Circle of the Blood Moons
Is said that when Noctaleya heard about the betrayal of Licha, she wept and cried so much and so loudly, that she cried blood instead of tears. Some say it happened because her very heart cried with her, because she loved her brother so much, and she knew that she would never see Licha again. Her eyes turned red, and with them, the whole night sky. That day was the day when the Blood Moons were born, bringing sorrow and fear to the heart of mortals.
Dark Rituals
The Blood Moons is a time for rituals, and you can channel the energy that flows from the bleeding eyes of Noctaleya to help you. When you choose this circle at 2nd level, you learn how to perform rituals using the corpse of a creature as sacrifice. By using the body of a creature that has died within the last hour, you can cast any of the druid spells as a ritual, even if it doesn't have the ritual tag. You can find the rules to ritual casting in the page 201 of the PHB.
In order to cast a spell in this manner, you need the corpse of a creature of a CR equal or greater to the one presented on the table below, and the spell must be of a level you have spell slots for. You can't cast a spell of level higher than 6th with this method. The creature used can not be a construct nor an elemental. The corpse replaces the material components of the spell you are trying to cast, but you still need to provide the other components as normal. Once you complete the ritual, the body turns to dust, making it unusable for other rituals again, and protecting it from spells such as raise dead.
| Spell Level | CR |
|---|---|
| 1st | 1 |
| 2nd | 3 |
| 3rd | 5 |
| 4th | 7 |
| 5th | 9 |
| 6th | 10 |
Circle Spells
The profane powers of the Blood Moons infuse you to the ability to cast certain spells. At 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th level you gain access to a number of circle spells, listed below the Blood Moons Table. Once you gain access to a circle spell, you always have it prepared, and it doesn't count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If you gain access to a spell that doesn't appear on the druid spell list, the spell is nonetheless a druid spell for you.
| Druid Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3rd | darkness, gentle repose |
| 5th | speak with dead, vampiric touch |
| 7th | death ward, blight |
| 9th | enervation, insect plague |
Eyes of the Dusk
Starting at 6th level, you gain darkvision up to a range of 60 feet. If you already have darkvision, its ranges increase by 60 feet. Additionally, you can see through magical darkness for the radius of your darkvision.
Bloodsight
After so many performed rituals using corpses as sacrifices, you have developed a sixth sense to hear the blood running inside other creatures. Starting at 10th level, as an action and while you are in darkness or dim light, you can concentrate yourself and hone your senses, allowing you to see the fine outline of the veins of every creature within the radius of your darkvision, and in some way, control it. You select a number of creatures that you can see equal to your Wisdom modifier. All these creatures must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell DC or suffer disadvantage against any of your spells. An affected creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns. A creature that succeeds in the saving throw is immune to the effects of Bloodsight for 24 hours. These effects lasts for 1 minute, or until you end it with a bonus action. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short rest.
Blood Moons Rituals
You became a master on your trade, and you are able to channel even more energy from the bloody tears of the crying Mahla. Beginning at 14th level, when you use your Dark Rituals trait, you can now cast spells of a level higher than 6th. The CR of the corpse needed to perform the ritual is detailed in the table below. Also, if you cast a spell as ritual of 6th level or lower, it takes you only half the time you previously need to complete the ritual, and also add to the duration of said spell half the total duration of the spell, rounded up. Additionally, whenever the Blood Moons are up in the sky, the CR of the creature only needs to be half of the CR needed to cast the spell level you are casting as ritual.
| Spell Level | CR |
|---|---|
| 6 | 12 |
| 7 | 14 |
| 8 | 16 |
| 9 | 18 |
Disclaimer
As you may notice, I use some particular names in descriptions and lore. This subclass was inspired by lore stuff of my own homebrew world, Erä (from which I'm making a campaign guide and I'm super excited for it), so the names and ideas are taken from it. However, you can easily change or even erase the name to suit better your own world. Thank you for reading this far, and hope you enjoyed it! You can find my other homebrew subclass, the College of the Traveling Minstrel, here.
Credits
Circle of the Blood Moons version 1.1
- Homebrew made by Reual Nathan Onyrian
- Bloodmoon Wallpaper by Alarra
- Unknown druid taken from Pixabay
- Druid by Roy Steuer
