Blood Mage Sorcerous Origin

[Mongobear]

A player asked me to try and Homebrew a "Blood Mage" archetype for him, loosely based on the older 3.5 PrC, Blood Magus.

Here is the first draft of what I've come up with, looking for input or possible OP combinations that might break the design.

The Blood Mage - v2.0

The Blood Mage was born with a taboo ability to manipulate the very blood within their veins, and eventually the blood of others. They can manipulate their own life essence to fuel their abilities, replenish their vitality by slaying enemies, and event use blood as a means to quickly traverse the battlefield.

Expanded Spell List
At 1st level, the Blood Mage may select additional options for their known spells from the list and treats it as a Sorcerer spell. At later levels, whenever they are able to learn a new spell, they may select a spell from the list if it is of a level which they can cast.

Spell
Level
1st - Cure Wounds, Inflict Wounds
2nd - Alter Self, Lesser Restoration
3rd - Life Transference, Revivify
4th - Aura of Life, Blight
5th - Contagion, Mass Cure Wounds

Sanguine Thirst
At 1st level, a Blood Mage's magical power naturally restores their life essence whenever they kill an enemy. Once per round whenever they reduce an enemy to 0 hit points with a spell attack, they may expend a single Hit Die as though they had just finished a Short Rest.


Thicker Than Water
At 1st level, the Blood Mage's abilities transforms his physical resiliency, and their natural rate of recovery. If dropped to 0 hp, the Sorcerer automatically stabilizes, and does not have to make Death saves, but remains Unconscious. If they take damage while Unconscious, Death Saves begin to occur as normal.


Sangromancy
At 6th level, a Blood Mage is able to fuel his Sorcerous powers directly from his own life energy. Whenever he uses an ability that normally costs Sorcery Points, he may instead choose to take an amount of necrotic damage equal to four times the cost of the ability being used.

This damage ignores resistances and immunities and cannot be reduced or prevented in any way, and it ignores temporary HP.


Sanguine Empowerment
At 14th level, a Blood Mage can infuse his very life energy into his spells, vastly increasing their power at the cost of his own well being.

Whenever he casts a Sorcerer spell he knows that deals damage, he may spend a number of Sorcery Points equal to five times the spells level. If he does, maximize the damage done by the spell.


Bloodwalk
At 18th level, the Blood Mage unlocks the pinnacle of his power, the ability to move between living creatures via their blood.

Once per Long Rest as an Action, he may disappear into a living creature within 5ft of him and reappear adjacent to another creature he can see by exiting their bloodstream.

He may choose to have either creature make a Constitution saving throw, if he does, that creature takes 15d8 Necrotic damage on a failed save from the trauma of the Blood Mage forcing his way into their bloodstream and is Stunned until the end of its next turn. If either creature makes their save, they take half damage and the Blood Mage is Stunned until the end of his next turn after exiting the second creature.

If the Blood Mage has a sample of the target creatures blood, he does not need to see the creature to use this ability, and may jump out of them from any distance as long as they are on the same plane of existence. Additionally, the creature has disadvantage on the saving throw if it has to make one.

[Composer99]

It does need a lot of refining. Blood magic is a great concept that is hard to do well in 5e.

Right at the start, this sorcerous origin gets a whole bunch of hit points and healing, making it extremely robust, compared to pretty well any other "full" spellcaster in the game (that is, anyone who eventually casts spells of 6th through 9th level). You won't "proc" the healing effect every turn, but, especially if you focus on weaker or already-damaged enemies, it should be possible to trigger it a fair bit, especially since you can use cantrips to do it.

... Actually, the fact that you can use cantrips to do it makes it practically unlimited healing, because there's no lower bound on what an "enemy's" CR can be, and any creature you attack with the intent of killing can reasonably be considered your enemy. Find a CR 0 beast? Cast fire bolt at it to kill it and get your hit points!

So you do need to rein in the healing somehow. I think it needs to be (a) tied to spell slots or otherwise use-limited even further than it already is, (b) the amount of hit points healed needs to be reduced, and (c) the vague term "enemy" should be dispensed with - just let it work on creatures, possibly with a lower bound on CR. (I would consider having it not work at all on constructs, plants, and undead.)

Because this subclass uses hit points as class-feature-currency on top of their normal uses, it seems to me that the maths need to be carefully worked out to make sure its healing and damage effects don't tip too far one way or the other - not enough damage, and it's ridiculously overpowered, too much and it's the glassiest of glass cannons. It might be better to rein in both the healing and damage to smaller numbers. (It's for that reason that I usually prefer not to use hit points as class-feature-currency - I like Hit Dice for blood magic instead.)

I'm not sure what to suggest to give it a "give-and-take" damage/healing trade-off right at 1st level, since sorcery points and slot levels seem like such obvious choices, but neither is available at that point.

