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I once again come back to androids, though this time the issue is more thematic than mechanical. the issue is this, how does an artificial race access eldritch magic through bloodlines? obviously there is many ways this could be handled, and i think it would be fun to have multiple people post their ideas here.
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Hmm, I'd say most of the issue could be gotten around with plenty of re-flavouring. It's easy for an android character to, say, have several "Magic Programs" installed, and have precice little instruments pop out of one arm and twirl around (it's easy to specialize in electricity or sonic energy spells). As for bloodlines, a simple one would be Abberant: they can spew acid (weaponised exhaust meets taking a leak on one's foes?) and have extended reach for their touch spells ("Go-go Gadget Shocking Grasp!") When you polymorph, don't forget to add, "<Character Name>, Terrorize!"
With the Destined bloodline, you could play your android as someone from a wacky futuristic sci-fi setting somehow stuck in a high fantasy one: just look at all the spells, Touch of Destiny, and luck bonuses as "Nanomachines"!
For the Celestial one, it'd work easily if if you go for a manga-inspired set-up. Basically, it's easy to get around the issue if you don't implement bloodline powers in an actual "bloody" way. Though it'd make it harder to use the Fey or Undead bloodlines. Maybe if your android used some sort of artifical blood that had a magical origin, or was built by the fey/demons/one of those undead alien magic scientists?
See here for some other thoughts on the matter.
Because Sorcery does not have to be actual genetics. He could have been exposed to a font of magic, or an ancient Thassalonian site, or wild magic, or a thousand other things that infused him with eldritch potential. That power source is what gave him his "bloodline."
heh awesome stuff, ill be sure to share some of these ideas with my players.
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These posts from the Inner Sea Bestiary thread may add some more possibilities as well.
Bloodlines can be imparted via other means than being handed down via genetics. An android wouldn't be able to gain a bloodline from an ancestor, but it would be able to gain a bloodline from magical reasons. For example: if the android's forge (or whatever you want to call the device that creates an android until we finally have the book where we can say for sure what it is) is possessed by a demon, that android might come out as a sorcerer with an abyssal bloodline. An android who was created by a super-scientist who was also a gifted musician might impart his android creation with the maestro bloodline.
Furthermore... while the word "bloodline" has the word "blood" in it... it's not necessarily linked to your actual blood. Bloodline means "magical ancestry" or "magical DNA" in this case.
So, yeah; android sorcerers can have any bloodline they want. You just have to be a bit more creative about how they got that bloodline. Or you have to be comfortable not knowing and letting the GM be more creative about how you got it.
Yeah, it's kind of cool to consider how a crafted being might be composed of material from other races (like having bits of dragon ivory affixed to their skin, growing darker and thicker and more spiky/dragony as the draconic sorcerer gains his natural armor bonus and energy resistance), or of materials that have been tainted / rarified / ennobled / whatever by otherworldy energies, such as 'elysian electrum' or 'nessian verdigris' or 'smokeless brass' or skin that shimmers and feels like 'chromatic feysilk' or something equally exotic and flavorful.
Whatever force / entity is creating these androids might find it intriguing to craft some of their parts out of 'exotic' local materials, whether treat's heartwood or demon's ichor, just to see what happens...
My setting Constructed Races normally have artificial souls or real souls implanted in them and that grants them the Bloodline power and such.
Exactly what I wanted to say...
Yeah. It always bugs me that people seem to assume bloodlines are always inherited through genetics despite many bloodlines saying in their very writeup that it is not necessarily the case. Thanks for the post Mikaze, exactly what I was going to say.
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Spark then someone mentions Transformers... Thanks... Now excuse me while I build my Android Druid...
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Spark then someone mentions Transformers... Thanks... Now excuse me while I build my Android Druid...
That's a cool idea. As a constructed life form, I'm sure many androids would find organic life endlessly fascinating, even 'magical,' since it's so different than their own life-experience.
That's a cool idea. As a constructed life form, I'm sure many androids would find organic life endlessly fascinating, even 'magical,' since it's so different than their own life-experience.
I can't remember the Generation it was featured in... But Transformers had a Nanobot Race that Mimicked Lifeforms similar to the Replicators from Stargate...
Android Druid who opens up and moves parts around to form the new form.
