Enhance attacks with your own blood with this high damage, high injury fighter subclass.
Blood hounds were created through nightmarish experiments in which the blood of 100s of species have been combined to produce the tarblood in their veins. This, they can then use to suffuse their own attacks and powers, harming themselves to harm their enemies more.
As you might expect, attacks that deal damage to yourself makes this a high risk, high reward subclass that must live dangerously to be at its most effective. But the powers do justify the cost as long as your HP isn’t too low.
Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt is a 3rd party book released for D&D 5e and 5.5e. A part of the book was recently launched on D&D Beyond as a player pack. You can also grab the full supplement from MonkeyDM’s website. This guide tackles the 5.5e version of the blood hound fighter.
At a glance
- Warrior class adept at weapon attacks and dealing damage
- Deals lots of damage and problematic effects against enemies
- But need to be wary of resilience as you’ll inflict damage on yourself when enhancing attacks
4/5 – A high damage dealer that can also cause problematic effects against enemies, making them less effective. This comes at a cost though. HP is drained the more you enhance attacks. This can be compensated for through your build and ranged tactics though. With he right build, this is a capable subclass, but remains risky to play.
Blood hound features
Blood strike (Lv3) – 4/5
Blood strike is a lot like the arcane archer’s arcane shot feature (though it’s more similar to the 2014 version of the arcane archer than the 2024 version). You can enhance some of your attacks, adding damage and extra effects. Many of the effects are even very similar to arcane shots like bloodboil strike (bursting shot) and bloodshard strike (piercing shot).
There are a few major differences between these features though. The blood hound has more potential uses than the arcane archer, can use it on melee attacks, constitution is their associated ability score (rather than intelligence) and they take damage when they use it.
The big thing to think about is building resilience so you can actually outlast your own blood strikes. This means a high constitution, but you might want to consider things like the tough feat or even being a Dwarf for the extra HP. High constitution is the most important here though as it’ll make your save DC better too.
The other thing to consider is the cost/reward of different blood strikes, balancing self-harm and impact. For example, bewitching strike could be excellent because the target may attack one of your enemies (there’s no mechanic to say it doesn’t attack you or a party member though). But it’s 1d10 damage per use. The trade off is probably good, but how many times can you afford to do this? If you do it 3 turns at level 3, you’re probably bloodied without being hit by an attack. Contrast this to bloodboil strike which will average a couple of hit points less damage to yourself per attack, but has the potential to damage quite a few enemies.
Because of this reason, I’d favour a ranged build over a melee build as you probably can’t afford to take as much of a beating as other fighters so may need the relative safety of range for survival. Your ability to weather this damage will increase with levels though as the damage you take doesn’t increase.
When choosing which strike options to take, I’d maybe favour bloodboil strike over bloodshard strike as your AoE option (emanations are easier to get multiple creatures in than lines anyway, even if the damage is less). I’d maybe also favour constraining strike over bewitching or exiling strike as it can restrict targets for longer while likely occupying their actions for at least a turn and potentially dealing additional damage to the target while dealing less to yourself.
Realistically though, other strikes have their place and there are no bad strikes options. Hunting strike is great against high AC targets and creatures that hide or turn invisible. Withering strike is good against high damage opponents and Shadow blood strike works well against ranged opponents or when you have allies with things like blindsight.
Blood hound anatomy (Lv3) – 3/5
Some decent resilience will help your durability a bit. Poison damage and the poisoned condition are 2 of the most common damage types/resistances. Magical contagions are much rarer and finding creatures you’ve injured is situational, but occasionally useful.
Blood armament (Lv7) – 3/5
Bypass resistances easily with your choice of acid, necrotic or poison damage on weapon attacks. I’d generally not use poison damage as it’s commonly resisted and avoid necrotic damage against undead (who are often also resistant to poison damage).
Blood explosion (Lv7) – 4/5
This can make your attacks better when you miss, but at the cost of a bonus action. It means you’ll want to favour attacking creatures that are close to one another and may need to be cautious around creatures engaged in melee combat with allies. Of course, you don’t have to use this if allies are nearby.
You’re probably looking at missing 30-40% of attacks. You’ll be making 2 attacks per round at this level and eventually 3 or 4 at higher levels so likely to be using this often. Your bonus action probably isn’t occupied heavily by other things anyway making this quite a strong use of it.
