So, in my world, one of the (if not the) major players are the world's fey/fairies. Among these fey were once the elves, the most talented craftsmen of the fairy people, who grew so good at the making things of beauty that they eventually created life.
Elves created the dragons. Much later they went on to make much more horrible things and were banished from the fairyworld for their sin, corrupted by the power of creation, but dragons were the first (and thus untainted) creation. The race of dragons was in its infancy beloved and spoiled by the fey people. When they began manifesting their wills flawlessly in the form of sorcery the fey rejoiced and mimmicked them (for fey, ultimately, are shadow-creatures, their existence a facsimile of nature, of human culture, of anything else that impresses itself upon them), and have favored their own feyish breed of sorcery ever since.
Much later humans would discover sorcery and learn from it, dismantling and distilling its core principles and building upon them the tradition of wizardry, and from there spread the myriad other magical traditions which we know today.
So, that's how I've got things worked out so far in my game. The only problem I see is that I don't know how to explain bloodlines other than "dragon" and "fey".
Celestials aren't sorcerous. Demons and devils aren't sorcerous. Elementals aren't sorcerous. Etc, etc. I want to USE these bloodlines (even if they're much less common) because they kick ass, but I'm having trouble explaining how a human with ANY non-human ancestor could potentially be a sorceror.
Any thoughts?
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they began manifesting their wills flawlessly in the form of sorcery...
Celestials aren't sorcerous. Demons and devils aren't sorcerous. Elementals aren't sorcerous. Etc, etc. I want to USE these bloodlines (even if they're much less common) because they kick ass, but I'm having trouble explaining how a human with ANY non-human ancestor could potentially be a sorceror.
Any thoughts?
If that is your source of sorcery (pun intended!) then perhaps celestial, elemental, demonic etc. heritage, when mingled with mortal blood is capable of bringing some mortals close to a flawless manifestation of will.
Fey and Dragon would be the oldest of the bloodlines but other types of creatures found use for the power of sorcery and later transformed or mutated it into their own unique lines.
Fey and Dragon would be the oldest of the bloodlines but other types of creatures found use for the power of sorcery and later transformed or mutated it into their own unique lines.
This sounds pretty solid.
You could also, if you want to take a slightly easier route, claim that demons and celestials and the kind existed when the fey did, effectively preceding life the elves created.
Personally I like the mutated idea better as it also allows you to create your own bloodlines under the same guise should you find the need or desire.
It doesn't even take that much mutation from a fluff perspective. Celestials and infernals might not be "sorcerous" but they certainly can produce a number of magical effects by a sheer act of will. No preparation (like a wizard or cleric) but simply willing the magic into existance.
Sure sounds like a natural form of innate sorcery to me, even if the celestial/infernal mechanic is a bit different.
Then they breed with mortals. Mortals are never bort with the innate ability to teleport at will or summon outsiders to aid them, right from the cradle. Mortals with these bloodlines, however, have ties to the magic of their ousdier ancestors. Magic of some incomprehensible kind flows in their veins. Unlike their outsider ancestors, they cannot manifest powerful magic in the blink of eye while still infants, but they can invest some years of practice, trial & error, and studying (themselves, not necessarily studying magic the way a wizard does).
And all that hard work pays off by eventually allowing them to reach down, deep inside, find that core of magic in their soul and bend it to their sorcerous will in ways that makes wizards weep with envy.
Now, the fluff on a few of the bloodlines is harder, like elementals, but it works kinda the same way, especially if you add in a twist. "Oh, you say your grandmammy was a fire mephit, eh? Fine, but every level when you pick two spells, one of them must be a fire spell, and none of them can be from any other element that has elementals." Maybe kick them a bit more of a bloodline bonus since you're limiting their spell selection a bit, but it might be a fun twist.
I think Geriant may be on to something. I'm not exactly sure what yet, but what I'm picturing is a viel cast between mortals and the arcane, with dragons (and dragon blood) being a tear in the center while the various extraplanar bloodlines represent fraying at the edges.
