Let's drop the whole flame war that this new UA has generated for a moment, ok? If you want to discuss that, go to those threads instead, but this is not about that.
With that out of the way, I like some of the possibilities this UA opens. I'm not talking about Dhampir and the Reborn, which are very generic IMO, though even those have their own charm, particularly the different Dhampir Hungers outside of plain ol' blood. Those who have always wanted to play as Alucard from Castlevania or as the Frankenstein's Monster must be having a field day with those, but to me they are very... 'meh'. Not bad, just not something that I'm particularly excited for myself.
Hexbloods, on the other hand... Yes, please. It's not just the whole Classic Fairy Tale theme they have going on, though there's that too and I'll get into that in a moment, but because they actually make sense in the already existing lore. Yes, D&D lore is a complete mess most of the time, but this right here makes sense!
A quick note here: I'll be dropping a little the whole "If you choose a lineage, you might have once been a member of another race, but you aren’t any longer. You now possess only your lineage’s racial traits" because let's be honest, it's stupid. I can see it as being there to balance things a bit, like say, a Dhampir Drow no longer having access to their race's cantrips on top of the features that Lineage now gives them, but its still dumb because your character is still going to look like the race they were born as regardless of their loss of humanity, for lack of a better word. For example, a Reborn Aarakocra is still going to look like the humanoid bird they are regardless of their new "I died and then came back all wrong" 'race', and so on. With that out of the way, let's go.
In Volo's Guide to Monsters, a book I admittedly love (Except for that whole "Let's make Gnolls into two-dimensional, CE-only beasts", but that's a different topic that has already been discussed to death...), there's this in the Monster Lore chapter, in the section dedicated to Hags:
The weird magic at a hag’s disposal means that she might have almost any type of creature helping or serving her — fey, giant, undead, and so on. Even a creature much more powerful than she might be under her command, working off the debt of a bargain for itself or someone else. Favors beget favors, and under duress a hag might speak a magic word to call upon a blood debt from a dragon, a noble, or another hag, making her able to wield magical, political, or physical power in a way she can’t do by herself.
Like the land near a hag’s lair, over time her minions are altered by her presence, becoming twisted versions of their former selves (in a dark fey sort of way), but still recognizable as what they once were. She might alter them with magic, making them tireless, resistant to fire, able to transform into a flock of crows, or able to teleport through shadows — whatever the hag thinks best defends or serves her.
"Altered by her presence" "(The Hag) might alter them with magic"
...Huh, won't you look at that. Going by that description, the Hexblood could not only be used to create PCs, but also as a template when creating servants for your BBEG Hag, which according to that very same book can include Kenku and Bugbears, both of which are PC races.
Of course, the same idea also goes for a PC backstory of one of those two races, a Human or a Fey race, such as a Satyr or maybe an Eladrin elf: You used to be an enslaved servant of this one Hag, and you are now on the run from her.
When using VGtM as an inspiration, the possibilities do not end there. If you are interested in playing a Hexblood, I recommend reading the whole Hags: Dark Sisterhood section, particularly the part titled 'Roleplaying a Hag', as there's some interesting things there that could work for roleplaying a Hexblood or when writing a Hexblood's backstory.
For example, there this trait on the Hag Bonds table:
My daughter was taken from me, and I want to find her and train her.
You have a possible Hexblood origin right there, if you ask me: Let's say that the PC is that daughter, and their transformation into a full-blown hag got botched or was interrupted by force when she was stolen from her as a baby, or anything along those lines. How does the PC feels about this? What are her feelings towards this long-lost Hag mother? If the campaign settling uses the whole 'eating the baby to transform them' canonical reproduction of the Hags, where is the PC's birth family? Where they the ones who "stole" her back from the Hag and rescued her, or did the PC never got to know them? And in that last case: Are they dead, or are they still somewhere out there? I could go on!
If you ever play a Hexblood who was raised by a Hag or by a Coven of them, I'd recommend using at least one of the suggested Hag Personality Traits, Bonds, Ideals and Flaws available in that book. While most of them are very Hag-centric, there's some that could easily be used when writing a Hag-raised PC. Examples: "I am very superstitious, and I see omens in every event and action around me.", "I am too eager for gossip.", "I will not tell a lie, but I can still say nothing, nod suggestively, or bend the truth a little to suit my needs.", "I can’t resist a clever riddle.", "I laugh at my own jokes — the darker, the better.", "I traded away something before I realized it was priceless, and now I want it back.", "I neither require nor want a coven. I will not be someone’s equal."
And my personal favorite:
I owe a great favor to a hag grandmother.
A Hag Bond, and another possible backstory for why your Hexblood is a Hexblood.
The possibilities for what kind of characters you could make with this are ENDLESS. Even by just going with the d8 Origin Table written in the UA itself, the characters just write themselves.
