Become a bounty hunter with this relentless tracker and hunter subclass.
Rangers make natural trackers and hunters. However, some have been trained in special techniques that elevate these skills. Bloodhounds can not only find their bounty more easily through magical means, but can also attack relentlessly until their quarry has been subdued.
Bloodhounds rely heavily on marking their targets, then focusing attacks against that one target. They also perform best when built for melee and increased opportunity attacks.
The bloodhound ranger is a 3rd party subclass created by Keith Baker and Visionary Productions and Design for their 3rd party supplement; Frontiers of Eberron: Quickstone. The book was released for D&D 5.5e on D&D Beyond and is also available on DM’s Guild.
At a glance
- Half spellcaster
- Works best as a melee specialist
- Main strength is its ability to deal lots of damage to individual targets
- Also does well at information gathering
4/5 – Additional attacks and extra damage make this a very damage and information focused ranger. Particulars around how to gain these extra attacks and damage help to balance this subclass from being overly powerful, but it can still pack a punch. The information gathering side of the subclass is decent, but can sometimes suffer from being a bit too situational. Overall though, this is a solid ranger subclass, so long as you build it right.
Bloodhound features
Bloodhound spells (Lv3) – 3/5
| Ranger level | Prepared spells |
|---|---|
| 3 | Alarm |
| 5 | Hold person |
| 9 | Clairvoyance |
| 13 | Locate creature |
| 17 | Scrying |
Alarm is the kind of spell a real adventurer would want, but is mostly overcome by just having guards when you camp. It’s at least a little more fool proof. Locate creature I find to be quite situational. I like clairvoyance and scrying better for information gathering spells and hold person is decent as a save or suck spell.
Ley line tracker (Lv3) – 2/5
Marking a bounty isn’t a particularly big deal for this feature specifically. Ranger divination spells can target the marked creature anywhere basically, but the main types of spells this might be useful for (say locate creature) are very situational. Some other spells don’t really have range as an issue like hunter’s mark making this a bit unimpactful.
There’s maybe a case to say you can cast hunter’s mark ahead of combat now and that could be solid if you’re catching up to your quarry, but again, you’ll need to know your target beforehand. At least this facilitates other features.
Unwavering attention (Lv3) – 4/5
An extra 1d6 damage once per turn makes hunter’s mark a little more valuable. If you can work it, the more valuable thing here might be the extra reactions. In theory, this can work twice in a round. Once by making an opportunity attack against a hunter’s mark target and again against a mark bounty target. This would be extremely hard to manufacture though. I think this is so unlikely that it’s not worth considering it for your tactics. The damage boost can in theory work against mark bounty and hunter’s mark targets. This means that if opportunity attacks are made against them, as it’s another turn when you make opportunity attacks, you can benefit from this damage boost more than once per round.
The hard part is creating opportunities to gain opportunity attacks, but there are a few ways to do this. You could encourage creatures to move away from you, say if a bard uses dissonant whispers on a nearby enemy.
A couple of feats can also help here. Polearm master will let you make an opportunity attack when a creature moves into your reach. Sentinel will let you make opportunity attacks when nearby allies are attacked and Zhentarim tactics will let you make an opportunity attack when a melee attack is made against you.
With those feats, this can be great. You’ll want to make this ranger a melee build for this exact reason. Just be aware that your DM might alter tactics to deal with these antics.
Relentless pursuit (Lv7) – 3/5
Free movement outside of your turn that does invoke opportunity attacks can be quite useful, but also quite situational depending on your target and what they’re doing. It does make it much harder for them to avoid you and I can see this being tactically, quite handy.
Eyes on the prize (Lv11) – 5/5
Focus fire is often what you want to be doing anyway. Especially with boosted damage from hunter’s mark and unwavering attention in place. For this reason, I can see you getting this additional attack a lot. A grapple or prone without a saving throw is quite good too. You can even use a topple weapon to accomplish both which can be a great tactic.
