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  1. #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...

  2. #2
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Question View Post
    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...
    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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