Vampiric subclass from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bound By Blood, adapted for D&D 5.5e.
Clan Toreador are a fraternity of vampires from Vampire: The Masquerade and have been converted into a subclass for the Kindred class.
Vampires of clan Toreador sense the world more intensely than other vampires. They have an acute appreciation for art and beauty and can instil that appreciation in others. This grants them an unusual set of powers that let them detect things that others can’t. They quickly become skilful characters that make outstanding investigators.
The Toreador subclass comes as part of the 3rd party Vampire: The Masquerade – Bound by Blood supplement on D&D Beyond. It outlines the Kindred class, its 6 subclasses and some other character options for converting vampiric, playable characters into your own D&D games. For this article, I’m diving into the Toreador subclass for the Kindred to see how good it is and how you can optimise for one.
At a glance
- A tough, melee class with substantial self-healing
- Extremely skilful subclass
- Can magically determine truths about people and objects
- Exceptionally quick and can even gain additional actions in a turn
4/5 – Phenomenal investigators and highly skilled, Kindred of clan Toreador may not be as profound combatants like their Kindred cousins, but they have plenty of exceptional abilities of their own. There is some amount of unevenness that may leave combat-focused players feeling short-changed and DMs may need to be wary of some extremely good investigative abilities. Largely though, this is an interesting subclass that does things quite differently from other subclasses.
Toreador features
An artist’s soul (Lv3) – 3/5
Advantage for investigation and perception, longer darkvision and 2 skill proficiencies and a tool proficiency (or an expertise if you already have proficiency in these things). This is all quite decent stuff and normally a subclass might have 1 or 2 of these for their ribbon feature. All of these together make for a very skilful kindred who could be especially good at scouting, but also at being the party face.
This makes it a great ribbon feature, but considering that this is your only perk at level 3, it’s also a let down mechanically. Compare this to Brujah’s fighting fury feature at the same level, they get some strong enhancements to combat at the same level.
Toreador bane (Lv3) – 1/5
There’s a good chance you want your Toreador Kindred making plenty of investigation and perception checks. This will likely occur a fair bit. Advantage on these checks helps, but proficiency will do nothing as what matters is the number on the dice, not the total score.
The consequences are potentially fairly severe as restrained is quite a problem. Fortunately, many of these checks will occur in benign circumstances and the DC to end the condition is low, but if you’re trying to spot an enemy ambush, this will be frustrating at the beginning of combat or inconsequential if combat doesn’t occur. Frustratingly, you’ll still have to make saving throws which can just be an annoying disruption to gameplay.
Depth of feelings (Lv6) – 3/5
Aura sight is a really interesting way to get information from the DM. It could be really fun, but I do have some concerns about how this may affect plots. For example, normally checking if someone is lying is dependant on the NPC’s capability to lie and a PC’s capabilities with insight but there’s usually a chance of success/failure. This feature though, is automatic. This could easily bypass some of your DM’s carefully laid plans so I think this is a feature that comes with a bit of DM caution.
The spells you get are alright, but many charm spells can be tricky to nail in actual gameplay. This is helped a bit by a later feature though (but that’s a lot later at level 15).
Live fast, be a good looking corpse (Lv9) – 5/5
+2 dexterity is great and being able to take that beyond 20 is excellent. There is a build issue here though. Most kindred will want to maximise strength for grapples and attacks and keep dexterity to 14 (which you’ll want to achieve before reaching level 9). To make building for dexterity over strength worthwhile, you need a very specific build. Either you take a 1 level dip into monk for martial arts and dexterity unarmed strikes, or you go with finesse weapons and nets to restrain and ignore grappling. Both are viable builds, but very niche ones.
Rapidity is really good! You already have a proficiency bonus of 4 which is typically enough to last an entire encounter. At the cost of 1 blood point, even for 3 or 4 extra attacks, is great. Add in other options like hiding or disengaging or even using a magic item with the utilise action is even better, though I do see it being used for attacks most often. Just be aware that the extra you gain while your beast feature is active doesn’t influence attacks using this feature.
Visionary (Lv11) – 4/5
3 expertises is a lot, and you may have already gained expertise on some skills at level 3. This should mean you’re seriously competing with a rogue and bard for best skill build.
Spirit’s touch is like aura sight for objects and I think could lead to some really interesting roleplay and investigation. Unlike aura sight, I think there’s less here that might stymy a DM, though it certainly is possible, so DMs allowing this subclass at your table, beware!
Truly majestic (Lv15) – 4/5
At this stage, it’s very possible you have expertise in deception and persuasion and a reasonably strong charisma. Now you’re gaining advantage on these checks too making you an almost irresistible orator.
The disadvantage on your entrancement spells really does make some of those charming spells a little more worthwhile too (even if it just counteracts the advantage in combat).
Sanctuary for 3 blood points may seem a steep price, but by removing the end conditions (other than duration) it makes your kindred very hard to target and really enhances survivability.
Magnum opus (Lv18) – 5/5
There’s a lot of potential blood point costs here. Flicker is great, but for a single round of combat, will easily get pricey. I see this as something for desperate situations.
Telepathy is useful, as are clairvoyance and scrying and really enhance your information gathering capabilities.
Mass suggestion with its enhancements for 3 blood points is an absolute steal though! This is the same amount of blood points as other subclasses are spending on enhanced level 3 spells or unenhanced level 4 spells. This makes a really strong spell even better!
