Homebrew Bloodfiend Species Details

Bloodfiends are Medium humanoid monstrosities that drink fresh, flowing blood to preserve their bodily integrity, maintain their sanity, and fuel their supernatural abilities.

Choosing to become a Bloodfiend grants extraordinary abilities at an extraordinary cost. Blood is not merely nourishment to them. It is the foundation of their existence and the ultimate object of their hunger.

Bloodfiend Traits

Your Bloodfiend character has the following traits.

Size

You are Medium.

Bloodfiend Save DC

Certain Bloodfiend traits require a creature to make a saving throw. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:

Bloodfiend save DC = 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Constitution modifier

The Only Sustenance

Blood is the primary source of your bodily integrity and the ultimate purpose of your existence. Ordinary food and drink cannot satisfy this supernatural requirement.

You must fully drain the fresh, flowing blood of at least one living Medium or larger Humanoid during each 24-hour period.

Draining a Medium creature requires 10 uninterrupted minutes. Draining a Large or larger creature can require up to 1 uninterrupted hour, as determined by the DM. A creature fully drained in this way dies.

After completing the drainage, you are considered satiated for the next 24 hours.

For each 24-hour period that passes without you satisfying this requirement, you gain one level of Exhaustion. Exhaustion gained from this trait stacks with Exhaustion gained from other sources.

Excess Consumption

If you fully drain more than one qualifying creature before finishing your next Long Rest, the excess blood heightens your senses and predatory instincts.

Until you finish your next Long Rest, you gain the following benefits:

• You gain a +1 bonus to Wisdom (Perception) checks.

• Your passive Wisdom (Perception) score increases by 1.

• You have Advantage on Initiative rolls.

Draining additional creatures does not increase these bonuses further.

Withdrawal Frenzy

Extreme blood deprivation can cause your higher reasoning to collapse beneath your predatory instincts.

While you are not satiated, the DM determines when your deprivation becomes sufficiently severe to trigger Withdrawal Frenzy. The frenzy begins immediately when the DM declares that it has manifested.

While in Withdrawal Frenzy, your sole overriding objective is to locate, subdue, and drain a creature whose blood can sustain you.

You prioritize creatures experiencing the greatest degree of fear, desperation, emotional turmoil, or hopelessness. Bloodfiends crave not only blood but also the tumultuous emotions and burning helplessness experienced by their prey.

When multiple creatures appear equally distressed, you prioritize the youngest and healthiest-looking creature you can sense.

You retain control of your speech and any decisions unrelated to obtaining blood. However, the DM determines your movement, attacks, and other actions whenever those decisions concern locating, pursuing, subduing, or draining a potential source of blood.

You act recklessly and can use force against allies, bystanders, or any other creature standing between you and your intended prey.

Consuming blood does not end Withdrawal Frenzy once it has begun.

The frenzy ends only if you completely forget that you are a Bloodfiend. This might be accomplished through the modify memory spell, an equivalent supernatural effect, or a sufficiently severe trauma that removes all knowledge of your Bloodfiend nature.

Withdrawal Frenzy is otherwise permanent. Unless this exceptionally rare reversal condition is fulfilled, you remain trapped within the frenzy indefinitely.

HBB Note: I suggest never starving yourself to begin with.

Blood Crystallization

You can collect, shape, and harden blood into crystalline structures suitable for offense, defense, or practical use.

Blood crystallized through this trait is physical matter rather than magical energy. Its appearance, texture, and precise composition are influenced by the blood used to create it.

Lasting Blood Weapon

After consuming excess blood equivalent to the complete blood supply of five Medium sentient creatures, you can attempt to crystallize that blood into one long-lasting weapon.

The weapon must be a rigid, non-flexible weapon whose reach does not exceed 10 feet. You determine its general shape and intended function, subject to the DM’s approval.

Creating the weapon requires you to make an Intelligence check against a DC determined by the DM. The DC should reflect the weapon’s complexity, unusual construction, and the precision required to imagine its internal structure.

On a successful check, the weapon is created in an unoccupied space within your reach.

On a failed check, no functional weapon is created, and you cannot attempt to create that particular design again until you finish a Long Rest.

The weapon remains indefinitely unless it is destroyed. You are always proficient with a weapon created through this trait, regardless of the form it assumes.

The DM assigns any weapon properties appropriate to its design. The weapon cannot possess a reach greater than 10 feet.

The weapon deals Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage, as appropriate to its form. Its damage dice are determined by your total character level, as shown in the Blood Weapon Damage table.

Blood Weapon Damage

Character Level	Weapon Damage
1st	1d8
5th	2d8
9th	2d12
13th	3d10
18th	3d12

You add the ability modifier normally used by the weapon to its damage roll.

While you are satiated, you can attempt to create a lasting blood weapon a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier, to a minimum of once. You regain all expended attempts when you finish a Long Rest.

Environmental Weakness

Crystallized blood is vulnerable to extreme temperatures and excessive humidity.

The DM determines whether prolonged exposure to extreme heat, extreme cold, concentrated moisture, or a comparable environmental condition is sufficient to weaken, deform, or destroy a blood weapon.

