to his brothers. So he found new brothers and a different less glamourized approach to fighting the forces of evil.
Also for balance sake I feel bloodhunters would be the accepting in having the same hit die as a barbarian d12 since they basically have to sacrifice alot of their own hp to deal extra damage, and why not let the profane soul have eldritch knight's spell table, now that it's intelligence based it shouldn't be exactly like a warlock spell table but only needed to hell, a bloodhunter even with his cures still can't compete with other spell casters, and also the eldritch knight (not the right thread I know) is to spell dependent with basically green flame blade being it's equivalent to warlocks eldritch blast
I'm actually really excited about this. At first I was very disappointed because they changed for int and I had wis my third stat and rely a bit on wis skills. Also I'm level 3 and had some ideas about ASI and now have to reconsider. But after letting it sink a little this might be amazing for me. I'm a order of the mutant Str build and want to go polearm master. I was thinking to go for 4th level Str 18 and Dex 14. But now I probably stay at 17, 13 and take the polearm master. With mutagens I get to Str 20 (And Dex 16 if need it). I only worry about the 1 less AC that I usually end up with. As far as I understand I don't need to invoke both ends of the polearm anymore? That's simply amazing for my build! Can't wait till it's up on dnd beyond and I can look deeper into it!
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Hi folks! I've got 2 questions for the group.
Do blood curses have "components"? There are no Verbal, Somatic, or Material requirements but does that mean no one would ever know you're invoking a blood curse?
7th level feature Brand of Castigation says "whenever you DAMAGE a creature with your Crimson Rite feature, you can choose to sear an arcane brand of hemocraft magic into it"
If the target is immune to your rite damage type does that mean they cannot be branded?
RAW, no. There's rule mechanically demanding that enemies can see your curse, though an amplified curse that forces you to suffer damage may require you to spill blood, depending on how your DM interprets it.
RAI, Mercer probably didn't intend for Blood Curses to be totally undetectable. Molly never played that way, and given that Matthew Mercer was DMing for the class he created when Mollymauk was a thing and never said otherwise, I can only assume that Molly's usage of blood curses was more or less correct.
That sounds rite to me. If you don't damage a critter with your Rite, you get no Brand. Thus why the Blood Hunter gets multiple types of Rite as they level up.
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at a high enough level it gets up to 4 attacks with EB and the bonus. Sure you can't bring them any closer but a 2 level dip in warlock to get some invocations will power you up nicely. Either push them off a cliff or bring them close enough to swipe them with the sword. It's a win win!
k now that i watched a video where a dude reads the pdf.
I heard that the ghostslayer level 11 feature got moved to lvl 7 which sounded like a huge buff but the feature itself was nerfed. Now no longer grants a third attack. This makes it pretty much an out of combat only feature that allows you to phase through creatures and walls. Still not bad and pretty nice but as said it used to give a third attack and was usable more often. Now duration is longer but no more damage boost. Ghostslayer rite also no longer only deals half damage to you. Instead it gives necrotic resistance so i guess a decent trade off. And the light it grants can be nice but can also suck for sneaking. I guess you could cover your weapon. With the level 11 feature you will deal a lot of damage to undead. Tripple your rite dice. But only against branded enemies which you can only do once per SR. Beforehand it was a fixed damage boost against everything. But double rite is better than +Int
Ghostslayer seems kinda worse with the loss of the third attack at 11. But a lot cleaner. You get an additional blood curse (or blood maledict? Why does that feature still have two names. You have the feature blood maledict that gives you blood curses. Thats just confusing)
Not that many changes to profane soul. No longer can put spells into your sword, but that feature was really clunky anyways. The extra spells you get at 7 sadly still require the use of a spellslot.
Mutant: made a lot cleaner. Tacked the advanced mutagens from level 7 unto the original feature which seems more orderly. You can cleanse the negative side effects at level 7 now but only once a long rest. The dex and strenght mutagens which will be your damage buffs are better now since mutagen score is gone and they give a fixated +3 score. Which is a weird number. Why not just +2 so it equals to a +1 modifyer. One could minmax with the +3 i guess, keeping the score uneven to gain a +2 mod from it. Also now instead of lowering your Wisdom by the same ammount it just gives disadvantage on WIS saves, which seems cleaner and better. The flying mutagen got nerfed to have only a 1 hour duration. Dont get why, constant 20 feet fly speed at level 11 with granting disadvantages doesnt seem too OP. The combat heal now doesnt only work in combat but only heals you until you are at 1/2 of your HP. Seems cleaner, because a "when in combat" mechanic is untypical for dnd.
