Blood Abilities: Domain Level

[aluman]

These are the ones from 2e that leapt out as mostly domain (I haven't gone to the storage facility and dragged out my old blood enemies supplement yet).
Battlewise
Blood History (more because its non-combative than anything)
Bloodmark (as above, grants a minor bonus to diplomacy probably).
Character Reading - Has limited combative ability, large social.
Direction Sense - Really less combative than non-adventuring.
Travel - This could be retooled into 1/encounter teleportation affects as well (though it loses flavor).

[AndrewTall]

2e, and to a degree 3e, both focused the bloodlines on adventure level play.

I'd look to create bloodline abilities that affect realm level play more. This does potentially cause a balance issue, but only if blood abilities add to adventure play rather than replacing an existing feature (ffat, skill, power) of it.

I would for example welcome bloodline abilities such as:

1. Weather ward. The regent can avert natural disasters such as storms, floods, blizzards, etc.

2. Sense province. The regent can sense the mood of the province allowing them to frame actions in ways that are readily accepted (bonus to actions?)

3. Land's blessing. The province responds to the presence of the regent producing a bounteous harvest while the regent is present - increasing the maximum level of the province, or its income if the population is low.

4. Pride of the people. Those loyal to the scion are healthier in the scion's presence, army units heal quickly, others gain a morale bonus of some sort.

5. Intercession. The scion has a priestly ability to intercede in a followers fate and request that the gods look more favourably on the scion's follower. This would probably pick up one of the priestly powers and really be there to add to the flavour of scions as touched by the gods.

etc.

[aluman]

I'm ok with creating more blood abilities as well, just those from the base book won't affect an adventuring party much, but could come into play on domain level.

[AndrewTall]

Well, the big question is should blood abilities affect adventure play at all.

Abilities which affect realm play only are the easiest to balance out in a group of regents and non-regents since adventure level abilities either makes the scion 'better' or need some balancing system (i.e. the 3e level adjustment) built in.

I like the idea of players having multiple options - so generating ability trees for each type of scion and saying that they can take one of those abilities instead of a class ability seems like a fair way of doing the bloodlines, similarly scion-only feats could be bought instead of the regular feats.

That then leaves the 'real' bloodline work that needs doing on the 4e conversion restricted purely to domain level play - which we can handle easily.

[Thelandrin]

We definitely need to "balance" the abilities so they at least have either a realm effect or adventure effect depending on the scenario, otherwise people will either have lots of power at one end and little at the other.

[bbeau22]

It might be too big of a change to remove blood abilities from adventure play. I am for one trying to keep the world as close as possible to the original. I think there are ways to make blood abilities balance into adventure play.

- Feats for blood powers.
- Seperate paragon paths for each derivation.

What we need to do ... and I don't have the books some others might have to help me.

Make people use their starting feat to denote if they are blooded or not. That will give them the option to use feats to gain some blood powers. This should also give them access to abilities (Paragon Path) for each seperate derivation.

Now the feats and path abilities will have pre-reqs to keep people from getting certain powers too quickly.

Not sure if this makes sense for 4th edition.

-BB

[aluman]

Feats for nonfighters are no longer just fluff is the problem with that approach, its not for rounding out a character or giving them a little umph All classes get a feat about every other level (you wind up with 18 feats by level 30),

However
There are elemental styling feats that boost damages for a wizard
There are bolstering feats for leaders to boost various buffs and healing they give
There are divine feats that allow clerics and paladins to channel their god
There are pact feats that allow the warlock to perform more ably
There are still generic feats (including one to get trained in a skill you weren't) that are useful to everyone

In addition to the weapon feats

And then there is Racial feats.

If we tie Blood entirely into feats/paragon paths We either have everyone being blooded or no one depending on how its balanced.

If we divorce blood from character sheet by having 'domain level' blood affects and 'adventure level' blood affects and make the second feats/paths then its back to a better feel of if it fits the character or not.

[aluman]

We definitely need to "balance" the abilities so they at least have either a realm effect or adventure effect depending on the scenario, otherwise people will either have lots of power at one end and little at the other.

Yeah, I wanted to get a list of blood abilities for now that should be retoole to the domain level, as I think that step will be easier then sorting out how to apporach making blood abilities in the adventure useful while not being 'absolutely nessarcy'

[bbeau22]

We are going to have to come up with rules for both. But we can keep them wholely seperate so if someone wants to not include adventure level blood abilities they can.

Ultimately we need to find a way to balance blood powers with character building. Keeping the system seperate leads to an unbalance of people with blood powers and people without. I might be ok with that because the setting could dictated some individuals being better than others.

Now tying in blood powers with feats and paths is an easy way to balance out the powers. If we keep them balanced with other abilities they can get then they will have important decisions to make. Grow their domain level powers or class level powers. I think many campaigns ... like the one I run .... has both.

I can see a situation where a powerful blooded individuals would focus on blood power training than their standard class. This leaves them open to being killed more easily one on one ... but a force to reckoned with on a domain level.

Personally I feel we should tie them into feats and paths. With the amount they get of each .... makes the most sense.

[AndrewTall]

To me the easiest route is to list out feats and abilities for each bloodline. A blooded character can choose an ability / feat from the bloodline list instead of their usual class feat / ability when they level up.

That way you:
a) always have balance - the scion has the same number of feats and abilities as anyone else (1 per level from what I can see).
b) can retain the low magic feel by restricting the highly magical abilities / feats to scion paths.
c) get an adventure level feel to bloodline without having to make major changes to the existing system.

To differentiate bloodlines you could restrict a tainted bloodline to abilities of level 1-5, minor of level 6-10, etc in the bloodline list or some such.

I'd then treat the rest of bloodline and domain rule entirely separately to the adventure level rules. Awnshegh would probably need a third system still.