Custom Mage Class: Blood Mage

By BJZSN, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Decided to try one more mage class. The Blood Mage has more expensive skills than usual, but they are powerful, and the costs can be negating by spending health in lieu of fatigue. This'll probably be the last mage I work on for a while since I'm running out of new ideas for the Mage class. This class might be a little wordy so I'll be working on the phrasing of the skills. Let me know what you think guys!

Edit: Cards are done, here's a link to the custom class, look for Blood Mage:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/odx5l47ypog6y89/AABZJBksn4UcH94OYT9lxhFSa?dl=0

Edited by BJZSN

this class have some cool ideas behind. Im not sure about balance, but I like the general concept! Nice one

Power of Affliction skill need some explaining. " Each of your attacks gains the conditions you have. " Does it mean that target will gain all conditions even if arack won't deal any damage?

Power of Affliction skill need some explaining. " Each of your attacks gains the conditions you have. " Does it mean that target will gain all conditions even if arack won't deal any damage?

The condition(s) still require damage to be applied as per normal rules. Usually if the condition doesn't need damage to apply I just write (even if you didn't deal any damage). I was also thinking of of making the ability like this to possibly balance it if needed:

Each of your attacks gains:

Surge: Choose a condition you have; this attack gains that condition

If someone suffer lethal damage, are they meant to still be able to cast Bound Soul before dying? You might need to reword it a little if so.

Agreed. To balance the skill a bit I'd make the timing "before dice are rolled" or perhaps "after" for it to be a little stronger. "Before" would make it more similar to "reflective ward," which is a good thing. Either way, it gives the attacker the opportunity not to add damage surges.

I think these are excellent. Nice work! However I would consider giving Focused Blast +1 Range, since it's a 1 XP skill, and Deep Wound +1 Damage, Bleed, for the same reason. I think for a 1 XP card, it's a bit strong otherwise. For Power of Affliction, I would confine it to giving the target just one selected condition, and not all of them. That seems a bit out of hand. That's my two cents, if it's even worth that much, but I'm really impressed by the creativity here. I'll have to check out more of these.

Power of Affliction skill need some explaining. " Each of your attacks gains the conditions you have. " Does it mean that target will gain all conditions even if arack won't deal any damage?

If someone suffer lethal damage, are they meant to still be able to cast Bound Soul before dying? You might need to reword it a little if so.

Agreed. To balance the skill a bit I'd make the timing "before dice are rolled" or perhaps "after" for it to be a little stronger. "Before" would make it more similar to "reflective ward," which is a good thing. Either way, it gives the attacker the opportunity not to add damage surges.

I think these are excellent. Nice work! However I would consider giving Focused Blast +1 Range, since it's a 1 XP skill, and Deep Wound +1 Damage, Bleed, for the same reason. I think for a 1 XP card, it's a bit strong otherwise. For Power of Affliction, I would confine it to giving the target just one selected condition, and not all of them. That seems a bit out of hand. That's my two cents, if it's even worth that much, but I'm really impressed by the creativity here. I'll have to check out more of these.

Thanks for the advice guys, it helped me with these skills a nice bit. So basically I made some changes, some drastic, some mild.

Blood Ritual: Changed so that you can only suffer 1 damage to reduce the cost of a skill by 1.

Focused Blast: Changed to +3 Range instead of +2

Deep Wound: Changed so that you have to spend a surge to get the bonus (i didn't want to reduce the damage potential, but I did wanna nerf it. Also you no longer need to suffer damage to activate the skill, only on spending the surge.

Power of Affliction: Reworded to be easier to understand.

Chant of Sacrifice: Now a 2XP skill, lets you use as much health as you want towards Blood Ritual.

Bound Soul: Reworded to be 'before dice are rolled'. damage is rounded up.

Flesh Link: Now a 3XP Skill, reworked so now you don't take damage using it, now does extra damage, doesn't require the attacker to be adjacent, etc. (very experimental skill as it's 4 fatigue, would like user input on this.)

Brothers in Blood: New skill, can pay for adjacent heroes skills.

Edited by BJZSN

Changed Bound Rune to 'Surge: Doom' from 'Surge: +1 Damage'.

Changed Bound Soul to give +1 to Willpower. Only other thing I'm looking to change is Focused Blast as it doesn't really fit in thematically. Probably gonna change it entirely. If anyone has an idea for a skill to replace it I'm all ears (preferrably a skill that has a fatigue cost).

Changed Focused Blast so you can change an attack die to the face of your choice. At 2 Fatigue I don't think it's too strong but if anyone has an opinion on it let me know.

Changed Focused Blast so you can change an attack die to the face of your choice. At 2 Fatigue I don't think it's too strong but if anyone has an opinion on it let me know.

You should change that to say "power die" for a couple reasons.

1) It makes it more clear that you mean when atttacking, not attacking or defending.

2) A 1XP skill that can auto-hit an attack once per round is crazy good, even at a cost of 2 fatigue. Much better to have just the ability to increase damage once per round (so if you're attacking blue/red and roll a single wound on a red die, you could essentially spend 2 fatigue for the attack to gain +2 and a surge.)

Edited by Zaltyre

Changed Focused Blast so you can change an attack die to the face of your choice. At 2 Fatigue I don't think it's too strong but if anyone has an opinion on it let me know.

You should change that to say "power die" for a couple reasons.

1) It makes it more clear that you mean when atttacking, not attacking or defending.

2) A 1XP skill that can auto-hit an attack once per round is crazy good, even at a cost of 2 fatigue. Much better to have just the ability to increase damage once per round (so if you're attacking blue/red and roll a single wound on a red die, you could essentially spend 2 fatigue for the attack to gain +2 and a surge.)

Just checked the rules....... had NO idea that 'power dice' were only the red, yellow and green dice. That could have changed some games for my group, whoops.

Changed Chant of Sacrifice so you can only spend 2 health maximum to reduce the cost of skills. Felt like it'd be too easy to pull off Flesh Link after being revived.

Coming back to look at the Blood Mage again and I am dreading it. I've always been unsure about the balance of the class so any changes I make are hopefully for the best.