School of Sanguine

When the cataclysm struck the weave became irreparably damaged. Since then, casting spells means risking a magical backlash.

Looking for ways to mitigate this backlash many arcanists turned to the once maligned study of blood magic, culminating in the new school of sanguine wizardry. Colloquially known as Blood Mages, members of this tradition manipulate their life force to improve their spellcasting.

Blood Surrogate

At 2nd level, you have learned to use magic to draw a portion of your vitality outside your body, crafting a new creature: a Blood worm. You can spend 1 of your hit dice and 10 minutes to create a Blood worm. You cannot recover this hit die while the worm is alive. You can only have one Blood worm at a time, if you attempt to create another the existing blood worm simply dissolves in a puddle of blood.

Whenever you cast a spell, you can choose to have the blood worm suffer any magical backlash from your spells in your place. The blood worm is friendly to you, and your companions, and obeys your commands.

In combat the blood worm acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own. You can use your bonus action to command the blood worm to take an action. If you don’t use your bonus action to issue a command the blood worm will use its movement to burrow and its action to Hide. If burrowing is not possible it will take the Dodge action.

Shared senses

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your bonus action to share your blood worm’s tremor sense until the end of your next turn. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus

Vitality Transfusion

Starting at 6th level, you can use your Action to touch your Blood worm and drain up to half the worm’s available hit points to heal yourself. Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.

Life Drain

At 6th level, you learn the spell Vampiric touch (if you don’t already know it) and can cast it without expending a spell slot. Once you cast the spell using this feature you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast this spell using your spell slots as normal, and it does not count against your daily prepared spells.

Blood Explosion

Beginning at 10th level, you can use your Action to command your Blood worm to explode in a shower of blood, acid, and raw magic. Any creature within 5 feet of the bloodworm when it explodes suffers 4d8 acid damage and 4d8 force damage. This increases to 5d8 at 17th level.

Blood Sacrifice

Starting at 14th level you gain the ability to increase the potency of your spells by burning your own vitality. When you cast a spell, you can spend your hit dice to cast the spell at a higher level. For every hit die you spend you increase the spell’s level by one slot. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. You recover all uses after a long rest.