1, 2 and 5 are very fairy tale-like. Adding on the fairy tale theme, I'd would like to present a variation of that first origin: Your parents made a deal with a hag, yes, but you weren't the result from it: You were the payment. Think of some versions of the Rapunzel tale, where her parents sold her as a baby to the witch in exchange for some of the fruits of the witch's garden.
4 and 7 reek of Archfey Warlock: You made a deal with either a Hag or another powerful Fey creature, but instead of just the usual Warlock pact your whole nature was changed by your patron, with or without your consentment.
With the 6, I immediately imagined a Firbolg who just wasn't born for the druidic life the rest of their kin are known for, and after an incident where they got cursed by a Dryad for whatever reason, they were exiled from their home and their forest. Now they carry their living crown as a mark of shame.
Speaking of druids, 8 makes me think of a Circle of Land druid who was raised by either a Green Hag (Swamp) or a Bheur Hag (Arctic) in her early life, and as such spent her whole childhood either on her Auntie's lair or running around the sinister place she calls home. Personality-wise, she would be a combination of both your typical One-with-Nature druid and the type of hag that raised her, and so some of her quirks would come out as creepy or strange to the rest of her party.
But those are just my ideas, which are yours? I'd love to read what other ideas people are creating with this.
It's funny because I've been playing essentially a Hexblood in my Feywild campaign for a long time. She was the changeling that the Hags swapped in for the real child. She didn't realize she was the Changeling, and her more hag-like traits have been secretly suppressed by her babysitter's tinctures.
The hilarious part is that I just swapped her out for the original child that got replaced (who has been living in the Feywild for over a decade and is a Fey Wanderer.)
Still gonna respec my Changeling PC on DnD Beyond when the Hexblood lineage is uploaded, just in case.
I have a player that is playing a Hexblood Drunken Master Monk, the characters parents went to a Green Hag to get help with conceiving a child. The Green Hag was more than happy to help. The child was born twins, male and female combined into one being, but truly neither. When the baby cries people swear it cries with two voices.
As an adult the character hides from theirselves heritage and fate by drinking and throwing themself at any every fight without weapon or armor. When the character speaks they speak with both a male and female voice at the same time.
As the character grows stronger in their Hexblood heritage, they gain more power. Ergo the player has taken the Magic Initiate (Warlock) feat at 4th Level to gain access to another Hex, and plans to take the Telekinetic (Wisdom) feat at 8th Level. (Want to see how ridiculous a monk can be? Have them throw Hex and assign Disadvantage to Con saves, at their opponent. Their opponent is always stunned and the Monk constantly has Advantage on to hit rolls after the first strike.)
Truly as a DM, I am astonished by this players ingenuity and roleplaying ability. Easily one of my favorite characters in a campaign in my 20+ years of D&D
but that's a different topic that has already been discussed to death...
1. I apologize for contributing with my thread.
2. I really like the Hexblood and it might replace Eladrin in a fey wanderer character I hope to play soon. I own VGtM, and I'm also thinking of playing a hexblood feylock child who becomes a hag at higher levels as reach 13 years of age(Represented by being higher level).
(Want to see how ridiculous a monk can be? Have them throw Hex and assign Disadvantage to Con saves, at their opponent. Their opponent is always stunned and the Monk constantly has Advantage on to hit rolls after the first strike.)
I don't think that Hex works on saving throws like that, only ability checks.
2. I really like the Hexblood and it might replace Eladrin in a fey wanderer character I hope to play soon. I own VGtM, and I'm also thinking of playing a hexblood feylock child who becomes a hag at higher levels as reach 13 years of age(Represented by being higher level).
I'm curious whether you've thought about the implications of the "half nature/type" in this UA and what it could mean for Eladrin. Hexblood are half humanoid/half fey, like the other two UA are humanoid/undead and humanoid/undeadORcostruct. I think Eladrin and Shader-Kai have promise as humanoid-fei lineages.
Fey weren't completely familiar to me when I picked up 5e, sort of wondering about the additional ramifications/susceptibilites/vulnerabilities a half fey would have to take if picking this lineage. I know some Palladins and maybe Clerics can turn them with Turn the Faithless, wondering what other traits may come along with taking on the Fey type in a lineage.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
(Want to see how ridiculous a monk can be? Have them throw Hex and assign Disadvantage to Con saves, at their opponent. Their opponent is always stunned and the Monk constantly has Advantage on to hit rolls after the first strike.)
I don't think that Hex works on saving throws like that, only ability checks.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mean to post twice.
