Blood Magus

[Collin152]

Mechanicaly speaking, how would you describe the Blood Magus prestige class?
It looks... interesting, to say the least, but I'm horrible at detecting balance.

[Nermy]

You lose two caster levels, several abilities are just fluff (scarification, blood draught), and you have to lose a level (die) and waste a feat on toughness to get into the class. Not a good tradeoff for the abilities it gives you.

[SamTheCleric]

Creepy and flavorful for interesting roleplaying... but it's on the weak side, I think.

I'd still play it.

[Collin152]

Weak for spellcasters, but still better than un-cheesed melee classes?
Sounds good.
Anything else?

[SamTheCleric]

Don't forget that other players can drink your blood to gain the potion benefits. That usually creeps them out.

I wonder... if a vampire drinks from a blood magus... could a blood magus force a cure critical wounds potion into it? :P

[Admiral Squish]

My opinion on it is it has some of the most awesome-cool flavor available. Besides, are you really going to miss two levels of spellcasting in the long run, if you're not trying to cheese out?

Also, you can make your foe's own blood rebel against them. If that's not the most awesome ability ever, apart from leaping out of your BBEG's henchman in a starburst of gore, then I don't know what is.

[Flickerdart]

Actually, what attracts me to the Magus is the Blood Teleport (or whatever) ability. Simply set up a "Blood Donation Clinic" until you have enough vials and bam! Fun for the whole family.
Also great for when you want to find the Big Bad Evil Guy that you almost beat before he escaped.

[BloodyAngel]

Having played a Blood Magus/Sorcerer in a long-running game, I can vouch for it. The class is fluffy and awesome, and the scars add an odd detail that is sure to stand out.

My blood magus was a tiefling and a slightly (alright, overwhelmingly) sadomasochistic fellow, who thought that any schmuck could set people on fire... but a true master could make them die screaming in horror as their blood steamed from their every pore. He took very psychologically traumatizing spells and was quite evil. (though never turned on the group once, oddly. The CN bard did that) I can't see how the class works if you don't play up the fact that it's at least a little bit disturbing.

If you can handle not being a super-optimized psycho-nut... then I say, give it a try! And look at the fighter's face when you cut your hand and hold it to him.

"Drink this... it will cure you."

[Solo]

My opinion on it is it has some of the most awesome-cool flavor available. Besides, are you really going to miss two levels of spellcasting in the long run, if you're not trying to cheese out?

Also, you can make your foe's own blood rebel against them. If that's not the most awesome ability ever, apart from leaping out of your BBEG's henchman in a starburst of gore, then I don't know what is.

If you're a Sorcerer? Yes.

[Gorbash]

Idiotic prerequsite feats, idiotic special way for getting into class for a few intresting roleplay traits? Not to mention, most people will take a sorcerer, so that means you're 4 lvls behind a regular Wizard... Just go play a Batman and pick spells like Burning Blood, Infestation of Maggots and other gruesome stuff and imagine that you're a saddistic masohist blood obssesed sonnuva *beep*.

[Tempest Fennac]

I would have to agree with Gorbash here (losing caster levels for what are mainly RP reasons sounds like a really bad idea).

[HermitIX]

I think blood magus is cooler than some of these posters think. Scarification lets you scribe scrolls on to your skin, and blood draught lets you hold potions in your blood. Both of these abilities give you “emergency spells.” You loose 2 levels of spell casting but these two class abilities allow for some strategic options you wouldn’t other wise have. No one is going to take away your blood potions, or the “scrolls” you scratched in to your skin. Although they take a lot of work on your characters part to use these abilities, having the ability to whip out that obscure spell you scratched on to your inner thigh when it’s needed is a wonderful feeling.

Considering that a good number of the Blood Magus’s abilities require you to injure your self the extra hit points from toughness are great to have.

The only difficult to deal with prerequisite I see is the dieing and coming back one. My mage died and was raised when a kobold got a lucky hit. (grumble) So being able to take this prestige class was a good silver lining.