Without having the maths figured out, I'm not sure if you want to have some additional use limit on Sangromancy.

Sanguine Empowerment looks bonkers - by the time you get Sanguine Empowerment, you can cast 7th-level spells, meaning each time you use the feature you upcast the spell as a 7th-level spell, but without using your 7th-level spell slot. The game tends to play loose with spells of up to 5th level (notice how that's the spell level cap for warlock pact magic spellcasting, sorcerer font of magic slot creation, and wizard/druid recovery), but strictly controls magic at a higher level, so if you want to retain Sanguine Empowerment, the effect really ought to cap at 5th level spells.

[Mongobear]

It does need a lot of refining. Blood magic is a great concept that is hard to do well in 5e.

Right at the start, this sorcerous origin gets a whole bunch of hit points and healing, making it extremely robust, compared to pretty well any other "full" spellcaster in the game (that is, anyone who eventually casts spells of 6th through 9th level). You won't "proc" the healing effect every turn, but, especially if you focus on weaker or already-damaged enemies, it should be possible to trigger it a fair bit, especially since you can use cantrips to do it.


The bonus HP I tacked on since it sorta made sense that they'd have more HP, but with the Self-Heal, this might not be needed.

Cantrips could pose a bit of an easy way to farm healing, but it's a very unlikely scenario that could be abused often, by level 5+ the easy farm likely isn't that easy to do anymore.

Also, if it isn't stated, the intent is that everything works off of Sorcerer spells, so no dipping Warlock 2 and EB spamming for healing.



... Actually, the fact that you can use cantrips to do it makes it practically unlimited healing, because there's no lower bound on what an "enemy's" CR can be, and any creature you attack with the intent of killing can reasonably be considered your enemy. Find a CR 0 beast? Cast fire bolt at it to kill it and get your hit points!


"Enemy" means an actual threat, if a DM let's the Sorc farm squirrels for healing, he probably has more issues going on.

I could probably tack on a CR Requirement, but honestly, smart DMs/Sensible players should know the intent.



So you do need to rein in the healing somehow. I think it needs to be (a) tied to spell slots or otherwise use-limited even further than it already is, (b) the amount of hit points healed needs to be reduced, and (c) the vague term "enemy" should be dispensed with - just let it work on creatures, possibly with a lower bound on CR. (I would consider having it not work at all on constructs, plants, and undead.)


I considered halving the healing vs Undead and Constructs, I'll likely add that in v2.0

Turning the self heal into a "expend a Hit Dice as if you short rested" is possibly a good idea for balance, and could also possibly remove the Once Per Round, since you're limited it Hit Dice.



Because this subclass uses hit points as class-feature-currency on top of their normal uses, it seems to me that the maths need to be carefully worked out to make sure its healing and damage effects don't tip too far one way or the other - not enough damage, and it's ridiculously overpowered, too much and it's the glassiest of glass cannons. It might be better to rein in both the healing and damage to smaller numbers. (It's for that reason that I usually prefer not to use hit points as class-feature-currency - I like Hit Dice for blood magic instead.)

I'm not sure what to suggest to give it a "give-and-take" damage/healing trade-off right at 1st level, since sorcery points and slot levels seem like such obvious choices, but neither is available at that point.

Without having the maths figured out, I'm not sure if you want to have some additional use limit on Sangromancy.


My goal was for the HP cost to create slots to be highly unlikely for a level 1 Cure Wounds with a 20 Cha to heal the cost back, but also to not make fueling metamagic prohibitive.

On average, a Cure Wounds will heal 10 HP, so the cost to make a level 1 slot should be about 10hp, so that at most you'll heal 3 HP. If I didn't type this accurately in draft 1, it's my mistake.

If I were to make the HP spending limited, say Cha mod per long rest, I'd lower the cost.




Sanguine Empowerment looks bonkers - by the time you get Sanguine Empowerment, you can cast 7th-level spells, meaning each time you use the feature you upcast the spell as a 7th-level spell, but without using your 7th-level spell slot. The game tends to play loose with spells of up to 5th level (notice how that's the spell level cap for warlock pact magic spellcasting, sorcerer font of magic slot creation, and wizard/druid recovery), but strictly controls magic at a higher level, so if you want to retain Sanguine Empowerment, the effect really ought to cap at 5th level spells.


I wanted this to be their earlier feature, but I couldn't fit it. I agree with limiting it in someway, 5th level slots, or only bumping the spell effect the the first stage of upcasting.

Do you have any input on Bloodwalk? I tried to make it comparable to Hurl Through Hell but also add the "dimension door/teleport" effect.

Thanks for your input, I'll be working on draft 2 shortly.

EDIT--Draft 2 with revisions updated in first post.

Self Heal now Hit Dice based.

Sangromancy cost increased.

Sanguine Empowerment changed to mirror "Overchannel" from Evoker Wizard.