How good is the Toreador subclass?
As subclasses go, Toreador are really unique. For the most part, you’re being transformed into more of a skilful charmer than a cold-blooded killer. And there’s something quite refreshing about that. There are a few niggles here like it being too easy to gain certain kinds of information and certain skills having the potential to be nearly infallible. Some might feel there’s not enough that helps in combat at early levels (especially before level 9).
Having said all of this, it is one of the more interesting subclasses I’ve come across and while there’s some potential design issues here, I think they’re less problematic than other Kindred subclasses suffer from. That’s perhaps not the highest endorsement, but is at least better. I would still suggest DMs read the features and make sure they’re happy having their secrets thoroughly revealed by a player playing this subclass before agreeing to having it at their table.
4/5
Building a Toreador Kindred
Toreador Kindred can be built quite differently from other Kindred. For starters, they lean more into dexterity than strength from both a skill and a combat point of view (gaining a boost to dexterity). While you can build for strength, I think the most optimal build means building for dexterity and charisma. Instead of using grapples for feeding, you can use nets (to restrain) and some charm spells using your charisma.
Ability scores
Recommended options
- Dexterity: Grab a finesse weapon and nets. You’ll use these for attacks, restraining and then feeding. Dexterity will help your attacks and AC and you can eventually get this as high as 25.
- Constitution: Not only important for your hit points, but will also enhance your healing and damage from feeding.
- Charisma: Your spellcasting ability as well as being important for the face skills that you should become extremely profound with. You’ll want to be charming creatures to feed on them (and for other benefits) so you’ll want to get this fairly high.
Options to avoid
- Strength: You can absolutely go for a strength build with clan Toreador, but for this build, I’m going to lean away from it. I think a dexterity build is going to work better for this subclass.
- 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 | 8 | 10 |
| Dexterity | 15 | 15 |
| Constitution | 15 | 14 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 8 |
| Wisdom | 8 | 12 |
| Charisma | 15 | 13 |
Skills
At level 3, you can pick 2 skill proficiencies of your choice and gain expertise in them if you already have proficiency. For this reason, I’ve suggested skills that aren’t necessarily on the class list, but may still be of use for a Kindred that should be good as a scout, investigator and being the party face.
Recommended options
- Acrobatics: Maybe not your most important skill, but as a dexterity build, this will serve you better than athletics.
- Deception: Toreador Kindred can become excellent at deception so you might as well capitalise on this with proficiency.
- 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.
- Investigation: You may not have great intelligence, but you will have advantage on investigation checks, and not many classes build into intelligence, so you may be the best option for this.
- Perception: You already get advantage on this and may want to fashion yourself into something of a scout build, in which case, you’ll want this to be even better.
- Persuasion: Really crucial face skill if you’re going down the party face route. It can eventually become outstanding, like deception.
- Sleight of hand: If you’re going to be the scout and have a high dexterity, you may want to grab this.
- Stealth: You should have a high dexterity, with the potential to get it really high. Take this if building for a scout.
Species/race
Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your species for a Toreador kindred.
- Toughen up: Kindred are martials and while fairly high on HP, they aren’t the best when it comes to AC (though Toreador can do better in this regard). 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.
- Stealth: Toreador are excellent at skills and my suggestion is to build into dexterity. Anything that can help you be sneakier is going to be useful.
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 an even 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 skilled if you really want to push into that skilful build even further. More heroic inspiration is always useful.
- 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 Toreador kindred, I mostly want a background that can give dexterity and constitution or charisma. You can swap that dexterity for strength if you’re going for a strength build instead. I’ve outlined strong origin feats in a later section too. I’d also prioritise face and stealth skills.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entertainer | Strength, dexterity, charisma | Musician | Acrobatics, performance | One type of musical instrument |
| Guide | Dexterity, constitution, wisdom | Magic initiate (druid) | Stealth, survival | Cartographer’s tools |
| Merchant | Constitution, intelligence, charisma | Lucky | Animal handling, persuasion | 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 Toreador 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.
- 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 – Toreador 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: Strong defensive boost against melee attacks if you’re wielding a finesse weapon.
- Lightly armored – If you want to boost your AC even more, you could grab shield proficiency with this.
- Mage slayer – Better at tackling concentrating spellcasters and a form of legendary resistance is all pretty good.
- Skill expert – Maybe you don’t need more expertises, but if you do want more, this is a good option for that.
- Speedy – Decent option for hit and run techniques by giving you extra speed and being harder to hit from opportunity attacks.
- Weapon master: Grab a weapon mastery property for your weapon attacks. You should be making enough attacks to make this worthwhile.
Weapons
If you’re going with my advice and going for a dexterity build, then you’ll want to grab a finesse weapon. A scimitar or shortsword are your best options here. You might also want to go for a shortbow for ranged attacks (though Kindred tend to be best in melee combat). A dual wielding build can be an option, but it’s really awkward to make work between the need for your bonus action for attacks or having to grab weapon mastery somehow for nick so you can preserve your bonus action.
I’d also suggest grabbing a bunch of nets to throw at enemies to restrain them for feeds.
Armor
With your high dexterity, studded leather is probably going to be your best bet. If you really want a shield, grab the lightly armored feat for +2 AC.
