[5e] Fighter sub-path: Blood Knight homebrew


4th Edition


So here's my take on a sort of half-vampire/dhampire theme build for Fighters.

FIGHTER
Path of the Blood Knight

Perhaps the thirst for blood runs in your lineage or maybe you've had the misfortune of coming across a vampire and thus have been bit. Regardless of the reasons, the abilities of a vampire slowly build within you. Although you’re not truly a full-fledged creature of the night, you start to exhibit the blood thirst common among that specific kind of undead. The seducing lure of darkness has enthralled you and you intend to embrace it’s power.

Blood Knight Features
Level Feature
3 Blood Drinker
7 Night Stalker
10 Drain the Vein
15 Nocturne’s Call
18 Dark Vitality

Blood Drinker
As you slay your victims mercilessly, blood gushes forth from the wounds you've inflicted, cascading over you like an unholy baptism. You start to draw strength from this invigorating feeling.
When you drop a creature to 0 HP with a melee attack, you can gain temporary hit points equal to that creature’s total Hit Die. These go away at the end of a short or long rest and do not stack with any other form of temporary hit points.

Night Stalker
Your heightened senses and motion allow you to glide more easily across the grown, giving you an almost unnatural gait and softened footfalls.
You gain proficiency with Stealth checks. Additionally, you do not suffer disadvantage to Stealth checks while wearing any armor.

Drain the Vein
Gripping a creature in your hand, the overwhelming urge to sink your sharp fangs into their exposed throat and tear it out is too great. Restrained creatures flail haplessly as you slowly drain the vitality from their veins.
When you use your action to successfully restrain a creature you have grappled, that creature takes damage equal to 2d6 + your Strength or Dexterity modifier. Further, you do not suffer disadvantage on attacks while restraining a creature. If a creature is reduced to 0 HP using this ability, you gain actual hit points from your Blood Drinker ability rather than temporary hit points.

Nocturne’s Call
The connection to other creatures of the night resonate strongly within your soul. The sound is so strong that you gain the ability to turn into one of their kind.
As an action you can transform into a bat or dire wolf. This transformation works just like the druid’s wild shape class feature and lasts for a number of hours equal to ½ your Fighter level. You regain the use of this ability after a long rest.

Dark Vitality
The pinnacle of your warrior’s training and blood lust leaves you with uncounted strength and endurance.
You gain the Champion’s Survivor feature.

Sovereign Court

The temp hit dice might be overpowered at higher levels, or be less useful (if you kill the biggest monster, you likely won't need those temp hp). Maybe make it a banked pool of temporary hp that you can pull out once per encounter?

Otherwise, it looks like a neat archetype that would fit well into Ravenloft!

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Do you gain temporary hit points equal to the number of hit dice the dead creature had? That's pretty cool. Not really OP, but definitely useful. It saves the party healer effort. And may help you survive a single big hit that would normally drop you.

It's kind of similar to the Abjurer wizard ability. But different enough to be really unique. I like it.


Thanks. The temp hit points come from the monsters/targets total HD and it doesn't stack with any other forms of temployment hit points. So if you kill a creature with 8 HD, you gain only 8 but if you kill 4 creatures with 5 HD each, you'd gain 20.

The thiNG is that a lot of PC features focus on short rest reliance and when you take it, the THP are lost. So if a Blood Knight takes a feat that gives him maneuvers he's more likely to take more short rests.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Oh!

I thought you would just get the higher HD total of temporary hit points.

Like, if you killed four 5HD monsters, you would gain 5 temporary hit points.

Otherwise, I can see some corner issue that would be really wonky, like if your allies wounded twenty 10 HD critters, and you killed them all at once, you'd get 200 temporary hit points. That seems a bit extreme.

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