Brujah Kindred Subclass: D&D 2024 (5.5e) Optimisation Guide

Vampiric subclass from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bound By Blood, adapted for D&D 5.5e.

At a glance

Brujah features

Brujah bane (Lv3) – 1/5

This is quite a severe consequence. Those extra blood points to stop going feral is quite an expense. It makes it harder to afford resisting turning feral and could really limit what you can do with your blood points. For this reason, you may need to accept turning feral more often, which may mean steering clear of allies a little more.

Fighting fury (Lv3) – 5/5

You should be saving blood points for this feature. I’d perhaps even be tempted to neglect the beast option in favour of this before level 5 (unless you’re happy to turn feral from time to time) when it grants an extra attack and while blood points are limited.

Advantage on one attack per turn is pretty good, you also have weapon mastery so can vex or topple for subsequent advantage once you get extra attacks. Bonus action dash is pretty good, but dodge is extremely strong if you need to be more defensive.

You can wield some heftier weapons too like a longswords and battleaxes. You can grapple and hold a greatsword, but will struggle to attack while grappling with it but can always swap loadouts or use other tactics to feed than grappling.

One issue here is that your proficiency and weapon mastery is only available when this is active, meaning you may sometimes be wielding weapons you aren’t proficient in. This might just mean swapping weapons around which isn’t generally a problem in D&D 2024.

Fearsome (Lv6) – 4/5

Fear is a strong level 3 spells and you’re getting it ahead of half casters. Remember that you can’t lose concentration from taking damage, making this more reliable.

The main challenge is having enough blood points to afford it. You’ll have 4 at this stage and will need 1 to activate fighting fury (for major encounters). You’ll likely want to activate the beast most turns for extra attack, but that will put you at risk of expending quite a few blood points if you fail a d20 test, but this use will also replace that.

50% of standard feeds should replenish a blood point, but you’ll need to use your bonus action to do so instead of dodging, or your action instead of attacking. There’s a complex interplay of action economy at play, especially with fear competing for your actions and grapples competing for an attack but it’s still good.

Intimidation advantage is good for a face class.

Fleetness (Lv9) – 4/5

Haste is another strong spell (and even better than fear, especially without the drawbacks). Both fear and haste are level 3 spells though, but this costs 3 blood points while fear only costs 1. I don’t think haste is that much better than fear so I’d actually be more inclined to prioritise fear unless you really have a glut of blood points and really need the extra durability/action or think your enemies will be tough against the frightened condition.

Burning wrath (Lv11) – 4/5

Improved unarmed strikes conflict a little with your martial weapon and weapon mastery proficiency. I actually think grappling feats like grappler and tavern brawler make sense to beef up your unarmed strikes and weave grapples into attacks, especially when adding this damage boost. Plus unarmed strikes set up in this way allow for easier feeding too.

Rouse emotions (Lv15) – 5/5

All 3 options here become really good. Charm person isn’t usually great in combat due to advantage on the saving throws, but with 6 targets who all now have disadvantage and the fact you can feed on these targets to replenish hit points/restore blood points suddenly makes this very useful.

Concentration-less fear is great, but to benefit from that, you need to also intend to cast another concentration spell (which would be haste, confusion or fear again with 1 blood point). The disadvantage on saving throws is useful too.

Confusion is usually a spell I steer away from due to its randomness but this version means you know creatures will attack other nearby creatures and be immobilised. That could be quite useful for groups of enemies you want attacking each other.

I think that these perks mostly elevate these options above haste, which demands the same number of blood points.

Puissant might (Lv18) – 5/5

That strength boost is big and means you might be at 24 strength via normal means. This is a huge boost to your damage and attack rolls. 2 extra dice rolls for your attacks is also a big damage boost, especially when activating the beast for an extra attack. The bigger your damage dice the better here, but it’s hard to resist making unarmed strikes for the other benefits these provide.

It may be worth grabbing the fighting initiate feat (there’s no 2024 version, but the 2014 version remains valid) and taking the unarmed fighting style to get d6/d8 damage on your unarmed strikes. Alternatively, you can take a 1 level dip in fighter (for fighting styles) or perhaps monk (for a martial arts die) to help here too.

How good is the Brujah subclass?

To my mind, the Brujah subclass has lots of great features, but it’s one of those that’s less than the sum of its parts. That’s because it lacks fluidity between features. Sometimes you’re enhancing weapon attacks while at other times you’re enhancing unarmed strikes, for instance. Unarmed strikes are best (eventually), but require heavy investment in feats, but then you also need strength, dexterity, constitution and charisma all buffing making for some serious ability score conflict.

