Version 0.10 · not yet playtested
Blood magic has no reservoir and asks no patron. It runs on the caster’s own life. Every working burns maximum Hit Points, spending the body’s future to buy power now, and there is no morning that gives it all back. It is the most immediate of the sources, cast freely with no pool to drain and no clock to watch, and the most dangerous: push too far and you bleed out where you stand. This is the personal, self-consuming end of the family (see Alternative Magic Systems).
This supplement swaps the core’s stress fuel for burned maximum Hit Points and its falter for bleeding out. Everything else stands unchanged. If a rule is not below, it works as the core book says.
Casting temporarily reduces your maximum Hit Points. Mark the loss on the sheet. Your current Hit Points can never exceed the reduced maximum, so a spell that drops your max below your current spills your current down with it: you bleed as you cast. The reduction lifts only with rest and time (see Recovery), never faster.
| Magnitude | Max HP burned | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Cantrip | 0 | A trick of blood, at will. Burns nothing. |
| Spell | 2 | One real effect now, and it bites harder than other sources. |
| Greater spell | 4 | An area, a drain, a barrier of blood and bone. |
| Ritual | 0 (self) | The slow rites, out of a fight. Some may spend another’s blood (below). |
On a partial (9–12) take the reduced effect free, or burn +1 max HP for the full result. Always optional.
Blood magic alone among the sources has no dedicated meter: no pool to size, no track to fill, no clock to tick. Its cost comes straight from the Hit Point economy every character already carries. That absence is paid back in breadth. Blood magic is the most multifaceted source, worn by more kinds of caster and keyed to more attributes than any other. Where the arcane sorcerer is always Wits and the summoner always Presence, a blood tradition chooses the casting attribute that fits the caster who carries it.
Because attributes in this game modify only the roll, never Hit Points or damage, the choice never touches the blood-burning economy. The cost is the same brutal HP whoever casts it; the attribute only says how a tradition reaches the blood.
| Attribute | The caster | How the blood answers |
|---|---|---|
| Might | Warrior-caster | Vitality mastered by force of body; blood spilled in the swing. |
| Wits | Shaman | Blood as lore and lineage, its rites learned and remembered. |
| Presence | Folk witch | Blood bound by will and word, in pacts of kin and curse. |
| Agility | Berserk-caster | Blood whipped to frenzy, quick and reckless, the spell riding the motion. |
Pick one attribute per tradition and hold it. A single playbook keys to one; the variety lives across the many traditions a setting can grow, not within one caster.
The signature lever and the temptation: when you cast, you may burn extra maximum HP to push the effect harder, +2 max HP for +2 harm, an extra target, or a step of reach or duration. Blood magic alone lets you simply pay more of yourself for more power. It is how a blood mage ends a fight in one bloody stroke, and how they die trying.
Lost maximum Hit Points return slowly, and by rest alone. A full rest restores 2 max HP; only proper downtime, tending, and time restore you fully.
Crucially, healing does not give it back. A cure, a potion, or a comrade’s magic refills your current Hit Points up to your reduced maximum, but nothing short of rest raises the maximum itself. A medic can keep a blood caster on their feet; they cannot refund the spells. This is what makes the sacrifice real: the cost is paid in a body that stays diminished until it mends on its own. A hard day of casting leaves you a smaller, frailer version of yourself for days after; the blood caster who spends wildly on Monday fights Thursday half-empty.
You may always cast, life is always there to spend, right up until it is not. If a casting would reduce your maximum Hit Points to 0 or below, the spell still resolves as your last act: you immediately fall Down and begin death saves (core rules). Blood magic’s overfill is not a mark or a madness. It is the floor, and the blood mage dances closest to it of anyone.
Every blood bundle grants Bloodletting Lash, the at-will poke: nick yourself for a token drop, no real burn, and whip a lash of blood at one target for 2 magical harm (ignoring armor), rolled to hit. It never rivals a real weapon or the bolt. It is the free option that does not mortgage your max HP, the blood mage’s safe strike when they dare not spend more of themselves.
The tie between blood and power is one humanity has reached for again and again: the blood oath and blood brotherhood, the covenant sealed in blood, sacrifice on the altar, bloodletting as medicine, the bloodline as the seat of virtue or curse, the taboos around a wound, a birth, or a first blood, the pricked finger of the fairy tale. A GM building a blood tradition has deep, real wells to draw from. Mine folklore and history for the texture, the gestures, the taboos, the reasons a people both needs and fears its blood-workers, and let that shape the tradition’s voice and its casting attribute. Treat living cultures with care and respect: take inspiration, never caricature.
Setting flavors, each keyed to its attribute:
The dark Blood Sacrifice ritual (paying another’s life instead of your own) is open to any of these, and defines the hemomancer, whichever attribute they cast by. Discuss it at the table before it comes up.
A ready-to-use blood catalog, sorted by magnitude. Copy chosen entries onto a spell-book sheet. Damage numbers are the L1 default; a playbook’s damage step scales them. All damage is magical harm.