Pure Blooded (Advanced Talents in Review)

[SangoProduction]

Preamble: Next up on the chopping block: Blood sphere.

Post Review Analysis: Neat. Blood sphere only had 1 Questionable, and 1 Warning (instant ban) rating. Probably due to the overall low power of the sphere. But yeah, this one's safe.

Ratings: (WIP)
Warning: This rare rating is given to talents that have truly game-breaking potential.

Questionable: These talents have an outsized impact, and should be considered in context before being allowed.

Acceptable: This is your standard faire advanced talent tier. Worth looking at, but rarely is it going to cause the catastrophic downfall of your campaign.

Fluffy: These little to no functional difference to a character. These are also the safest to give out as reward talents. For example, if they beat the witch who eats children, they might manifest the ability to summon items made of gingerbread.

Unknown: For when I really just don't know where it would lie. It's probably needlessly complicated. Take a good look at it yourself. I'll try and provide a cliff notes version of the talent, along with potential pit falls.

Spoiler: Warning

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Union Of Blood: Very Cool. Thematic. But wow. This is an instant ban in my books. This trivializes literally all HP-based challenge. Which... includes a lot of combat that isn't save or die... and combat takes a long time. It's either an out right total party wipe, or they don't even notice it.
Unless you keep dispelling it every time you want to challenge them... which is probably going to get a bit annoying, since it's just saying "Hey, no. Don't use that," while still letting them take the talent.

Spoiler: Questionable

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Cardiovascular Ascension: Save or drop to 1 hp is worth considering whether it's right for your game. There are non-advanced save or actually lose/die, but still.

Spoiler: Acceptable

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Overclock: An extra standard action each turn? My god so OP... Except that it's level 18, and comes with Con burn.

Puppet Master: I mean, it's a very cool gimmick. It can get abusive to be able to trade your standard action for your entire team getting standard actions. But in general it's alright, and won't break the game due to how Blood Puppet works.

Sanguine Minion: If the fact that they have blood elementals following them wasn't turning everyone away, and you already didn't mind the summons, then having them last an indefinite duration doesn't seem terrible.

Sanguiphilia: This does have a functional effect - it heals and grants basically passive Vitality benefits. But it's very minor. Especially since those Vitality benefits come with the assumption that you already have Life sphere, which can heal much better without advanced talents.

Spoiler: Fluffy

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Drain Lifeblood: 1 con bleed vs 1 bleed / CL? They would need 2x the HD compared to their CL for that to result in equal damage. As a debuff, it's very narrow (granted focused at their target save), and happens very slowly, getting to -2 after 3 to 4 turns. Now, it presumably stacks with normal bleed but...who cares?

Essence Manipulation: Just makes their sphere usable against more monsters. It's a weak sphere. It's fine.