The "mutations" line of thinking didn't click with me first (excuse me, I thought I posted here last night but I guess it never showed up), but I think I'm starting to get it.
Would you mean, for example, that a sorcerous lich (who first got his sorcery by being dragon-blooded) might have infused unborn children with his power to create an undead bloodline?
Or is this more a matter of elementals/outsiders/etc devising some means to steal the magic for their own, then passing this magic to their children? I suppose some outsiders do cast as sorcerors...
Blake, that sounds like it would be a good explaination for sorcery in most games (where sorcery represents any sort of innate magic). You could even say that dragons are the ones who inherited it from some outsider bloodline, being the first creatures to slowly develope their powers as you describe. I don't think that works if you're saying that sorcery is innately dragon-y, though.
Blake, that sounds like it would be a good explaination for sorcery in most games (where sorcery represents any sort of innate magic). You could even say that dragons are the ones who inherited it from some outsider bloodline, being the first creatures to slowly develope their powers as you describe. I don't think that works if you're saying that sorcery is innately dragon-y, though.
No, no, I'm not saying that at all.
Dragons are only one of a myriad of creatures that have innate magical abilities (not even counting the ones who have actual spells they prepare or cast).
Perhaps there are more dragons in our world, or at least more that mate with other species, than there are outsiders. Outsiders are, after all, er, uh, outside most of the time, right? No mating done when you're on another plane.
So maybe most sorcerers had a great-granddaddy who was a dragon. Maybe even for a time, maybe even today, most people think that all sorcerers had a dragon in the family tree. Or maybe in the family wood shed...
That doesn't mean that from time to time, some celestial, infernal, elemental, vampire, beholder, illithid, leprechaun, drow, aboleth, hag, or whatever, doesn't knock up a mortal (or get knocked up by a mortal as the case may be) and deliver a normal looking, normal seeming child into the world. A that posesses and/or passes on the innate magic to future generations of sorcerers - and most of those future sorcerers will be surrounded by the ignorant masses who incorrectly attribute their power to dragons.
And sure, you could sayt that dragons are Johny-come-lately to the world of innate magic if you want. It fits either way.
Sorry, I wasn't clear (the dragons-came-last thing was just a thought, not a view I was attributing to you).
I think that what you're saying is exactly how sorcery works in the implied setting. Any creature with innate magic can be the ancestor of a sorceror.
It's only when you want to say that all arcane magic originally comes from dragons that things get more complicated (and hence, this thread. =) ).
I think he's saying that sorcery explicitly comes from dragons as his condition. The problem is, your question (as I understand it) is kind of self-answering: the other bloodlines DO NOT AND CAN NOT make sense because your very premise is that they do not make sense. If you wish to have this part of canon, you really have only one other option. Make each of the "bloodlines" more or less independent of ancestry. What I mean by this is not that a sorcerer needs no bloodline and then still gain the bloodline's benefits; rather, I mean that those bloodlines beyond your typical Fae and Draconic bloodlines are merely specialized branches of those two. Dragons are almost always associated with elemental traits, so you can easily make that into a sub-bloodline that replaces the benefits of the normal inherited abilities. At a glance through the bloodlines this is how I would categorize and rationalize them:
Aberrant - Fae subtype: The fae are beings of primordial chaos, taking form only when it suits them (and often permanently anchoring themselves to a paticular form). Sometimes, the result isn't always pretty, or "natural." Cthluhu Ftaghn and what-not.
Abyssal - Fae subtype: As seen in mythology throughout the ages, the fae are not always nice. The Unseelie Court provides some of the more evil of the bunch. Primordial Chaos + Psychotic Cruelty...demons?
