The Order of the Blood Star Class for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e)

Base Class: Blood Hunter

Role in Aetheris

The Order of the Blood Star serves as a cosmic counterweight within the Claret Orders. Its members are specialists in threats that descend from beyond the ordinary planes or twist celestial power into ruin.

They are often dispatched to:

Investigate falling stars, astral breaches, and corrupted celestial signs.

Hunt extraplanar horrors, star-spawned entities, and void-touched beings.

Destroy corrupted celestials, fallen heralds, and radiant tyrants.

Seal unstable cosmic phenomena before they become planar wounds.

Protect observatories, oracle towers, and sacred astrological sites.

Interpret omens before divine, astral, or Old God-aligned forces move openly.

Their rites are beautiful in the way a collapsing star is beautiful: radiant, lethal, and over far too quickly for comfort.

Order of the Blood Star Features

Blood Hunter Level	Feature
3rd	Blood Star Magic, Celestial Conduit
7th	Starbound Sigil
11th	Astral Veil
15th	Nova Strike
18th	Stellar Apotheosis

3rd Level: Blood Star Magic

When you join the Order of the Blood Star at 3rd level, you learn to bind celestial arcana into your hemocraft.

You gain access to the spells listed in the Blood Star Spells table. These spells count as Blood Hunter spells for you, do not require material components, and are always prepared. They do not count against the number of spells you can prepare.

Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Blood Star Spells

Blood Hunter Level	Spells
3rd	faerie fire, guiding bolt
5th	misty step, moonbeam
9th	blink, spirit guardians
13th	guardian of faith, greater invisibility
17th	flame strike, wall of force

Star-Read Omen

You gain proficiency in Arcana or Religion. If you already have proficiency in the chosen skill, you gain expertise in it instead.

You also gain proficiency with one of the following:

Proficiency Option
Cartographer’s Tools
Navigator’s Tools
Calligrapher’s Supplies
Jeweler’s Tools
One musical instrument used in celestial rites

You have advantage on Intelligence checks made to recall information about celestials, astral entities, constellations, cosmic omens, star-spawned creatures, radiant corruption, planar alignments, and extraplanar phenomena.

3rd Level: Celestial Conduit

You learn to channel radiant and astral force through your Crimson Rite.

When you activate your Crimson Rite, you can choose for the rite’s damage type to become radiant or force instead of its normal damage type. While this rite is active, your weapon or spellcasting focus glows with dim starlight, shedding faint light in a 10-foot radius.

Blood Star Focus

You can use a celestial-themed object as a spellcasting focus for your Blood Hunter spells. This focus might be a constellation map, star-forged talisman, crystal astrolabe, comet-metal ring, tattoo of an ancient sigil, or a shard of fallen celestial glass.

You can apply your Crimson Rite to this focus if it is also a weapon. If your focus is not a weapon, you may instead brand it with your rite, causing it to glow with astral hemocraft for the duration of the rite.

While your focus is branded by your Crimson Rite, you gain the following benefits:

Conduit Benefit	Effect
Radiant Thread	When you deal Crimson Rite damage, you may choose radiant or force damage.
Celestial Casting	When you cast a Blood Star spell of 1st level or higher, you may add your Intelligence modifier to one damage roll of that spell against one creature.
Astral Mark	Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a rite-empowered weapon attack, the target sheds dim starlight until the start of your next turn. During this time, it cannot benefit from being invisible against you.

You can use Celestial Casting a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

7th Level: Starbound Sigil

At 7th level, you learn to inscribe radiant sigils onto your body, weapon, armor, or spellcasting focus. These sigils act as small constellations of living blood, guiding your strikes and shielding you from celestial force.

Radiant Strike

Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack empowered by your Crimson Rite, you can deal an additional 1d8 radiant damage.

This damage increases as you gain levels in this class:

Blood Hunter Level	Radiant Strike Damage
7th	1d8
11th	2d8
15th	3d8

If the target is an aberration, celestial, fiend, undead, or extraplanar creature, you may instead deal force damage with Radiant Strike.

