CLASS OPTIONS

Darkplane campaigns include adventurers who delve into truly sinister power sources. The following class options are examples of some of these dangerous paths.

DIVINE DOMAIN: ABERRATION

There are few known gods whose influence extends beyond the territory of the four worlds. That alien abyss is the dominion of mad, twisted beings whose powers defy the fundamental assumptions of nature. Of the handful of gods who have ventured into the Darkplane, only Daemoth, Maruma’e, and Senfaer have brought aberrant secrets back to their servants.

These acolytes of aberration understand only infinitessimal glimpses of the horror that lies beyond the natural worlds, but this is enough to tear the sanity of their enemies apart. To them nature is heretical and the faiths that fight aberrant influence are infidels.

 

Aberration Domain Spells

Cleric Level      Spells
          1               arms of Hadar, dissonant whispers
          3               darkvision, detect thoughts
          5               fear, hunger of Hadar
          7               confusion, Evard’s black tentacles
          9               dream, geas

Bonus Proficiency

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you become proficient in the Arcana skill. 

Telepathy

At 1st level, you can use your bonus action to open a telepathic connection with a creature within 60 feet. While the creature is in range, you can speak to each other telepathically. You must share a language to understand one another. You can end the connection whenever you choose. You can only have one telepathic connection open at once.

Channel Divinity: Fortify Sanity

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to erect a psionic shield. When you or a creature within 60 feet of you gains a temporary madness or takes psychic damage, you can spend a reaction to grant it resistance to psychic damage and immunity to short-term madness for 1 minute.

GROUP Telepathy

Starting at 6th level, you can maintain multiple telepathic connections at once. A single bonus action can target up to six creatures. If you break this connection with one creature, you break it with every creature you targeted with the same action.

Terrifying Strike

At 8th level, you gain the ability to endow your weapon strikes with psionic energy. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can deal an extra 1d8 psychic damage. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8.

Channel Divinity: Darkplane Ascension

At 17th level, you can use your Channel Divinity to open a portal into the Darkplane.

You may spend an action to create a 15-foot cone extending from your holy symbol. The base of the cone becomes a portal facing you, and creatures and objects within the cone are pulled through the portal into the Darkplane unless they weigh 500 pounds or more, or succeed on a Strength saving throw. Once created, the portal stays open for 1 minute, or until you use an action to close it.

DIVINE DOMAIN: BLOOD

To some faiths, the power of divinity is closely linked to blood, which holds the energy of the soul. Gods connected to primordial power such as Baturach, Daemoth, Emriel, Lakhi, Maruma’e, and Volgothyde are willing to teach these macabre secrets to their priests in exchange for devotion and worship. The abilities granted by gods of the blood domain are similar to those harnessed by blood mages. They’re often related to binding and mind control.

Clerics of blood might hoard blood samples from many victims, experimenting and crafting powerful religious relics in hidden temples. The particular goals of these clerics depend on their chosen deity, but often they’re concerned more with the sanctity of blood than the sanctity of life.

Blood Domain Spells

Cleric Level      Spells
          1               bane, false life
          3               levitate, hold person
          5               fly, vampiric touch
          7               banishment, compulsion
          9               planar binding, telekinesis

Unnatural Recovery

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you learn to cut primordial symbols into your flesh in order to regain some of your magical reserves. Upon finishing a short rest, you can spend a number of hit dice equal to the combined level of the spell slots you wish to recover. All recovered spell slots must be of 5th level or below. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Channel Divinity: Blood Siphon

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to draw power from your bleeding wounds.

When you take damage, you can use a reaction to set aside one damage die rolled against you. The die’s result becomes 0, and until the end of your next turn you can add its highest possible result to one of your attack or damage rolls. You can only add one die this way to any one attack roll.

Channel Divinity: Bloodmark

Starting at 6th level, you can use your Channel Divinity to charm an enemy and use its mind as a scrying tool.

As an action, make a melee spell attack against a creature. This attack automatically misses if the creature is immune to being charmed. If the attack hits, you rub your blood on it, searing a branded mark onto its body that remains as long as the effect is in place. The creature is charmed by you for 1 hour, and in addition to your own sight you can see what it sees. You cannot control what the creature is looking at or any of its actions, though while charmed it regards you as a trusted friend. The effect ends if the creature takes damage or if you hit another creature with this attack.

Biting Strike

At 8th level, you gain the ability to endow your weapon strikes with primordial energy. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you deal an extra 1d8 necrotic damage. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8.

