Sanguine Knight Illrigger: D&D 5e Subclass Optimisation Guide

Wield blood magic to leach your enemies of essences and vitalise your allies.

The sanguine Knight is one of the subclasses of MCDM’s illrigger class. They supplement their combat prowess with profane blood magic.

Sanguine knights belong to a cult known as the chalice of vitality. Not only are these knights worshippers of Sutekh, the greatest sorcerer in Hell, but they also seek Sutekh’s ascension to the throne of Hell and, secretly, to godhood.

The blood magic of the sanguine knights is not just a manipulation of blood, it involves literally drinking of the essence of their enemies. Many consider such magic an abomination.

In this article, I’ve looked at how you can optimise your own sanguine knight as well as assessing just how good I think they are and the tactics you can use with them. Just remember, the illrigger and its subclasses are 3rd party content (created by MCDM) so check with your DM before you use them. If you want to play an illrigger, they’re available available on D&D Beyond or as a PDF.

At a glance

Frontline warriors with enhanced attacks
Make solid party faces
Have healing and buffs in their repertoire
Can also supply passive damage effects

5/5 – Sanguine knights have a strong repertoire of extra effects that make them great allies despite the very questionable use of blood magic. If you can effectively manage their expendables, you’ve got some great healing, buffs, debuffs and damage effects that you can be layering on over the course of an encounter.

Sanguine knight features

Exsanguinate (Lv 3) – 4/5

1-4d6 temporary hit points per seal for an ally on top of the damage your seals deal is a nice bonus that costs nothing. Be aware that temporary hit points don’t stack, but you can burn multiple seals simultaneously for more temporary hit points in one go.

Keep in mind though that some interdict boons (like abating seal) aren’t burnt on an enemy and are simply expended so won’t grant temporary hit points when expended. You may want to build around boons that enhance the burning of a seal on an enemy rather than those that expend seals for a separate effect.

Sutekh’s blessing (Lv3) – 2/5

Religion proficiency and the ability to know where creatures with blood are make quite a good ribbon feature (but this is still only a ribbon feature). Your intelligence won’t be great though so there’s only so far your religion proficiency will take you

Identifying blood-filled creatures is quite interesting and does cover the majority of creatures. It won’t help you with undead, constructs, elementals and plants, but will help with a lot of the more common creature groups like humanoids, fiends and fey.

Invoke hell (Lv3) – 5/5

Embolden allies is potentially very useful. This gives you 15-60HP to spread among yourself and allies. Some big healing for one person can be great, but it also means that if multiple allies are at 0HP, you can easily recover all of them within range with just a bonus action. To compare, mass healing word (a 3rd level spell) will heal about 6-7HP to up to 6 nearby creatures. That’s about 36-42HP if there are 6 of you, but many parties won’t have that (or may not be in range) which can lead to wasted HP.

Embolden allies is much more flexible. I’d say this is the equivalent of about a 3rd level spell. You’ll be able to do this once per short rest which could be better than a lot of spellcasters, especially at lower levels (and you have this from level 3).

Vitalize can let you help with a series of ability checks for the whole party. You get a minute with a bonus to ability checks equal to your proficiency bonus. I’d use this when a series of ability checks are needed or players will all need to perform ability checks. This might be the case for a social encounter, a stealth situation or overcoming some obstacle. This is a bit more situational, but not so much that it’s an issue and could be very valuable at times.

Sutekh’s interdiction (Lv7) – 5/5

There’s some really strong interdict boons here. Foul interchange is a great way to just end conditions and add that condition to an enemy. It’s best with the most debilitating conditions (so paralyzed), but these also tend to be rarer. You may not want to bother with deafened, but others could all be great options.

There’s some amount of ambiguity here. If a creature is blinded for example, by an ongoing effect (like the darkness spell) can they remain in the darkness area and not be blinded? I’d rule not as the blinded effect would simply be reapplied. Also, if a condition has additional effects (like frightened often has) are those applied too. I’d argue not as you’re only applying the condition, not the additional effects that come from some feature or spell, but I could see this ruled differently.

Sanguine gift is probably the more average of these options allowing extra healing to creatures. It’s 13-20 hit points per seal so if you do have spare seals, this can be good, but technically weaker than the other boons here I think.

Blood for blood I think is very interesting. It encourages getting as many enemies interdicted as possible and then letting them have their hit points drained each time they attack. Note that this doesn’t seem to work if you are the one hit. It also works on each attack so multi-attack creatures make great targets for this. Spellcasters may be a less effective target though. This can add up to some big damage over time, but it does conflict a bit with exsanguinate.

