Kindred Class From Vampire: The Masquerade – D&D 2024 (5.5e) Optimisation Guide

A vampiric class adapted from Vampire: The Masquerade for D&D 5.5e.

At a glance

Kindred features

Feed (Lv1) – 4/5

Feed is strong. You get easy healing and decent damage and can restore blood points. The challenge though, is getting creatures in a position where you can feed on them.

Grappling is the easiest method for doing this as you can do it as part of the attack action. It does necessitate a strength build though as the kindred (nor any of its subclasses) allows for dexterity grappling. You could take a level in monk for this though. The different subclasses all have some methods for charming or causing other conditions that allow for feeding, but some of this doesn’t kick in until later in your progression.

You can also rely on allies like spellcasters or monks with stunning strike to help here too. Or grab some nets and use those to restrain creatures instead.

Handily, for all this effort, the damage and healing scales and becomes easier at level 5 when you can feed as a bonus action and can have 2 attacks with one or both being attempted grapples.

The beast (Lv1) – 5/5

Advantage on a round of d20 tests is excellent, but the consequences for failing one can be severe too. For this reason, you’ll want to make sure you’re well stocked on blood points (perhaps go hunting for animals between encounters).

If you’re apart from allies, the blood frenzy you launch into may not be too problematic, just try and keep enemies between you and allies and the risk may be worth it. You should be able to use this a fair bit since it regenerates on a short rest. Just be careful of cunning DMs that target you with saving throws you’re not great at or high AC enemies that you might still miss.

Blood potency (Lv1) – 5/5

This kind of reiterates what other features say about using blood points, but really importantly, you get one extra use for them. You can self-heal with a bonus action. This grants 1d10 + your kindred level in healing which is quite a lot.

You only have 1 blood point at level 1, but this increases fairly quickly as you level up. By level 10, you’ll have 6 of these to play with per rest and a few ways to regenerate them. This has the potential for quite a lot of healing.

This is essentially the same healing as a fighter’s second wind, but with more potential uses (but also more competing for its uses).

Kindred biology (Lv1) – 3/5

Theres a real mix of benefits and drawbacks here. To make this a little easier to work through, I’ve summarised them below:

Benefits

• 60ft darkvision
• Don’t need food or drink
• Kindred spells (gained from your subclass or kindred feats) require no verbal or somatic components and only material components with a cost
• Taking damage can’t break your concentration
• You don’t age
• Automatically succeed on death saving throws

Drawbacks

• Need a blood point to benefit from a long rest
• Food or drink poisons you
• Take damage when starting your turn in direct sunlight
• Being dropped to 0HP via fire or radiant damage or being beheaded will kill you outright
• Vulnerability to fire and radiant damage
• Can be paralyzed by wooden, piercing weapons

Most of the drawbacks can be worked with, but the damage vulnerabilities and the sunlight sensitivity have potential to be a serious problem. The vulnerabilities are more for balancing the big benefits of the kindred features, but sunlight sensitivity can really stifle gameplay. I would suggest that this is hand-waived away or the penalties are reduced like -1 on ability checks in direct sunlight.

On the benefits, the spellcasting benefits don’t clearly state that it’s only kindred spells affected by the component and concentration benefits. This would make a kindred a brokenly good 1 level multiclass dip if a wizard or sorcerer could have permanent subtle spellcasting, be relieved of challenges with handling multiple components and not have their concentration broken through damage. The grammar is off in the description and I’m inclined to think that this should be exclusively for your kindred spells. If this isn’t the case, this is how I’d rule it as a DM regardless.

Bestial fury (Lv5) – 4/5

I’m not sure how expending a use of your very powerful beast feature is worth it to roll damage twice. Maybe you really need to finish a creature off with a good damage roll, but I just wouldn’t choose this often. It also isn’t a problem knocking unconscious with melee attacks so shouldn’t be a problem here.

Bestial flurry is considerably better. This is the kindred’s version of extra attack. It’s not an always on extra attack which is a shame, but will occur when beast is active which can be a fair bit. You will have to balance uses of beast, blood points and proximity to allies, but you should get a fair bit of use out of this.

