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07-27-2018, 12:46 PM #1
Why doesnt anyone "farm" bloodline strength via bloodtheft?
No, i dont mean the way the Gorgon supposedly does it which is incredibly slow and inefficient (yea lets spend a decade trying to get some scions to increase their bloodline strength and then attack me sucidally, great plan).
As described, descendants of a blooded character get the same bloodline score. If someone like an Awnshegh wanted to increase their bloodline strength efficiently, couldnt they just, I dont know, kidnap some blooded characters, force them to have children and kill their children for bloodtheft or force them to give up their bloodline via a ceremony?
And some Awnsheghs can create their own offspring (like the hydra, although i dont know if they are considered blooded) so if they were inhuman enough (and most are) they could kill their own offspring for bloodtheft...
Or just sit around and increase your bloodline strength via investing regency...if the Gorgon did that he would probably have several times his current bloodline score...I mean hes got like 500+ years of regency to work with...
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07-27-2018, 11:54 PM #2
Note: The offspring of scions get the average of their parents' bloodline score, not the same score. So, a scion with a 40 who mates with one with a 30 is going to have a child with a score of 35. And one who has a child with a commoner is going to cut his/er bloodline score in half.
Despite that, the way bloodtheft works, it is always worth a few points, no matter how low the bloodline score of the victim is, so it could work the way you're describing. This has been a game mechanical problem with the setting since its inception, and folks have presented a few solutions, starting often with role-playing/DM fiat types of things. That is, a PC or NPC who went about such an endeavor would become the target of an adventuring group (or groups) whose goal it was to destroy such an evil. The argument goes that anything like a program of breeding scions for "harvest" would be so attractive to the adventuring community that it'd be doomed to fail simply by dint of the waves of adventurers whose righteous indignation (and DM hooks) would interfere. There's also the idea that the scions themselves—who are, after all, born with the blood of the gods in them—would rise up as underdogs to destroy their potential bloodthief. Or their respective mothers would. Or their respective (unkidnapped) relatives would. Etc.
Then there are those who propose game mechanical solutions. Bloodlines can't be increased by the same bloodline more than once, or need a certain amount of time to "cool down" between acts of bloodtheft. I wrote up a system of bloodtheft that means a scion's bloodline score wouldn't increase if he committed bloodtheft on another scion whose bloodline score was 20 less than his own. I like that because it also makes the Gorgon's period rampages less about raising his bloodline score and more about rampaging for the sake of rampaging. Or whatever other motive he might have. Plus, it means nobody could "farm" his own offspring using some sort of noble "prima nocta" with every commoner wench in his domain in order to commit bloodtheft on his own offspring. Scions would have to be breeding with someone with similar score. After having a bloodline score of about 38, that is.
All of these ideas, however, be they role-playing or game mechanical, are interpretations or re-interpretations of the source materials. Those original materials didn't necessarily take into consideration the full implications of the basic ideas. So, there's not a really good reason why any of the longer lived awnsheghlien (or just evil-inclined scions...) wouldn't go about doing what you suggest until they reach some sort of threshold that is outside the game mechanics of the setting.Last edited by geeman; 07-28-2018 at 02:26 AM.
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12-16-2024, 09:31 PM #3
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Great idea to factory farm but there might be some issues.
Shared bloodlines p57
The campaign setting says that "all members of a family SHARE the same bloodline derivation and strength." (page 57). So lets just say you find two blooded individuals from the same family and drain the Patriarch to 0, do all of them drain to 0? This concept of shared family bloodline/fortunes has strong evidence in reality (Kennedys, Machiavelli, Ming, Tudor, Roele, etc)
Individual bloodlines p64
If we allow for individual bloodlines. Page 64 of the book says that children get the average of the parents bloodline.
The Gorgon kidnaps a blooded male with a 20 point bloodline and a female with a 10 point bloodline. He somehow manages to mate them and after 9 months 2 children are born, with a 15 bloodline (20+10 / 2).
The Gorgon now needs to keep the children safe for 15-20 years before inbreeding them. Assuming after 15 years the bonding works you now have 2 grandchildren with a bloodline of fifteen and probable genetic issues.
If the Gorgon kills them he will get at most 1 point for each of them for 17-22 years of trouble. Or he could roll stomp some nearby provinces, test his sword out on their regents for laughs, and get the same or better result.
This gets even worse if you are breeding elves as that could take centuries.
Book alternative ending
Roele before he dies channels his bloodline into the ground to stop the Gorgon getting it. If this is possible, the factory farmed bloodlines would almost certainly do this to stop their masters getting it making farming a waste of time.
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12-23-2024, 05:12 PM #4
Awnies don't create blooded offspring once they are fully transformed, but monstrous races, so they can't breed their own offspring.
But the idea of, say, lots of goblin children being produced by harems of captive female scions and then periodically harvested has been raised a few times. As Geeman notes there is nothing in the original canon to stop it, although if you read the conspectus, etc and wider idea of what a bloodline is (teased out here and there with the idea of a bloodline loss for a major failure and so on) its in keeping with the original setting to rule that it just doesn't work - the divinity will not be so manipulated. Personally I would say that slavery/otherwise equivalent subjugation effectively suppressed the bloodline until the scion breaks free, although I quote like the idea floated on the site previously that you can't harvest the same family lineage more than once.
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