Bloodstroke (Lv11) – 5/5

This will really push you to use exsanguinate as much as possible. 13+ damage each time a creature hits an ally protected by your temporary hit points from exsanguinate can really add up. Having said that, enemies will likely remove temporary hit points as quickly as you damage them with this. It may put enemies off attacking protected allies for the fear of retribution and instead target you. Whether that’s good or bad is down to you. This is mostly limited by how much you can use your blood seals to dish out temporary hit points and how easily enemies can whittle these down.

Haemal exchange (Lv15) – 4/5

This is probably best used on saving throws. You have a limited number of seals and this could quickly reduce them, but if you help a spellcaster ensure a nasty condition or effect is landed against a creature, this can be very useful (and handy for your allies).

How good is the sanguine knight subclass?

Sanguine knights are surprisingly good team mates for individuals that dabble in such inhumane arts. Healing, temporary hit points, improved saving throws and better ability checks are all available to parties with a sanguine knight. Maybe they’re not the hero you deserve, but they could be the hero you need…

There’s actually a complicated interchange here that means many mini judgement calls that ensures a good amount of balance between features that could easily become very powerful if left unchecked. Do you burn seals for the immediate damage and temporary hit points, or leave them on enemies for extra damage over time? Do you burn seals to ensure a saving throw is failed or should you save an invoke Hell usage to help with ability scores, or should it be saved for a nice chunk of healing?

The balance is in the number of seals you have, but these are also replenished quite easily through a short rest meaning there’s still a lot you can do with this subclass. I’d probably make sure the interdict boons you take aren’t too seal burning heavy though and encourage more passive or add on benefits.

It’s worth mentioning too that sanguine knights are pretty good at dealing passive damage. If you can master the intricacies of this subclass, they can be quite potent.

5/5

Building a sanguine knight illrigger

Sanguine knights are decent at a lot of things like healing, buffing and debuffing and dealing damage. At their core though, they are martial warriors with a bunch of add ons (most akin to a paladin). As such, they should be built with that combat focus first which is similar to most illrigger builds.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Dexterity: I’d say a dexterity build is better for a Sanguine knight than a strength build. This is partly because you’ll need to invest a fair bit in charisma and constitution making investing in strength and dexterity difficult (you only have light and medium armor proficiency so will want a minimum of 14 Dex just for the AC boost). Party faces can also be useful in stealthier roles too so a boosted dexterity at least makes you passable here.
Constitution: Most Sanguine knights will want to be in the middle of the melee, which means having more resilience through constitution.
Charisma: This affects your DC for things like interdict boons as well as your face skill capabilities.

Options to avoid

Strength: You can go with a strength-based Sanguine knight, but you will need to either grab heavy armor proficiency through a feat or multiclassing, or invest a bit in dexterity for the medium armor AC boost. Otherwise, I’d dump this and focus on dexterity.
Wisdom: You should dump wisdom, you’ve got too many other ability scores to focus on.
Intelligence: The same goes for dumping intelligence.

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

Skills

Recommended options

Athletics: Only good on a strength build, otherwise not worth splitting athleticism and acrobatics.
Deception: Really important face skill if you intend to do a lot of deceiving.
Insight: Your wisdom likely won’t be great, but you will likely be the party face, in which case, a decent insight can be useful.
Intimidation: Another good face skills, especially for an evil leaning class.
Persuasion: Usually the most important face skill and another important one for a party face.
Stealth: Works well on a dexterity build.
Options to avoid
Arcana: Your lack of intelligence means there are likely to be better options for knowledge skills, especially as you’re better off focusing on face skills.
Investigation: similarly, you’ll lack the intelligence to be much good at this.
Religion: You get this as standard as a Sanguine knight so don’t take it at level 1, especially as you can’t replace your feature proficiency in religion.

Races

As a Sanguine knight, you’ll likely want your race to help you with certain aspects of your build including:

Party face: You’ll likely be used as the party face, but you don’t have loads of skill proficiencies to throw at face skills. Your race can help here though.
Toughen up: Sanguine knights remain martials that will likely take a bit of a beating. That means anything you can do to increase resilience will be beneficial.
Damage dealing: You also want to deal as much damage as possible meaning traits that can improve this will help.
Innate spellcasting: Most Sanguine knights will have a decent charisma, making innate spellcasting a viable option. They aren’t the best for innate spellcasting as they can’t repeat cast spells, but can be decent at it.

