New to the game

[Cyris]

Yo, I'm new to Birthright as a 3.5 game. I only ever played the PC game, and wanted to try this out with regular D&D. I've been reading the pdf, and have gotten very confused by character creation. I was wondering if I could get some help :)

1- Chapter 1 and 2 each point to the other for the rules for determining the Blood Ability Score.

2- The Blood Ability Score is doubled and becomes the Bloodline Score? This is very, very confusing. First, the text refers to bloodline a number of times, does this mean the Ability Score or the Bloodline Score? When this number is increased, does the Ability Score increase? Are they independent after character creation? Why is a 12 in the Ability Score (a +1 modifier by D&D standards) become a 24 when doubled, which gives a +2 bonus?

3- How does Bloodline Strength interact with the abilities granted? Is being a Great blood, from a pure power standpoint, just better then Minor? Does the Bloodline Strength, the Scion class, or both determine what level of blood abilities you get to use?

Basicly, I find myself translating the rules differently each time I read them :( I'm not trying to bash, I'm just very confused. And my spelling sucks, sorry :)

[Benjamin]

1- Chapter 1 and 2 each point to the other for the rules for determining the Blood Ability Score.

You buy the bloodline score, just like you would any other stat.



2- The Blood Ability Score is doubled and becomes the Bloodline Score? This is very, very confusing. First, the text refers to bloodline a number of times, does this mean the Ability Score or the Bloodline Score? When this number is increased, does the Ability Score increase? Are they independent after character creation? Why is a 12 in the Ability Score (a +1 modifier by D&D standards) become a 24 when doubled, which gives a +2 bonus?

Bloodline score is always 2x the Blood Ability Score. Blood Ability Score is basically only ever used during point buy. The double system is used because canon Birthright allowed for a variety of scores, some of which were really high. It was impossible to drop all scores down to a 3-18 range.



3- How does Bloodline Strength interact with the abilities granted? Is being a Great blood, from a pure power standpoint, just better then Minor? Does the Bloodline Strength, the Scion class, or both determine what level of blood abilities you get to use?

If you have a minor bloodline derivation, you can only ever have minor blood abilities and no levels of scion class. If you have a major bloodline derivation, you can have minor or major blood line abilities, as well as 1 level of scion. If you have a great bloodline derivation, you can get 2 levels of scion and great bloodline abilities.

(this may be in slight error regarding the scion class levels - I'm going from memory)

[irdeggman]

It becomes important to understand where a lot of this bloodline stuff came from.

That was based on the 2nd ed game (not the PC game). BR (Birthright) was a setting that TSR (now Wizards of the Coast) had creted - Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun were all settings in 2nd ed.

Each one had things that set it apart from the others. The crux of BR was that the old gods died and the surving mortals on the battlefield inherited a portion of their divinity when their blood spilt on them.

This granted the ability to rule (regency) and extra abilities (blood abilities) that were in a way related to the strength of the bloodline. The bloodline was a means of measuring this divinity.


Bloodlines have three primary characteristics. A scion's bloodline derivation (Anduiras (And), Azrai (Az), Basaïa (Ba), Brenna (Bre), Masela (Ma), Reynir (Re), or Vorynn (Vor)) specifies the old god whose divine power flows in the veins of his family. A scion's bloodline strength (minor, major, great, or true) describes the purity of the scion's family's bloodline. A scion's bloodline score describes the power of a specific scion's divine essence. The manifestations of a bloodline are known as blood abilities.

The three parts of the bloodline are:

derivation - basically from which of the old gods this power came from.

Strength - the purity of the bloodline. That is how close to the original deity the character is or how diluted the bloodline has become over the generations.

Score - the numerical measure of the power.

In 2nd ed characters could be either blooded or non-blooded. Non-blooded got a 10% exp bonus. That type of game mechanic doesn't really exist in 3.5. In addition a bloded character could be a regent (ruler) or not. A regent gained several benefits - 10 bonus hit points, a starting magic item and bodyguards (usually).

In 2nd ed there was only a superficial correlation between the score and strength of the blodline. In fact it was possible for cahracter with a tainted bloodline (very diluted) to have a higher score than a characte with a great bloodline. It can still happen but the present mechanics make it more difficult.

The use of scion classes was a way to help handle the exp bonus that non-blooded characters got in 2nd ed and also to provide a means of measuring the difference in power levels of the characters (that is roughly CR).

I hope that helps to explain some of the history and such. It is really difficult to use a computer game as the basis for understanding a setting - computer games are far too limited by software to adequately handle the complexities fo a RPG.

[Cyris]

Thankyou for the replies. I'm going to look over all this more this weekend. I ran the first "session" today after work, just got home. Three newbie role-players, it should be fun. I understand the system philosophicly, but the mechanics are more what have been confusing me. Your comments have helped a bunch, I'll ask some more later :)

Thankyou!

[irdeggman]

Thankyou for the replies. I'm going to look over all this more this weekend. I ran the first "session" today after work, just got home. Three newbie role-players, it should be fun. I understand the system philosophicly, but the mechanics are more what have been confusing me. Your comments have helped a bunch, I'll ask some more later :)

Thankyou!

Good luck and welcome by the way.

You will most likely find that the 3.5 rules themselves will casue you more trouble than the specific BRCS stuff - especially if you are not familiar with it.

Watch out for the grapple rules - probably the single most complicated pieces of info in the core rules and one of the most often talked about.

[ausrick]

Gosh, Grapple!, and throw in Trip and Disarm, Bull-rush, trample, Over Run. and whatever the heck else. . . but especially grapple. I've been DMing for over a decade and last weekend we set chewing over interpretations in the phb. It slowed down combat forever. And I've been DMing 3.0 since its release. I just wanted to say in Embarrasment "Why can't your characters just try to chop it with your swords like you've done a hundred times before? Why grapple here and why grapple now!"

Just had to say that.