Expanding Blood Abilities.

Dungeons & Dragons The Royal Library
1

I`ve been considering a system of 3e blood abilities and a thought occurred…

Bloodline strength categories: tainted, minor, major, great, true.

Blood ability categories; minor, major, great.

The actual descriptors are, of course, largely a semantic issue, but why
not five or more levels of blood abilities rather than three? It might
make it easier to categorize and place them in according to their actual
power. The great form of Resistance for Basaia`s bloodline (75% resistant
to light or fire based attacks) might not really be as powerful as the
Travel ability, for example.

Gary

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2

How do you want to expand the powers?
To minor, major, great, true great and exaptionally great? How do you want to realize this? Most have their strenght already, do you mean, they should update them then? It would be a little unfair, if newly created characters posses extended abilities and old ones not…

Naturally you are right, that these resistances is less powerfull then other abilities (that’s why they are less popular, I think).

3

At 06:26 PM 9/5/2002 +0200, Ariadne wrote:

>How do you want to expand the powers?
>To minor, major, great, true great and exaptionally great? How do you want
>to realize this? Most have their strenght already, do you mean, they
>should update them then? It would be a little unfair, if newly created
>characters posses extended abilities and old ones not…

At first I was thinking of doing it like that; just adding a few
categories, but now I`m thinking there might be a slightly better way that
would interact with the bloodline strength score. It could work like this:

Blood Ability Point
Strength Value
Minor 1-3
Major 4-6
Great 7-10

Each blood ability would have a point value. Bloodmark might be described
as minor(1) while Alertness might be minor(2) and Heightened Ability might
be minor(3). (The actual point values would have to be assessed, of
course, but let`s go with this for now.) Major abilities would be
major(4-6) and great would be great (7-10).

A particular blooded character would get X blood ability points. Let`s
say, for example, that a character had 6 points. Those points would then
earn blood abilities; six minor(1) abilities, three minor(2), a single
major(6), or any combination that added up to 6 points. There could be a
maximum number of blood abilities if one wanted, preventing a character
with a very high bloodline from taking all minor(1-3) abilities and having
scads of them.

Its still in the brainstorming stage, but thats what Im thinking. It would fall into place with some of the other aspects of how character classes should work that Im fiddling around with, so I like it so
far. Such a system, of course, would also require a revision of Table 12:
Blood Ability Acquisition that included how many points each “level” of
bloodline strength got, and all the blood abilities would have to be
assessed as well.

Gary

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4

Gary:
> I`ve been considering a system of 3e blood abilities and a

thought occurred…

Bloodline strength categories: tainted, minor, major, great, true.

Blood ability categories; minor, major, great.

The actual descriptors are, of course, largely a semantic
issue, but why not five or more levels of blood abilities
rather than three? It might make it easier to categorize and
place them in according to their actual power. The great
form of Resistance for Basaia`s bloodline (75% resistant to
> light or fire based attacks) might not really be as powerful
> as the Travel ability, for example.

Not a bad idea…
I was going to “3E” the semantics in my game and make minors into
“Lessers Whatever”, majors into “Whatever”, and greats into “Greater
Whatever”. If there were five then there could be “Minor Whatever”,
Lesser Whatever", “Whatever”, “Greater Whatever”, and “True Whatever”.

I`m also of the opinion that most blood-abilities should be available at
all power-levels and that enhancement of existing abilities should be
more common than getting new ones.

–
John Machin
(trithemius@paradise.net.nz)

“Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All.”
Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Sciendi.

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5

IMC I made some changes in the way blood abilities work. A character who wants to be a scion must take a feat (“blooded scion”, I saw it on one of the conversions here).
The first step to generate a bloodline is to determine the bloodline derivation.
Then the pc rolls to see his bloodline strenght:

Roll------Strenght------Score-----Modifier-----Caster Level
01-40----Tainted------3d6--------+1---------------1
41-70---- Minor--------5d6--------+2--------------5
71-90---- Major--------7d6--------+3--------------10
91-100— Great-------10d6-------+4--------------15
- --------True--------100--------+5--------------20
(PCs can’t start with a True bloodline.)

This table is not definitive, I could change it…
Then he rolls his bloodline score, according to the table and his bloodline strenght. The following table shows the number and type of blood abilities a character will have:

Score-----Minor----Major----Great
01-15-----1--------0---------0
16-30-----2--------0---------0
31-45-----2--------1---------0
46-60-----3--------2---------0
61-75-----3--------2---------1
76-90-----3--------3---------2
91-100----4--------3---------2

The best score a character can have at creation is 60, so you can’t start with a great ability. I find this to be good, since at the low-levels they could unbalance the campaign.
The major difference between this and the original rules is that you do not roll to see if you actually has an ability. If you have, for example a bloodline strenght of 38 you WILL have 2 minor and 1 major ability.
The last step is to determine what are you blood abilities. I use the tables of the Book of Regency, they are much better than the one on the Birthright Rulebook.

The modifier and the caster level on the first table are to determine things like the spell caster level of a bloodline ability that functions like a spell. I thought on basing this on the character level, but IMO this doens’t make much sense. You can be strong and have a weak bloodline… The modifier is like an atribute modifier: to determine the Saving Throw DC of a blood ability…

6

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Gary wrote:

> Each blood ability would have a point value. Bloodmark might be described
> as minor(1) while Alertness might be minor(2) and Heightened Ability might
> be minor(3). (The actual point values would have to be assessed, of
> course, but let`s go with this for now.)

A particular blooded character would get X blood ability points.
[snip] Those points would then earn blood abilities

Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.

I also like Carls method of working bloodline score into character creation. I think I may even be sold on the idea that all scions with the same bloodline strength have the same total power of blood abilities, but Im not convinced for sure just yet.

Ryan Caveney

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