Arcane - Dragon subtype: Magic is not always the stablest of things. Why then, should ability to wield it remain unchanging? Over time, a people's innate abilities can mutate, giving rise to new, and often very different forms. Although this reasoning really applies to either fae or draconic heritage, I feel it is more appropriate to the dragons given that their magic is supposed to have been originally "purer," and the arcane bloodline is supposed to represent raw arcane might.
Celestial - Fae subtype: Similar to the abyssal line, this bloodline could represent a connection to the Seelie Court rather than Unseelie.
Destined - Fae subtype: The destined bloodline deals with fate, a domain much more in the realm of fae than dragons.
Draconic...
Elemental - Dragon Subtype: explained above
Fae...um...yeah.
Infernal - Fae Subtype: See abyssal
Undead - Fae Subtype: This one is really hard to fit into either, but of the two it fits better into fae for similar reasons to aberrant
Yes, this gives fae many more sub-types than dragons. But look at mythology, or even the Monster Manuals. What racial type has more variety: Fey or Dragons? I dunno, just my opinion, take what you like, leave the rest.
Personally, at this point I would take this one step further, I think. All of these other beings that you might normally have acquired these bloodlines from are in fact heavily mutated forms of the fae or dragons. Outsiders are easily dealt with as fae essentially are outsiders. Aberrations can be the misshapen cursed and mutated unseelie fae. Elementals could be the draconic equivalent of ghosts (rather than going to an aligned plane after death, a dragon's soul goes into an elemental plane and gathers energy from the plane to take a physically manifested form (this has the added bonus of explaining why you can't easily raise elementals...it's hard to return something that's double-dead to just single-dead).
The "mutations" line of thinking didn't click with me first (excuse me, I thought I posted here last night but I guess it never showed up), but I think I'm starting to get it.
Would you mean, for example, that a sorcerous lich (who first got his sorcery by being dragon-blooded) might have infused unborn children with his power to create an undead bloodline?
Or is this more a matter of elementals/outsiders/etc devising some means to steal the magic for their own, then passing this magic to their children?
Either one of these scenerios would work. Mutations would imply a more evolutionary type creation. Transformation, as I mentioned, could mean just about anything you want it mean and would fit your second possibility. I was kind of vague on purpose to let the them come up with their own details that fit the campaign world best. Your second suggestion might be more interesting when it comes to revealing the information to the PCs.
I personally adhere to the philosophy that dragons come from kobolds, given the predestined once-present-future existence of Pun-Pun....
I'm a big fan of Elementals as sources of sorcery, thanks to my early exposure to the excellently articulated Genasi from Planescape.
I think the point of the various bloodlines is as DM Blake says... dragons are hardly the only innately magical creatures in the D&D universe. Mind Flayers, Efreeti, djinni, demons, devils, raksasha, all of these creatures and more all have spell-like abilities (that base on their Charisma even,) and some even can cast spells as sorcerors.
I've always considered it unfair and limiting to say that spontanious spellcasting /must/ come from dragon blood. That was the line early on in 3E (and it bothered me back then, too,) but after a while, they backed off on it and pointed out that it might come from various different sources.
But I don't want to muck up your world. If it's key to your design that sorcery blood is from fey and dragons alone, it's not my place to say. It's just in any world I run, and hopefully, the worlds my DMs run, or I won't get to play most of my cool sorcerer ideas. ;)
That said, I can offer some ideas for the less blood-oriented bloodlines.
What's interesting in PF is that there are some bloodlines that don't actually necessarily come from bloodline... at least not in a traditional way. Destined may be touched by Fate or a conflux of the cosmos and borne on the alignment of the planes or planets. An Arcane bloodline would be suitible for mutation caused by exposure to magical radiation while in the womb, or even one's father and/or mother's "excessive" wizardry irradiating their reproductive cells prior to conception. The same ideas (if necromancy is involved) could explain an undead bloodline. Or perhaps the child is a dhampyr (child of a mortal and a vampire) whose innate necromantic energies, since they don't need to sustain an undeath that doesn't exist, have been re-channelled.
