Hexblood
by Prince Phantom
Another of the Lineages provided in the Ravenloft book, the Hexblood represents a being whose essence has been touched by one of the many types of Hags. While I rate this as the weakest of the three lineages, it’s still a very strong race and provides a unique feature with a lot of potential. There’s a lot to go over, so let’s break it down.
Hexblood Features
Ancestral Legacy: Okay, so the Lineages in the Ravenloft book work a little differently than a normal race. You can select this race at character creation as normal, or you could potentially become this race through the events of your campaign. Perhaps a coven of Hags offer your party a favor, but ask for your eternal soul as recompense, or any other sort of event that could lead you to deal with old fey women. This can be a very fun character motivation, but it can also be incredibly broken. The only things you retain from your old race are proficiencies and movement speeds, meaning if you were a flying race, you retain your flying speed. I’d reckon that a Winged Tiefling who has been turned into one of the three Ravenloft Lineages is probably the single strongest race in the game, and I don’t think it’s very close. I do not recommend that DMs allow this, or you play to this extreme. This race is plenty strong enough on its own, you don’t need to boost it with a fly speed.
Creature Type: Fey: Being a Fey actually has a few mechanical benefits and detriments. You are immune to spells like Charm Person and Hold Person, along with many other miscellaneous monster abilities that only target humanoids. However, there are also certain spells that you can’t benefit from like Protection from Evil and Good, and you are susceptible to similar spells. Also, if you write in your backstory that you are native to the Feywild, watch out for Banishment. I’d say this is more of a good thing than a bad thing, but just be careful when selecting and casting buff spells.
Darkvision: Always good to have.
Hex Magic: We get Disguise Self and Hex with this, and can cast them once for free and then with spell slots. Disguise Self has a lot of exploration and roleplay potential, but I’m not nearly as big a fan of Hex as most people are. Weapon using characters can take bonus action attack feats that blow Hex out of the water in terms of damage, and Warlocks have much better spells to concentrate on past level 3. No other classes are really looking to make use of Hex, so I would really only cast it if the disadvantage on ability checks mattered, like if I knew my opponent’s casting stat and expected them to use Counterspell frequently.
Eerie Token: This is a weird one. We can imbue a token with magic and then likely give it to another creature for use later. We can either send a telepathic message to the person holding it, akin to the Message cantrip just with a bigger range and lacking the ability for the recipient to speak back to us. Alternatively, we can see and hear as if we were in the space of the token, akin to seeing through a familiar’s eyes. Neither of these abilities are better than a 1st spell, and they are a bit limited in that we need to get the token to wherever we want to see or whoever we want to talk to. Still, there is definitely some exploration utility here, and you’ll find plenty of uses for this.
I definitely think the Hexblood is the weakest of the three Ravenloft lineages, but it’s still a pretty solid race. If you’ve got a build that just has to have Hex for some reason and doesn’t want to go into Warlock, this is a potential avenue for that, and the utility provided by Eerie Token isn’t really something that other races can replicate, although magic certainly can. I’m not sure if any builds specifically want to be a Hexblood, but I also don’t think anyone would hate to have this race either.
Final Rating: 3/5
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