Order of the Profane Soul – D&D 5e Blood Hunter Subclass Guide

Enhance your hematurgy with pact magic by becoming beholden to a powerful patron.

At a glance

Profane soul features

Otherworldly patron – Lv3

How it works

You choose a patron from those available to warlocks.

Tactics

• Your choice of patron will affect some of your later features. Make sure you read ahead to ensure you opt for a patron with good options.
• Determining which patron is best for your character is tricky as the features gained for each patron are quite disparate. To help I’ve included them in a table below:

Patron	Rite focus	Revealed arcana spell	Unsealed arcana spell
The archfey	Prevent benefits of cover and invisibility.	Blur	Slow
The celestial	Provide healing.	Lesser restoration	Revivify
The fathomless	Breathe underwater and reduce target’s speed.	Gust of wind	Lightning bolt
The fiend	Reroll 1s and 2s from rite of the flame.	Scorching ray	Fireball
The genie	Gain a few rounds of flight.	Phantasmal force	Protection from energy
The great old one	Cause frightened when landing a critical hit.	Detect thoughts	Haste
The hexblade	Deal extra damage to those with blood curses.	Branding smite	Blink
The undead	Use reaction to halve necrotic damage.	Blindness/ deafness	Speak with dead
The undying	Regain hit points when killing someone.	Silence	Bestow curse

Pact magic – Lv3

How it works

You gain spellcasting in the same way as a warlock (though your spell progression is slower and peaks at level 4 spell slots).

Tactics

• Like warlocks, you cast spells with your highest level spell slot available, but have very few spells you can cast between each rest.
• Choosing spells that can be cast at higher levels is a good idea to maximise impact (or that are of a higher level already). This includes spells like bane, invisibility and Tasha’s hideous laughter.
• You’ll also want to make sure you take plenty of short rests between combats to keep your magic topped up.

Rite focus – Lv3

How it works

Having an active crimson rite allows you to use your weapon as a spellcasting focus and gives you a benefit based on your patron.

Tactics

• Your approach depends on your patron, but you’ll want to choose a patron that fits your particular build.
• I think the best abilities include; fathomless for ranged combat and slowing down enemies, genie for gaining temporary flight, hexblade for increasing your damage to cursed enemies and undying for healing when killing enemies.

Mystic frenzy – Lv7

How it works

When you cast a cantrip with your action, you can make an attack with your bonus action.

Tactics

• If you don’t need your bonus action for anything else, then this is likely to be your highest damage option.
• For example, at this level, eldritch blast will be dealing 2d10 damage (averaging 11 damage). A single rapier or longbow attack (which this will likely be replacing) will average about 8.5 damage (assuming a dexterity of 18).
• The extra damage from using a cantrip will increase with your levels too.
• But this is only the case if you don’t need your bonus action for something else, like using a blood curse. It’s also only the case if your spellcasting ability is roughly keeping pace with your dexterity (ensuring similar levels of accuracy).

Revealed arcana – Lv7

How it works

You gain a spell based on your patron.

Tactics

• This is an oddly worded feature as it implies you can cast the spell once per long rest, but that you use pact magic spell slots to do so.
• Unsealed arcana at level 15 is more clearly worded and allows you to not use a spell slot for the spell granted there. I’d suggest that is what was intended for this feature too, even if it isn’t phrases that way.
• The likes of lesser restoration, scorching ray and blindness/deafness are strong options here.

Brand of the sapping scar – Lv11

How it works

Creatures afflicted with your brand of castigation have disadvantage on saving throws against your spells.

Tactics

• Brand of castigation is always best against particularly tough foes, and this only magnifies those benefits.
• Use your brand of castigation against a tough enemy, then nullify them with greater reliability by targeting them with saving throw spells like banishment, enemies abound or hypnotic pattern.

Unsealed arcana – Lv15

How it works

Gain a spell that you can cast once per long rest. The spell received depends on your patron.

Tactics

• Some of your better options include the likes of slow, fireball and haste.
• Depending on your combat style might determine the best spell for you. For example, melee blood hunters might want to avoid concentration spells as they’re more likely to lose concentration. On the other hand, ranged blood hunters might prefer something like slow so they can fire more shots on enemies before they can reach them.

Blood curse of the souleater – Lv18

How it works

You gain the blood curse of the souleater. This grants you a turn of advantage on attack rolls and resistance to all damage when you use a reaction to siphon energy from a creature that has dropped to 0 hit points. When amplified, you also regain an expended warlock spell slot.

Tactics

• Staying near your enemies (and potentially your allies) will be beneficial here.
• You may even want to ensure you or an ally kills something weaker to get easy access to this.
• This feature can work slightly better when you’re the one doing the killing as the effects last until the end of your next turn. This means if you kill something with your initial attack or a cantrip, you can then benefit from advantage on attack rolls for the rest of the turn’s attacks.
• You’ll also get damage resistance for longer as it’ll last the full round rather than just between an ally’s turn and yours.