You’ve also got a lot of features that guzzle blood points, especially failing a d20 test while the beast is active, but you need the beast active for your extra attack. However, this requires a bonus action, which you also want to use to dodge, dash or feed. You need to grapple to feed, but casting your spells stops you making grapples while expending blood points that you have to wait to restore until you can grapple.

Hopefully you get my point. There are great features, but the design fluidity is off (and that’s partly down to the core Kindred class). By pure brute force, rather than design elegance, this ends up as an alright subclass, but expect to spend most turns heavily deliberating how you make all of these great features function fluidly together.

3/5

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Building a Brujah Kindred

A Kindred of clan Brujah builds and plays similarly to other Kindred. You may choose to alter your weapons as new features kick in or to use other methods for activating feeding, but the same options that make for a good build largely remain the same.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Strength: Most kindred will need to invest heavily in strength. Not only will this be important for weapon/unarmed attacks, but it’ll also be crucial for landing grapples, which is likely your easiest method for enabling feeding in combat.
• Dexterity: All kindred will want to push this to at least 14 for the benefits of medium armor (specifically a breastplate, the only medium armor they’re proficient in). You can do better with studded leather and 20 dexterity, but that’s a lot of investment when strength and constitution are likely more important (but not definitely). A multiclass into monk or using nets to restrain will mean you can just push into dexterity and dump strength.
• Constitution: Not only important for your hit points, but will also enhance your healing and damage from feeding.
• Charisma: Your spellcasting ability. Brujah have a few spells from their subclass and/or kindred feats. You’ll want a high charisma for charming, frightening and confusing through spellcasting. You can also use that silver-tongue of yours to be the party face too.

Options to avoid

• Intelligence: Kindred have little use for intelligence. You can dump this, you don’t have enough points to invest here.
• Wisdom: The same goes for wisdom.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	14	15
Dexterity	14	13
Constitution	14	14
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	9	10
Charisma	13	12

Skills

Recommended options

• Athletics: Good options for tackling physical obstacles. Acrobatics isn’t an option as standard and most kindred should be prioritising strength over dexterity anyway.
• Deception: Kindred make a decent party face and you may need some deception to keep your true nature secret.
• Intimidation: Similarly if you’re prioritising charisma, this can help with your face skills. It’s a lower priority than persuasion or deception in my opinion.
• Perception: While your wisdom may be low, perception is good for anyone.
• Persuasion: Really crucial face skill if you’re going down the party face route.
• Stealth: You probably aren’t the scout of the party, but the whole party often engage in stealth so may not be a bad option.

Species/race

Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your species for a Brujah kindred.

• Toughen up: Kindred are martials and while fairly high on HP, they aren’t the best when it comes to AC. Anything that can help shore up their defences will be useful. One interaction to consider is what happens when your species grants a resistance and vulnerability to a damage type (like an Aasimar granting radiant resistance). I’ve decided that these cancel each other out which may be useful to consider with species choices but keep in mind this isn’t clarified in the rules as they don’t ordinarily crossover.
• Damage dealing: You’re also there to deal damage. Any species that can enhance this will be useful.
• Grapple enhancements: Any species that can enhance grappling will be good too. Mostly, this might just enable grappling larger creatures (as a Goliath can do).

Recommended species

• Aasimar: All the celestial revelations work well for a kindred. This is helped by your decent charisma, but also by the fact that kindred want to be getting close to enemies. Flight is always a useful option too. Radiant and necrotic resistance help to up your durability while compensating for radiant vulnerability.
• Dragonborn: Kindred aren’t the best at damaging multiple targets (though you’ll be able to caus conditions on multiple targets) so breath weapon gives some ways of handling this. You can take fire resistance to compensate for your vulnerability and temporary flight is useful for scouting or moving around.
• Dwarf: Damage resistance gives you resistance to the most common damage type and toughness gives you more hit points for more resilience. You also get poison and prone resilience too making this one for really gnarly kindred.
• Goliath: Faster movement, can sometimes grapple larger creatures and some extra damage or other effects all works nicely for a kindred.
• Human: An extra skill can help you become a better party face. An extra origin feat can be useful for all sorts of things, but tough is definitely a good option for the extra resilience or tavern brawler if you want to lean into an unarmed build. More heroic inspiration is always useful.
• Lupin: Amusingly one of the better options for an unarmed class which Brujah kindred very much can be. The main thing is shove and damage from unarmed strikes but their howl is great on a martial too.
• Orc: Orcs are tough. They get extra temporary hit points, can survive the odd drop to 0HP and can dash sometimes as a bonus action. All good for a kindred.
• Warforged: Improved AC and other resilience features make this good for toughening up your kindred.