Honestly mutagenist seems like the best one now for an attack based build like PAM or CBE. It still the subclass i am least interested in playing and would probably reflavour.
Lycan now only gets one use per SR but it lasts and hour and is a bonus action. Id call that a buff! Will be easier to pre-use before a fight since longer duration and easier to use in fight since only bonus action. The bad thing is that if you dont use this before combat you also cant use Rite before combat. And if you get forced to use it in combat you can attack first round but dont get your BA attack, then next round you Rite up so no BA attack again. All i all you REALLY wanna use it before the fight and it will suck big time if you miscalculate. It being an action at least made you able to transform and rite in the same round so im not sure it the BA transformation is that huge of a buff actually. Since you wanna use it before initiative anyways.
Lycan also loses the vulnerabilty to silver, silver just bypasses its resistances. Makes sense since MM werecreatures also dont have vulnerability , it just bypasses the immunity. The "going feral" also got changed to now trigger when you are at below half hp. You can also hold back the attacks and forgo extra attack should you see yourself attacking an ally. The save is also harder to make since it is still a WIS save and you no longer gain proficiency with that. Here the change from wis to int seems like a nerf. There is also no benefit for a high INT in this subclass so i would still raise wis instead of it. The wis save still makes sense thematically but less mechanically and i would change it to INT. Or at least make it a concentration save.
Instead of the "half proficiency" bonus to attacks it now just gets a +1 that becomes a +2 +3 at certain levels. Again a lot cleaner
The biggest buffs id say are that Rites no longer reduce your HP maximum. So you can heal after you take the damage to activate the rite. Also The mark of castigation which allows you to track something perfectly and deal a bit of revenge damage.
Besides that some stuff got cleaned up, features like grim psychometry got the dm fiat removed and some actual mechanical benefits.
The class was rather weak before and these changes gave some rather careful buffs. People say it is overloaded with features but the classes damage doesnt seem that much higher than a Rangers with hunters mark. The blood curses/maledicts are often rather small benefits. Cutting words on ONE attack against you once per short rest? Thats not that much. Blood curses also often use Bonus actions which is heavily valuable on Blood Hunters. Lycan has the bonus action attack, Crossbow mastery and PAM are great for them as said and also have bonus action attacks and Mutagenist also gains a bonus action attack at level 11, profane soul also gets a bonus action attack on cantrip use. And if you cant prebuff Rite is also a bonus action. So often you have to ask yourself "is this better than just making an attack? Take curse of the marked. Double rite damage or an extra attack? Maybe worth it on level 11 ghostslayers against undead. Maybe reducing the enemies movement speed to 0 or making another attack? Bloated agony becomes worth it if the enemy has tripple attack but only if you fear you might miss the attack. Honestly id take the reaction ones here, even if its just a once per SR worse cutting words.
Id say the best way to play the class is cross bow expert to benefit from your on hit rite damage. Because PAM no longer counts as two weapons for both ends PAM becomes a lot better for blood hunter but i dont see much benefit in going melee with this class aside from lycan. You have medium armor which pushes you towards dex and you damage yourself so you dont want to be in melee range necesarily. You also have no features that benefit from you being melee. Also you get archery fighting style which is the best fighting style. Dual wielding is still crap on it, i dont personally see why you shouldnt be able to buff both of your weapons with one rite usage. Not like dual wielding isnt already bad enough.
Id say it is still not that strong of a class. Your damage is higher than rangers since rites are easier to apply than hunters mark and the dice become higher but you too fall behind fighters at level 11.
Still, id like to play one. I had a concept of someone buffing a weapon with magic energy for the artificer, but arcane weapon sadly got removed.
@Yurei1453 Thanks for the reply! Kinda the way I was leaning but wanted to see what others thought.
