Tainted Bloodline?

[irdeggman]

Why are ECLs associated with the scion templates?


Whether or not an actual ECL is applied to scions, the DM must invoke a virtual one to make up for their increased power as compared to other (non-blooded) characters. This is important when determining the appropriate CR for encounters. There are 3 things that contribute to the increased power of scions; (1) blood abilities, (2) increased hit points and (3) better starting equipment (e.g., starting magic items).

Individually none of these, except for higher power (great and some major) blood abilities, provide enough of an increase to warrant an ECL on their own. When combined, however, the effect is such that an ECL is necessary in order to maintain the correct balance. A scion with only the minor scion template (no actual template, but the scion must use his extra ability roll for this purpose) does not gain an ECL, but also doesn’t gain any blood abilities greater than minor nor do they gain better starting equipment or bonus hit points.

This concept was also used to help give non-blooded characters a bonus to make up for this. Players running non-blooded character get to roll 7 ability scores and assign the highest 6 to their chosen abilities. Between the 2 advantages, an extra ability score and the ECLs, non-blooded characters get to make up for their “loss” of the 10% experience bonus they had in 2nd edition BR.

To sum up the above are the reasons that ECLs were assigned to the various scion templates. Some other bonuses were added (such as a one time increase in the bloods score for the ECL templates) to help balance out the ECL rating.:)

[Birthright-L]

From: "irdeggman" <brnetboard@TUARHIEVEL.ORG>

> This concept was also used to help give non-blooded characters a bonus to
make up for this. Players running non-blooded character get to roll 7
ability scores and assign the highest 6 to their chosen abilities. Between
the 2 advantages, an extra ability score and the ECLs, non-blooded
characters get to make up for their "loss" of the 10% experience bonus they
had in 2nd edition BR.
>
>

This seems terriblly, terribly expensive.


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[usermaatre]

Some Thoughts about Tainted Bloodlines

1. Having a tainted bloodline is not a waste. True, you may get no special abilities, but you get the most rock-and-roll ability of all--the potential to rule a domain.

1.1. Many of the minor nobles and courtiers will have tainted bloodlines. Any collecting
RP will have to have some score.



2. In the spirit of converting blood abilities into a d20 system I suggest the following:

Making the bloodline score a seventh ability produces similarities to the ability score for spellcasters. Blooded characters have access to blood abilities in an analogous way to wizards having access to arcane spells.

However, wizards have access to 9 levels of spells; blooded characters have access to 3 levels of blood abilities: minor, major and great. (Incongruity #1) I would resist the urge to overlay the two. Access to casting a 2nd level spell 1/day may be a minor blood ability, but not all minor blood abilities mimic low-level spells.

3e introduced the idea of 0-level spells (cantrips and orisons) and they are useful and meaningful for spellcasters, whereas cantrips and orisons were less useful in 2e.

I would suggest that there be blood abilities (provisionally called Tainted abilities) that are analogous to 0-level spells. Heck, one of them might be the ability to cast Mend 1/day. (Personally, I would put the Bloodmark ability in the Tainted category.)

I am not suggesting this merely to mimic 3e as much as possible.

Characters with a bloodline strength greater than zero can rule domains. However, from my earlier analogy to spellcaster ability scores, a spellcaster cannot cast a spell without a score of 10. (This is the second incongruity.) Since a wizard or cleric with an Intelligence or Wisdom respectively of 10 can cast 0-level spells, then a Blooded character with a Bloodline score of less than 12 should be able to do minor, but useful tricks too.

3. Should the Bloodline ability limit the maximum realm-spell level in a similar way to Int, Wis, & Cha in 3e? Do you have to have a 19 Bloodline ability score to cast 9th level realm spells? Should you?


4. I would not make it too difficult to raise the Bloodline ability score. I did an experiment with 16 individuals with bloodline scores ranging from 19 to 46. In 4 generations I had so badly diluted all of the bloodlines that I drew several conclusions.

If there were no way to raise bloodline score the following would occur:

A. There would be no marriages between families with great differences in their scores. No one can afford the dilution of the family's power by half of their combined total.

B. There would be a lot of intra-family marriage. Not like the Egyptian royal families where half-brother/half-sister combinations were very common. Nor like the European royal family inbreeding. The most common would be full-brother/full-sister, mother/son or uncle/niece, etc. Of course the uncle/niece would be doubly so because the grandparents would likely have been brother and sister. The people that you are most likely to have similar scores to are your own relatives.

C. The only way to alleviate the royal incest problem is to marry into families that have similar scores, which would be relatively easy for families with a low score, but the Archdukes of Boeruine and Princes of Avanil are going to have great difficulty finding scores with similar power. The number of such families will be small and then they will become so intermarried that they will in effect be a superfamily with all of the problems of royal incest. (which is what happened in Europe)

D. Bloodtheft is a useful way to complicate this problem as are great heroic deeds. But neither can be perennially used as a family strategy for maintaining a strong bloodline. At least not with anywhere near the kind of results that arranged marriages provide.

E. The bloodline derivation comes from the parent with the greater score. I would also make the bloodline score come from the parent with the greater score modified by the lesser score in a small way.

There are five steps in bloodline strength: Tainted, Minor, Major, Great and True. If the parents belong to the same category do not subtract anything from the higher Bloodline score of the parent and assign that score to the child. For every step difference between two parents subtract 1 point from the Bloodline score and assign it to the child. For example, should a True woman marry a Minor man then the child would have a score that was 4 less than mum's score. If both parents were Minor then the child would have the Bloodline score of the parent with the higher score. If dad were Major and mum were Minor, then junior would have a bloodline ability score one less than dad's score.

You would still have to work to keep your bloodline strong, but marrying your mother wouldn't be an attractive option.

This issue is important because the bloodline ability score is now a seventh character stat. Since the score is roughly half of what it was in 2e, the percentile increments between two numbers is 5% on a d20. This is a lot! and if the old formula that junior has a score of half of the total of her parents, then every bloodline will be tainted very quickly and only the PC will have blood abilities.

Usermaatre