Gangrel 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

Gangrel features

Gangrel bane (Lv3) – 1/5

Disadvantage on persuasion and deception checks a decent amount of the time isn’t generally great, especially for a party face, but, if you’re in a party with another party face (say another kindred or a bard) then this will matter very little. Considering that the supplement encourages all kindred parties, this may be OK.

Of course, if you are the party face, then this could be a real pain as you either stifle your combat prowess or be poor at face skills from time to time. It’s not explicitly clear RAW, but I think RAI, if you sate your hunger from the beast using a blood point, then you’re unaffected by this feature too.

Gifts of the beast (Lv3) – 4/5

The extended darkvision is a nice bonus, but it’s the damage boost to unarmed strikes that’s really helpful here, bringing your attacks up to the level of a greatsword, but with just one hand and the ability to grapple and attack. It does cost a blood point and because it requires a bonus action, it will also prevent you activating the beast feature on your first round of combat, but in major encounters this will often be worthwhile.

Clan Gangrel will want to invest heavily in unarmed combat, feats like grappler, fighting initiate (for the unarmed fighting style), tavern brawler and the Lupin species can help here.

One important thing to note is while it may seem like you can dump strength and just push into dexterity, that only works if you don’t intend on shoving and grappling. However, grappling in particular is likely to be a common thing you do as a kindred so you likely still end up split between the 2 and it still makes sense to invest heavily in strength and limit dexterity to 14 for medium armor (at least initially).

Feral spirit (Lv6) – 2/5

Coming across beasts is situational, but the ability to cast animal friendship and speak telepathically to them is sometimes useful. I think you’re much better off with find familiar or an animal companion in the party (or wild shape) though.

The feature doesn’t mention comprehension of telepathic speaking on the part of the beast. I assume the intention here is that the beast can understand your telepathy (with the intellectual limitations of a beast).

Hitting a little harder when affected by your beast hunger I guess is kind of useful sometimes, but generally you want to avoid that hunger making this a feature you want to avoid too. The boost isn’t that great, but I suppose larger creatures can now be grappled by you and fed on. This is all too situational in my opinion.

Gifts of survival (Lv9) – 3/5

Reaction damage reduction is quite good as your reaction probably isn’t under high demand.

I’m not really a fan of meld into stone, even with tremorsense allowing you to actually know a bit of what’s going on outside of the melded surface (ironically, you can’t actually meld into stone when cast this way). The problem is, it requires you being in place ahead of something else and the surfaces are limited. I find this a very situational spell.

Corporeal mastery (Lv11) – 4/5

This is kind of a weak form of a druid’s wild shape. You get a few forms you can shape shift into and gain a handful of temporary hit points too. However, none of these forms are really combat ready. Even the higher CR forms have very weak attacks compared to what you can do now. There are only minor other benefits to assuming one of those tougher forms when you take combat out of the equation, like a slightly faster speed.

For this reason, I’d almost always recommend using these forms for exploration and scouting and not for combat. I’d also almost always use the weaker forms due to their lower blood point cost (you still have your base class hit points anyway to survive with).

This is still a good utility feature just for flight and subtle scouting. I do think it’s a shame that it hasn’t followed wild shape’s example on requiring a bonus action to transform, but considering it’s a primarily out of combat feature, that perhaps matters less anyway.

Command the beast (Lv15) – 1/5

Dominate beast is a decent spell, but only if you find the right kind of beast. Problem is coming across the right kind of beast. By this level, you need higher CR creatures to just happen to be lurking around when you need one. That’s going to be rare as casting this on more common, but puny creatures (like squirrels or birds) is of little use to you as you could shape shift into a similar form anyway and accomplish what they could better. This makes for something very situational.

Rouse is supposed to help an allied kindred to pass a saving throw by expending a use of their beast feature. This is an expensive use though as it doesn’t let them use it on their turn, requires a blood point, a reaction from you and still needs to expend a use of the beast feature. On top of that, you’ve lost your reaction to absorb a few points of damage. I’m just not sure that either of these features is that great.

Protean rewards (Lv18) – 2/5

Doubling the damage reduction from gifts of survival is great, but it consumes your action which is a lot for something like this. It may help once per round in an encounter, but losing that action and 2 blood points is kind of a lot. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think at level 18, that this damage reduction might just increase as standard.

Gaseous form is decent for exploration, but you already have shapeshift to mostly accomplish what this might, this grants a little more flexibility to your scouting, but not loads. At level 18, you don’t expect slightly enhanced scouting and a clunky increase to damage reductions. I’m not really sure how much I’d use either of these.

How good is the Gangrel subclass?

Honestly, I don’t think this subclass is that great. It gets a decent damage boost for unarmed combat, some decent resilience with your reaction and some good scouting utility in shape shifting. However, even the unarmed damage boost creates bonus action conflict and lacks a fully fleshed out feature to allow for a full dexterity build kindred. Beyond that, you end up with lots of situational features that just aren’t going to come up an awful lot.

I can see where the designers wanted to go with this. A more beast-like vampire that can talk to beasts and charm them while taking on more bestial qualities themself. The problem is that some of these just aren’t useful enough, often enough. For the most part, I just feel like this subclass (and to be honest, other Kindred subclasses) were not playtested much at all. At least the Brujah subclass manages to be OK based on pure brute-force of features rather than elegant design. Sadly, clan Gangrel lacks either.

2/5

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Building a Gangrel Kindred

A Kindred of clan Gangrel builds and plays similarly to other Kindred though they do lean more into unarmed attacks than other kindred Subclasses. They also possess less in the way of magical means to enable feeding so rely more on physical methods like grappling, nets and allies to subdue enemies before a feed.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Strength: Most kindred will need to invest heavily in strength. In theory, Gangrel Kindred don’t need strength for their unarmed attacks, but they do still need them for grapples, which is likely your easiest method of enabling a feed. If you invest in nets, then you’ll be able to restrain with those and rely on dexterity, but the grappler feat and strength will let you attack and grapple simultaneously so I think a strength build is going to work better.
• 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. Gangrel have a few spells from their subclass and/or kindred feats. You’ll want a high charisma for charming, frightening and confusing through spellcasting. This is less crucial for Gangrel than other subclasses as they tend to be worse at face skills and have fewer spells to worry about.

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. If there’s someone else in the party good at face skills though, you may want to leave this to them as you’ll sometimes have disadvantage on these skill checks.
• 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, especially if you intend to shapeshift to scout a bit..
• Persuasion: Really crucial face skill if you’re going down the party face route. As mentioned before though, Gangrel Kindred can have issues with face skills so go with something else if there’s already a decent party face in the group.
• Stealth: Gangrel can make good scouts so investing in stealth can be important.

Species/race

Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your species for a gangrel 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 but becomes less important once you can shape shift at level 11. 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 cause 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 (which you should). More heroic inspiration is always useful.
• Lupin: Amusingly one of the better options for an unarmed class which Gangrel Kindred very much should 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 scouting skills for a Gangrel.

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 Gangrel 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 you may need to invest more in your charisma to make these spells potent enough.
• 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 scouting 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:

• 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.
• 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 Gangrel are really built for unarmed strikes and you should build around this with feats. This means you won’t often be using weapons. However, you should have some ranged capabilities for when you can’t get into melee combat. If you’re a strength build, then thrown weapons are a good option. A javelin is probably your best bet there. If you have gone for a dexterity build, then a shortbow should do the job.

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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