Bloodlines?

[CIDE]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm#

I'm not sure if I'm simply not understanding this or what.

Say I have a level 1 fighter using the Major Celestial bloodline (For the sake of ease as it's at the top of the page). I get no penalties as long as I take a blood line level prior to Level 12. But....there's 20 levels for the Major bloodline.

What's the point of these? Unless I go straight all 20 levels for a major blood line I'd be DEEP into epic levels before any of these give me anything decent. IF I'm reading these right.

Anyone able to explain it for a layman?

[Tyndmyr]

Bloodline levels grant you bonuses. The bonuses come at certain char levels. You take the bloodline levels in lieu of other levels, but you otherwise level normally.

So, if you take a minor bloodline, you only invest one level of your build into it, but get a sprinkling of minor things.

I mostly only take minor bloodlines for games I do not expect to reach the level wherein I pay for it, making it basically a free gain.

[jindra34]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm#

I'm not sure if I'm simply not understanding this or what.

Say I have a level 1 fighter using the Major Celestial bloodline (For the sake of ease as it's at the top of the page). I get no penalties as long as I take a blood line level prior to Level 12. But....there's 20 levels for the Major bloodline.

What's the point of these? Unless I go straight all 20 levels for a major blood line I'd be DEEP into epic levels before any of these give me anything decent. IF I'm reading these right.

Anyone able to explain it for a layman?

You would only need to take 3 levels max in a bloodline, the 20 levels deal is the character level also know as HD or total number of levels taken. So if you got 20 fighter levels then you get all the benefits.

[dsmiles]

With LA buyoff, some of the bloodlines can give useful little boosts, but others jut give you the suck. Without LA buyoff, I wouldn't take a bloodline.

[big teej]

With LA buyoff, some of the bloodlines can give useful little boosts, but others jut give you the suck. Without LA buyoff, I wouldn't take a bloodline.

unless reality has been twisted someway, or my reading comprehension dies everytime I read the bloodline rules in UA

....they don't have LA :smallconfused:

[dsmiles]

Eh. We've always counted those three empty levels you have to invest as LA, just like the "by-level" templates and monster races that started in Savage Species and continued (without much improvement, mind you) in Races of Destiny.

[Darrin]

unless reality has been twisted someway, or my reading comprehension dies everytime I read the bloodline rules in UA

....they don't have LA :smallconfused:

Yep. In fact, that's one of the few things that's explicitly clear about bloodlines: they cannot be combined with LA at all.
[Edit] Apparently I was wrong. About Bloodlines and LA. I am not surprised by this.

I think it's supposed to work like a "Reverse Level Adjustment". Instead of getting the immediate benefits of LA and the immediate XP penalty that you can slowly buy off later, you buy the Bloodline levels in "installments" and get the benefits gradually as you level up.

Unfortunately, the designer explained it so badly, nobody can tell how exactly you pay for them or whether they count towards ECL.

[Ellrin]

Okay, I actually recently was going over bloodline levels and realized it was a bit more complex than I actually thought it was (and can actually be good for getting into prestige classes early).

For a major bloodline, like the one you have, you have to take a "bloodline level" before you hit 3rd, 6th, and 12th levels (well, you don't have to, but you take XP penalties, etc., etc.) The levels listed in the bloodline description aren't bloodline levels, but character levels (which bloodline levels don't count towards determining).

So essentially, you start out at first level, level up, and then when you gain enough XP to level up again, you put that experience into the bloodline instead of your next character level. You don't get any of the normal benefits of leveling up with two important exceptions. Your max skill ranks (using your current class's skills as your class skills) go up as if you had gained a level in that class. You don't gain any skill points, but the maximum number of ranks you can put into them goes up. (So you can retrain your skills, as per PHB2, and get, say, 8 ranks in Knowledge (Arcana) for your relevant prestige class as early as level 4, assuming it's a class skill).

The second benefit is that your character and caster level go up by one, for all effects that depend on it and in all classes that your character has taken levels in.

After you take the bloodline level, you continue on to earn experience towards your third character level; while none of the experience you sank into the bloodline counts towards the level, you don't need any more experience to get to 3rd character level than normal.

Essentially, it's all benefit and very little drawback--no more than buying off LA, anyway. And since it doesn't count as LA, you can actually do the two at the same time, if you don't mind slowing your progression down even more.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

If only there were some kind of ... handbook (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Bloodlines+Handbook). Or a thread somewhere on this forum to ask "Where can I go to understand B

[Manateee]

There are a few interpretations ranging from useless to interesting to pretty abusive.

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Generally, they play best with characters that benefit from having the highest number of levels in the highest number of classes.

(Eg. even by the most rigid bloodline interpretation, an Ardent 5/Sangehirn 1/Meditant 1/Ectopic Adept 1 with a Major Bloodline would have access to level 9 powers at ECL 11.)

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One thing that remains consistent though, is that if you're not expecting a campaign to last until level 12, a minor bloodline is something for nothing.

So hey, free stuff.