Sorcerer Variant: Blood Magus [PEACH]

[Primal Fury]

Recently, I have watched the machinima movie, Bloodspell. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a movie made using the game Neverwinter Nights. The jist of it is that that are a group of people whose blood literally contains magic. When this blood is spilled, it results in the casting of spells of various levels (the majority of which seem to be summoning and evocation spells.)

I have now been inspired by it's awesomeness. Rather than making a whole new class, I believe it would be reasonable to simply make a variant of the sorcerer. I already have a few ideas, but I'd like to bounce them off this board first.

For those of you who have the time and wish to know more about it, the movie can be found here.

Here's one of the first ones I thought of:

Blood Bound Summoning (Su): Whenever a blood magus takes at least 10 points of slashing or piercing damage, the magic in their blood springs forth to defend them. This functions as Summon Monster (or similar spell), with a level equal to 10% of the damage taken, rounded down. This creatures turn comes as soon as the attackers turn is over. For example, a blood magus takes a critical hit from an orc warrior, taking 12 points of damage. This ability activates, casting a Summon Monster I spell. The creature is fanatically loyal to the magus, regardless of alignment, and will not attack them even if they are somehow controlled by something else.

Well? What do you guys think?

[BelGareth]

What would this be replacing?
I'm skeptical about the amount of damage taken to initiate the affect.
10 points is a lot of damage for a Sorcerer.
Why not lower it to 5, then the Sorcerer could actually live through the ordeal!
and more than just annoying summon Monster 1 critters would pop out!
can the Sorcerer choose not to manifest his ability?
I can see a high level Sorcerer getting hit by a bunch of 10's and 11's
and he has 4 or 5 little critters facing CR17 monsters!

[Primal Fury]

Well, I'd have to alter the hit-die as well you see. I'm thinking d12 would be reasonable. Rather than having spells per day, they could loose a set amount of hit-points to cast a spell of a specific level, sort of like spell points. And before anyone says anything: Yes, they will be able to heal themselves; but doing so prevents them from casting spells for a certain amount of time until a specific level.

As a sidenote, given the amount of changes that would need to be made, an entirely new class might be easier. Ugh, and I just said to myself I was done trying to make new classes for a while, ah well, I'll think on it.

Also you've got a point about the summoning thing Bel. It's kind of hard to determine the level of power from a movie that was so ambigous when it came to that. One minute the main character is summoning Glabrezu's and high-level drider clerics, the next minute he can't get anything stronger than a mini-ettercap. Hm.

PEACE

EDIT: Lastly, it was difficult to tell if they could control this particular ability very well. In more than one instance, the main character (or the magic in his blood) summoned the creatures after he had fallen unconcious.

[Baron Corm]

Perhaps make it take effect whenever the sorcerer is critically hit. This prevents you from having to select the right amount of damage by yourself, and you're guaranteed a sufficient amount of blood. This thing won't happen very often, but it's replacing a familiar, so it's got to have about the same power level.

Instead of increasing the hit die, you could just make the sorcerer's casting Constitution-based. Comes from within and all that. Making his casting cost HP instead of spell slots is a whole different ordeal... and very hard to balance.

The level of the summon monster spell should be equal to the highest level of sorcerer spells you can cast, so a powerful sorcerer's blood is also more powerful. This gets around having to select a damage amount as well. If the person in the movie's effects were of random strength, maybe make it 1d(highest spell level you have access to). You could have class-specific feats to make this more reliable, allowing rerolls, increasing the minimum level, etc.

Also, the monster shouldn't be loyal to the caster, it should attack the person who cut the caster. This prevents your ally from slashing you 19 times with a Fine dagger to activate it.

You said it sometimes duplicated evocation spells as well. I think allowing a targeted evocation spell of the highest level you can cast against the creature who critically hit you would be fair as an alternative option.

[Primal Fury]

Thats a lot of good ideas um... flyingpoo, especially the one about the summoning. In truth, it seemed more context sensitive than anything, so I don't believe it's necessary to randomize it. And class specific feats are indeed a must. Might even steal somethings from the PrC Blood Magus.

As for everything else... An increase in hit die will be needed (something like d6... maybe d8... maybe) since I'm planning on giving them the Masochist feat at level 1.

The creatures will be loyal to them, but only to a certain point. If you are somehow able to summon a balor, it will do it's best to further your ends, but more evilishly. It will kill anything it can when left to its own devices. The reason for this is the fact that the monsters the main character summoned often referred to him as "Master".

And what I meant was their spell-casting duplicated evocation. Summoning was the only thing that happened when blood was spilled.