[Frosty]

Can you use Blood Teleport against a Warforged?

[monty]

Blood Magus is top on my list of "Flavorful but mediocre classes that would be interesting to play in a campaign."

[Hal]

What book is this in?

[Sholos]

I would have to agree with Gorbash here (losing caster levels for what are mainly RP reasons sounds like a really bad idea).

Because everyone knows that roll-playing beats roleplaying. People who roleplay are stupid and just get in the way of those who like their cheese.

Doing something for RP reasons is very rarely a bad idea. It's the "RP" in "RPG". Without it, you've just got "G" and might as well go play something else. Mechanics are not the most important thing!

What book is this in?

Either Complete Mage or Complete Arcane. I forget which exactly.

[monty]

Complete Arcane.

[Dr Bwaa]

I like blood magus a lot. I realize it's not exactly powerful compared to full casters (understatement) and has a lot of silly prereq's, but it's still a lot of fun, I think. I'm a big fan of fluff, though; I'm the kind of guy who would take all ten levels of Mindbender =)

[Samakain]

Played in a on-going game once, level 25 cap.

There was a PrC released in a dragon magazine some time back called the Ocrolmancer or some such, But basically gave you control over your bones in much the same way a Blood Magus has control over his blood, spikes, thrown shards etc etc, can't remember the exact mechanics of it.

But a Sorcerer/Bloodmagus/Bonemagus we had in our party was full of lovely squishy fluff.

[Jack Mann]

Because everyone knows that roll-playing beats roleplaying. People who roleplay are stupid and just get in the way of those who like their cheese.

Doing something for RP reasons is very rarely a bad idea. It's the "RP" in "RPG". Without it, you've just got "G" and might as well go play something else. Mechanics are not the most important thing!

Hold up, here. First off, I think you owe Tempest an apology. That wasn't what he was saying. Second, while certainly one should always endeavor to play a flavorful, interesting character, you shouldn't have to pay mechanically to do it. You shouldn't be penalized for, essentially, roleplaying. You shouldn't have to consign yourself to being ineffective in combat to play the two-weapon fighter you've envisioned. You shouldn't have to be a second banana in your own party to play a hand-to-hand combatant. And you shouldn't have to be a weaker caster to get your masochism on either, if that's what you want to do with your character.

Sure, mechanical superiority isn't the only important thing (or else we'd all be playing gestalt wizard/incantatrix//archivists), but it's still a big part of the game. Most players want to be effective. We want to feel heroic. Powerful. We want to feel like the party is better off for having us around. That we can save the day every now and again. If a rule makes us choose between that and having an interesting character, then that's a problem with the rules, not our attitudes.

Besides, fluff can always be changed. We can go a long way towards playing these characters without resorting to poor mechanics. Crunch can be changed too. A good DM can fix a bad class to make it palatable.

[Admiral Squish]

Would blood magus be overpowered if you gave it full casting?

[Frosty]

Given its prerequesites? Nope. About as strong as straight Wizards I'd say.

[Aquillion]

If you want blood-fueled casting, how about Tainted Sorcerer? Your DM will have to be willing to use taint, of course. (Despite the name, you don't actually have to be a sorcerer.)

...actually, the last time I looked at the class was the OA equivalent back in 3.0, and I don't remember it too well. Looking at it now, it looks even more broken. 23 damage to yourself or a helpless prisoner to pay for any material component of any cost? Constitution damage to pay for metamagic (which you are apparently allowed to be immune to or heal immediately)?

The best ability is using their taint score instead of their ability modifier for bonus spells and saving throws against your spells. You can get it up to just under twice your wisdom before you go insane, so if you pump wisdom as if it were your casting stat you can basically have nearly double normal person's casting stat -- oh, wait, no, you get nearly double plus ten.