Celestial Resilience

You gain resistance to radiant damage and force damage.

In addition, you cannot be blinded by magical light, celestial radiance, starfire, or similar radiant effects unless you choose to be.

Omen-Flare

When a creature you can see within 30 feet makes an attack roll against you or an ally, you can use your reaction to cause your Starbound Sigil to flare.

Roll one Hemocraft die and subtract the result from the triggering attack roll.

If this causes the attack to miss, the attacker takes radiant damage equal to your Intelligence modifier, minimum of 1.

You can use Omen-Flare a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

11th Level: Astral Veil

At 11th level, you can enshroud yourself in a veil of astral energy, causing your body to flicker between starlight, blood, and possibility.

As a bonus action, you can expend one use of your Blood Maledict to enter the Astral Veil for 1 minute, until you are incapacitated, or until you dismiss it, no action required.

When you activate Astral Veil, you may teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

While Astral Veil is active, you gain the following benefits:

Astral Veil Benefit	Effect
Starlit Distortion	Attack rolls against you have disadvantage if the attacker relies on sight.
Astral Flesh	You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks.
Step Between Stars	As a bonus action on subsequent turns, you can teleport up to 15 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.
Void-Sense	You can see invisible creatures within 10 feet of you if they are not behind total cover.

You can use Astral Veil a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

15th Level: Nova Strike

At 15th level, you learn to release the light of a dying star through a single devastating blow.

When you hit a creature with a weapon attack empowered by your Crimson Rite, you can trigger a Nova Strike. When you do, you take necrotic damage equal to half your Blood Hunter level, rounded up. This damage cannot be reduced in any way.

The target and each creature of your choice within 10 feet of it must make a Constitution saving throw against your Hemocraft DC.

On a failed save, a creature takes 6d8 radiant damage and is blinded until the end of its next turn.

On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage and is not blinded.

If the original target is an aberration, celestial, fiend, undead, or extraplanar creature, it has disadvantage on this saving throw.

Once you use Nova Strike, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest unless you expend two uses of your Blood Maledict to use it again.

18th Level: Stellar Apotheosis

At 18th level, your blood burns with cosmic resonance, and the stars themselves echo your will. You become a living omen, a wound in the night sky, a hunter crowned in collapsing light.

When you activate your Crimson Rite, you can choose to invoke your Stellar Apotheosis. This transformation lasts for 1 minute, until you are incapacitated, or until you dismiss it, no action required.

While transformed, you gain the following benefits:

Apotheosis Benefit	Effect
Astral Conduit	You can maintain concentration on one additional Blood Hunter spell at the same time. If you take damage while concentrating on two spells, roll a separate Constitution saving throw for each.
Starflare Rite	Once per turn when you deal Crimson Rite damage, you can cause a radiant flare to burst from the target. Each creature of your choice within 10 feet of the target takes radiant or force damage equal to one roll of your Hemocraft die.
Bloodwoven Sigils	When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that targets only yourself or an ally, you may mark that target with a blood-star sigil. The next time that target deals damage with an attack or spell within 1 minute, it deals additional force damage equal to one roll of your Hemocraft die + your Intelligence modifier.
Cosmic Defiance	You gain resistance to radiant, force, psychic, and necrotic damage.
Star of Execution	Once during this transformation, when you hit a creature with Nova Strike, you may cause one creature that failed its saving throw to also be stunned until the end of its next turn.

Once you use Stellar Apotheosis, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.

Cosmic Persistence

If you roll initiative and have no uses of Stellar Apotheosis remaining, roll a d6. On a 6, you regain one use of Stellar Apotheosis.

Playing an Order of the Blood Star Blood Hunter

An Order of the Blood Star hunter should feel like an astral executioner and omen-reader, someone who studies the heavens not for comfort, but for warnings. They know the stars are not merely distant lights. They are graves, gates, witnesses, and sometimes weapons.

These hunters are often quiet, intense, and unsettlingly patient. They may interpret blood drops as constellations, refuse to travel under certain stellar alignments, or speak of future disasters in the tone others use for weather.

