Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 daspian Apr 28, 2015 2:14:18	anyone else remember the good ol Blood Mage from past renditions? anyways i tried creating it as a sorcerer origin, here's my spin on it, some of the things i feel are balanced, while others i still am not comfortable with i marked those with either an X or an O to signify which ones i think i need help with, but you can go ahead and critique the whole thing if you feel something is wrong.   if you're familiar with the blood mage then you are familiar with the central themes i am shooting for, high risk for high reward, you gamble your own hit point/ hit dice pool in exchange for power/damage etc. you can not only manipulate your own blood or that of your foes, but also your allies, which is what i encorporated into one of their abilities.   at the bottom of the doc is also a review of my abilities/ a reasoning for why i made it that way etc, i'd ask if you could also just give that a quick read to understand the reasoning behind why i made an ability that way etc, and also help you the reader understand what i am aiming for perhaps.   anyways, please feel free to review and help me make it balanced!   Sorcerer Option: Blood Mage
#2 benedictxxii Apr 29, 2015 8:55:51	it seems kind of unbalanced to me 1d6 life steal as a cantrip? you're effectively doubling his health every single time you cast this spell this puts him on par with the freakin barbarian in terms of hit points
#3 supreme_slayer Apr 29, 2015 9:27:30	To start with, your cantrips and such say "damage" but not the kind of damage. My guess is that this would be Necrotic damage, and probably would not affect undead considering the way it works. I also don't like the idea myself of regaining so much HD, and playing with HD in general is a bit iffy to me. Especially because it does not say -which- HD you are regaining. So if you take 1 level in Barb or Fighter you can keep regaining a d12/d10 to your HD pool for rests. Not -necessarily- overpowered, but you would want to playtest this for sure.
#4 Breefolk Apr 29, 2015 10:30:06	What others have said, plus: do the cantrips count against the normal limit of Sorceror cantrips known or are they a bonus?  It would seem kind of unfair to add extra powerful cantrips like that at no cost.
#5 daspian Apr 29, 2015 11:04:46	While the cantrips are not "life steal" in that they only provide temporary HP, temporary HP doesn't stack it replaces the prvious amount with the new fresher amount i that amount is higher than the old temporary hit point value. i made it d6 because i thought a flat d6 would be little damage and then not to mention it's cut in half.... so technically the maximum amount of THP you would be getting is 3 at 1st-4th level which yes would bring you on bar with slightly under the fighter (who starts with a 1d10)  its nots 1d6 and you receive the damage dealt as temporary hit points, its 1d6 and you receive HALF the damage as temp HP, i could reduce it even more but i thought 1d6 would make the mechanic broken... i wanted to create some way to mitigate the fact that he would be sacrificing his own hit points and hit dice, he would need someway to recuperate and steal the essence of others, so he's not constantly walking around with 1 hp left and convulsing in the back from blood loss. .   ahh yea to clarify the cantrips they are untyped damage (pretty certain that 5e still does this type of mechanic, i know 4e did untyped damage for a few types of things) as is any of the damage that was dealt by ot her mechanics, i left it untyped as ifelt splashing someone with undead couldn't technically be categorized as "necrotic" although if causing it to be untyped damage is not within reason i will switch it to necrotic.  i can switch it to necrotic damage if it is a problem, i did not think that there would be a difference between untyped and necrotic... oh wait while im typing this is i just realized resistances haha, i can see your point it means it would be able to bypass any resistance because it is untyped... doh... yea it should  be necrotic my bad.   ah yes i was debating on making it count as aainst the sorc cantrips or known together with them.   as for the hit dice expenduture for Blood Empowerment, it specifically clarifies that it is only sorcerer hit dice. You can only sacrifice your sorcerer hit dice (which are d6) to gain a +1d6 dmg boost per HD spent, and as for the "regain 1/day' feature, that part can only renew your sorcerer HD and only up to a maximum of 6 sorc HD at it's maximum version.
#6 daspian Apr 29, 2015 11:07:06	i addd a little "Patch note list" at the top of the doc to keep track of the changes from everyone's suggestions, thanks again all!
#7 mellored Apr 29, 2015 13:07:57	i'd still reduce the cantrip damage to 1d4.
#8 daspian Apr 29, 2015 17:00:47	well the reason i added the THP cantrip is because with the ability to sacrifice your HD thus one of your only resources to regain your hit points, as well as sacrifice your current hit points for spell points,. your  character will have very few hit dice to expend during rests to regain hit points, and will most likely never be at full hit points and thus at risk, which is why i added the THP gain cantrip to provide some form of survivalbility, the reason i did a d6 is because it's the same die as sorc  HD, but i felt that cutting it in half would balance it. at 1st-4th level, the maximum amount of thp you can get would be 3. so if you start out with 6 hp (not factoring in con mod) you would be slightly under that of a fighter, in terms of hit points and THP.   i could reduce it to 1d4, which means the the maximum potential would be 2 at 1st-4th level, which is perfectly scaled fine at that level bracket, but the higher brackets it becomes largely miniscule and i am worried that at higher levels with the amount of HD and HP expendature they will be walking around very bloodied and need some cushion to protect'em.... i'll be playtesting it this weekend to see how it goes. thanks again for the responses.