Bhaal Taint
You are a child of Bhaal, the dead god of murder. Your dreams often feature bones, rivers of blood, and other morbid imagery. You occasionally feel that death is beautiful, and wish to inflict more of it. Perhaps you will give in to these urges and follow a path of wanton destruction – or perhaps you will rise above them, and be a paragon of virtue and restraint. The choice is yours. The DM will keep track of your choices and what sort of alignment they represent.
If you’re the first one to choose this origin, you were raised at Candlekeep by Gorion, a harper and wizard. Gorion was killed by Sarevok, your “brother,” who went on to try to start a bloody and completely unnecessary war, hoping to ride the tide of blood to Ascension. Some of your companions are likely to be automatically aware of your history and divine blood.
If you are the second person to choose this origin, then your origin is elsewhere, and you may be able to keep your dark nature a secret.
Each Bhaalspawn starts with 3 Taint points. They lose one point of Taint when killed (including petrification), or when they fail a Death save, and perma-die if they ever hit 0 taint points. Each taint point gives them access to a 1/day cleric spell, typically along the lines of Shield of Faith, Cure Wounds, Inflict Wounds, assigned by the DM. Buff spells are self-only. These spells are cast without need for V, S, or M components, but are still obviously spells cast unless a Deception check is made as a Bonus Action.
Alternatively, Taint may be used to support a particular character’s idiom in some other way, such as coating a blade in blood or ice and causing it to deal 2 extra ice or necrotic damage per hit for 1 minute at a cost of 1 taint point and a BA.
These spells may shift if your alignment changes towards Good or Evil.
Additional Taint points are gained by killing other Bhaalspawn (equal to the target’s PB-1), or by gaining 1 point of Proficiency Bonus.
Gained Taint be used to either upgrade an existing spell to a higher level upcast, or to swap one of the original spells out for one of higher level. Bhaal spell level jumps are 1st to 3rd, 3rd to 5th, then by one spell level each up to level 7.
Bhaalspawn Ideas
As a Bhaalspawn, you have a small divine fragment in your soul, oriented towards murder. Your character has:
-Occasional dreams about blood, bones, rivers of blood, death, killing, and other similar morbid topics
-One or more supernatural talents or abilities
-Some portion of his or her spirit takes pleasure in death or murder. Maybe your character stops for a moment or two to stare at the bodies of whoever you just killed - just long enough to be weird.
-Your character doesn't particularly care about honor in battle. Murder, after all, is often done when nobody is looking.
-Impulses, desires, and thoughts of killing or murder - ranging from "I look forward to killing bandits" to "Nobody will know if I killed this guy who just surrendered" to "That shopkeeper would look better with a smile carved across his neck." You could handle this through RP or through dice rolls modified by your character's values, or whatever. There should be choices made regularly to follow one path or another.
-You can ignore the desires, channel them to productive ends (I think there was a fictional show named Dexter about a serial killer who did this), or try to deny them entirely. Your character may develop habits, tics, mantras, or similar to help remember to choose to redirect these urges.
Spoiler: Bhaalspawn sorc
Show
Extra Spells Known 1 Hunter's Mark, Inflict Wounds
2 Invisibility, See Invisibility
3 Nondetection, Spirit Shroud
4 Locate Creature, Phantasmal Killer
5 Dominate Person, Mislead
1 Murderous Healing When you kill a living intelligent creature (INT 4+) with a spell, you regain HP
equal to your PB + spell level. You can only gain this once from a given spell.
1 Deadly Blow You score a critical hit on a natural 19 as well as natural 20
1 Resist the Grave You gain resistance to necrotic damage
6 Sorcerous Assassin When you cast a spell that deals damage, and have advantage on the attack
roll, or the target is unable to perceive your location and actions, the spell does
2d6 extra damage.
When you cast a spell that does not deal damage under the same parameters, the target has -1d4 to its initial saving throw against the effects of the spell.
14 Perfect Getaway Whenever you benefit from Murderous Healing, you may gain the benefit of the
Sanctuary spell until the end of your next turn. This feature may be used a
number of times equal to your PB per long rest.
18 With a Word You may cast Power Word: Kill once per day without expending a spell slot.
Dhampir
You were a normal (non-noble) person until kidnapped weeks, or months, ago. You’re not sure what happened, but your canine teeth can elongate and sharpen themselves, and you have a constant low-level desire to bite something or someone and drink blood.
If you consistently give in to this desire, your alignment will shift to evil, and you will acquire most of the strengths, and some (but not all) of the weaknesses of a vampire over time.
If you consistently resist this part of your nature, you will gain strength of will and self-discipline over time.
If you travel down the middle road like a ship tossed about by the waves, you gain no benefits.
