Grim Hollow Fighter Subclass Guide | Bulwark Warrior, Living Crucible & Nightwatcher

Deep diving into the bulwark warrior, living crucible and nightwatcher subclasses.

The setting of Grim Hollow is a dark and foreboding place. Danger lurks almost everywhere and as such, many must raise up arms in order to survive. This leads to many that train as fighters.

While some of these warriors learn to tackle the dangers of the dark or become protectors of others, some imbibe potions to enhance their capabilities and increase their chances of survival.

The 2024 version of the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook has 3 fighter subclasses. They are:

Bulwark warrior – A tanky defender that focuses on diverting attacks away from allies and having the resilience to take a beating.
Living crucible – Use alchemical compounds to enhance their capabilities making them a very versatile subclass.
Nightwatcher – Focus on scouting and being the first to strike.

In this article, I’ll dive into each subclass to provide advice as well as analyse how strong they are and which is the most powerful.

Bulwark warrior

What are they?

Bulwark warriors are defenders. They protect others by drawing attacks and using their superior defences to survive the onslaught.

Key abilities

Protective taunt (lv3)

Fighters are pretty tough so pushing enemies to focus fire on you is generally a pretty good idea. You’ll want to make sure you attack the creatures you really don’t want attacking your allies. You’ll also need to make sure your defences are high (so high AC and high HP). This means a shield might be a good investment, even if you won’t hit as hard as hard as a result.

Just be aware that this may be less impactful on spellcasters who could just use a spell that doesn’t require an attack roll.

Weather the storm (lv3)

You get a decent number of temporary hit points each turn almost once per encounter (as long as you’re taking regular short rests). This is actually a lot of temporary hit points with them being regularly replenished and scaling quickly with levels. This means enemies will need to focus fire a bit to whittle down your hit points in a turn.

You may want to focus on constitution to get the greatest benefit out of this.

Threatening presence (lv7)

This is a solid AoE for a non-spellcaster with quite a big radius. The challenge is it hurts allies so you’ll need to keep yourself far from allies when using it. You’ll also need to be ready to take a battering from all the creatures you’ve thrown yourself in the middle of. I’d definitely ensure you activate weather the storm when you use this.

Aggressive defense (Lv10)

Expend temporary hit points into damage once per turn (you can only expend a number equal to half your fighter level). It’s a decent enough damage boost and it’s worth being aware that the trade off isn’t that high. Because your temporary hit points regenerate at the end of your turn, if you have temporary hit points to use on this, you’re probably using weather the storm. If that’s the case, they’ll regenerate anyway. This means you should almost always use this feature when you can.

The main thing that will limit this is whether you’ve lost your temporary hit points since your last turn.

Improved second wind (Lv15)

This is great in isolation, but does conflict with weather the storm. Still, it’s a good back up for when you can’t use weather the storm and need some extra health and/or damage.

Halt the assault (Lv18)

Use a reaction to divert a nearby attack to yourself. You get resistance to damage from this attack too. It’s a good fail safe when your rogue gets caught in combat and the half damage means total damage against the party is reduced.

What are they good at?

Bulwark warriors are tanks and defenders. They’re great at absorbing loads of damage and drawing attacks away from allies.

How effective are they?

They do a decent job of drawing damage away from allies and do an even better job of being a tank. With such a regular supply of temporary hit points, it can be hard to take a bulwark warrior down.

If you want a solid, tanky, melee warrior, then a bulwark warrior is a good option that sits up there with barbarians for durability.

Score: 4/5

Living crucible

What are they?

Living crucible fighters have developed alchemical means to increase their capabilities as warriors.

Key abilities

Compound creator (lv3)

You can create enhancing compounds and drink them as a bonus action. You can take between 2 and 6 per long rest depending on your constitution. The big thing here is picking the right compounds to know and beefing up your constitution for more compound uses.

Some compounds are pretty universally useful like fleshknit phosphate (regeneration), liquid rage (+1d4 damage on all attacks) and steelskin ointment (resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage). Others are a bit more situational like granting blindsight or detecting magic. These could be useful to have available, especially if your party spellcasters aren’t equipped to tackle these issues.

There’s a lot of variety here, but not all are made equally. For example, several of these help with the ability checks and saving throws of certain ability scores, but something like draught of fox’s cunning is affecting intelligence which has few saving throws and is mostly knowledge skills (which fighters aren’t best for anyway). You’re better off buffing wisdom or Dexterity for something like this.

Student of alchemy (lv3)

A ribbon feature that makes you proficient with alchemist’s supplies and better at tests using them.

Living cauldron (lv7)

The number of compound’s you can consume per long rest increases by 2 and increases again at level 18.

