PDA

View Full Version : [Feat] Vandrel Bloodline [3.5, PEACH]



Dairun Cates
2008-09-09, 03:35 PM
Editing Done. Sorry for the slight glitch.

The Backstory:
This mostly comes from a joke with a friend. Despite the fact that I GM 90% of the time, a good friend of mine and I have gotten in an unusual habit of building an entire family bloodline over numerous systems and campaigns. It started as a joke. The friend in question had played a half-elf pokemon trainer in a space opera/high school campaign (don't ask) whose jealous female dragon pet monster ended up gaining a human form and ended up becoming his girlfriend.

We were playing a group of noblemen twin spellcasters in an upcoming campaign, and we needed a name. We ended up turning our spell-casters in said characters ancestors. Well, the campaign goes through, and one of the twins ends up falling in love with a forest guardian unicorn who takes the form of a beautiful brunette girl.

A huge portion of the campaign is dedicated to his unfortunate attempts to save her. Thanks to the way a related campaign went, it's assumed that said character eventually fathered children while his twin sister went off to become one of the most powerful sorceresses in the realm.

Well, this starts the huge joke about the "impurities" of the Vandrel bloodline. Because of said spellcaster, the Half-elf had now been retconned as having a very small part unicorn blood. Ever since then, there's been a habit of one of us playing a Vandrel in a campaign and ultimately adding to the bloodline in some way.

At Dinner recently, I remembered that there was a feat in 2nd edition Star Wars d20 that was the "Skywalker Bloodline". We joked about making the Vandrel bloodline feat and well... Here's the D&D version

Yes, there is actually a story behind all of these.

Vandrel Bloodline
Prerequisites: Human, 1st Level
Benefit: Your character belongs to an ancient bloodline of unlucky heroes with a wide mix of supernatural powers.

Most of your bloodline is dormant, but some portion of it has manifested. Roll randomly for either 1 major bloodline trait or 2 minor bloodline traits. You may pick your abilities by GM discretion.

Minor Traits
1. Elven Blood- Gain +1 to Listen, Search, and Spot Checks

2. Diviner's Eye- You gain the spell Augury once a day as a spell-like ability. Treat character level as a caster level for purposes of % chance of success.

3. Dragon Eye- You gain low-light vision as a natural ability. You also have a slight uncontrollable greed for treasure.

4. Fire Starter- All spells that belong to the Fire Element gain a +2 to damage.

5. Deft Hands- Gain a +2 to Sleight of Hand checks

6. Magician- Gain Prestidigitation as a spell-like ability. Gain Character Level/2 uses a day.

7. Natural Healer- Gain a +2 insight to Heal Checks. You are consider trained if you have no points in it.

8. At one with Nature- Gain a +2 insight to Survival checks.

Major Traits
1. Unicorn Blood- Gain Cure Light Wounds once a day as a supernatural ability. At Level 5, the Character also gains a use of Cure Moderate Wounds. At Level 10, the Character gains one use of cure Serious Wounds. At level 15, the character gains 1 extra use of each. Treat character level as caster level.

2. Eye of the Stick- The Character has a knack for seeing into the future. Once a week, the character can meditate for 10 minutes and gain a severe insight into the future. What this reveals is GM's discretion, but the visions are lucid and give accurate portrayals of probable events in the near future.

3. Dragon Breath- The character gains a 20-ft Cone breath weapon as a supernatural ability. This breath weapon deals 1d6 damage/4 levels, takes a standard action to use, and requires one turn of recharge between uses.

4. Fire Master- All Fire typed spells gain +1 damage per dice rolled.

5. Dimensional Mastery- Gain 1 usage of the spell Dimension Door daily as a supernatural ability. This version can only transport the user.

6. Adaptable- Once a day, gain +3 insight to attack and damage rolls against one target of your choice.

Special: This feat can be taken multiple times, but the first time it is taken must be taken at first level. The same trait cannot be taken twice. Wielder's of the Vandrel bloodline suffer some turn of incredibly bad luck to compensate for the power of their bloodline. The GM determines this form of the bad luck. It can take the form of a curse, people being strongly prejudiced against the character for their blood, being prone to bouts of insanity, or even just general bad luck in life. This curse of bad luck applies only the first time the feat is taken.

Example Case of Bad Luck:
- a -1 on all skill rolls for the benefit of the character
- the character suffers a major prejudice and suffers a -4 on charisma based skills for one race
- The character suffers from some form of insanity. Every morning the character rolls a d20. If they roll a natural 1, they go beserk and physically attack the nearest target available until subdued.
- The character's bloodline physically manifests itself in a way that is obvious to arcane spellcasters. This can be something like unusual colored hair, an arcane sigil, or a physical trait of one of their bloodlines. This gives a -4 to disguise checks, makes them easy to identify to people hunting them, and a DC 20 Knowledge: Arcane check can reveal their general basics of their nature. Particularly evil characters that make the Arcane Check may want to capture the character for experimentation.

This is my first attempt at homebrewing a feat, and I don't play D&D as much as I used to (I try a lot of systems). So, I've inevitably screwed something up here. I'd appreciate any criticism on the feat in general or the bloodline traits. I'll add more abilities when I think of them or more Vandrels get played.

Dairun Cates
2008-09-09, 05:18 PM
Right. Finished it up. Sorry about the original posting being incomplete. When I hit enter to make a new paragraph, it hit post instead.

boomwolf
2008-09-09, 06:26 PM
I don't see how bad luck is implanted. its a "DM does the thinking" feat, and might get annoying, or banned by DMs that don't want even MORE work on their shoulders.

But what IS a vandrel anyway?

Dairun Cates
2008-09-09, 06:44 PM
I don't see how bad luck is implanted. its a "DM does the thinking" feat, and might get annoying, or banned by DMs that don't want even MORE work on their shoulders.

But what IS a vandrel anyway?

If you're asking how an entire bloodline gets unlucky, the shortest explanation is it's a cursed bloodline.

I could probably just change it to say the player needs to pick a form of bad luck their character has and have it be approved by their GM. I really put that in there for 3 reasons. First, it meshes with the actual story behind the bloodline and the fact that every member that's been played has been cursed to some form of horrible luck. Second, it's a way of balancing out getting one huge advantage or two small ones. Third, I just enjoy the few feats that have defects attached to them. I think they're interesting.

As for question 3, Vandrel is just the last name of the person who started the bloodline. Every single one of the traits in the feat is actually representative of someone's abilities in the bloodline that's been played as a character. It's mostly a joke for my RP'ing group, but I figured I should actually structure and balance it as a legitimate feat.

Owrtho
2008-09-09, 06:56 PM
One possibility for bad luck would be something like "all rolls for the benefit of the character are reduced by 1."

Owrtho

Dairun Cates
2008-09-09, 08:20 PM
One possibility for bad luck would be something like "all rolls for the benefit of the character are reduced by 1."

Owrtho

Good idea. I added that and a few other examples of bad luck curses.