I'm really excited to play the new BH especially the Mutant order now. Sagacity as a potion to give you +3 int is so exciting to me, because taking a potion to buff not only my later class features but also my out of combat options is HUGE. It's effectively a cursed cup of coffee. And it pumps up your hemocraft DC and improves your brand. It's hard to see Sagacity not having huge priority.
So now do I switch Wisdom with Intelligence on my character or not. My character has quite a decent wisdom and I put it there because it was good for Blood Hunters.
Discuss it with your DM.
Honestly Order of the Lycan will take a huge hit cuz of the Wis to Int change...
A Lycan BH in my group was given the choice to swap them and chose not to. Lycan is already becoming easier to control, and some friendly fire is mitigated, that said Wisdom is still pretty key. You also have to consider that you can use your Dex mod for unarmed strikes and crossbows, so you don't need to be so strength loaded either in Lycan form.
I played a Profane Soul for 13 levels, and the such slow progression of spell levels and slots killed me. I never had instance to really use them for anything fun. I got more use out of my Magic Initiate Warlock feat. My DM had me switch to the usual Warlock spell table (effectively making me a half caster), and we didn't notice anything game breaking. I was finally able to keep up with every other caster and half caster in the party.
I don't think it'll be as bad as you're thinking. The Bloodlust DC is only 8 + 1/3 BH level which is super low for a DC, you can choose to not use the Extra Attack if forced to target an ally (love that flavor of still retaining some modicum of control), and just be mindful of keeping an enemy in between you and your allies.
Daft question but this will replace the old version?
I wanna say probably given the pay what you like model, but who knows. Maybe itll be charity.
Hey there Mikaos! Adam Bradford confirmed in last week's Dev Update that once the revised Blood Hunter is supported on D&D Beyond that it will be the sole version you can add to a new character.
If your character already has the original Blood Hunter class, they will be unaffected by the change -- you just won't be able to add it later.
Thanks for the reply.
The question was more to figure out DnDB's response seeing as it's less official than UAs I could imagine them leaving both up but I suppose it's a similar situation as with the Eberron changes.
What are all of your thoughts on a bloodhunter subclass based on a order of bloodhunter based solely around warriors who wished to be paladins but due to a flaw in themselves, being denied by a order due to their race or background, prejudice, or they themselves not feeling worthy to take up the mantle of the god's champion but rather accept a less praised, respected, and loved path of goodness and become and combination of a bloodhunters dark nature and having one foot in the darkness, and a palading unflinching faith and trust in the god they swore allegiance to basically a palain/bloodhunter variant like having access to some palain abilitys, like imagine a paladin who fell from grace and was cast out of his order due to breaking his oath becoming a oathbreaker and finally finding redemption in the sacred bloodhunter Order Of The Redeemed, not feeling worthy to return to his brothers. So he found new brothers and a different less glamourized approach to fighting the forces of evil.
Also for balance sake I feel bloodhunters would be the accepting in having the same hit die as a barbarian d12 since they basically have to sacrifice alot of their own hp to deal extra damage, and why not let the profane soul have eldritch knight's spell table, now that it's intelligence based it shouldn't be exactly like a warlock spell table but only needed to hell, a bloodhunter even with his cures still can't compete with other spell casters, and also the eldritch knight (not the right thread I know) is to spell dependent with basically green flame blade being it's equivalent to warlocks eldritch blast
I had this thought as well, but honestly if anything, this just makes Resilient (Wisdom) an incredibly useful feat for a Lycan BH.
I'm actually really excited about this. At first I was very disappointed because they changed for int and I had wis my third stat and rely a bit on wis skills. Also I'm level 3 and had some ideas about ASI and now have to reconsider. But after letting it sink a little this might be amazing for me. I'm a order of the mutant Str build and want to go polearm master. I was thinking to go for 4th level Str 18 and Dex 14. But now I probably stay at 17, 13 and take the polearm master. With mutagens I get to Str 20 (And Dex 16 if need it). I only worry about the 1 less AC that I usually end up with. As far as I understand I don't need to invoke both ends of the polearm anymore? That's simply amazing for my build! Can't wait till it's up on dnd beyond and I can look deeper into it!