Nowhere to hide (Lv15) – 3/5
It probably won’t come up loads, but when you do encounter illusions and invisibility, you’ll be very happy you have true seeing available. The boost to your mark bounty is unlikely to come up much at all, if ever.
How good is the bloodhound subclass?
The bloodhound can be a great ranger subclass, but you’ve got to build it right to make it work well. You need a melee build that’s good at landing opportunity attacks and wants to use hunter’s mark a fair bit, otherwise this subclass falls a bit flat.
On that note, it does rely a fair bit on hunter’s mark (though with mark bounty, this isn’t essential) but it is another ranger subclass that leans into that build which may frustrate some.
Some of the features are a lot more mediocre and it relies a little too much on what enemies do to get some of your extra opportunity attacks to be a truly top tier subclass, but with so many potential additional attacks available, this ranger can end up being anything between decent to excellent.
4/5
Building a bloodhound ranger
Bloodhound rangers are definitely better as melee builds. I’d also argue that those extra opportunity attacks will be better with big damage weapons which can mean leaning towards two handed weapons. At later levels, you’ll also get more grapples too. This all means leaning towards a strength build (though dexterity can still work). This isn’t usually the best option on a ranger as they become a bit MAD at that point (Multiple Ability Dependent) but I think that’s going to be the best option on the bloodhound so my advice below will reflect that.
For a full breakdown on how to build a ranger, you can check out my ranger guide. For this article, I’ll just recommend options available from Frontiers of Eberron that work well for a bloodhound.
Species
Largely you’ll want a species that enhances your resilience and ability to deal damage with the following your best options from Frontiers of Eberron:
- Gargoyle: Some extra resilience is great for a frontline scout build. The unarmored defence could be handy on a dexterity build too, but is unlikely to be great on a strength build.
- Goblin: Some extra damage on some of your attacks. Most creatures will be larger than the small Goblin so this is easy to be applying. Disengage as a bonus action can be useful for moving around the battlefield more easily though relentless pursuit will eventually help you here.
- Harpy: If you want to mix in more spellcasting, then harpies grant some great spells like suggestion and enemies abound. You’ll just need to get that wisdom fairly high. Flight is great too.
- Warforged: The Warforged in this book is largely the same as the version in Forge of the Artificer. +1 AC will work with your unarmored defense, poison resilience is great and there’s a few other more minor perks. Great if you want to be a bit more defensive.
Backgrounds
For a bloodhound ranger, you’ll want a background that enhances your strength, constitution and/or wisdom. Dexterity could also be an option here as well. Below are the backgrounds from Frontiers of Eberron that I think combine great ability scores with good origin feats and skills for a bloodhound.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragonmarked bravo | Strength, dexterity, charisma | Lesser dragonmark | Athletics and intimidation | None |
| Dragonmarked foundling | Dexterity, constitution, charisma | Lesser dragonmark | Insight and stealth | Thieves’ tools |
| Magewright | Constitution, intelligence, wisdom | Magic initiate (wizard) | Arcana and insight | One kind of artisan’s tools |
Feats
- Hewn for battle: If you’re a Gargoyle and you want to invest less in dexterity, then you could pick this up for some quite good AC which is handy for a strength build without heavy armor proficiency.
- Lesser dragonmark: Not all of these are going to be great on a bloodhound, but some grant great spells and handy skill improvements. I’d probably suggest the lesser dragonmarks of mending (for magic weapon), passage (for misty step and longstrider), sentinel (for perception proficiency and shield) and shadow (for stealth proficiency, darkness and some illusions).
- Wings of stone: Flight is always useful. If you want that and are a gargoyle, then this could be handy.
More from Eberron
There are several 1st and 3rd party releases dedicated to Eberron, including Keith Baker’s Exploring Eberron and Frontiers of Eberron and the 1st party Forge of the Artificer. Check out all our coverage on these releases.