Backgrounds

For a kindred, I mostly want a background that can give strength and constitution ability scores with charisma and dexterity possibilities too. I’ve outlined strong origin feats in a later section too. I’d also prioritise face skills.

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Entertainer	Strength, dexterity, charisma	Musician	Acrobatics, performance	One type of musical instrument
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Guide	Dexterity, constitution, wisdom	Magic initiate (druid)	Stealth, survival	Cartographer’s tools
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Noble	Strength, intelligence, charisma	Skilled	History, persuasion	One type of gaming set
Sailor	Strength, dexterity, wisdom	Tavern brawler	Acrobatics, perception	Navigator’s tools
Soldier	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Savage attacker	Athletics, intimidation	Cartographer’s tools
Thrall	Constitution, wisdom, charisma	Healthy	Athletics, medicine	One kind of gaming set or musical instrument
Touchstone	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Protected	Persuasion, survival	One kind of artisan’s tools

Feats

Origin feats

I’d recommend the following origin feat options for a Brujah kindred:

• Alert: Earlier turns in combat is always useful. You should have a decent dexterity meaning you should be fairly high on initiative order more often than not.
• Healthy: Improved short rest healing is alright, but the extra saving throw proficiency is especially useful for some extra resilience.
• Lucky: Imposing advantage or disadvantage on a d20 test 3 times a day is always going to be good.
• Magic initiate: Grab spells that can help restrain, charm or deal another feeding condition on enemies so you can feed on them. Charm person, entangle, sleep and Tasha’s hideous laughter all fit the bill here though be aware that you get an enhanced charm person at level 15.
• Musician: Always a strong origin feat for sharing out more heroic inspiration round the party.
• Protected: Somehow this is better than lucky, which is already really good but you can grab a reroll on a few d20 tests or use your luck points to prevent yourself dropping to 0HP.
• Skilled: Use this to enable yourself to have more face skills.
• Tavern brawler: You can really push into an unarmed build with this and the grappler feat.
• Tough: More hit points is always useful, but especially for a martial build.

General feats

At level 4, you can start picking up general feats:

• Actor – Kindred are good with face skills, if you want to impersonate others (as kindred often might), then this will make you quite good at that.
• Charger – Some kindred subclasses can dash as a bonus action. This enhances that movement boost further and gives you extra damage or pushing on some attacks too.
• Crusher – A great way to get push working on your attacks without having weapon mastery. Enhanced critical is sometimes nice but not something to rely on.
• Defensive duelist – Kindred could do with an AC boost and this will get it for them against some attacks.
• Grappler – Probably one of the best feats for a kindred. Most kindred will want to be grappling a lot. Now you can combine this with damaging attacks and have even more reliable attacks against those you grapple.
• Lightly armored – If you’re planning on just going for an unarmed build, then you can have a hand free for grappling and attacking while also wielding a shield. This will get you the shield proficiency you need and +2 AC.
• Mage slayer – Better at tackling concentrating spellcasters and a form of legendary resistance is all pretty good.
• Speedy – Decent option for hit and run techniques by giving you extra speed and being harder to hit from opportunity attacks.

Weapons

Clan Brujah are the most flexible clan when it comes to weapon choices as they can temporarily grant themselves extra weapon proficiencies and weapon mastery. There’s still some limitations in what you can wield while getting in important grapples. This means you’re likely looking at an unarmed or one handed weapon build. Brujah get both improved weapon attacks (through martial weapon proficiency and weapon mastery) and harder hitting unarmed strikes.

Two handed weapons are largely ruled out as you can’t attack with them while grappling, however, versatile weapons can give the best of both worlds. Higher damage while not grappling and slightly lower damage when grappling. Handily, martial weapon proficiency gives you slightly higher damage versatile weapons like the longsword and battleaxe.

You may want to go unarmed though, especially with the grappler and tavern brawler feats and enhanced damage at later levels.

You may want thrown weapons for some range, or if your dexterity is quite good, you can go for ranged weapons like a longbow.

Armor

If you’re a strength build, get your dexterity up to 14 and grab a breastplate for maximum AC (as this is your only medium armor option).

If you’ve got 18+ dexterity, you’ll get equal or better AC with studded leather. If you’re going for an unarmed build, you can still grapple with a shield, but you’ll need the lightly armored feat to get proficiency with this. It may be worth it to beef up your relatively low AC for a martial though.

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