Sacrificial NPCs

[Graysire]

I'm currently trying to build a cult that uses hit points to fuel powers, about as blood themed as possible.

Ideally they should be able to use their hit points, death, being damaged, and the like to use special abilities

Was wondering if their was any RAW(or if someone has homebrew for it) lurking around,

Ideally it should work for CR 1-10 range and not be cheesy, but I'd still be eager to hear all about anything that doesn't fit that as well

[FreddyNoNose]

I thought this thread was going to be about character hiring hirelings as canon fodder!

[TheFurith]

If you're allowing homebrew than I'd check out Encyclopedia Arcane's book, Blood Magic Oaths and Sacrifice. Might have something for you in there. There's a few other books from random publishers with stuff on magic powered by blood in them, but they're not coming to mind right now.

[ATHATH]

PF has a Druid archetype for this. I think it's called "Life Channeler" or something like that.

Alternatively (also for PF), be a Mesmerist with the Cult Master archetype.

You could use the sacrifice rules from the BoVD (IIRC), if you're playing a 3.5 or 3.PF game.

Also for a 3.5 or 3.PF game, I think there are some rituals in Lords of Madness (or some other, similar book) that let you use certain abilities like Warlock-style blasts at the cost of ability score damage/drain.

Finally, you could use "bag of rats"-style tricks with followers instead of rats.

[DrKerosene]

I believe Blood Magus is a 3.5 prestige class, but it loses some caster levels.

I believe there is a 3rd level Wizard spell that lets you trade damage with another creature, so you gain HP. I would consider making it an incantation, or at-will magic item (blood alter?).

I would consider combining those options with some weird half-vampire template/spell. Maybe the Mother Cyst spell line.

I believe there is a Sorcerer ACF, or something, that lets you trade spells to reduce damage. It's not good, but it might help if you are already refluffing some stuff.

There are a few spells that do ability damage, like that Greater Luminous Armor spell I would just refluff it as an evil spell and call it a day. I think a number of [Vile] spells also do so.

[Telonius]

Two things that come to mind immediately are Hellfire Warlock (take Con damage to deal more eldritch blast damage) and Crusader (delayed damage pool; the higher it is, the harder you hit).

[Lyndworm]

The first thing that comes to mind probably seems really weird at first, but... Warchief (from the Miniature's Handbook). It's meant to be a tribal war leader, but easily be refluffed as a cult leader. It gets the ability to deal damage to its followers in order to give them +2 Strength every other level (+10 at 9th). The damage is 1 point per follower's hit die per round, so it can bleed them dry pretty fast but it could also make for a very memorable encounter with the cultist's suicide shock troops.

[Graysire]

The first thing that comes to mind probably seems really weird at first, but... Warchief (from the Miniature's Handbook). It's meant to be a tribal war leader, but easily be refluffed as a cult leader. It gets the ability to deal damage to its followers in order to give them +2 Strength every other level (+10 at 9th). The damage is 1 point per follower's hit die per round, so it can bleed them dry pretty fast but it could also make for a very memorable encounter with the cultist's suicide shock troops.

That alone makes me wish I had that book, might end up getting it, because that sounds perfect for the theme here

[Morphic tide]

Okay, some stuff from this Book of Vile Darkness PDF (https://dnd.rem.uz/3.5%20D%26D%20Books/Book%20of%20Vile%20Darkness.pdf) that I'd like to note:

Crafting XP from sacrifices is equal to DC x3, so reaching a Knowledge(Religion) DC of 20, the minimum, gives you 60 XP for crafting. GP uses DC x5 instead, so the DC 20 minimum gives 100 GP for crafting purposes. Now, this is a big catch: Only one instance of the sacrifice-based crafting XP/GP can be used in a given instance. Once each, though, so you can use it to substitute for both GP and XP, but the going rate is goddamn tiny.

However, succeeding a DC 25 check gives you control of an Evil Outsider for 1 hour per HD of the sacrifice, working as Lesser Planar Binding. On page 25, there's rules for Fiends possessing items, of which one of the options is giving the effects of 2,000 GP worth of item enhancements per HD of the Fiend. LPB caps at 6 HD, so that's 12,000 GP of item enhancement for an hour per HD of the sacrifice. This is not actually a magic item bonus, so it can be used to stack upon actual magic items with more situational effects.

Page 28 has this lovely section describing Dying Curses. For the low, low cost of requiring True Resurrection to be brought back(not like most people will ever see the chance), ECL/HD 5-8 creatures can let loose a Bestow Curse upon death. ECL/HD 9-12 gets Bestow Greater Curse or four regular Bestow Curse. 13-16 gets a Limited Wish, 4 BGC or 10 BC. 17-20 get to use Wish. Or 10 BGC, or 25 BC. Do note that this is on the same page as a list of added Bestow Curse effects which includes such lovely things as advancing the target by one age category, making the next person to meet them have absolute unending hatred of them, replace all nat 20s with nat 1s and a one-in-four chance of attacking the nearest creature instead of your intended target. Oh, and ECL/HD 10 and up creature need a Wish, Miracle or DM-specified deed to be removed. Oh, and ECL/HD 21+ get to basically be DM fiat outright.

There's also Family Curses, which can be applied by Wish, and by extension Dying Curses from ECL/HD 17-20 creatures, and include the wonky option of dooming one male child of each generation to be eaten by a dragon. Or having the youngest daughter of each generation become an evil spellcaster, which makes for lovely recruitment options.

Page 33 has Souls as Power, which offers a meagre 10 XP for crafting magic items, as well as mentioning that a dose of liquid pain can be used to fulfil 3 XP of crafting costs, alongside souls and the Dark Crafting XP from sacrifices. The cap on how many doses of liquid pain can be extracted from a particular creature is it's constitution score, so that's 30 XP for crafting in addition to however much you can get out of the sacrifice rules.

Page 46 has some spell component options, like using a dose of Liquid Pain to increase the CL of any spell by 2. Using a humanoid brain gives a 50% chance of doubling a spell's range, while a devil's hart gives a 10% chance of a spell staying prepared after casting and doesn't aid spontaneous casters.

Pages 63 and 64 have the Lifedrinker class, which is a Vampire PRC. Every negative level they bestow with their Energy Drain ability grants two Lifewell points and every point of Constitution drain they cause grants one Lifewell point. Said Lifewell has a cap of 3 times their level in the PRC. At 2nd level, they can spend 4 Lifewell points to Empower a spell, while they can Heighten for 2 points per spell level at level 3. A good gem of a trick, given the fiend-possessed object rules, is spending 10 Lifewell points at 5th level to get a Lesser Planar Ally for a full day. Seriously, take a look at it, it's a nice pile of stuff for a Vampire caster boss with mooks to sacrifice.

On pages 66 and 67, you have the fittingly-synergistic Soul Eater class, which gives bonuses for using energy drain. At 2nd level, they get +4 Strength for a full day whenever they use their energy drain ability. At 3rd level, they get to let loose a blast dealing 1d6 damage per Soul Eater level to one target in 100 ft once per day, and only on a day which they use energy drain on. Which a Lifedrinker/Soul Eater will be doing as often as they can get away with.

Seriously, look through the PDF I linked. It has the Ur-Priest on pages 72-73, in case you want to see the actual rules text of that infamous class.

[The Viscount]

Blade of blood is a neat low level spell that trades some health for higher damage.

Is there any possibility these cultists would be undead or have an elemental subtype? That would open up Destruction Retribution and Final strike, respectively.

[ATHATH]

@Morphic tide: Are we allowed to post links to that site here?