Suggested Order Mannerisms

d8	Mannerism
1	You read spilled blood as though it were a star chart.
2	You never sleep beneath an uncovered sky during certain lunar conjunctions.
3	Your scars glow faintly when constellations are visible.
4	You refer to powerful enemies as “falling stars waiting for impact.”
5	You keep a journal of omens, eclipses, dreams, and celestial distortions.
6	You whisper to the night sky before battle.
7	You distrust perfect radiance, believing unbroken light hides corruption best.
8	You count heartbeats during comets, eclipses, and meteor showers.

Suggested Characteristics

Personality Traits

d6	Trait
1	I speak in omens because plain speech rarely survives cosmic truth.
2	I am calm in battle, as though I have already seen how the stars record it.
3	I distrust celestial beings who demand worship before mercy.
4	I treat every wound as a message written in a temporary ink.
5	I rarely look surprised; the sky warned me long before anyone else did.
6	I am fascinated by ruins, observatories, and anything built to measure the impossible.

Ideals

d6	Ideal
1	Balance. No star, god, horror, or mortal should dominate the heavens alone.
2	Sacrifice. A little blood can prevent a much larger catastrophe.
3	Truth. The cosmos is terrifying, but ignorance is worse.
4	Defiance. Even the stars die. So can anything that threatens the world.
5	Guardianship. I stand watch where heaven touches the wound of reality.
6	Revelation. Hidden patterns must be uncovered before they become chains.

Bonds

d6	Bond
1	I survived a falling star that killed everyone else around me.
2	A corrupted celestial marked my bloodline, and I hunt its scattered servants.
3	My mentor vanished into an astral rift and still sends warnings through constellations.
4	I protect a star-chart that predicts a future catastrophe.
5	I owe my life to a creature from beyond the world, though I do not know its price.
6	I seek the truth behind a constellation that appeared on the night I was born.

Flaws

d6	Flaw
1	I see patterns where none exist.
2	I sometimes value cosmic balance over mortal suffering.
3	I believe omens more readily than people.
4	I am tempted by forbidden astral knowledge.
5	I fear open daylight more than darkness.
6	I expect betrayal from celestials and kindness from monsters, which complicates diplomacy.

Order Equipment and Aesthetics

Equipment	Description
Star-Forged Talisman	A celestial focus made from meteoric iron, silver, crystal, or comet-glass.
Constellation Blade	A weapon etched with tiny star-marks that glow when a Crimson Rite is active.
Astral Mantle	A dark cloak lined with luminous thread, resembling a private night sky.
Blood Astrolabe	A ritual instrument that reads celestial movement through drops of the hunter’s blood.
Comet Vial	A small vial of powdered meteorite mixed with dried blood, used in rites and omens.
Sigil Tattoos	Star-map tattoos that shift subtly during eclipses, meteor showers, and planar disturbances.

Adventure Hooks

d8	Hook
1	A new constellation appears over Aetheris, and every person born beneath it begins speaking the same prophecy.
2	A fallen celestial asks the party to kill it before its radiance becomes contagious.
3	A Blood Star observatory goes dark after recording a star that should not exist.
4	A meteorite is found pulsing like a heart, and nearby dead creatures rise with radiant eyes.
5	A noble house claims descent from a star-being and begins purging “earthbound” bloodlines.
6	A corrupted planetar hunts Blood Star members, insisting they have misread the heavens.
7	A child’s blood forms accurate star charts of places no mortal has visited.
8	During an eclipse, every Blood Star sigil in the region turns black and points toward the same ruined temple.

Subclass Summary

The Order of the Blood Star is a Blood Hunter subclass built around radiant and force damage, celestial spellcasting, astral mobility, anti-extraplanar combat, defensive star-sigils, and explosive nova-style strikes. It is ideal for characters who want a mystic warrior feel: part monster hunter, part cosmic oracle, part radiant executioner.

Its rhythm is luminous and dangerous: read the omen, ignite the rite, mark the target in starlight, step through the astral shimmer, and bring down the light of a dying sun.

"Every star is a wound the dark failed to close."

Blood Star Magic