Of all the classes, Thief receives probably the brunt of criticism regarding D&D’s early class design. I’ve even met some OD&D grognards who view the class as borderline heretical and excise the class entirely from their games, viewing it as a “forced niche.”
The point of this article is not to debate the merits of the thief class, which I believe it has - even if not mechanically, certainly archetypically - but that is a bit beyond the scope of this article.
Most of my conceptual brewing is like panning for gold: rolling the idea over in my head again and again to refine it before putting pen to paper (or keyboard to screen) and shaping it into something hopefully understandable to my fellow man
Other times, a concept strikes out of the blue, arriving almost fully formed and ready to be developed. This was one such occasion. As I was having breakfast and saw a meme comparing American to Japanese isekai, it hit me…
“We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open… Fear the old blood.”
— Master Willem, Bloodborne
I have a great deal of contempt for what Matt Mercier and Critical Role have done to the TTRPG play culture, the reasons nearly endless and worthy of an article in it’s own right.
However, I need to give the devil his due, mechanically and thematically the Blood Hunter is a good class shackled to a lackluster version of D&D.