Blood Domain

The priest, clad in bright red robes signifying his position, accompanied a town guard into the local graveyard, having heard rumours of the graveyard's haunted nature. Reassuring the guard of his competency, he held his lantern aloft, spying an animated zombie in the distance. As he points the creature out to his accompanying guard, he takes a ritualistic knife from its sheath and runs it across his hand before whispering a prayer that, suffused with his sacrifice, empowers the guard's strength and resolve. As the guard charges the abomination, the priest calls down divine retribution, seizing what blood yet remains in the corpse and holding it still, an easy target for the guard to cut down.

 

Though clerics who draw power from this domain are stereotyped as cult leaders or secret blasphemous sects that sacrifice the living to please dark and bloody gods, the majority of these clerics are actually tied to gods that most often grant powers of Life to their followers. Blood is, after all, the essence of the life of a creature, and these clerics simply manipulate that essence. Rather than drawing new essence to heal or empower, they draw the life essence from the bodies of the defeated and from themselves, sacrificing part of their vitality to confer divine blessings on allies.

While the cult leader stereotype is not always true, these individuals often draw upon bloody divine magic as well as the good clerics, thus causing a powerful stigma that follows blood clerics. Most of these priests therefore hide the nature of their bond with their god, often remaining embedded in temples posing as a regular life cleric, exercising their particular power in private.

This subclass is part of a series on blood magic, the previous being the College of the Dirge.

Domain Spells

CLERIC LEVEL	SPELLS
1st	bane, healing word
3rd	calm emotions, hold person
5th	mass healing word, vampiric touch
7th	blight, compulsion
9th	antilife shell, mass cure wounds

Bonus Proficiency

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain proficiency with heavy armour.

Bloody Blessing

Starting at 1st level, you can sacrifice your life force to empower your divine blessings. Whenever you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that targets only one ally, you can choose to take force damage equal to your cleric level + the level of the spell slot expended to give the target an additional effect that lasts until the spell's duration ends.

• The target gains temporary hit points equal to your cleric level + your Wisdom modifier.
• The target gains a +1 bonus to attack rolls.
• The target gains a +1 bonus to damage rolls.
• The target gains a +1 bonus to saving throws.
• The target gains a +1 bonus to AC.

Channel Divinity: Blood Curse

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to make your spells especially debilitating.

As a reaction when a creature fails its saving throw against one of your cleric spells, you present your holy symbol and call down a divine curse on the target. The target has disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes against one of your spells.

Steal Essence

Beginning at 6th level, you can gift your allies the ability to steal their enemies' vitality. As a reaction when an ally within 60 feet of you deals damage to a creature, you can give the ally temporary hit points equal to half the damage they dealt.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier, and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Potent Spellcasting

Starting at 8th level, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip.

Enhanced Blessing

Starting at 17th level, when you use your Bloody Blessing feature, you can choose 3 additional effects to impart.