D&D: Five Bloody Good Magic Items to Quench Your Bloodlust
Keep everything feeling sanguine with these five bloody good magic items. You might get red on you, though.
Baldur’s Gate 3 might have the Dark Urge, but they don’t have the market cornered on blood. In fact, D&D characters have been thirsty af (for blood) since the dawn of D&D. Call it the dark, brooding little edgelord that lurks in the subconscious. Call it a weird obsession with vampires that goes back centuries.
Either way, there’s no denying there’s something alluring about a character who wields a bit of blood along with their magic. And these five magic items are bloody good at doing exactly that.
Bloodaxe
This is a dark, rust-colored axe that has a hunger. If it were a person, it would say that it doesn’t drink…wine. But since it’s an axe, instead it just makes its demands known by bathing enemies in extra necrotic damage and feasting upon their blood. Any time you reduce an enemy to 0 hit points with this axe, you’ll gain 10 temporary hit points…as long as your target has blood.
This is one of the axes wielded by Grog Strongjaw, and you can wield it for yourself thanks to Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount.
Bloodwell Vial
Blood has power. Thousands of fantasy stories hammer that point home. And even in D&D, this is true: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything introduced these magic items, which are attunable spellcasting foci. Just add a little of your own blood and not only do you get +1 to +3 to your spell attack rolls and saving throw DCs, but you also can regain 5 sorcery points whenever you roll a hit die to recover hit points.
Blood Spear
A bloody spear that was the personal weapon of one of Strahd von Zarovich’s predecessors, a chieftain known as Kavan. Though Kavan was no vampire, he had many traits in common with them. Despite being alive, he drank the blood of his prey, slept during the day and hunted at night, and he lived underground.
He was infamous for wielding a spear stained with blood. And you can too, gaining a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls, as well as 2d6 temporary hit points any time you reduce an enemy to 0 hit points with the spear (no restrictions though, so you can even drink skeleton blood with this spear).
Bloodfury Tattoo
You’ve seen weapons that drink blood. But what about one that’s made out of your blood? The Bloodfury Tattoo is a magical tattoo that takes up quite a bit of space on your body. It’s legendary, so that’s both arms and your torso at minimum. Hope you’ve got a good sense of design.
But it’s worth it, because you can spend one of this tattoo’s 10 charges to deal an extra 4d6 points of necrotic damage, healing you for half of what you do (average of 14 hit points per attack), or you could spend a charge to make an attack against a creature that damages you, with advantage no less, as a reaction.
The Bloody End
Finally, there’s The Bloody End, a magic, sentient morningstar with foot-long spikes and a jagged blade on its pommel. It’s an evil weapon, in case the jagged blade and spikes didn’t give it away. In fact, it’s a weapon inhabited by a pit fiend that will use what influence it can to push the mace’s wielder to subjugate others, granting them the power to use charm a person, dominate a person, or fear.
As you “awaken” the Bloody End, it becomes more powerful, bringing people to a messy end when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points, they’re frightened, and in addition to doing extra psychic damage, it allows you to dominate monsters as well.
What’s your favorite bloody weapon?