That is most likely correct. I'm still pretty new to 5th Edition and get rulings wrong :)
Building a hexblood but trying to figure out how male hexbloods exist but there's only female hags is part of the magic process that completes the transformation a gender swap or what... male hags
Building a hexblood but trying to figure out how male hexbloods exist but there's only female hags is part of the magic process that completes the transformation a gender swap or what... male hags
Hexbloods don't have to be hagborn. I particularly like the idea of a fey creature that was cast out of the Feywild and gained a bit of mortality. Or you could just be the exception to the rule. Or maybe hagborn children can be of any sex or gender and the final transformation into a hag is a dramatic one.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Let's drop the whole flame war that this new UA has generated for a moment, ok? If you want to discuss that, go to those threads instead, but this is not about that.
With that out of the way, I like some of the possibilities this UA opens. I'm not talking about Dhampir and the Reborn, which are very generic IMO, though even those have their own charm, particularly the different Dhampir Hungers outside of plain ol' blood. Those who have always wanted to play as Alucard from Castlevania or as the Frankenstein's Monster must be having a field day with those, but to me they are very... 'meh'. Not bad, just not something that I'm particularly excited for myself.
Hexbloods, on the other hand... Yes, please. It's not just the whole Classic Fairy Tale theme they have going on, though there's that too and I'll get into that in a moment, but because they actually make sense in the already existing lore. Yes, D&D lore is a complete mess most of the time, but this right here makes sense!
A quick note here: I'll be dropping a little the whole "If you choose a lineage, you might have once been a member of another race, but you aren’t any longer. You now possess only your lineage’s racial traits" because let's be honest, it's stupid. I can see it as being there to balance things a bit, like say, a Dhampir Drow no longer having access to their race's cantrips on top of the features that Lineage now gives them, but its still dumb because your character is still going to look like the race they were born as regardless of their loss of humanity, for lack of a better word. For example, a Reborn Aarakocra is still going to look like the humanoid bird they are regardless of their new "I died and then came back all wrong" 'race', and so on. With that out of the way, let's go.
In Volo's Guide to Monsters, a book I admittedly love (Except for that whole "Let's make Gnolls into two-dimensional, CE-only beasts", but that's a different topic that has already been discussed to death...), there's this in the Monster Lore chapter, in the section dedicated to Hags:
"Altered by her presence" "(The Hag) might alter them with magic"
...Huh, won't you look at that. Going by that description, the Hexblood could not only be used to create PCs, but also as a template when creating servants for your BBEG Hag, which according to that very same book can include Kenku and Bugbears, both of which are PC races.
Of course, the same idea also goes for a PC backstory of one of those two races, a Human or a Fey race, such as a Satyr or maybe an Eladrin elf: You used to be an enslaved servant of this one Hag, and you are now on the run from her.
When using VGtM as an inspiration, the possibilities do not end there. If you are interested in playing a Hexblood, I recommend reading the whole Hags: Dark Sisterhood section, particularly the part titled 'Roleplaying a Hag', as there's some interesting things there that could work for roleplaying a Hexblood or when writing a Hexblood's backstory.
For example, there this trait on the Hag Bonds table:
You have a possible Hexblood origin right there, if you ask me: Let's say that the PC is that daughter, and their transformation into a full-blown hag got botched or was interrupted by force when she was stolen from her as a baby, or anything along those lines. How does the PC feels about this? What are her feelings towards this long-lost Hag mother? If the campaign settling uses the whole 'eating the baby to transform them' canonical reproduction of the Hags, where is the PC's birth family? Where they the ones who "stole" her back from the Hag and rescued her, or did the PC never got to know them? And in that last case: Are they dead, or are they still somewhere out there? I could go on!
If you ever play a Hexblood who was raised by a Hag or by a Coven of them, I'd recommend using at least one of the suggested Hag Personality Traits, Bonds, Ideals and Flaws available in that book. While most of them are very Hag-centric, there's some that could easily be used when writing a Hag-raised PC. Examples: "I am very superstitious, and I see omens in every event and action around me.", "I am too eager for gossip.", "I will not tell a lie, but I can still say nothing, nod suggestively, or bend the truth a little to suit my needs.", "I can’t resist a clever riddle.", "I laugh at my own jokes — the darker, the better.", "I traded away something before I realized it was priceless, and now I want it back.", "I neither require nor want a coven. I will not be someone’s equal."
And my personal favorite:
A Hag Bond, and another possible backstory for why your Hexblood is a Hexblood.
The possibilities for what kind of characters you could make with this are ENDLESS. Even by just going with the d8 Origin Table written in the UA itself, the characters just write themselves.
1, 2 and 5 are very fairy tale-like. Adding on the fairy tale theme, I'd would like to present a variation of that first origin: Your parents made a deal with a hag, yes, but you weren't the result from it: You were the payment. Think of some versions of the Rapunzel tale, where her parents sold her as a baby to the witch in exchange for some of the fruits of the witch's garden.
4 and 7 reek of Archfey Warlock: You made a deal with either a Hag or another powerful Fey creature, but instead of just the usual Warlock pact your whole nature was changed by your patron, with or without your consentment.
