how to mimic blood magic

[CyberThread]

How would one go about doing blood magic style play build.


That you sacrifice something todo something

[Big Fau]

Hellfire Warlock and Hellreaver both do this.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Blood Magus Prestige Class?

[Zanos]

You could go into Blood Magus, but it's kind of a crap class.

[Karnith]

Maho-Tsukai, Tainted Sorcerers, and Tainted Scholars can all use their blood, or the blood of others, to power their spells (mainly for free metamagic and to ignore spell components). They also all rely on various Taint mechanics, and have a tendency to be absurdly powerful.

[CyberThread]

can you give me more info on the maho please

[Big Fau]

can you give me more info on the maho please

IIRC it was the 3.0 version of the Tainted Sorcerer, but I may be mistaken.

[Karnith]

can you give me more info on the maho please
Sure. It's in Oriental Adventures, pp. 238-241. It's a prototype of the Tainted Sorcerer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/taint.htm#taintedSorcerer) PrC (and in fact has almost the same prereqs). It gives you most of the same abilities as Tainted Sorcerer, but rather than progressing your existing spellcasting, you convert your previous casting ability to maho/tainted casting. Maho-Tsukai casting is very similar to sorcerer casting, but based on your taint score rather than Charisma and you get access to higher spell levels sooner (i.e. at odd levels, not even levels). They can also pick spells off of the Maho-Tsukai list, which is limited (containing only select Core and OA spells) but fairly powerful, or their old spell list. It's also implied that you get the Akutsukai template (OA, pp. 241-242) at some point, but there are no rules regarding this.

It's generally going to be less powerful than Tainted Sorcerer or Tainted Scholar, but that's not saying much.

[CyberThread]

Is it less involved in taint abuse

[Big Fau]

Is it less involved in taint abuse

Nope. The three Taint PrCs are all neck-deep in the craziness that is Taint mechanics, and all of the broken it brings.

[Karnith]

Is it less involved in taint abuse
Not really; OA taint rules are about as borked as the other taint rules. Maho-Tsukai specifically gain taint for casting spells, get bonus spells per day based on their taint, and their spell save DCs are equal to 10 + Spell Level + Taint Score (so they'll be enormous).

OA taint is also really easy to control past a certain level, given a friendly cleric/divine caster/UMDer/what have you.

[Big Fau]

Not really; OA taint rules are about as borked as the other taint rules. Maho-Tsukai specifically gain taint for casting spells, get bonus spells per day based on their taint, and their spell save DCs are equal to 10 + Spell Level + Taint Score (so they'll be enormous).

OA taint is also really easy to control past a certain level, given a friendly cleric.

The real issue with Taint is if the character becomes an Undead, at which point they can have literally infinite Taint scores. And the PrCs give you a really good incentive for doing so.

Since all 3 can base their Bonus Spells/Day off of their Taint scores, this leads to an exponential growth in spells/day simply by abusing spells that raise your Taint score. Filling your daily repertoire of spells and then blowing them all and intentionally failing the saves against Taint makes it easy, provided you do so during "days off".

Stupidity ensues, as the caster now has nearly limitless spells/day.

[Karnith]

The real issue with Taint is if the character becomes an Undead, at which point they can have literally infinite Taint scores.
That's actually not true of OA Taint, and is debatable with HoH Taint. However, Taint Scores get ridiculous even without getting infinite Taint. Thanks to Suppress Taint, it is very easy for a Maho-Tsukai to manage a Taint score in the mid-20s, which would give them a large number of bonus spells (effective casting stat in the 30s) and spell save DCs in the 30s.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder also has the Bloatmage Bloodmage (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/a-b/bloatmage). You become corpulent and slow, but you gain the ability cast your spells at higher caster level, recall them as though they weren't used, and even drink the blood of monsters to acquire bloodline powers. But there is a catch - you are powered by a resource known as a blood pool, and refilling it during the day requires a risky bloodsurge. Roll too high, and you end up going berserk and lashing out at everyone in range with your spells (including allies) before collapsing and beginning to die.

[BWR]

Find the Encyclopedia Arcane: Blood Magic supplement from Mongoose publishing.
Find Bloodspeakers for dualstat d20/R&K. Some borked stuff (some crap, some really OP) there but a better treatment than OA gave Rokugani maho.

[Big Fau]

That's actually not true of OA Taint, and is debatable with HoH Taint. However, Taint Scores get ridiculous even without getting infinite Taint. Thanks to Suppress Taint, it is very easy for a Maho-Tsukai to manage a Taint score in the mid-20s, which would give them a large number of bonus spells (effective casting stat in the 30s) and spell save DCs in the 30s.

That can already be done without Taint though. It isn't too difficult to get a spell's save DC into the 30s, even without Heighten.

Unless you meant low-level spells with that kind of DC...

[Tvtyrant]

Reserves of Strength is the powah example, especially if you are the imuu.e to stun/daze. 5d6 to uncap all spell effects on a spell you are casting. Broken as heck.

[Karnith]

Unless you meant low-level spells with that kind of DC...
Spell save DCs for Maho-Tsukai are 10+Spell Level+Taint score. Thanks to Taint Suppression, your maximum taint score is going to be twice your Wisdom score. Maho-Tsukai can be entered at 6th level (and OA Taint can be managed with Remove Disease, which Clerics got access to at 5th level). It is very easy to make a Maho-Tsukai who throws out DC 30 first-level spells at level 6.

At high levels, you're looking at save DCs in the 50s to 60s with little to no effort.

[Maginomicon]

The Death Master class (Dragon Compendium page 29) has a class feature where you can sacrifice a vial of blood to ignore somatic component requirements.