Improved Bloodmark

Starting at 17th level, when you hit a creature with Bloodmark you create a telepathic link with the target. This telepathic link lasts as long as the creature is charmed, and you can use it to issue one-word commands, which it does its best to obey. The effect lasts up to 8 hours, or as long as you maintain concentration.

DIVINE DOMAIN: DARKNESS

When the sun sets, the priests of darkness venture into the night like living shadows. Their presence is not always felt as they call the Void forth, nor are their hidden altars seen by mortal eyes. They worship gods like Imbakhao, Ulmhasa, and Daemoth, who use fear to inspire reverence, whose very presence is living emptiness.

The clerics of the darkness domain know how to harness the material of the Shadow Realm to pass unseen, to call shadow creatures to their side, and to twist the dreams and memory of other mortals. Their motives differ from god to god. Some fight shadow with shadow, while others look forward to a day when material life will be consumed by darkness.

DARKNESS DOMAIN SPELLS

Cleric Level      Spells
          1               inflict wounds, unseen servant
          3               darkness, misty step
          5               fear, spirit guardians
          7            dimension door, phantasmal killer
          9            dream, scrying

DARKVISION

When you choose this domain at 1st level, your eyes see through darkness into the shadow essence of all around you. You gain darkvision within 60 feet, and have advantage when making Wisdom (Perception) checks to spot hidden creatures within that distance.

CHANNEL DIVINITY: SHADOWBLADE

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to create a weapon out of shadow essence.

As a bonus action, you can form a dark, shadowy blade in your free hand. The blade is similar in size and shape to a scimitar, and you have proficiency with it. It lasts for 1 minute, or as long as you maintain concentration. If you let go of the blade, it disappears, but as long as your concentration isn’t broken you can form the blade again as a bonus action.

You can use your action to make a melee spell attack with the shadowblade. On a hit, the target takes 2d6 necrotic damage.

CHANNEL DIVINITY: SHADOW Mantle

Starting at 6th level, you can use your Channel Divinity to disappear into the darkness. As an action, you become invisible until the end of your next turn. If you attack or cast a spell, you become visible again.

TWIN SHADOWS

Beginning at 8th level, when you use Shadowblade, you form one shadowblade in each hand. When you take an action to attack with one shadowblade, you can use a bonus action to attack with the second one.

When you reach 14th level, you add your Wisdom modifier to the first shadowblade attack you make on your turn. If you have the fighting style Two-Weapon Fighting, you gain the benefit of it when making a second shadowblade attack.

TRUTH IN Darkness

Starting at 17th level, you can slip through the bounds of the Material Realm to peer into the souls and minds of others. You can use an action to gain truesight within 30 feet for 1 minute. While this effect is in place, you can see into the Primordial Realm, the Shadow Realm, and Spirit Realm.

SORCEROUS ORIGIN: BLOOD MAGIC

Within your veins lies the darkest and most dangerous form of magic. Blood is a powerful arcane channeler. Only the foolish or the very wise tamper with it as a component, and those who do often suffer as much as they excel. As a blood sorcerer, you substitute self-mutilation for study. You may not be as well read as some spellcasters, but the path you’ve chosen taxes the body, not the mind.

Some blood sorcerers discover these occult secrets in ancient grimoires, learning to carve hideous but powerful symbols in their flesh. Others enter the apprenticeship of a vile mentor who personally instructs them. Whether you use blood magic to help others or to serve your own ambitions, it is a practice that will leave you scarred, literally and figuratively.

BLOOD-POWERED SPELLS

When you select this origin at 1st level, you learn the dark arts necessary to turn blood into an arcane enhancement. You can use blood as a replacement for the material components for any sorcerer spell you cast, including those with a cost listed. Your spell save DC for enchantment and necromancy spells increases by 2 while you use your blood as a material component.

BLOOD BLIGHT

At 6th level, your blood begins to manifest occult properties that enhance your magic and leave you in pain. You can spend hit points to recover sorcery points. As a bonus action, declare the number of sorcery points you’re recovering and expend that many hit dice. Roll the expended dice and take that much piercing or slashing damage.

Additionally, the temperature of your blood becomes intolerably high. You are in a constant state of physical agitation and discomfort, and you find yourself going to extreme lengths to sooth it. For example, you might refuse to set foot in a room where a fire is burning in the hearth, or you might flee the sight of hot food or drink. You have odd physical tics that others find eccentric or off-putting because of the eternal fire raging in your veins.

Objects and creatures that touch your blood take 1 fire damage. You are immune to damage caused by your own blood.

WOUNDED VIGOR

Beginning at 14th level, pain becomes a source of strength to you. When you take piercing or slashing damage, you immediately gain temporary hit points equal to the damage taken.