How good is the order of the profane soul subclass?

The order of the profane soul does a good job of weaving spellcasting into the blood hunter’s more martial capabilities. There’s also a lot of flexibility here to build into the style of caster you’d like.

The main challenge though, is combining martial capabilities with spellcasting acumen. This likely means sacrificing things like constitution to ensure dexterity and wisdom/intelligence can be nice and high.

Despite this, the profane soul is a strong subclass with a lot of flexibility and potential utility.

4/5

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Optimising a profane soul

The profane soul can be difficult to balance. Like eldritch knights and arcane tricksters, they must build for martial and spellcasting capabilities, which often means sacrificing some capacity in one area or the other.

Below I’ve given a load of advice on how you can build and optimise your profane soul character.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Dexterity: Dexterity is your best option for weapon attacks as you can use it for ranged attacks or a sword and shield build and you need it for your AC anyway. Despite your spellcasting, I’d still argue this is your most important ability score.
• Constitution: You’ll want as much resilience as you can get, especially if you’re planning on playing a melee build or using a lot of hematurgy features. However, you may find it difficult to invest heavily in constitution with your reliance on spellcasting too. This is why the profane soul can be a better option for ranged blood hunters.
• Intelligence or wisdom: You’ll need one of these for your spellcasting and things like your blood curses. You can choose which one. Wisdom is generally stronger for the more common saving throws, but you might opt for intelligence to enhance your knowledge skills instead.

Options to avoid

• Strength: Dexterity is usually best for the profane soul. If you’re going for a ranged build, then you don’t need strength. Even if you go for a melee build, you’ll already need some dexterity for your AC. The only reason to go for a strength build is if you want to use two handed weapons, but you’ve also got a heavy reliance on so many ability scores that this becomes challenging. If you can grab heavy armor proficiency, it can work, otherwise, I’d build for dexterity.
• Charisma: You’re very dependant on many ability scores. There’s absolutely no space for being charismatic with a blood hunter.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	10
Dexterity	15	15
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	12
Wisdom	15	14
Charisma	8	8

Skills

Recommended options

• Acrobatics: Most profane souls should focus on dexterity over strength. If you are a strength build though, swap this out for athletics.
• Arcana: Good knowledge skill. If you have opted for an intelligence hematurgy ability score, then this could be valuable as there aren’t many intelligence-based classes.
• History: Another good option for an intelligence-focused profane soul.
• Investigation: An often used skill that’s particularly good for an intelligence-based profane soul.
• Religion: Similarly good option for an intelligence-focused profane soul.

Options to avoid

• Athletics: Take acrobatics for a dexterity build, but swap this in if you’re a strength build.
• Insight: This is more of a face skill and as you’re definitely not a good party face, I wouldn’t bother with this.
• Survival: Not a hugely used skill and you already get advantage on this sometimes.

Race

I’d consider the following when picking a race for a profane soul:

• Toughen up: You’re going to be hurting yourself and probably throwing yourself into harm’s way too. The more hit points, resistances and other protective traits you can grab, the better. If you have the luxury of being a ranged profane soul character, this may be of lesser importance, but it’s rare to be in a party where this is an option for a martial class.
• Damage dealing: You’re also there to deal damage. Any race that can enhance this will be useful.
• Innate spellcasting: You have spellcasting of your own. This not only means you should have a decent spellcasting ability, but also that you can repeat cast spells. Pact magic is notorious for allowing few castings per rest so extra spell castings is really useful too.
• Stealthiness: Most blood hunters should have a good dexterity but lack the skills for things like stealth, perception and sleight of hand that go hand in hand with stealthiness. And yet blood hunters make a good fit for a potential scout or stealth role. If you lack a party rogue, you could use your race (and your background or feats) to have a blood hunter compensate in this area.

Recommended options

• Bugbear: Great option for dexterity builds, especially for melee-focused characters. It makes the most of your high dexterity with stealth proficiency and bonus damage when you attack before an opponent. Long limbs are great for better reach too.
• Duergar: Invisibility is great for a high dexterity class without stealth proficiency. You also get some handy resilience features.
• Hill Dwarf: Wisdom and constitution ability score increases suit a blood hunter well and you get extra HP to aid your durability.
• Hobgoblin: Blood hunters benefit from the support of allies as well as being close to others to dole out damage on those that attack allies. The hospitality fey gift is especially useful as hematurgy can just drain your temporary hit points which can easily be replenished. You’ll make plenty of attacks rolls and saving throws so chances to turn failures into successes is very useful too.
• Human (variant): A skill of your choice can give you some scout skills and a feat is very useful and will sometimes compensate for the slightly lower ability score with an increase from the feat.
• Goblin: Extra damage on creatures larger than you is useful and a bonus action to disengage can be good for hit and run tactics which can be useful for your durability.
• Goliath: You’re mainly here for the damage reduction which will help you last longer in combat. Cold resistance is useful here too.
• Shifter: Regular temporary hit points and you can take beasthide for higher AC and even more temporary hit points. Wildhunt also makes you more durable by preventing advantage on attacks rolls.
• Simic Hybrid: Constitution increase plus another ability score increase of your choice will suit you well. I’d go for the carapace enhancement for extra AC.
• Warforged: +2 constitution and another ability score increase are great for a blood hunter. You also get +1 AC, some resistances and a skill and tool proficiency (allowing you to partially fill the role of a rogue).
• Yuan-ti Pureblood: Advantage on spell saving throws makes you very resilient to any kind of saving throw plus you’re tough against poison. The innate spellcasting isn’t much help, but you’re not really here for that.