The exact benefits are known only to the DM, and will develop over time.
ie, I don't have them planned out yet
Mechanical effects:
• You have the Dhampir “lineage” as your race. You must use human or variant human as the base species.
• You do not detect as Undead to spells, class features, etc. Turn Undead does affect you, but you have advantage on the saving throw against it.
• Certain groups (druids, paladins, some priests) may view you as unnatural and inherently evil.
• Certain powerful vampires may be able to command your obedience magically, although only for short times or specific tasks.
Harper Agent
You are an agent of the Harpers, an organization devoted to stopping evil, promoting balance between civilization and nature, and preserving knowledge and lore. Harpers are a “good through Any Means Necessary” organization, and will use rebellions, assassinations, poison, etc. if needed to remove a threat.
Although bards are the most stereotypical Harper agents, wizards, druids, fighters, rogues, and others are also often members of the Harpers. Barbarians, Clerics, and Warlocks are not likely to be Harper agents.
You traveled with one of the Bhaalspawn in earlier adventures, partly to help defeat the plans of Sarevok Anchev, a Bhaalspawn who wanted to start a war to ascend on a tide of bloodshed, and partly to watch over the Bhaalspawn, who was raised by another harper, named Gorion. Your goal is to guide the Bhaalspawn onto a Good path… or, should that fail, should someone with a small spark of divinity inside choose to serve Evil ends, to arrange for the death or permanent removal of the child of an evil god.
Mechanical Effects
• You gain bonus proficiency in one skill: Chose from Deception, Insight, Stealth, or Sleight of Hand.
• You understand Druidic and Thieves Cant.
• You have prior history in the city of Athkatla, with at least one useful friendly contact. You may also have an old enemy here (side quest/plot).
• You are aware that respected Harper agents typically bear an emblem of some sort with substantial defensive properties. If you fulfill your role as a Harper, you can expect this item to eventually find its way to you.
Normal Person
You are a normal person with no special heritage or unique powers. You were just unlucky enough to get captured, but lucky enough to not die before being freed.
Tainted Mind
You were a normal (non-noble) person until kidnapped weeks, or months, ago. Now, you feel like sometimes you hear what people are going to stay before you say it.
• Awakened Mind: You may communicate telepathically with one creature visible to you within 30’ of you. You can hear that creature’s responses until you switch to communicating with another creature, or until it is no longer visible or within range.
• You have disadvantage on Intelligence saving throws
• You have vulnerability to psychic damage.
Whenever you reach an even level (2, 4, 6…), roll on the Psionics chart below with the DM, adding your Proficiency Bonus to the roll. You gain a new psionic power. Psionic powers are cast as spells, using INT as your spellcasting modifier. No material or somatic components are needed.
They may be used once per long rest unless otherwise specified.
3 Darkvision (self only) (reroll if you naturally have Darkvision)
4 Enlarge/reduce (self only)
5 Jump (Self only)
6 Absorb Energy
7 Tongues (self only)
8 Levitate (self only)
9 Mind Spike
10 Mind Whip
11 Tongues (Self only)
12 Telekinesis
13 Psychic Lance
14 Longstrider (self only)
15 Chose 1 known power valued below this number. You may use it a second time per day.
16 17 Remove Vulnerability: You no longer have INT save disadvantage or vulnerability to psychic damage.
18 You gain the Telepathic (INT) feat
19 You gain the Telekinetic (INT) feat
20 You gain the Resilient: Intelligence feat.
21 Intellect Fortress: You gain resistance to psychic damage.
22 Disintegrate
23 Roll twice and pick whichever of the results you wish when rolling on this table. Roll now.
24 Body Adjustment: You reduce your exhaustion level by 1 when you take a short rest.
25 Regenerate (self only)
26 Psychic Scream
Betrayer (overview)
You made an agreement with an enemy of the group. At some point during the game, you will betray your allies (the DM will help fill this in). Expect to need to roll up a new character afterward, or take over an NPC.
Mechanical Effects
Instead of a 27 point buy, you will use the following stat array (equal to a 31 point buy):
15, 14, 13, 12, 12, 10
Betrayer (detail) this only gets shared if someone picks this origin. This replaces Yoshimo.
Your sister was killed in the city of Baldur’s Gate by a powerful group of adventurers, although you were very light on details. Having made your way west to the Sword Coast, you burn with desire to avenge your sister… enough so that when a powerful wizard approached you, you took his deal.
Not until the Geas was complete did you understand what kind of a person Irenicus is. Your task is to travel with the party, keep the Bhaalspawn alive, and eventually deliver the Bhaalspawn into Irenicus’s custody.
The geas is unbreakable, and even in death, your heart will need to be brought to a priest of Ilmater for you to truly have rest.
This won’t kick in until the party reaches a certain area, and will be lightly foreshadowed through interactions in that area.