Improved feed (Lv5) – 5/5

Feed as a bonus action is a pretty big deal at this point. Not only is this an additional attack, but it means you can be resupplying HP and blood points even more regularly. You’ll also be able to grapple and feed in the same turn making this much easier to accomplish. Being better at maintaining a grapple will really help you for future feeds too.

Vampiric will (Lv10) – 2/5

Better at not being charmed and resisting turn undead is OK. Turn undead isn’t likely to be common, charmed will be more so. It’s alright, but charmed usually isn’t a huge problem either.

Efficient feeding (Lv14) – 3/5

Because feeding doesn’t require a roll to hit (you automatically hit) this only helps with your damage roll. This is to prevent against low feed rolls. Personally, I’d have preferred being able to roll twice and pick the highest value. Most similar damage rerolls work this way in the new rules, but this version is a decent boost considering how often you should be feeding.

Ancient awakening (Lv20) – 5/5

This is pretty much equal to a barbarian and monk’s level 20 features which increase 2 ability scores by 4. This spreads your ability score increases more thinly across more areas but with a little more flexibility.

I think this is technically worse, as specialising tends to be better, but it remains an excellent feature for beefing up performance in a variety of areas.

The ability scores you choose will depend on your build, but constitution will almost certainly be on the list, as will strength for your grapples and weapon attacks. Dexterity may be an option for AC depending on your armor choice and how far it’s already been upgraded and charisma is likely to be your other focus for spellcasting and face skills. If strength or dexterity isn’t worth upgrading due to your build, then go for wisdom as these saving throws are more common than intelligence saving throws.

How good is the kindred?

Delivering on the vampiric fantasy

The kindred accomplishes some great things. Firstly, it manages to deliver on the fantasy of playing a vampire with a fully fledged class. It weaves in the real advantages and disadvantages of such a creature with blood points doing a decent job at representing your thirst for blood.

Unique style of combat

It also manages to generate a different style of combat that is much more monstrous in approach. The grapple/charm/other condition attack approach is reasonably unique and seems like it could be fun, especially getting allies involved in helping with the feed.

Lack of combat variety

However, the class comes with problems too. For starters, you are very much pushed down a certain attacking style with little variation. This is OK for some, but usually, this is reserved for simpler classes that beginners can use to get to grips with mechanics. The kindred is a complex class that I can only recommend for more seasoned players, but with quite a narrow combat style which may conflict a little.

Bogged down gameplay

I’d also suggest that blood points have the potential to suffer from either the bag of rats problem (just carry around a load of very low level creatures and feed on them between encounters) or you necessitate doing things that slow down gameplay. This means either hunting for creatures to feed on when your blood points are low, or knocking out enemies in an encounter to charm and feed on after an encounter. I guess there’s always creating a group of vampire sycophants that will want you to feed on them. I’m not generally a fan of mechanics that slow down gameplay and get in the way of doing the fun stuff, and this threatens to be quite a self-involved mechanic too.

Unnecessary complexity

I’d also place some mechanics in the category of unnecessarily complex. Take the poisoning from eating food or drink mechanic. It’s fine for there to be a drawback from this. But I don’t expect it to happen much if at all, yet there are 3 whole paragraphs detailing how this operates in stages. Personally, I think this should have been simplified in the design process.

I also think that feeding could be streamlined a fair bit. There are times when you can gain hit points from feeding and other times when you can gain blood points. These are limited by the circumstances of feeding, but this ends up getting quite convoluted. A really straightforward simplification would be to simply choose between regenerating hit points or blood points. You could still have reduced damage for willing targets, but maybe they just take half damage or can expend hit dice instead of damage reductions.

Unclear language

I should also mention some confusing language. Feed tells you how feeding works, but then proceeds to give you alternative feeds without suggesting there are multiple ways to feed. I think this makes it unclear when reading this section which rules to follow. Feed also states that you roll “up to your maximum feed dice” but I see no reason to not roll the maximum, but this implies perhaps these are expendable (which they’re not). What’s strange is the language for the damage and the hit points maximum reduction is slightly different using the word “only” for the latter, implying that a lesser value is used for reducing the hit points maximum, but the calculation is the same.

