Circle of Blood

Life and death are indeed portions of a grand cycle – as one life ends, violently, another is enriched by its passing. The spirits of prey live on in their predators, and those members of the Circle of Blood are more akin to animalistic predators than their druidic ilk. These druids bear an innate affinity for the life essence within blood, and can use that connection to foster and maintain bonds between their own spirit and those of creatures they’ve consumed.

Druids of the Circle of Blood are not mere caretakers of their natural realms - they are the embodiment of its inhabitants. As the druid stalks their territory, culling herds and challenging predators, they become an amalgamation of those they’ve slain. They become the spirit of their woods.

Bonus Cantrip

When you choose this circle at 2nd level, you learn the siphon cantrip.

 

Beyond the Flesh

Starting at 2nd level, you become magically attuned to the life energy that flows through the veins of all living creatures. As a result, you are able to absorb the essence of any dead, once living creature whose flesh you consume while in your wild shape. The process for consuming a creature in this way takes at least ten minutes and prevents you from taking any other actions over this time. If you are in a carnivorous beast form of size medium or larger, this ability instead takes one full turn's worth of actions to complete.

When you finish this process, a portion of the creature's blood merges with your own, establishing a blood bond. You can then view brief glimpses of that creature's memories and life experiences. These visions always provide answers to the following specific set of questions:

Alternatively, you can choose to freely access the creature's memories. When using this ability you can view any number of memories, but no more than 1 minute of total memories can viewed at a time. It is up to the DM to decide what specific memories are revealed, although you can request to make a guided search of the creature's life to find memories pertaining to a specific topic or event. Whatever memories you can access using this ability are from the creature's point of view, and you can only be shown things during your search that they directly perceived in life.

Restrictions

Failure to meet the criteria below could result in either partial success or outright failure at the discretion of the DM.

1. You can utilize this ability on the same corpse more than once, assuming there is still flesh remaining to be consumed, but only once per short rest.
    
2. This ability does not function on living creatures, creatures that were never alive, creatures without flesh and blood, or creatures whose spirit lives outside the body such as a simulacrum or clone.
    
3. This ability only functions on Celestials or Fiends if they are killed on their own plane.
    
4. If you eat the corpse of a creature that was animated into an undead creature or turned into a construct, you can only view memories the creature possessed in life. Your spirit bond is made with the original creature, not its construct or undead counterpart.

 A creature whose body has been eaten in this way cannot be brought back to life through the usage of the spells revivify or raise dead.

Blood Rites

At 6th level, you learn to invoke a rite of blood magic in order to empower your wild shape, but you do so at the expense of your own life essence.

As a bonus action, you imbue the natural weapons of your wild shape with the elemental energy of a known rite. While active, attacks from your natural weapons deal an additional 1d8 rite damage. Rite damage is considered magical, and your attacks in beast form count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage while a rite is active. The rite damage die changes as you gain druid levels, as shown below.

Druid Level	Damage Dice
6th	1d8
11th	1d10
17th	1d12

When a rite is activated, you suffer damage equal to twice your character level and then reduce your maximum hit points by the same amount. This damage and reduction is dealt to your actual hit point pool, and not to your wild shape hit point pool. These lost maximum hit points return once the rite fades and cannot be restored otherwise. When a rite fades, no hit points are regained as part of the restoring of maximum hit points.

You can only have one rite invoked at a time. Should you leave or be forced out of beast form, any invoked rites fade immediately but can be invoked again costing additional hit point loss. A rite can be allowed to fade at any time (no action required) .

You gain access to two Primal Rites at 6th level, and learn one additional rite at 11th level. You may learn an Esoteric Rite at 14th level.

Primal Rites

Choose from the following: Rite of the Flame, Rite of the Frozen, Rite of the Storm

Esoteric Rites

Choose from the following: Rite of the Roar, Rite of the Oracle, Rite of the Dead

Rite of the Dead

Your rite damage is necrotic type.

Rite of the Flame

Your rite damage is fire type.

Rite of the Frozen

Your rite damage is cold type.

Rite of the Oracle

Your rite damage is psychic type.

Rite of the Roar

Your rite damage is thunder type.

Rite of the Storm

Your rite damage is lightning type.

From Many, One

When you reach 10th level, you may sacrifice a 1st level or higher spell slot and expend two uses of your wild shape at the same time to transform into any creature with whom you share a blood bond, with the following restrictions:

• The maximum CR of any form you can assume is equal to half your Druid level (rounded down). Sacrificed spell slots must be at least equal to the CR of the form you are assuming, excepting that 5th level spell slots or higher can be used for any CR.
• The maximum duration of your wild shape when using this ability is equal to half of your Druid level (rounded down) minus the CR of the form you're assuming (minimum 1 hour) .
• If the chosen form can speak, you may still cast spells.
• If the chosen form possesses one of the following abilities, those abilities are not gained: Spellcasting, Innate Spellcasting, Shapechanger, Change Shape, Rejuvenation, Regeneration, Magic Resistance, Teleport, Telepathy (any).

This ability can be used to assume to form of a specific character, but you can not gain class levels or class abilities using this method. You do, however, acquire the ability scores and racial abilities of the character whose form you are taking. Taking the form of a character with class levels, who is not a monster, always requires at least a 5th level spell slot and has a maximum duration of one hour.

Power in the Blood

When you reach 14th level, using your Beyond the Flesh ability grants one of the following additional benefits based on creature type.

Aberrations:

You gain immunity to the Charmed condition. You have advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects imposed by Aberrations.

Beasts:

Beasts view you as one of their own kind and will not attack you unless provoked. You are constantly under the effect of the spell Speak with Animals

Celestials:

Add Conjure Celestial to your spell list. You gain resistance to Radiant damage.

Dragons:

You gain resistance to the dragon's elemental damage type. You gain immunity to the Frightened condition.

Fey:

You gain immunity to the Charmed condition. You have advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects imposed by Fey.

Fiends:

Add Infernal Calling to your spell list. You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.

Humanoids:

You get advantage in ability contests against humanoids of the type you consumed. You can also speak, read, and write in that creature's corresponding racial language.

Giants:

You are always considered two steps less Fatigued than you actually are, unless you would normally die from Exhaustion. You can also speak, read, and write Giant.

Monstrosities:

You gain resistance to Poison damage. You gain immunity to the Poisoned condition.