Taint and Bloodlines

[Xaositech]

In Unearthed Arcana, I've been looking at several different variants and two of them happen to be Taint & Bloodlines. Hypothetically, if a PC is allowed to take a bloodline of something like a devil or a demon, how would you have Taint work within it? Mechanics wise, one would think that the PC would become tainted much more quickly than the others ... and to be truthful, given his half-fiend nature, he would be more apt to be susceptible to Taint and quickly descend into evil in comparison to the other players in the game. I'm curious about trying to balance it out a bit ... knowing that they should indeed be more affected by it given their nature, but not so quick of a rapid descent as if it were all but futile.

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[frankthedm]

In Unearthed Arcana, I've been looking at several different variants and two of them happen to be Taint & Bloodlines. Hypothetically, if a PC is allowed to take a bloodline of something like a devil or a demon, how would you have Taint work within it? Mechanics wise, one would think that the PC would become tainted much more quickly than the others ... and to be truthful, given his half-fiend nature, he would be more apt to be susceptible to Taint and quickly descend into evil in comparison to the other players in the game. I'm curious about trying to balance it out a bit ... knowing that they should indeed be more affected by it given their nature, but not so quick of a rapid descent as if it were all but futile.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Opinion: A game with taint is one i would recomment to not allow a half fiend PC. The other charcters might risk becoming tainted by that PC and even if that is not a danger, it might feel weird, with the rest of the party trying to stay clean, yet associating with one so unclean.

Evil and Taint
Simply having an evil alignment is no defense against taint — it is too profound an effect for personal beliefs or moral codes to ward it off. Only undead and creatures with the evil subtype can ignore taint. Of course, you may choose for evil creatures to become tainted by good. You can create sacred places and objects in your campaign that taint evil characters as well. You could say that creatures with the good subtype are immune to the effects of taint in such sacred places, but those sacred places would rot away creatures of the evil subtype.

Alternatively, you could inflict taint according to the conflict between law and chaos, along with or instead of taint associated with the good-vs.-evil conflict.

 

[Xaositech]

Opinion: A game with taint is one i would recomment to not allow a half fiend PC. The other charcters might risk becoming tainted by that PC and even if that is not a danger, it might feel weird, with the rest of the party trying to stay clean, yet associating with one so unclean.

In this campaign world I'm brewing, there's two major factions - one abyssal and the other infernal - who've pretty much taken their Blood War onto this world and the PCs are the rabble that is the minority whose caught in the middle. Post apocalyptic, if you will. Some may be rebels trying to eradicate both factions and others are simply just trying to survive and stay out of the way.

It just so happens that one of the PCs have a fiend bloodline. I'm trying to decide that with each manifestation that they get assigned another point of taint or if it is natural to them, they're not affected. As for the rest of the PCs in the group, I suspect in the beginning they could be tainted by the half-fiend PCs evolution, but some may eventually grow resistant to it as they come to expect it. *shrug*