Nosferatu 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

Nosferatu features

Hidden in plain sight (Lv3) – 4/5

Cast disguise self at will is pretty decent on a high charisma build. Invisibility is generally great, especially on a stealth build (which a Kindred can be). There’s a lot of castings of invisibility there too and it doesn’t require blood points which is useful.

Nosferatu bane (Lv3) – 1/5

As drawbacks go for Kindred, this is one of the better ones. Since you can cast disguise self at will anyway, only people that can see through your disguise will cause this to have an effect, which probably won’t be most people. Disguise self lasts an hour, long enough to keep topping up that disguise.

Monstrous gifts (Lv6) – 6/5

The unarmed damage boost is nice and means you’ve got the damage of a weapon without investing in any feats. You may still want grappler anyway to attack and grapple simultaneously and to make unarmed strikes really worthwhile.

Blindsight is often very useful when dealing with magical darkness, the blinded condition or invisibility. That damage reduction is also huge. It may seem small (just your constitution modifier) but it’s from almost every attack. 3-5 less damage from most attacks very quickly adds up. In fact, it’s too much in my opinion.

The frightened effect is useful too as you can select targets really easily without affecting allies.

There’s some smaller bonuses like gliding, avoiding fall damage and some animal related spells too making this a really excellent feature! Too excellent if you ask me. In fact, I’d have probably moved the unarmed damage boost to level 3 and maybe even the gliding and reduced the impact of leathery hide and probably the blindsight too. This is a lot for one feature.

Inhuman strength (Lv9) – 5/5

That +2 strength means +1 to attack and damage rolls on your unarmed strikes, plus some other benefits. This also takes it above the strength most characters can attain.

On top of this, you can activate a power boost to your unarmed strikes. If you’ve got the blood points to spare, this will often be worthwhile (at least for trickier encounters). Nosferatu have less competition for blood points too making this easier to accommodate.

The concealing (Lv11) – 5/5

Making potentially big objects invisible and forgotten from memory feels like it could be really fun. I imagine there are a lot of creative ways to use this including hiding escape routes, leading creatures into traps and having them forget about important things.

Mass invisibility is excellent and you can do this on just the one use of concentration. This will enable entire party stealth and surprise attacks. There’s some potentially high blood point costs here so this works better on a smaller party, but it can be really good.

Greater monstrous gifts (Lv15) – 6/5

There are loads of boosts here including better unarmed damage, better feed damage and healing and improved blindsight.

There are a couple of decent spells too. The blood point costs for spells between subclasses is very inconsistent. Blight is a 4th level spell and insect plague is a 5th level spell but both cost 2 blood points. The Brujah clan can cast fear (at level 3) for 1 blood point and a slightly enhanced haste (also a level 3 spells) for 3 blood points. A 5th level spell for 2 blood points feels like good value to me.

Flight is just universally useful, as is your increased movement speed. Stony flesh is also really good and those 2 resistances are so adaptable that it’s really easy to just apply whatever resistances suit the enemies you’re facing. You already have a damage reduction that will stack with this as well!

What goes bump in the night (Lv18) – 5/5

Lots of vermin is pretty useless at this level. You can fly and turn invisible already so there’s little value in this for scouting or sneaking and for combat at this level, they’re basically useless.

Greater invisibility without expending blood points is extremely good though. The advantage over standard invisibility means you can stay invisible even when attacking making it quite hard for creatures to find and hit you. Unless you’re surprised, there’s little reason why you can’t cast this ahead of many encounters too. There are so many free uses that you should never be running out of this.

How good is the Nosferatu subclass?

Nosferatu is far too good! Unlike a lot of Kindred subclasses, most of its features actually slot really well into the class design without making heavy demands on your action economy or blood points, especially at lower levels.

The problem is that this makes them too good. By a long way! This is perhaps the most long-winded subclass I’ve ever seen and that’s mostly because there’s just so much going on for every feature. It sort of looks like a wishlist more than a balanced subclass. The damage reductions on there own are insanely good, they can be invisible far too much and they get blindsight too early. It’s all just too much.

Oddly, they also don’t go hard enough at level 3. The spells they gain are pretty good for utility, but until level 6, the subclass may feel a little weak in combat compared to other Kindred subclasses.

Like other Kindred subclasses, it feels like this was bashed together with little or no playtesting. Unlike the others I’ve analysed, because there’s little conflict for action economy or blood points, it ends up being seriously overpowered! I even had to break my own rating system to accommodate its power levels. My suggestion would be not to allow this at your table without significant modifications.

6/5

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Building a Nosferatu Kindred

A Kindred of the nosferatu clan builds and plays similarly to other Kindred. They have some extra utility that make playing a scout more viable and lean heavily into unarmed combat, making this a must for attacks, but this doesn’t overly change how you build your character.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Strength: Most Nosferatu will need to invest heavily in strength. Not only will this be important for 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 invisibility and proficiency in stealth for hiding.
• Constitution: Not only important for your hit points, but will also enhance your healing and damage from feeding. Nosferatu also reduce damage they receive by an amount equal to their constitution modifier so the higher this is, the less damage they take.
• Charisma: Your spellcasting ability. Nosferatu have a few spells from their subclass and/or kindred feats. You’ll want a high charisma to make these more effective. You can also use that silver-tongue of yours to be the party face too (just keep those disguises in place).

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: Nosferatu kindred are great at stealth due to their invisibility and you’ll want proficiency in this to help you maximise on this.

Species/race

Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your species for a nosferatu 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: Nosferatu kindred can be 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.
• Human: An extra skill can help you become a better party face or scout. 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 Nosferatu Kindred very much are. 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 Nosferatu 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 nosferatu 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.
• 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. You’ll be creating plenty of disguises anyway.
• 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

You should primarily be using unarmed strikes unless you can’t reach your target, in which case, you’ll need a ranged backup.

Grab the grappler feat and potentially tavern brawler too for enhanced unarmed strikes (and especially for grappling and damage in the same strike). You don’t need the unarmed fighting style like other Kindred subclasses, you already get a damage enhancement at level 6.

If you’ve not taken tavern brawler at level 1, then you may want a melee weapon until you reach level 6 however.

For ranged attacks, thrown weapons will be best due to your enhanced strength. You could go for a ranged weapon if your dexterity is high enough or you need longer range.

Armor

If you’re a strength build (which Nosferatu should be), 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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