With the 6, I immediately imagined a Firbolg who just wasn't born for the druidic life the rest of their kin are known for, and after an incident where they got cursed by a Dryad for whatever reason, they were exiled from their home and their forest. Now they carry their living crown as a mark of shame.
Speaking of druids, 8 makes me think of a Circle of Land druid who was raised by either a Green Hag (Swamp) or a Bheur Hag (Arctic) in her early life, and as such spent her whole childhood either on her Auntie's lair or running around the sinister place she calls home. Personality-wise, she would be a combination of both your typical One-with-Nature druid and the type of hag that raised her, and so some of her quirks would come out as creepy or strange to the rest of her party.
But those are just my ideas, which are yours? I'd love to read what other ideas people are creating with this.
Active Campaigns:
Raiketsu's Princes of the Apocalypse (DM: Raiketsu) - Shautha: Half-Orc, Level 3 Druid (Circle of Land: Mountain) ⟆ Monster Misfits Adventures (DM: ShadIn) - Vrakskan Onyxadyn: Dragonborn, Level 3 Barbarian (Path of the Ancestral Guardian) ⟆ Rime of the Frostmaiden (DM: Sarvaeth) - Rildayne Uln'hyrr: Drow Elf, Level 1 Warlock of the Archfey
RachelEvening's Tyranny of the Dragon Queen - DM
RachelEvening's Tomb of Annihilation - DM
It's funny because I've been playing essentially a Hexblood in my Feywild campaign for a long time. She was the changeling that the Hags swapped in for the real child. She didn't realize she was the Changeling, and her more hag-like traits have been secretly suppressed by her babysitter's tinctures.
The hilarious part is that I just swapped her out for the original child that got replaced (who has been living in the Feywild for over a decade and is a Fey Wanderer.)
Still gonna respec my Changeling PC on DnD Beyond when the Hexblood lineage is uploaded, just in case.
I have a player that is playing a Hexblood Drunken Master Monk, the characters parents went to a Green Hag to get help with conceiving a child. The Green Hag was more than happy to help. The child was born twins, male and female combined into one being, but truly neither. When the baby cries people swear it cries with two voices.
As an adult the character hides from theirselves heritage and fate by drinking and throwing themself at any every fight without weapon or armor. When the character speaks they speak with both a male and female voice at the same time.
As the character grows stronger in their Hexblood heritage, they gain more power. Ergo the player has taken the Magic Initiate (Warlock) feat at 4th Level to gain access to another Hex, and plans to take the Telekinetic (Wisdom) feat at 8th Level. (Want to see how ridiculous a monk can be? Have them throw Hex and assign Disadvantage to Con saves, at their opponent. Their opponent is always stunned and the Monk constantly has Advantage on to hit rolls after the first strike.)
Truly as a DM, I am astonished by this players ingenuity and roleplaying ability. Easily one of my favorite characters in a campaign in my 20+ years of D&D
1. I apologize for contributing with my thread.
2. I really like the Hexblood and it might replace Eladrin in a fey wanderer character I hope to play soon. I own VGtM, and I'm also thinking of playing a hexblood feylock child who becomes a hag at higher levels as reach 13 years of age(Represented by being higher level).
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
I don't think that Hex works on saving throws, only ability checks.
I don't think that Hex works on saving throws like that, only ability checks.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mean to post twice.
I'm curious whether you've thought about the implications of the "half nature/type" in this UA and what it could mean for Eladrin. Hexblood are half humanoid/half fey, like the other two UA are humanoid/undead and humanoid/undeadORcostruct. I think Eladrin and Shader-Kai have promise as humanoid-fei lineages.
Fey weren't completely familiar to me when I picked up 5e, sort of wondering about the additional ramifications/susceptibilites/vulnerabilities a half fey would have to take if picking this lineage. I know some Palladins and maybe Clerics can turn them with Turn the Faithless, wondering what other traits may come along with taking on the Fey type in a lineage.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The big one is that Protection From Good And Evil works against them.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
That is most likely correct. I'm still pretty new to 5th Edition and get rulings wrong :)
Building a hexblood but trying to figure out how male hexbloods exist but there's only female hags is part of the magic process that completes the transformation a gender swap or what... male hags
Hexbloods don't have to be hagborn. I particularly like the idea of a fey creature that was cast out of the Feywild and gained a bit of mortality. Or you could just be the exception to the rule. Or maybe hagborn children can be of any sex or gender and the final transformation into a hag is a dramatic one.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Can a hexblood and a sorcerer be a PC?
I assume you want to know if one PC could be both a sorcerer and a hexblood.
Hexblood is a race/origin choice, while sorcerer is a class choice. The two aren't in conflict, so yes a PC could be a hexblood sorcerer.
Awesome! Thank you!!!! Yes that is what I meant :)
Hex doesn't apply disadvantages to saves, just skill/Attribute uses.