Hello!
Love the Birthright setting; it's one of my two favorites. And while I love the concept of the blood and domain rules, I think the execution could have used a bit of tuning up.
Posted by Azure Trance:
I realize that the origin for this came from the historical explanation of a Kings divine right to rule the masses, but is it the fact that one must be 'blooded' (regents?) to rule a Kingdom and only they are allowed bother people the most?
This has always been my major gripe with the domain rules. It makes no sense that unblooded usurpers and bandit-lords, "tyrants" in the original Greek sense of the word, should be incapable of taking certain ordinary, real-world political actions just because they require a Regency Point payment simply to initiate. The ability to spend RPs to influence success of those actions is a huge enough advantage for blooded rulers; there seems to be no need to unrealistically forbid certain actions to unblooded rulers just for the sake of game balance. Initial RP costs for truly magical actions, like the wizardly Alchemy domain action, I have no problem with.
The regency rules were also a bit harsh on wizardly regents, but the tweaks in the
Book of Magecraft go a long way toward fixing that.
I'm not quite sure how they're handling blooded status right now over at the official Birthright site (I'm having some problems with their "About Bloodlines" page), but when I last waded through their message boards, there was talk of using a prestige class to handle it. I strongly dislike this approach myself; blooded characters were supposed to be strictly superior to unblooded, and having to slow down one's normal class progression to take time to develop blood abilities seems alien to the wonderful feel of the setting, to me at least. I'd probably use a template, or better yet, bonus feats in amounts tied to a character's Blood Point total (akin to the bonus feats
ta'veren characters get in
Wheel of Time), selectable from a mixed list of feats including some normal ones and some new blooded-only ones equivalent to the bloodline powers of 2e Birthright. As ColonelHardisson noted, many blood abilities have been converted into 3e feats already.
Posted by Azure Trance:
I would say to counter that is to make commoners have the ability to be blooded as well (easier then the tighmere[sp] method). Perhaps a magical enhancement to a weapon or something to that effect.
Something like this already existed in 2e Birthright. There was a ceremony that could transfer blood power from one character to another, and the recipient didn't have to be blooded to begin with. The "donor" had to consent to the rite, but the consent could be obtained by force. There were also those blood power gems from the
Book of Magecraft, but I'm not sure whether they would work for unblooded characters.
Hope this helps, and good luck with the new campaign!
