Friday, October 31, 2025

Scion of the Three Rogue

 Thanks to the computer games, Baldur's Gate is a very well-known part of the Forgotten Realms, and the Dead Three, the gods Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul, are also quite notable.

This is the rare subclass where you'll need to work fairly hard if you want to play a good-aligned character and justify it. It's a brutal, violent subclass, literally themed around the blessings of three evil gods.

Level 3:

Bloodthirst:

When an enemy you can see within 30 feet of yourself takes damage and is bloodied after taking that damage but not killed outright, you can use a reaction to teleport to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of them and make one melee attack. You can use this feature Int times per long rest.

    In the right circumstances, this can be a big boost to your damage, but with a few considerations: the target already has to be bloodied for this to work (though it can trigger on the damage that gets them to being bloodied). That means the fight is already going poorly for them. That being said, I've seen some dismiss the power of this feature because a bloodied creature is close to death, but running high-level D&D where most monsters have like 200 HP, there's still plenty of damage needed to be done to take down a bloodied creature. However, if you want Sneak Attack damage on this, it'll probably have to be on someone else's turn. Then again, its being on someone else's turn means that you might be more likely to get Sneak Attack because you might wait for a melee ally to hit them in order to trigger this. The teleport is also nice.

    The limitation on uses, though, is pretty rough: at best we're talking 3 times per day until much higher levels.

Dread Allegiance:

When you get this subclass feature and when you finish a long rest, you can pick between Bane, Bhaal, or Myrkul to give you their blessing. Each gives you a cantrip and a damage resistance. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability.

Bane: Psychic, Minor Illusion

Bhaal: Poison, Blade Ward

Myrkul: Necrotic, Chill Touch

    Each resistance is decent to have. I don't think you're likely to use Chill Touch as a Rogue, but if you're facing a lot of undead (especially incorporeal undead,) it'll be good to have that resistance. Blade Ward is good if you can get it off before combat starts.

Level 9:

Strike Fear:

You gain a new Cunning Strike option: Terrify (cost: 1d6): The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened for 1 minute. While frightened in this way, you get advantage on attack rolls against them. They can repeat the save at the end of their turns, ending it on a success.

    Ideally you'll have other ways to get advantage, like a Vex weapon, but fear can be a really good debuff to put on foes.

Level 13:

Aura of Malevolence:

When you use Bloodthirst to teleport, each creature of your choice within 10 feet of either the space you left or the one you enter (your choice) takes damage equal to your Int modifier, the damage being the same as the resistance associated with your current Dread Allegiance choice. This damage ignores resistance.

    There's very few creatures with resistance to any of those damage types, if memory serves. It's not a ton of damage, but Rogues don't tend to get AoE damage options.

Level 17:

Dread Incarnate:

You get two benefits:

Cutthroat: You regain a use of Bloodthirst when you finish a short rest.

    Bloodthirst was pretty limited in use, so getting a way to get more of them is certainly nice.

Murderous Intent: When you roll Sneak Attack damage, you treat 1s and 2s as 3s on the d6s.

    This changes the average roll of a d6 from 3.5 to 4. At 17th level, we do 9d6 with Sneak Attack, so that's a boost of 4.5 average damage, and 5 at level 19. It does make the floor on our Sneak Attack 27 damage.

Overall Thoughts:

I like the flavor of this one. I think we could stand to get more uses of Bloodthirst. As always with Rogues, it's tough that they don't get their second set of subclass features until level 9, and for a class that feels like it struggles a bit to keep up with other martial classes in terms of damage, I feel like they played it a little conservatively here.

The storytelling potential of this subclass, though, is enormous.

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