PRIMORDIAL SURGE

At 18th level, your spells seek out the blood of others. Living creatures that have taken damage and have less than 20 hit points remaining have disadvantage on your spells’ saving throws.

SORCEROUS ORIGIN: SHADOWBOUND

In the void that separates the body, spirit, and soul, there are terrible powers that drown the light with pure shadow. All things, living or otherwise, are composed of light and dark: the material and the void. Some sorcerers gain their powers through an unnatural connection to this shadowy wellspring.

Spells cast through shadow can be twisted and manipulated in ways unattainable through other methods. Shadowbound sorcerers may be limited in daylight, but in the absence of light their magic is as potent as it is foul.

DARKVISION

When you choose this sorcerous origin at 1st level, you gain darkvision within 60 feet.

Dark Spells

Sorcerers with this origin receive magical power in an uninterrupted flow of shadow energy, as long as there isn’t enough light to disrupt the connection. Beginning at 1st level, when you cast a sorcerer spell while in dim light or darkness, you can cast it without using material components.

After casting a spell with a range of 5 or more feet while in dim light, you can use a bonus action to turn dim light into darkness within the spell’s range. Once you do so, you must finish a long rest to regain use of this feature.

Shadow Step

At 6th level, you learn to step through the void that connects all shadows. When you are in an area of dim light or darkness, you can use a bonus action to teleport to an unoccupied space you can see within 60 feet that is also in dim light or darkness.

True Shadow

At 14th level, you can spend 2 sorcery points while in dim light or darkness to become invisible for 1 minute. Anything you’re wearing or carrying is also invisible as long as you’re in contact with it.

Fade

Starting at 18th level, your spells begin to affect your grasp on the material world. When you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, you can spend 2 sorcery points to gain a fade level as you slip further into the Shadow Realm. Each fade level has a cumulative effect, described below.

You must spend 2 sorcery points when casting a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher to remain at a fade level of 6. If you end one of your turns without having spent sorcery points in connection with this feature, you lose one fade level. Once your fade level returns to 0, you must finish a long rest before you can use this feature again.

SORCEROUS ORIGIN: VAMPIRE BLOODLINE

Not all vampires are made. Some are born, inheriting the abhorrent curse of their undead parentage. Vampires bear children only rarely over the centuries, more often rendering the honor to the wretched mortals upon whom they prey. The young resulting from such a union aren’t always evil, but they inevitably manifest certain insidious powers of the vampire. Sorcerers with the vampire bloodline origin face a harrowing choice: channel their inner darkness into a worthy cause as penance for the sins of millennia, or give in to the exhilarant predator within.

VAMPIRE WEAKNESSES

When you choose this origin at 1st level, you gain the following susceptibilities.

  • You’re physically incapable of entering a residence unless one of the occupants invites you in.
  • You have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks while in sunlight.
  • If a piercing weapon made of wood is driven into your heart while you’re incapacitated, you become paralyzed until the stake is removed.

UNDEAD FEROCITY

Starting when you choose this origin at 1st level, your unarmed attacks deal 1d6 damage. You may choose to bite with your unarmed attack to deal piercing damage instead of bludgeoning.

You also have natural armor, making your AC equal to 13 + your Dexterity modifier while you’re not wearing armor.

SPIDER CLIMB

When you choose this origin at 1st level, you gain the ability to climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.

LIFEBLOOD

At 6th level, your taste for blood becomes insatiable, but the surge of power it grants is even more alluring. When you deal damage with a bite attack against a living creature that is incapacitated, restrained, or that you have grappled, you can spend 2 sorcery points to deal an additional 1d6 necrotic damage. You regain hit points equal to the necrotic damage taken. You can spend up to 6 points this way on a single bite, adding 1d6 necrotic damage (and hit points regained) for every 2 sorcery points spent. When you bite a creature that is charmed by you, it doesn’t end the charmed condition.

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

Starting at 14th level, you can call upon the creatures of darkness to do your bidding. As an action, you spend 3 sorcery points and call 2d4 swarms of bats or rats if the sun isn’t up. If you’re outdoors, you can choose to call 3d6 wolves instead. The creatures take 1d4 rounds to arrive and remain for 1 hour, or until you are reduced to 0 hit points. During that time, you can dictate their actions with verbal commands or dismiss them as a bonus action. You cannot use this feature again until you take a long rest.

IMMORTAL CORPSE

Beginning at 18th level, you have resistance to necrotic damage, and bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons. Your body no longer ages with the passage of time.