Rapid consumption (lv10)

You can now drink 2 compounds with the same bonus action making mixing and matching compounds in combat easier.

Toxin transmutation (Lv15)

Resistance to poison damage and the ability to end the poisoned condition with a bonus action. I’d say this is likely the most important thing you can do with your bonus action if poisoned so always a worthwhile option.

Living catalyst (Lv18)

You can easily change compounds you know when you finish a long rest.

What are they good at?

The living crucible is all about being adaptable. Need darkvision or blindsight? They’ve got that. Need more damage? They’ve got that too. What about more resilience or speed? Yep, they can have all of that as well.

How effective are they?

Living crucibles do a decent job of being adaptable. And this increases over time with more compound uses and more compounds known and even being able to take 2 compounds at the same time.

However, everything revolves around this adaptability, and it doesn’t really scale all that well. Yes a couple of things do like regeneration increasing with your proficiency bonus or temporary hit points increasing with your fighter level. But many of these options remain as potent at level 3 as they do at level 20. You’re just maybe taking more of them, but they still need to be activated.

So while the living crucible is a decent fighter subclass, I do feel like it’s maybe missing a bit more scaling and something that’s always on. It’s a perfectly solid subclass, and you can fashion your fighter into a few different roles because of the subclass’ flexibility, but I’d say it’s no better than average.

Score: 3/5

Nightwatcher

What are they?

Trained in darkness, nightwatchers are accustomed to the night. They are undaunted by it’s presence, having worked as guards and Investigators and can now use the darkness to their advantage.

Key abilities

Skilled guardian (Lv3)

You gain proficiency with 2 skills and an expertise. This makes your fighter a little more useful outside of combat.

Because of the nature of the nightwatcher, I’d be inclined to go for a dexterity build and work them into a scout. Especially if the party is lacking in a rogue or ranger. This means skills like perception and stealth are especially important here.

Ever vigilant (lv3)

Darkvision is always handy, as are better initiative rolls, but the fact you can help the party improve their initiative rolls and potentially have them reposition is quite a big deal allowing the party to hit harder, earlier in combat.

Size up (lv7)

Use a bonus action and a reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack roll from an enemy you choose and resistance to any damage from it.

This is a tad awkward as you have to identify the target, expending a bonus action on your turn. If they don’t make an attack roll, this is wasted. It’s also wasted if they would have missed anyway. Still, attacks are common enough from most creatures, and targeting this against heavy hitters is a good idea, but I think I’d have preferred if this was streamlined to only require a reaction.

Night stalker (lv10)

Gaining blindsight is situational, but very useful when an issue like this arises. Being harder to hit with opportunity attacks is great too. Fighters don’t tend to be built for hit and run tactics, but being able to manoeuvre around the battlefield to be where they need to without worrying so much about being hit does work in favour of a melee tank/damage dealer.

Ready for action (lv15)

You literally can’t roll low on initiative now. You also have a 15% chance of making a second action in the first round of combat. When that lands, that can be a huge boon as you’ve got 3 attacks at this point with a single action. You get to double that in these instances. But it won’t be happening most of the time.

Beat down (Lv18)

So there’s a conflict here as size up requires a bonus action to use and only lasts until the start of your next turn. This means you can’t then use a bonus action for another attack if you miss. Instead, you’ll have to use your reaction. Getting an attack with this is fine, but you now can’t use your reaction defensively. I’d say the trade off is similar so you get more flexibility, but not necessarily any better, which feels a shame at this level.

What are they good at?

Nightwatchers make good scouts, can move freely in combat and are great at ensuring the party go earlier in combat.

How effective are they?

They’re decent, but no more than that. Some utility outside of combat and some scouting skills are all useful, especially when the party lacks a rogue or ranger. It’s also easy to underestimate the usefulness of taking turns earlier and the fact that this aids the whole party is quite solid.

Unfortunately, I think the nightwatcher struggles beyond this. Size up is a little problematic for your action economy and I think generally, the nightwatcher doesn’t have enough going for them to be considered more than average

Score: 3/5

Which Grim Hollow fighter subclass is best?

Grim Hollow’s fighter subclasses are all decent enough options (though lack the power levels of the druid subclasses I recently analysed). For me though, the bulwark warrior is the most effective. It’s a really solid tank/protector subclass that’s up there with barbarians for tankiness, with a solid dose of protectiveness in the mix too. It takes one solid aspect of a fighter and substantially enhances it.

That’s not to say the nightwatcher and living crucible aren’t decent; they both have their own roles to play. Nightwatchers are great for parties that need a scout and want to strike early in combat while living crucibles have a fair bit of flexibility in their capabilities. But neither are as competent in their areas of focus as the bulwark warrior.

What do you think of Grim Hollow’s fighter subclasses? Let me know in the comments below.