[b]Originally posted by gav
I don't see the issue with most of the comments. Don't you guys use the Gods Haelyn, Nesire, Erik, Rournil etc. These are the scions I refer to who would have True bloodlines. I know that they are pretty powerful, but I thought the idea was that the gods of Birthright were quite powerful.
My take on the issue is that the old gods died and the new gods were created from mortals exposed to the old gods blood essence (True presumably). That’s what gave them the “Power” to create their own realms and have divine followers. I want to extend the rules to explain how the gods powers work. The gods were humans once and gained godhood. So although unlikely it is possible for a mortal to travel to the outlands and create their own realm. If two gods fought each other and mortals were present when another god died then I need rules to cover what happens to the newly created “demi-god”.
I hope to use the return of the Cold Rider to be a catalyst for a renewed war between the gods and are therofore developing the mechanics. Indeed a non-scion campaign is effected by the scemes of regents - so when the players become powerful regents they must still bow to the scemes of the gods.
I make no comment on how you choose to run your campaign (no planar travel, no gods - whatever). I merely ask whether anyone else has any ideas to help me develop my thoughts further. For example I would add another column “True” to table 2-2 of the First Release Playtest Rules for Birthright with 1 starting at bloodscore 24 and an extra 1 each 8 bloodscore. This would mean that a bloodscore of 100 True (a weaker god) would get 10 True Bloodpowers (and lots of Great, Major and minor). In addition I would have Godly Actions (another type like standard, court, character) that only those of True bloodline could use - such as Godly Rule - Which can allow the God to spend large sums of RP to increase the power of his godly realm.
As a DM I would use this concept to run the gods as NPCs - with interesting results if one god was busy and chose not to provide a service to his followers (such as divine link) for a short period for some reason. I could also track what happens to the dead. The new Birthright rules p87 say that a pertitioner can dice with Sera in her realm “The Marketplace Eternal” with a prize of gaining reincarnation (under my rules a Godly Action)so I am considering running a short group of sessions for dead charcters (as there are quite a few over the last 5 years) and need to know “where they stand” before I start.
Gav [/b]
I would recommend using Deities and Demigods vice manual of the planes to capture how to best describe a god. There are options in that book that describe different methods of divinity including a small write up on gods that die.
IMO I see no real correlation between a god an a true blood line. What I mean is that gods’ blood is not difined in terms of blood strength, it is beyond being “true”, more of a “pure” divine blood if you will. The gods are not scions, that was not presented in the 2nd ed BRRB nor was it presented in the playtest version - and it was not intended that they be described as scions (at least in the playtest version).
The present deities are not “carbon copies” of the old ones, Haelyn is not Anduiras reincarnated but the one who was the closest to him both physically and philosophically. How could Khrisha, Belinik and the Cold Rider all be Azrai reincarnated? I tend to view them as each having an aspect of Azrai but not the whole, even though the Cold Rider is the closest to the evil that was Azrai and could easily be made into Azrai reborn if desired.
Note that both in 2nd ed and the proposed version a character can never “acquire” a true blood line except through direct investiture, not blood theft nor raising of blood score via regency.
I think that what you are describing as True blood powers are best though of as salient divine abilites (again see Deities and Demigods) and would probably be best described using that book. Also it is already written and is an “Official” WotC D&D product which makes using it a whole lot easier and consistent with D&D rules than trying to create your own system.
As proposed in the playtest version all planer travel passes through the shadow world so that is an important aspect to keep in mind. I only use this since you brought up the playtest version as a source for the planes you are attempting to capture.
As far as adding more blood abilities, most of the comments I’ve seen on this one pretty much think that the playtest version granted too many blood abilities at high blood scores and the very bottom had too few. So IMO this would translate into not adding more blood abilities but rather lowering the table (or equivalent method).
Deities and Demigods uses divine ranks to determine the amount of abilites that a deity gains. This reflects their individual power and number of followers, etc. When we put together the playtest verrsion we deliberatly removed any references to books other than the core 3 (PHB, MM and DMG) that would make them “required” sources to play since not everyone internationally would have equal access to them, also it gets expensive buying these products. This does not mean that they can’t be used nor that they shouldn’t be used in an individual campaign. For example if a campaign has characters that are reaching 20th level they should definitely use the Epic Level Handbook but that was not for us to dictate.