That's a cool idea. As a constructed life form, I'm sure many androids would find organic life endlessly fascinating, even 'magical,' since it's so different than their own life-experience.I can't remember the Generation it was featured in... But Transformers had a Nanobot Race that Mimicked Lifeforms similar to the Replicators from Stargate...
Android Druid who opens up and moves parts around to form the new form.
Beast Wars!
Beast Wars!That's a cool idea. As a constructed life form, I'm sure many androids would find organic life endlessly fascinating, even 'magical,' since it's so different than their own life-experience.I can't remember the Generation it was featured in... But Transformers had a Nanobot Race that Mimicked Lifeforms similar to the Replicators from Stargate...
Android Druid who opens up and moves parts around to form the new form.
No... It definitely wasn't Beast Wars...
I remember it because of Optimus Prime referring to the nanobots as the Ticks & Fleas of Cybertron
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I'm not much of a Transformers guy, but I do remember an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation where the android Data has just broken up with a human girlfriend and she walks out all teary-eyed and he just deletes the 'dating subroutines' from his mind and goes back to his life, and then his cat walks up and he picks it up and starts petting it. It was kind of a harsh scene, because it hammered home how he didn't feel anything for his 'girlfriend,' or even his cat, but he was petting it because it made the cat feel good.
I'm more likely to pet my dog because *I* want to pet my dog, because it makes *me* feel better, not because I'm running a program that tells me that my dog needs X minutes of socialization per day.
It made Data look less human (which was a plus, because that side of his nature was rarely explored, and he was more likely to be overly humanized in a given episode) and yet also kind of made his nature seem purer than a more complicated human reaction. He pets his cat because the cat needs / wants it. He could care less. That makes his choice seem much more selfless than that of a human, who wants a pet to keep *them* company.
An android druid who finds animals fascinating, and is utterly dedicated to the physical and psychological well-being of his animal companion, and yet is equally practical and 'cold-blooded' when it comes time for an animal to be killed, seeing it all as part of the utterly ruthless natural cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth he is observing, could be freaky and fun to roleplay.
@Set: I love that episode... If it is the one I am thinking of...
And you just gave me the one thing I couldn't come up with...
I though would add in them being protective against Humanoids damaging Nature.
I simply said that with thoughts of wild shaping android druids in my head.
I simply said that with thoughts of wild shaping android druids in my head.
Ah... Ok yeah I can see the Beast Wars era being Animal Shamans.
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I though would add in them being protective against Humanoids damaging Nature.
The android might naturally think of a forest or weather as a mechanical system, and that destructive changes in one place can 'gum up the works' and cause system disruption and failure in other locations.
It's all a big collection of moving parts, says the druid, and it's balanced itself over millenia. Remove something, or add something, cut down these trees, kill those wolves, dam that river, it's all the same, it throws the 'machine' of the forest out of balance, and stuff changes. Eventually, it will rebalance itself, but perhaps not in a way that you wanted, as the grasslands that supported your people might become desert that cannot, or the animals you hunted for food and hides have been replaced by animals that are of no use to you, or the tall trees you needed for timbers and masts have burned down, and your kingdoms expansion of homes and ships has hit a sudden stop...
The android druid might attempt to teach others how the 'machine' works, and how to work *with* the machine, within the 'system,' and not just charge in there short-sightedly and 'kill the goose that lays their golden eggs.'
The android druid might attempt to teach others how the 'machine' works, and how to work *with* the machine, within the 'system,' and not just charge in there short-sightedly and 'kill the goose that lays their golden eggs.'
I was thinking of making her be focused on maintaining the Forests' cycles of Death & Re-Birth. Either through regulating Woodcutting and hunting or something.
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I once again come back to androids, though this time the issue is more thematic than mechanical. the issue is this, how does an artificial race access eldritch magic through bloodlines? obviously there is many ways this could be handled, and i think it would be fun to have multiple people post their ideas here.
I think of Warforged from Eberron who were created via magic. If the creation process utilizes magic, then who is to say that latent energies, aka bloodlines, don't remain?
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An android druid who finds animals fascinating, and is utterly dedicated to the physical and psychological well-being of his animal companion, and yet is equally practical and 'cold-blooded' when it comes time for an animal to be killed, seeing it all as part of the utterly ruthless natural cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth he is observing, could be freaky and fun to roleplay.