PS: Drew has some really good ideas that mesh with your worldview.
As I look at it more, and at a more reasonable hour, I think you really have two options really, if you want to keep the other bloodlines. Use my idea or something something similar. Or just don't call it sorcery (and have it function exactly the same; the "flawless manifestation of will" idea). The latter is completely functional and takes less work, but (IMHO) also feels more artificial, a cop-out almost, like you're actually admitting to the players that you just want to include those other bloodlines but had no way of doing so without saying poof. It might just be the kind of player I am, but when I look at a world, I like to see it deal with all the ramifications of various decisions (hell, in designing worlds, I use environmental simulation to calculate the effects of multiple suns, landmass to ocean ratio, effects of the size of the landmasses and such).
Clearly, I am not one of your players and so my tastes in game world should not apply to your group unless they prefer it that way as well; do what suits your group best, whether that be to remove some options that you don't feel work in your setting (the easy and consistent way, but also restrictive), gloss over the fact that they don't work and allow people to take them anyways for the sake of fun (the easy and fun, but inconsistent way), or spend a bit of extra time that you could spend preparing a game to instead flesh out your world more fully (harder and more thematically consistent, but possibly at the expense of fun or deeper role-playing implications [evil fairy just doesn't have the same ring to it as demon]).
Anywas, that's one DM's advice to another (I assume you're the DM of this campaign anyways, and not a player seeking to circumvent your DM's canon XD).
Just bumping with thanks. There are some really cool ideas in this thread.
And yes, while I'm saying that all sorcery (and basically all arcane magic) begun with dragons, it's doesn't necessarily come directly from dragons.
I was actually going to treat elemental bloodlines as variant dragon-bloodlines anyway (dragons even have elemental subtypes), but saying that demons are evil fey is a really cool idea with a lot of ramifications elsewhere in the setting. I'll have to think about it. ^^
Elves made aberrations, and by the time they did wizardry was an integral part of elven society, so saying that aberration-magic is rooted in sorcery (and can reconstitute itself as sorcery again should an aberration mate with a human) makes sense. And the idea of "magical irridation" (in some sense or another) works great for arcane, destined and undead bloodlines.
As a note, in my intial post when I talked about the abyssal and infernal bloodlines being from unseelie fae, I more just meant the bloodlines themselves were from fae. You can still keep actual demons and fae completely separate even with that. If you like the idea of blurring the lines a couple of things to keep in mind.
-Eladrin are already fae in all but name (if you disagre, read book of exalted deeds; if you still disagree, get your eyes checked), and so I would advocate giving this to them in name as well. Guardinals, being anthropomorphized animals, have a little bit of a fae feel to them (animals are often used to represent various spirits which might otherwised be deemed fae). Angels should either by eliminated (bleh) or created as wholly separate entities, perhaps directly by external gods as their direct servants. Finally, archons are a very mixed bag...despite their group alignment, they have the most varied in feel, from angel-like (trumpet archon), guardinal-like (hound archon), or fae aka eladrin (lantern archon).
-If you make demons and/or devils be fae of sorts, be sure to give them some differentiation in back-story, whther it be that they descended from different unseelie courts or a schism in the one court. If you don't meaningfully differentiate the two, make sure you don't include any part of the Blood War (demons vs. devils) in your setting to keep it consistent. Your campaign setting sounds interesting, when you finish developing it, you might consider posting it somewhere.
Your campaign setting sounds interesting, when you finish developing it, you might consider posting it somewhere.
Thanks. n_n
There are a lot of mytholoical ties between fiends, angels and fairies which D&D does its best to sever. It was once believed that fey were angels who became stranded on earth when heaven's gates were slammed shut. They weren't in hell and so didn't become demons, but they also could never return to heaven. There's definitely something feyish about the eladrin, and imps could be portrayed as fairies from hell just as easily as trickster demons.