On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, daniel mcsorley wrote:

> Whoa, you just boggled my mind there. That`s a very interesting use
> of the land`s choice rule.

Thanks. =)

> Quibbles: Bloodlines boundary conditions were poorly defined.

Good point.

> bloodline 0 (because you can have a bloodline less than 1, but round
> fractions down),

In my first version of this rule, what I said was that every sentient
creature had some tiny spark of divinity (which predates Deismaar, but
anyway) -- every member of any PC species has some bloodline, even if one
as small as one-billionth of the power represented by Bloodline Score 1;
but this would never be noticed until such a person became a regent.

> Also, isn`t there a rule that you can only invest RP into your bloodline
> once per domain turn? I think I remember that.

Indeed there is. One point per domain turn is also possible, if slightly
less pretty mathematically. I like formulae with aesthetic appeal.

What I first came up used this; say you had a bloodline of 0.001, or
roughly 2^-10. If you have a holding of even one level, you`d get
max(bloodline, domain power) per turn, so in two domain turns you`d have
2^-9 RP saved up. The only thing you could do with this small an amount
of RP is to spend them on increasing your bloodline to 2^-9; thus you`d
have a bloodline of 1 after 20 turns. In practice the only thing to keep
track of is to roll some dice (d4 or 3d20 or whatever you like) and say
that after that many DT, you got a bloodline of 1. The trouble is, that`s
way too slow to keep a new regent from getting utterly squashed.

> Second turn, he gets bloodline 1. Third turn, bloodline 2. This could
> only continue as long as there`s uncollected RP around to raise his
> bloodline in one turn, it shouldn`t bank. So his best bloodline he could
> get `free` like this would be half his domain power.

This also seems reasonable. The reason I like multiple-point increases
each turn is to scale the amount of growth to the power of the domain
inherited, so that the effect of inheriting an 80-point domain versus a
40-point one is not just to keep the same slow growth going on twice as
long, but rather to have growth happen faster (e.g., 2 turns instead of 5
to bloodline 16). This both fits my picture of how such a thing ought to
feel (instant rush of power then a rapidly slowing increase, rather than a
steady progression all the way through) and helps such regents survive
long enough to have a chance to manage their domains in the long term.
If we kept multi-point increases but dropped banking them between turns,
then they`d stop at half-strength but still grow quickly for a time and
then level off to linear, reaching their full "free" score in a number of
domain turns equal to half that score; there also wouldn`t be any turns in
which there was no present increase but would be a future one. I think I
might like this better.


Ryan Caveney

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