Recommended options

Autognome: Improved AC without having to take bravado (so can grab a different combat mastery instead) is great on a dexterity build. Built for success means more reliable attacks or even saving throws and resistances and advantage on saving throws makes you more resilient.
Bugbear: Potentially more damage on the first round of combat, better reach for melee attacks and great at sneaking are all great on an illrigger, especially a dexterity build with high initiative.
Changeling: If you want to lean into the party face aspect of the class, then Changeling is a great option. Grab a couple of face skill proficiencies and be able to change your appearance.
Dragonborn: Breath weapon gives you some crowd control and only costs one of your attacks. You also get a resistance and more depending on the type of Dragonborn you take.
Dwarves: The extra constitution and resistances are welcome to toughen you up. Hill Dwarf will get you more hit points, but you’ll have to take an extra wisdom which won’t be useful. Mountain will get you +2 strength which probably won’t be the best for you, and armor training is no good on an illrigger that already has those proficiencies so I’d go with Hill Dwarf.
Forest Gnome: Even more resilience for saving throws, the minor illusion cantrip and the ability speak with small beasts.
Goliath: Cold resistance and some reduced damage is handy for the extra resilience.
Hobgoblin: Help as a bonus action with extra bonuses works well for the illrigger which tends to be light on bonus action options unless you take certain interdict boons. Plus you can grab some resilience, damage or speed from this. A boost to failed d20 rolls is great for more resilience and damage too.
Human (variant): An extra skill proficiency and a feat are handy, especially as that skill can help you flesh out those face skills.
Orc: Bonus action dash and temporary hit points to close the gap in melee and for some extra resilience and survive being knocked to 0HP too.
Shifter: Grab intimidation proficiency, a bunch of temporary hit points and some bonus effects like an AC boost, a bonus action attack or improved wisdom saving throws.
Warforged: Warforged have a bunch of resilience features like improved AC, resistance to poison, advantage against the poisoned condition and more.

Backgrounds

Primarily, you want your background to pad out your skills and with a party face requiring quite a few face skills, you’ll likely want to enhance this through your background.

I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a Sanguine knight:

Name	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency	Languages
Courtier	Insight, persuasion	None	2 of your choice
Faceless	Deception, intimidation	Disguise kit	1 of your choice
Faction agent	Insight and 1 intelligence, wisdom or charisma skill	None	2 of your choice
Gambler	Deception insight	Gaming set	1 of your choice
Smuggler	Athletics, deception	Vehicles (water)	None
Soldier	Athletics, intimidation	Gaming set, vehicles (land)	None

Feats

From level 4 (or at level 1 if you’re playing a Human) you can grab a feat in place of an ability score increase. I’d suggest the following are some of your better options for a Sanguine knight:

Fighting initiate: Grab a fighting style to complement your combat mastery.
Heavily armored: If you want a strength build without the dexterity investment, then you can grab this for a high AC and low Dex build.
Inspiring leader: Quite a lot of temporary hit points for the party every rest, especially if you’re a high charisma build.
Lucky: More reliable d20 tests.
Polearm master: A great option, especially with terrorising force which will enhance damage further for each attack you make. This guarantees an option for a bonus action attack each turn and makes opportunity attacks with your reaction much more likely. This combines really well with the swift retribution interdict boon for the potential of double reaction attacks too.
Resilient: Some more resilience for another saving throw.
Sentinel: More opportunity attacks means you get the effects of terrorising force more often and with swift retribution, you can do this more often too.
Tough: More hit points means more resilience, great for a melee martial.

Weapons

Illriggers are capable of fighting with any type of weapon they want. Much of your choice will depend on the combat mastery you take. Brutal will mean using two handed weapons, inexorable means taking any kind of melee weapons and unfettered is good for ranged builds.

Dual-wielders can be a good option if you want more attacks, perhaps to maximise on terrorising force.

Armor

If you’re a strength build, get your dexterity up to 14 and grab some half plate for maximum AC. If you want to do some stealthing, grab a breastplate instead.

For a dexterity build, you can go for studded leather and get your dexterity as high as possible. A shield is a solid option if you want to go for more defence over damage.

Your highest AC option is to go unarmored, but that will require considerable investment. You’ll need to take the bravado combat mastery and get your dexterity and charisma as high as possible (20 if you can). This gives you a 22AC potential with a shield though, or more with magic items.