Backgrounds

You’ll mainly want your background for some extra skills. I’d recommend trying to grab things like stealth, sleight of hand and perception to make you into something of a scout, especially if you’re going for a dexterity build.

Below I’ve included the backgrounds that work well for a profane soul.

Name	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency	Languages	Equipment
Imvestigator	2 of insight, investigation or perception	Disguise kit, thieves’ tools	None	Magnifying glass, evidence from a past case, common clothes, 10gp
Sailor	Athletics, perception	Navigator’s tools, vehicles (water)	None	A belaying pin, 50ft of silk rope, lucky charm, common clothes, belt pouch containing 10gp
Urchin	Sleight of hand, stealth	Disguise kit, thieves’ tools	None	Small knife, city map, pet mouse, token to remember your parents by, common clothes, pouch containing 10gp

If you do really want to go down the route of a scout, the urchin background gets you the closest to fulfilling that ambition.

Feats

Instead of taking an ability score improvement, you can opt to take a feat (if your DM allows it). A variant Human can also take a feat at first level and some DMs will grant these to characters at level 1.

I’d suggest the following feats for a profane soul:

• Defensive duelist – Grab a rapier and shield, invest in dexterity and this will give you reactionary protection to turn hits into a miss.
• Fey-touched – Misty step works well for moving where you need to be. I quite like the idea of grabbing hex or hunter’s mark for a blood hunter for greater damage. Profane soul do have access to hex, but you could be using it a lot, especially alongside a cantrip and bonus action attack combo so having a free casting each day would be very useful and free up spells known for something else.
• Gunner – Allows you to use firearms alongside your extra attack. A pistol and a shield could work nicely and you can use it capably in close combat.
• Heavily armored – Proficiency with heavy armor will let you completely ignore dexterity if you want to go with a strength build.
• Lucky – Turn potential successes or failures in your favour with an extra d20 roll. Great option for any class.
• Mage slayer – Get better at dealing with spellcasters.
• Mobile – Great for hit and run tactics if you don’t want to be left too vulnerable.
• Sentinel – Great if you’re going to be working with allies to get some extra opportunity attacks. Only a good option for a melee build though.
• Shadow-touched – 2 free castings of spells expands your spell uses nicely and invisible is a great option for a possible scout.
• Sharpshooter – Great option for ranged blood hunters that want to attack from a greater distance.
• Shield master – Great for shield wielding blood hunters to increase your durability.
• Skilled – Great way to help you fulfill your potential as a scout class.
• Tough – More hit points is a great option for the often damaged blood hunter.

Weapons

Technically, profane souls are proficient in whatever weapons they choose. Part of your decision here will come down to whether you’re focused on strength or dexterity. I’d generally suggest a dexterity build which means wielding ranged or finesse weapons.

I’d suggest opting for the following approaches:

• Sword and shield: Generally, playing it safer is best as you’ll often be hurting yourself. A shield will help here. Grab a rapier as the highest damage finesse weapon for a dexterity build or a longsword for a strength build.
• Ranged: Grab a longbow for your highest damage projectile that can take advantage of your extra attack. Things like crossbows, pistols and muskets can do more damage, but rely on reloading. There are feats for this if you want to go this route and a pistol can be wielded with a shield if you have the gunner feat.
• Two handed weapons: Your highest damage option. Go for a great sword but just be aware, you’ll sacrifice defence for damage output with this build. Especially as you’ll have to lean more into strength and being shield-less. It’s hard to have a strength build for the profane soul with a fairly heavy demand on your spellcasting ability and the need to invest in dexterity and constitution. You’ll probably need heavy armor proficiency to make this work.

Two weapon fighting is usually poor on a blood hunter. You’ll often have your bonus action occupied with other features and things like your crimson rite will only work on one of your weapons (unless you want to use it twice which means double the damage to you).

Armor

I’d generally opt for medium armor until your dexterity hits about 18-20, at which point, you can switch to light armor and potentially outperform medium armor.

Grab a breastplate if stealth is important for you or halfplate if it isn’t. Once your dexterity is high enough, you can take studded leather instead.

I’d usually opt for a shield if you can for the extra durability. Especially if you’re planning on being more melee-focused.

Other class guides

Not sure a profane soul is for you. Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other class and subclass guides.