Is the vampiric Kindred class and the rest of the supplement worth buying?
If you often keep an eye on D&D Beyond’s 3rd party offerings, you may have noticed an unusual release appear. One based on an entirely different RPG known as Vampire: The Masquerade. Bound By Blood is not a full setting, it’s much smaller in scope. Instead, it adapts the vampiric PCs known as Kindred from the Vampire: The Masquerade universe, transforming them into a D&D class along with some vampiric backgrounds, feats and equipment.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time since the release of Bound By Blood analysing the various character options in the hope that I’ve found a vampiric class I can give to my players to use. With all that analysis under my belt, I’m ready to give my opinion on this rather curious release.
At a glance
- Poorly balanced vampiric class in the Kindred
- It also has overly complicated mechanics
- Some poor wording leads to confusion
- Some subclasses have interesting ideas, but poor mechanical design prevents these from shining
- Equipment adds very little other than being wooden or silvered
- Art style feels dull and low effort
- Feats are at least interesting and reasonably balanced
- The short adventure is decent
1/5 – Bound By Blood is already quite short for a $30 supplement. This could be overlooked if the material was excellent, but it’s not. The best thing I can say about Bound By Blood is I think the flavour is there and it has a decent single session adventure. Beyond that, this feels like it’s been cobbled together with minimal playtesting and design reviews. There’s serious imbalance in the class and subclasses, they lack mechanical fluidity and some are just downright too broken to be played at a table. Sadly, I don’t think this is the vampire class we were hoping for.
What to expect from Bound By Blood
| Contents | The Crooked Moon |
|---|---|
| Classes | 1 |
| Subclasses | 6 |
| Backgrounds | 5 |
| Feats | 25 |
| Mundane items | 49 |
| Magic iems | 1 |
| Monsters | 6 |
| Maps | 3 |
| Adventures | 1 |
| Edition | 5.5e |
| Publisher | Ghostfire Gaming |
The main portion of the supplement is the new Kindred class; The name vampires give to themselves in this universe. There are 6 Kindred subclasses that represent different clans and the capabilities granted to each with their vampirism.
You get a bunch of other character options like feats, backgrounds and items. The rest of the supplement is taken up by a short adventure you can use to get a feel for running an adventure for D&D in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade. This comes with a couple of minor systems to determine your masquerade level (how much people are aware of a vampiric presence in their vicinity). There is also a system for narrated feeding.
You get some brief context to the setting (but this is definitely not a setting guide) and a few monsters and maps to use for the adventure.
That’s it. It’s not a lot for a $30 supplement! For example, you could grab the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide for $40 (from the same publisher) with 21 species, 1 class, 40 subclasses, 25 backgrounds, 41 feats, 102 spells, 82 items and quite a lot more! That price point hurts even more when you consider the quality of the package, but more on that in a moment.
How good is the content?
The Kindred class is both overpowered and goes overboard on drawbacks
This is just an extremely unevenly designed class. Some features are vastly overpowered but then compensates for this with drawbacks that are extensive and just frustratingly stifling for gameplay. Neither of these things work great in my opinion.
At the same time, some features make you very reliant on maintaining blood points, which take considerable effort to maintain (no regaining on a rest for example). You must feed to maintain your blood points, but this requires imposing conditions on creatures. I fear that all of this does more to bog down gameplay than make for interesting mechanics.
On top of this, the class is unnecessarily complicated with a vast number of rules. I know a vampire needs brand new mechanics, but even within these features, they could easily have been simplified to improve the fluidity of gameplay.
On top of this, most Kindred are very forcefully funnelled down a certain playstyle (grappling so they can feed for instance), but are also extremely MAD (Multiple Ability Dependant) making it hard to specialise well enough in the full range of abilities you need to.
All of this made me seriously question whether the designers had even playtested the supplement before release. Power creep can happen and 3rd party supplements are notorious for this, but to be presented with such a complicated and uneven class makes me wonder whether anyone actually tried playing a Kindred before releasing this. This became more apparent as some language just seemed very unclear.
In case it wasn’t clear, I don’t recommend the Kindred to be used at your table without significant modifications. I have worked on homebrew myself and I’m well aware of how hard it can be to create something both interesting, unique and well designed, but when selling a product at a premium price, I do expect that product to at least have undergone a reasonable amount of playtesting and scrutiny. Instead, I’m left feeling like this supplement was a quick cash-grab and that leaves a sour taste for me.
Subclass design is no better and sometimes feels more like a wishlist
The subclasses don’t get any better. There are 6 to choose from and I can say that I did at least enjoy the range of vampiric archetypes they represented. However, mechanically, these remain very problematic. Some are better than others. clan Ventrue offered something a little different and unique, but on the other end of the scale were subclasses like Nosferatu Who just have an endless wishlist of buffs that make them completely overpowered.
It’s not just power-scaling that was a problem. Sometimes, power levels just about balanced out, not because of good design, but a lack of fluidity between features. This left subclasses like Brujah who just have no synergy between features, almost forcing you to pick one set of features or another in your build with little consideration for blood point levels or action economy.
The 6 Kindred subclasses
Feats are at least decent but equipment is practically meaningless
Thankfully, the feats are better designed and feel about right in terms of power. Some do feel quite good, others a little weak, but largely, I felt these hit the mark. To some degree though, with the inclusion of Kindred feats, it does feel like some of the challenges introduced in the main class and subclasses are a little easy to overcome. Ironically, part of the balance of the class is by having these design drawbacks. To some degree, the feats compensate for this which swings the Kindred more into the realms of being overpowered.
There are a bunch of new equipment, but honestly, the list isn’t as impressive as it seems. Mostly, it’s just providing wooden or silvered equipment which I guess is a practicality of a world of vampires and werewolves. Otherwise, these are largely the same equipment you already had access to.
Adventure
The adventure is a single session affair. It’s a monster hunt that cleverly weaves in elements of the masquerade (vampires masquerade as Humans to avoid detection and being hunted in this world). There’s a solid amount of mystery and investigation while feeling easy to run and actually being a really good way to introduce players to the new mechanics and the setting.
If I wanted to play a game in this setting and with Kindred, I’d very happily run this adventure and think my players would enjoy it too. Unfortunately, there’s too little incentive to run it and too little material to expand from this adventure without having to homebrew everything myself. This makes Bound By Blood a one off curiosity at best, but more likely, just one to avoid entirely.
Art style just feels like weird choice
I’m not very familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade itself, so I assume there’s a reason the art looks the way it does, but it’s not a style I like at all. It also feels like it’s been chosen more because it’s easy than because it’s good. It sort of has a medieval Britain vibe to it (which to be fair, is appropriate), but medieval Britain was not blessed with exceptional artwork. It also goes for minimal colour, sometimes opting for simply black and white (and often red). In some instances, it looks like a photo of a face has been outlined with drawn art for clothes and a minimalist background.
To me, it just feels like an easy art style was used rather than a good art style. So I can’t even say that the supplement looks impressive. It just doesn’t.
Overview
I really wanted to find a good, well-balanced, vampiric class. I hoped Bound By Blood might give this to me. Sadly, that is simply not the case.
Instead, we’re given a wishlist of features that have not been playtested sufficiently and have not been given the time to cook that they deserve. For me, this is a thoroughly disappointing supplement. There are decent elements like the feats and adventure, but the problem is that the vehicle for both these things is the use of the Kindred class. With that being a mess, there is little incentive to use these other elements.
Not only that, but the price is an insult to our wallets considering the size of the supplement and the effort that has gone into it. I can’t recommend Bound By Blood, even for the most ardent Vampire: The Masquerade fans who I suggest stick to the original RPG
1/5