Heavy-handed drawbacks

Finally, I think that sunlight sensitivity is too severe a disadvantage. That’s a lot of damage reduction and while I think the idea is that kindred go out at night, this isn’t always pragmatic, especially when in a party with non-kindreds. Yes, I know that the book suggests you play a party of kindred’s, but I don’t think most groups are going to go in for that. For starters, not everyone will want to play the same thing, but also there’s not enough variety in the subclasses to really allow for a party of diverse enough roles. Personally, I’d either hand waive the sunlight sensitivity, or reduce the impact. Maybe ability checks are reduced by 1 or something along those lines.

Summary

That’s a lot of nitpicking and I think realistically, there will always be challenges creating a vampire class as they are supposed to have vulnerabilities as well as major strengths. Not all of this is a design flaw. I still think there’s something imteresting here.

Actually scoring the power of this class is challenging. It swings between very powerful in some ways and quite weak in others. For instance, what do you do against celestials or fiends with lots of fire/radiant damage? Or paladins and clerics for that matter? How do you handle daytime adventures? Working around feeding and especially, how effective are they against creatures they can’t grapple (so really big creatures)?

At lower levels, they can struggle too when they can’t feed and grapple in the same turn and have very few blood points. Yet at higher levels and against many other things, they can be really strong and annoyingly hard to keep down.

I guess the aggregate is a 4, but this will swing somewhere between a 2 and a 5 depending on enemies, tactics and circumstances. But do I recommend this for your table? I think it comes with a caution. It’s not wildly imbalanced, but it does swing from being quite strong to quite weak and there may be a bit of DM adjustment to be made.

4/5

---

Optimising a kindred build

Optimising a kindred will mean ensuring you can maximise on durability, damage and feeding. There’s extras here like the ability to be a party face and some light spellcasting from subclasses and kindred feats. There’s a little variety between builds, but not loads. I’ll also assume that there is no multiclassing here, but in theory, a dip into monk could remove the need to invest in strength for grappling for instance.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Strength: Most kindred will need to invest heavily in strength. Not only will this be important for weapon 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. Kindred tend to have a few spells from their subclass and/or kindred feats. You’ll want a high charisma for charming and other things 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

Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your species for a 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 dealing with 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 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

Choosing your subclass

Kindred have 6 subclasses based on the different kindred clans found in Vampire: The Masquerade. Each clan embodies different qualities and capabilities. They are:

Feats

Origin feats

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

Recommended options

• 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.
• 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.
• Weapon master – Great if you’ve gone for a weapon wielder and want some extra effects in your weapon attacks. Kindred are one of few martials (alongside monks) that don’t get weapon mastery.

Epic boon feats

• Boon of combat prowess: Great for a guaranteed hit each turn.
• Boon of dimensional travel: Get wherever you need to be in combat really easily without expending action economy.
• Boon of energy resistance: Grab fire and radiant resistance to counteract your fire and radiant vulnerabilities.
• Boon of fate: More reliable (or unreliable) d20 tests is great for anyone.
• Boon of fortitude: A big stack of extra hit points is great for increasing your durability
• Boon of recovery: Allows you to heal yourself with a bonus action and recover half your hit points if you’re reduced to 0.

Weapons

Kindred are a little restricted when it comes to weapons. You’ve not really got access to heavy hitting two handed weapons (except clan Brujah) and even then, you need a hand free for grappling in many instances. This also rules out dual wielding too.

There’s also no weapon mastery either. You’re mainly looking at a single, one handed weapon build, or an unarmed build. I’d probably go for something versatile like a quarterstaff or a spear so you can hit a little harder when not grappling and still have decent damage when you are. Or I’d just go all in on a grapple build and you can even grapple 2 enemies at once.

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.

More from Vampire: The Masquerade Bound by Blood