For the saving throws, though, it's even worse, because it's not replacing your ability score, it's replacing your ability modifier. The save DC of your spells is equal to 10 + spell level + your taint score. Remember, the only thing limiting your taint score is that you get 1/2 of it as a penalty to your wisdom -- but if you have 36 wisdom, say, you can still raise your taint to 30 or so with no problem, giving all your spells a DC of 40 + spell level, while still leaving your wisdom at 21, high enough to avoid going insane from a sudden taint increase (and leaving you a decent will save)... and leaving your taint low enough that you can burn it down to negligible levels in a single day if you use all the available taint-reducing spells.

Insane. Actually, IIRC, the 3.0 OA version was better in one respect... I seem to recall that you could use constitution from prisoners to pay for metamagic back then, too, which it looks like you can't do anymore. But everything else is still absurd.

Oh, yes, and the best part? You get all abilities in full from the first level in the class. You only need one level to get all the above. Now, there's a catch -- you have to make a will save of 10 + your level to put levels in another class. But there's lots of spells to reduce taint, so you can easily manage it with a little foresight; and since you've pumped wisdom as your primary casting stat (it's the only limit on your taint, which replaced your casting stat) you just need to burn off a little bit of taint to have the will save fail only on a 1. Fatespinner levels or something similar to protect you against an unlucky 1 would be a good idea, too.

You just absolutely need a source of Restoration, both to remove taint and to recover constitution spent on metamagic.

(Note: No sane DM will actually let you use Tainted Sorcerer.)

...wait, what were we talking about?

[Tempest Fennac]

I only have access to the first 2 class levels from Crystal Keep, and I think it looks quite interesting (the needing to be dead for a while part would put me off wanting to have anything to do with the class, though, and the lost Caster levels would stop me from wanting to take too many levels of the class).

[Jimp]

The class is incredibly fun to play and the fluff, as many others have said, is awesome.
Mechanically it looses caster levels which is a bad thing and one or two of it's early abilities aren't great.
I once played a ridiculous build involving Blood Magus. It went something like Rogue/Assasin/Blood Magus but I can't remember the exact levels or anything. There may have been a level or two of either Warlock or Wizard in there too. Mechanically it was pretty blah. Most straight up combats were spent using disabling spells and sneak attacking. However, I was also the most terrifying assassin of the land. Stories were told of how I would teleport into a room, assasinate the mark and leap through someone standing nearby to emerge outside the area through some commoner, bringing his insides with me. Any combat where we could prepare in any way was just awash with awesome.

[Tempest Fennac]

I didn't notice Sholos's comment earlier when I posted, but his post made me smile due to how I've been critercised to a degree on other threads for only being interested in PrCs and feats if they fit with my character concept (Jack Mann summed up my opinion on RPing and optimisation perfectly).

[Sholos]

I agree that certain concepts shouldn't be punished mechanically, but if a concept comes with certain requirements, that shouldn't be grounds for not running with the concept. It's certainly not grounds for being an elitist and telling other people they're wrong to run such a concept. I just get sick of people saying that no one should ever take such-and-such class because it's vaguely mechanically weaker. Who cares? Not every character has to be the best that you can build. Weaknesses are okay. Unless you're playing Greyhawk .

[Tempest Fennac]

I never said I had issues with other people doing that; I was simply stating why I wouldn't want to take too many levels in the class.

[Sholos]

Ah. It sounded as if you were saying that no one should.

Apology extended. Though I maintain the point of my post (just not directed at you).

[SoD]

Idiotic prerequsite feats, idiotic special way for getting into class for a few intresting roleplay traits? Not to mention, most people will take a sorcerer, so that means you're 4 lvls behind a regular Wizard... Just go play a Batman and pick spells like Burning Blood, Infestation of Maggots and other gruesome stuff and imagine that you're a saddistic masohist blood obssesed sonnuva *beep*.

[nitpick]Not on the wizard/sorcerer spell list, it's a druid spell.[/nitpick]