FIGHTER
Path of the Blood Knight
Perhaps the thirst for blood runs in your lineage or maybe you’ve had the misfortune of coming across a vampire and thus have been bit. Regardless of the reasons, the abilities of a vampire slowly build within you. Although you’re not truly a full-fledged creature of the night, you start to exhibit the blood thirst common among that specific kind of undead. The seducing lure of darkness has enthralled you and you intend to embrace its power.
Blood Knight Features
Level Feature
3 Blood Drinker
7 Night Stalker
10 Drain the Vein
15 Nocturne’s Call
18 Dark Vitality
Blood Drinker
As you slay your victims mercilessly, blood gushes forth from the wounds you’ve inflicted, cascading over you like an unholy baptism. You start to draw strength from this invigorating feeling.
When you drop a creature to 0 HP with a melee attack, you can gain temporary hit points equal to that creature’s total Hit Die. These go away at the end of a short or long rest and do not stack with any other form of temporary hit points.
Night Stalker
Your heightened senses and motion allow you to glide more easily across the grown, giving you an almost unnatural gait and softened footfalls.
You gain proficiency with Stealth checks. Additionally, you do not suffer disadvantage to Stealth checks while wearing any armor.
Drain the Vein
Gripping a creature in your hand, the overwhelming urge to sink your sharp fangs into their exposed throat and tear it out is too great. Restrained creatures flail haplessly as you slowly drain the vitality from their veins.
When you use your action to successfully restrain a creature you have grappled, that creature takes damage equal to 2d6 + your Strength or Dexterity modifier. Further, you do not suffer disadvantage on attacks while restraining a creature. If a creature is reduced to 0 HP using this ability, you gain actual hit points from your Blood Drinker ability rather than temporary hit points.
Nocturne’s Call
The connection to other creatures of the night resonate strongly within your soul. The sound is so strong that you gain the ability to turn into one of their kind.
As an action you can transform into a bat or dire wolf. This transformation works just like the druid’s wild shape class feature and lasts for a number of hours equal to ½ your Fighter level. You regain the use of this ability after a long rest.
Dark Vitality
The pinnacle of your warrior’s training and blood lust leaves you with uncounted strength and endurance.
You gain the Warrior’s Survivor feature.
I'm not a fan. I prefer to keep race (and although I'm not a fan of PC vampires, they should be a race if the player wants to be one, or at least a template to apply to race) and class separate.
While I don't disagree with you that a Vampire could easily be represented by a race, I want far more options to represent that arch-type. For examples:
• Race (like 4E's Vyrloka)
• Class (like 4E's class, but probably better made)
- Sub-classes like my Blood Knight or even one that just plugs in their features.
• Template (like 3.5's from the Monster Manual OR the half version from Libris Mortis: Book of the Dead)
For me, it's a lot easier to just create a sub-path that has a few key features rather than going through the whole class-creation processs OR creating a race / template.
Nightstalker seems wrong. Doesn't matter how graceful you are, that full plate is going to make a lot of noise. The rest of it seems OK, but I also dislike hybridizing race/class and wouldn't bring this to my own table
Nevvur wrote:
Technically the level 10 feature doesn't do anything unless the character also has the "Grappler" feat, as normally there is no default way to restrain the victim of a grapple.
Having had a think about this, I'd be happy having this as a sub class of fighter. It reflects a vampire becoming more powerful with age/experience (which fits well with my preferred vampire lore) and seems balanced enough that it won't overshadow other characters.
The trick was looking at the character as a whole, not as something made up of separate parts.
In short, I like.
A question, though. If a druid wood elf (for example) becomes infected with vampirism, would you allow the character to begin gaining levels in the Blood Knight sub class instead of druid, would you treat this as a multiclass from the word go, or would you treat the two separately?
Nice. Just a question about Drain the Vain. Do those permanent hit point go away with a shirt or long rest or are they gained permanently? It is to powerful in the later case. And how exactly would this work in the former?