Blood of creation (Lv10) – 3/5
Reducing blood strike damage a little is decent, but it likely won’t average as loads. Adaptable blood strike options is alright, but you already have 5 out of the 9 options. I’m not sure you’ll really need to change your load out very often here. I doubt this is used much more now you’ve already worked out your tactics and what strike options you find most useful anyway.
Blood symphony (Lv15) – 4/5
This is probably 5HP healed at this level per blood strike (you should be optimising for constitution and should be at 20 constitution now). That means on average, you should be healing more than you’re harming yourself when using blood strikes meaning you have no reason not to keep using these other than limitations on uses.
Improved blood strike (Lv18) – 4/5
Blood strikes now increase in damage making them even more impactful. In each case, this is an extra 2d6 damage. It’s worth being aware that this impacts bloodboil strike and bloodshard strike most as they’re AoEs that damage multiple targets. The same goes for constraining strike which deals damage to the same target multiple times. This may make you want to favour these options a little more.
How good is the blood hound subclass?
The blood hound is sort of a high risk, high reward subclass. You can deal lots of handy effects and extra damage, but do so at the cost of your HP. This means durability is a real challenge for this subclass. You can get around this though through your build and by favouring ranged attacks. Not all parties can afford the luxury of a fighter that isn’t on the frontlines soaking up attacks though, which makes this tricky.
If you can survive though, the ability to deal damage and debuff enemies is fairly high and worth the risk in my opinion.
4/5
Building a blood hound fighter
Blood hounds are fighters operate in a very similar way to other fighters. While they have similar features to an arcane archer, they are capable at both melee and ranged combat. However, because of their self-damaging approach, I think they work best as a ranged build. This might mean using ranged weapons or thrown weapons. It could also mean using hit and run tactics if you do want to play a melee build. I’ve considered this in my advice below.
As this is a Steinhardt’s Guide subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt book in my build advice below and shared which work well for this fighter subclass. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my fighter optimisation guide.
Species/race
I’d probably just go for a Dwarf, warforged, Autognome, Orc or some other resilient species. Of the species in Steinhardt’s Guide, I’d perhaps only say that the Demidritch is worth considering.
- Demidritch: Resilience against the blinded condition and cold damage. You also get a damage boost with a bonus action damaging emanation or the ability to tackle invisibility. Either way, this is a good, but the damage boost is best on a melee build.
Backgrounds
For a blood hound fighter, you’ll want to prioritise ability score increases for strength or dexterity (dexterity for a ranged build which I’d recommend) and constitution.
Unfortunately, there’s only 1 background that combines constitution with strength or dexterity and one of the origin feats that fits a blood hound (which is most of them). You could maybe take a strength and dexterity increase depending on your build, but it’s not ideal.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marked for death | Strength, dexterity, constitution | Grizzled | Arcana and survival | None |
Feats
The following are all good feats for a blood hound:
- Curious: Can temporarily gain proficiency in a skill you don’t already have this for. Nice if you need to fill in as a scout (if you’ve gone for a dexterity build). Handily, you can do this reactively when a skill check comes up. Learning resistances and vulnerabilities can be useful too, especially as you have changeable damage types that you can inflict.
- Faithful: Charmed and frightened resilience plus you get heroic inspiration when you roll a 1 on a d20 test. Fighters roll more d20 tests than most due to the volume of attacks so a little more handy for you.
- Grizzled: Advantage on frightened saving throws is decent for resilience. You’re also likely to get bloodied a decent bit with all the damage you’ll inflict on yourself so heroic inspiration is a nice bonus when that happens. Survive is likely inconsequential, but can be handy for campaigns that use survival rules.
- Brutalizer: If you want to dual wield and fight at range, then this will allow that. Grab a longbow (or a musket if you have the gunner feat) and a hand crossbow and this will let you use your bonus action for an attack with your hand crossbow. Just be aware that at level 7, some of your bonus actions will be occupied with blood explosion which is going to be better than this attack.
Weapons
I’d mostly recommend ranged weapons, but will want to avoid weapons with the loading property as it’ll get in the way of your extra attacks. However, of the weapons in Steinhardt’s Guide, a scythe could actually be a good option if you want to dive into melee as you can more easily use hit and run tactics with the extra reach. This may keep you safe enough while you use your blood strike.
More from Steinhardt’s Guide
Interested in what else is available from Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt? Why not check out some of our other guides?