I once played a character who was a modron druid. He was fascinated by the order of things and saw nature as an extension of the same. Like the movie, Pi, he was convinced that order is in everything ... one need only find it. He also had a wolf animal companion. It's name was "canis lupis".
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The way I handle it is somewhere in your android brain is an arcano emulation matrix. It's attuned to an energy source, be it planer or not. But you basically are tapping into the energies of that realm.
So Fey have a First World tap in their heads, etc.
Other bloodlines are from tinkering with that matrix. And picking up things like the Dual Bloodline feats, etc are you tinkingering or making that matrix more advanced.
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Data was a problematic character which shows that at best the Trek writers were schizoid in how they wanted to handle him. In the episode you mentioned above they went out of their way to show how emotionless he was. Then in every other way, they leap to hint at a hidden subtler shades of emotion in all the alogical ways he expresses himself. The fact that he has a DESIRE to emulate humanity which was clearly not programed by his misanthropic...
[tangent]Agreed. The writers were very inconsistent in their portrayal of him. He acted very 'human' at times, showing signs of hurt feelings, a need for approval, etc., more like a child-like 'innocent' than a machine. It was annoying! And it's also why episodes that really 'got it right' (IMO) stood out for me. I suspect that, with a different actor, willing to play a creepier and less playful Data, it might have been a more consistent, and less popular, portrayal. If Data came across more like David, from Prometheus, I suspect he wouldn't have been as popular a character.[/tangent]
David Weber fan? I smell Armageddon Reef.
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Robotic Construct Sorcerer? sounds like fun!
*Accessing global arcane faunt lines*
......
*Access granted*
*begin eldritch code line 1100101010010101010111010101100*
*scanning for pattern*
*working......*
*scan complete*
*eldritch code line prepared*
*scanning for targets*
*working......*
*targets found*
*executing eldritch code line*
FIREBALL!
sorry I could not resist
@Set: I love that episode... If it is the one I am thinking of...
I always kind of liked the one where Data got captured to be part of this collector's museum, and in the end he tries to kill the guy to stop him from doing it again but is foiled by the Enterprise's transporter. When Riker asks him about a phaser shot detected, he then lies to Riker. Straight up.
One of the coolest character developments for Data, and it never really got followed up on that I can recall. And it was pre-emotion chip.
But back on topic, I really love that take on an android druid. Very inhuman, and yet very naturalistic.
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I always kind of liked the one where Data got captured to be part of this collector's museum, and in the end he tries to kill the guy to stop him from doing it again but is foiled by the Enterprise's transporter. When Riker asks him about a phaser shot detected, he then lies to Riker. Straight up.
Ha. Good old Data. "Something must have occured during transport." Yes, something 'happened during transport' alright. Like 'I tried to blow his head off, and then my molecules went all fuzzy.'
The report he must have filed for Captain Picard & Starfleet later must have been a masterwork of leading text and misdirection...
Barbarian. Bard.
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While the Android Barbarian takes the major hit to his abilities, (he does have SOME things he can do without rage), the only thing that the Bard loses is the ability to boost himself. He can still give those morale based bonuses to his companions.
And it could be a funky RP experience.
"Dear journal. The experiment has been verified. When I hit certain precise harmonic resonances, in this sequence, it triggers a chemical rush in their bodies, causing them to fight as if their very lives depended on it. Intriguing. I must experiment more with subharmonic manipulations of this sort. I believe there are frequencies that may also cause them to experience fear and uncertainty..."
Paladins also take a big hit.
well... this may be the successful thread i ever started. as far as barbarians and bards go, i already got a racial feat that i posted in another thread for that.
if you are curious
i recall there being a plasma homebrew bloodline in the threads a while back, anybody got a link?
i recall there being a plasma homebrew bloodline in the threads a while back, anybody got a link?Was it Set's Incandescent bloodline idea?
yup that was it
edit:thanks mikaze
I would say that the nanobot matrix within the android had a magic infusion preformed on it that imprinted the desired "bloodline" of the sorcerer.
And Azaelas Fayth, Pretenders were transformers that had an nano tech (or was it organic) shell formed around the inner robot to disguise it as a native life form of another planet. It may be what you were thinking of.
wow, i think that was my first thread necro