Lasombra 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

Lasombra features

Lasombra bane (Lv3) – 1/5

All Kindred subclasses have a weakness. This one is actually better than some as rolling a 1 on a d20 test will only happen 5% of the time. Kindred are quite good at getting advantage on d20 tests so this might even be negated. It’s still not great, but not the worst either.

Taste of oblivion (Lv3) – 5/5

The big thing here is that sight through magical and non-magical darkness. This can be really good if you can weave in something like the darkness spell and attack from within the darkness. You now have advantage on attack rolls and your prey has disadvantage.

You will get the darkness spell in a few levels, but this will work better with the help of an ally so you can coordinate attacks on the same turn and preferably try to entrap your victim in the darkness. Even better if you can grapple a creature and drag/keep them in the darkness. You’ll want to make plenty of grapples anyway so you can feed.

Better stealth checks is always good and makes this subclass ideal as a scout build and with bonus action hiding, you’ll be excellent at actually managing to go unseen. It’s also another great way to grab advantage on your attacks.

It’s also worth pointing out that seeing normally in dim light and darkness is better than darkvision as you can see colour too. It probably makes little practical difference in most situations, but is worth being aware of.

Shadow mastery (Lv6) – 4/5

Use the darkness spell as a shroud to keep enemies in using your phenomenal vision to gain advantage on attack rolls (or force them grappled and screaming into it). You can also use the darkness to hide as a bonus action, then emerge with advantage on your next attack.

Black tentacles is a solid AoE spell that damages and restrains. That restraining could be really useful for your feeding. Just make sure you feed on victims on the edge of the AoE so you don’t get grasped by your own tentacles.

Force of will (Lv9) – 3/5

Two additional methods to get enemies in a condition where you can feed on them. Use suggestion to get a creature to stop fighting, and since they’re charmed by you, can be fed upon when it’s convenient. Or you can simply put them to sleep. Suggestion is generally handy anyway and sleep is good for just keeping an enemy out of combat. You may want to consider shhh specifically because it doesn’t require concentration and will allow you to mix and match with the spells you have that do.

At this level, you can feed as a bonus action so you can use these spells as an action, then feed in the same turn. However, both these effects will keep an enemy out of combat for a bit so you may just want to feed on them later once you’ve thinned out that battlefield a bit.

Abyssal strength (Lv11) – 5/5

This is the equivalent of +2 or maybe +3 to attack and damage rolls (so long as you’ve gone for a strength build). It also means better grapples and things like strength saving throws.

There are some conflicts here though. The bonus action is going to get in the way of things like hiding, feeding and the beast. Your build also relies on heavy investment in dexterity (for hiding), strength for grapples and attacks, constitution for feeding and charisma for your spells. That’s far too much and highlights the main issue with this subclass (and all kindred). There are far too many ability scores to optimise for, forcing you to neglect some of your features by being weaker in certain areas.

I’d probably suggest building for strength and relying on your stealth advantage and proficiency to get by with 14 dexterity. On that build, this is excellent.

Crush weakness (Lv15) – 4/5

Reaction damage is always nice as your reaction will often go unused. The damage is decent too and the triggers should be fairly common. The 2 blood points it costs will limit this a fair bit though as you’ll have to balance the costs for other uses of blood points as well.

I’m not sure we needed two separate options detailing for this. That feels unnecessarily clunky, even if one option is slightly different from the other.

Tenebrous form (Lv18) – 5/5

This is a pretty huge AC boost. Most Kindred aren’t blessed with high AC, but this will certainly get it there. The temporary hit points are fairly large too making this huge for your resilience.

Extended reach is great for melee (which you’ll be involved in a lot) and means you can even reach into your black tentacles further without being restrained yourself. That damage boost is great too. While I’d have recommended building for unarmed combat for most Kindred anyway, a weapon build is still an option, but when using this feature, you definitely want to be using your enhanced unarmed strikes.

Just be aware of the high blood point cost and the fact this takes an action to activate. Usually these features require a bonus action in 5.5e design so I feel this is a frustrating design choice. I’d have probably reduced the AC boost by 2 and made this a bonus action to activate for greater combat fluidity.

How good is the Lasombra subclass?

Lasombra kindred bring in some more interesting tactics for kindred. Hide and strike tactics make them a little more like a rogue in how they might play. However, they enhance this with several magical tools to enable feeding. This makes for an interesting grapple build that likes to drag creatures into your magical darkness and keep them there while you feed on them.

Its all absolutely terrifying, but like the Brujah clan, comes with some challenges. The main issue here is that Lasombra, more so than most Kindred, require high competence in 4 abilities; strength, dexterity, constitution and charisma. There’s also potential feats to invest in like grappler that can be near essential for the subclass.

The problem is that is just too much to invest in and it means that you’re left being average at some of these which leads to almost voiding tactics that require them. Do you reduce damage dealing and grappling by not investing in strength, hiding capabilities and AC by neglecting dexterity, resilience and feeding by ignoring constitution or spellcasting and face skills by ignoring charisma. You can’t be excellent at all 4.

This means that Lasombra is less than the sum of its parts with the subclass feeling like an interesting first draft of a subclass that simply hasn’t been properly playtested. This is a shame as there are some great tactics and ideas in here.

3/5

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Building a Lasombra Kindred

A Kindred of Lasombra builds and plays similarly to other Kindred. There is a heavier influence on stealth and spellcasting than some other subclasses, but largely, your build is similar.

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 with so many ability score priorities. A multiclass into monk or using nets to restrain will mean you can just push into dexterity and dump strength. However, I’d normally stick with 14 dexterity and focus on strength and rely on advantage and proficiency on stealth checks for hiding.
• Constitution: Not only important for your hit points, but will also enhance your healing and damage from feeding.
• Charisma: Your spellcasting ability. Lasombra have a few spells from their subclass and/or kindred feats. You’ll want a high charisma for charming, restraining and putting to sleep. 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	14
Constitution	14	13
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: Lasombra kindred are great at stealth and you’ll want proficiency in this to help with your fairly regular hiding.

Species/race

Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your species for a Lasombra 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).
• Stealth: Lasombra kindred are uniquely good at stealth so a species that enhances this is a good idea.

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 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.
• Halfling: A discreetly excellent option for a Lasombra kindred. They can reroll 1s on d20 tests allowing them to usually avoid suffering from Lasombra bane. They can also hide behind allies using their bonus action. All excellent for Lasombra.
• 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 Lasombra 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 and stealth if you haven’t picked these up with your core class.

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 Lasombra 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 do get some similar options at level 9.
• 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.
• 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.
• Skill expert – If you want to get really good at stealth, then you can grab expertise in it with this feat. Great if you plan on hiding a lot.
• Speedy – Decent option for hit and run techniques by giving you extra speed and being harder to hit from opportunity attacks.

Weapons

Your best option is building for unarmed attacks. This means taking the tavern brawler feat and grappler feat as well as potentially the fighting initiate feat for the unarmed fighting style. This will get your damage up to the right levels and extra effects you can layer in, including grapplnig and attacking at the same time.

If you want a bit more damage, you can keep one hand free for the odd grapple and use a one handed weapon. Versatile weapons are going to be your best option as you can wield them in 2 hands when available for more damage and then switch to one handed attacks when grappling.

You may want thrown weapons for some range, or if your dexterity is quite good, you can go for ranged weapons like a shortbow. For a Lasombra, I’d probably lean more towards a strength build which means thrown weapons will be a better choice.

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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