The severity and speed of this deterioration depend on the intensity of the exposure.

Fleeting Blood Shapes

While you are satiated, you can temporarily crystallize your own blood into tools, weapons, defenses, or bodily extensions.

As a Bonus Action, you create one Small or Medium object or extension in your space or attached directly to your body.

The transformation can extend no farther than 10 feet from you.

The following forms are examples rather than an exhaustive list:

Example Form	Possible Function
Blood Whip	A flexible extension with a reach of up to 10 feet
Crystalline Barricade	A barrier approximately 6 feet tall
Umbrella	Protection from rain, falling residue, or similar hazards
Longsword	A temporary melee weapon
Drawing Pins	A collection of small sharpened projectiles
Blood Shield	A shield that grants a +1 bonus to your Armor Class

The DM determines whether a proposed form is physically possible and what practical functions it can perform.

A Fleeting Blood Shape lasts for 1 minute unless it shatters earlier. You can dismiss it at any time without taking an action.

Blood Shape Attack

As an action, you can attack with a Fleeting Blood Shape.

Make a melee or ranged attack against one creature or object within 10 feet of you. You are proficient with the attack and use your Constitution modifier for its attack and damage rolls.

On a hit, the target takes 2d4 + your Constitution modifier Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage, chosen when you create the shape and determined by its construction.

Immediately after the attack is resolved, whether it hits or misses, the transformation shatters and becomes unusable.

Single-Purpose Construction

A Fleeting Blood Shape shatters immediately after it is used to perform a significant action or directly overcome an obstacle.

Examples include striking a door with a hardened limb, throwing a cluster of sharpened blood droplets, catching a creature with a whip, or using a barricade to stop a moving creature.

A passive transformation, such as an umbrella, can remain for its full duration if it is not placed under enough stress to shatter.

A blood shield remains until it causes an attack that would otherwise hit you to miss, after which it shatters immediately.

Limiting Movement

When you use a Fleeting Blood Shape to grapple, restrain, block, trap, or otherwise limit the movement of one or more creatures, each affected creature must make a Strength or Dexterity saving throw against your Bloodfiend save DC. The DM determines which saving throw is appropriate to the form and method used.

On a failed save, the creature suffers the intended restriction until the transformation shatters or its duration ends.

On a successful save, the creature avoids the restriction, and the transformation shatters without affecting it.

Thirst for Family

Bloodfiends can transmit their nature to other Humanoids, creating Descendents bound to their progenitor through blood.

You can use this trait once, regaining its use when you finish a Long Rest.

To use it, you must bite the neck of a living Humanoid and maintain the bite continuously for at least 30 minutes. The creature must remain within your reach for the entire duration.

During this process, your Bloodfiend nature passes into the creature through your blood and saliva. At the end of the 30 minutes, the creature becomes your Descendent.

The Blood Hierarchy

The Bloodfiend who creates a Descendent is known as its progenitor. The created creature occupies a subordinate position within the resulting blood hierarchy.

A Descendent retains the attributes, statistics, memories, personality, and abilities of its previous form unless the DM determines otherwise.

The DM determines the Descendent’s final stat block and what additional Bloodfiend traits, vulnerabilities, or physical changes it acquires.

Commands

You have partial control over each Descendent directly connected to you.

You can issue simple commands such as “Follow,” “Attack,” “Guard,” “Stop,” or “Sleep.” A Descendent is compelled to obey such commands to the best of its ability.

You cannot issue abstract, emotional, or conceptual commands. You cannot command a Descendent to dream, cease thinking about something, forgive you, stop resenting you, change its personality, or experience a particular emotion.

While you are Unconscious, asleep, or in a trance, your control is suspended. Your Descendents remain connected to you but are free to act according to their own desires until you regain consciousness.

When you regain consciousness, you immediately know the exact location of every Descendent still connected to you.

You can telepathically issue a simple command to a connected Descendent regardless of the distance between you, provided you are both on the same plane of existence.

Breaking the Connection

If a Descendent consumes an amount of blood equivalent to fully draining at least seven Medium sentient creatures within a single 24-hour period, its bodily composition becomes sufficiently altered to weaken your control.

At the end of that period, the Descendent can choose to sever its connection to you permanently.

A Descendent that breaks free retains its Bloodfiend nature but is no longer compelled to obey you. You no longer know its location and cannot issue commands to it through this trait.

Descendent Limit

You can have no more than two Descendents directly connected to you at the same time.

If a Descendent permanently breaks free from your control, it no longer counts against this limit, allowing you to create another Descendent.

If you attempt to create an additional Descendent while already at your limit, the transformation catastrophically fails.

The creature dies as its body attempts to mutate into a shapeless mass of blood and soft tissue. Its skeletal structure is violently expelled as the unstable transformation destroys it from within.

The failed creature never becomes your Descendent and establishes no connection to you.

Bloodfiend Traits

A blood-dependent humanoid monstrosity that crystallizes blood into weapons and tools, creates controlled Descendents, and risks permanent frenzy if deprived of its only sustenance.