Should an Android be allowed to have a class feature that denotes special heritage, such as a Bloodline?

[Reksew_Trebla]

Stop typing. No seriously, stop typing. I don’t care that by raw, they can be descended from dragons if the player wants. This isn’t the g@# d&!n Rules Questions forum. This is the General Discussion forum.

Anyways, what do you think? Theoretically, they could have been made with dragon dna, or devil dna, or celestial dna, or hell, as a natural lycanthrope. But as far as I know, there is nothing saying (some) androids have been made with unique heritages, so I don’t know if this is the case.

[Volkard Abendroth]

I think it is a home game and you can apply whatever rules you, as the DM, see fit to apply.

[Pizza Lord]

I say no. For the reasons you mention. Flavor-wise.
I don't mind unlocking power as they attain mote levels but getting power or bloodline from non-existent ancestors not so much.

[Evilgm]

Yes. All of these heritages are about the influence of magic on an individual, and there's nothing to prevent that magic from suffusing an Android's body, even if the actual DNA doesn't.

[Rosk]

Sure. Why not? The Impossible bloodline fits pretty dang well, and depending on how the android was created there could be a whole bunch of interesting backstory sprouting from this. I say go for it.

[OmniMage]

This is another reason why I think making bloodlines as a feature of the Sorcerer was a bad idea. It makes determining a bloodline a requirement of the class, instead of an option. I like the idea of the Sorcerer being a class that could work for primitive cultures, or cultures that don't have much of a background with academic wizardry. The Sorcerer could be to the Wizard, the same way a Barbarian is to a Fighter.

[Mysterious Stranger]

While the name bloodline seems to indicate you are a descendant from a specific creature that does not have to the case. Your bloodline could easily be from being exposed to powerful magic of the appropriate type. For example you could have the Abyssal bloodline because you were created near the Worldwound. A Fey bloodline sorcerer could have been raised in the first world. An undead bloodline could be the result of surviving a powerful necromantic spell. The Celestial bloodline even mentions divine intervention as a possible source of the bloodline in its description.

You could also have an android that was created with nonhuman DNA. Since most androids don’t know where they came from who is to say what went into their creation.

[Mysterious Stranger]

While the name bloodline seems to indicate you are a descendant from a specific creature that does not have to the case. Your bloodline could easily be from being exposed to powerful magic of the appropriate type. For example you could have the Abyssal bloodline because you were created near the Worldwound. A Fey bloodline sorcerer could have been raised in the first world. An undead bloodline could be the result of surviving a powerful necromantic spell. The Celestial bloodline even mentions divine intervention as a possible source of the bloodline in its description.

You could also have an android that was created with nonhuman DNA. Since most androids don’t know where they came from who is to say what went into their creation. Considering the fact the androids still have breathe, eat and sleep that seems to indicate that they are at least partially organic.

[Pizza Lord]

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

While the name bloodline seems to indicate you are a descendant from a specific creature that does not have to be the case.

I got the impression that for purposes of this topic that was the case here. I think this was more "I don't have a great grandfather who was seduced by a tree (even one used to make my wooden legs)." Rather than, "I was infused with fire energy during a freak magical catastrophe."

I do otherwise agree with what you're saying.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

The Celestial bloodline even mentions divine intervention as a possible source of the bloodline ...

I think when we use "It was divine intervention!" we could literally justify anything though, right?

Is that really a backstory you'd accept more than twice? That a god specifically decided to warp the laws of physics, genetics, ancestors, and bloodline to create what is arguably a new and unique creature and no other divine powers have anything to say about this meddling?

Sure RAW it's perfectly fine, personally (going with the premise that the androids being discussed are created not birthed, ala Edward Scissorhands doesn't have the Vincent Price bloodline)... I'm saying "No, your great great grandfather was not, in fact, a genie. You don't have 'the Blood of Kings' in your veins, and you aren't descended from the Rock of Gibraltar."

[deuxhero]

The article on Androids in Iron Gods 1 explicitly addresses Bloodlines on Androids: They're the result of magical stuff they've been exposed to in their past incarnations.

Remember even in the core rule book there was alternate methods of getting a bloodline besides having something as your ancestor. Being subject to a magical event was always an option.

[doomman47]

Look at it this way they did not gain their bloodline from having actual blood flow threw their veins but because some of the magic from their creator merged with them at the time of their creation.

[Val'bryn2]

I think of it more as the bloodline of the magic than of the character. What the magic descended from. Sort of like schools of magic, but more thematic than similar effects.

[Set]

Evilgm wrote:

Yes. All of these heritages are about the influence of magic on an individual, and there's nothing to prevent that magic from suffusing an Android's body, even if the actual DNA doesn't.

That's my thought too. You don't have to have a grandparent who boinked a dragon, so much as have had exposure to draconic elements in you or your ancestors past, such as having consumed dragon flesh or been immersed in dragon's blood or even worn dragonhide for so long that it 'seeped into you.' An ancestor may have *been* a dragon, but reincarnated as a human, so you've got zero dragon blood or DNA, but a little bit of dragon *in your soul.*

As for an Android, their physical frames can be assembled from organic material, like cast-off bone or skin, and some of that material could have come from a dragon. (Or fiend, or whatever.) Maybe it's a really old Android body, and the dragon-y bits are from before the reached Golarion. Maybe it's a 'newer' body and the dragon-y bits came from a wyvern corpse that got rendered down by the Android-making creche that formed your body.

Maybe it was *deliberate,* because whatever intelligence was behind the decision wanted to see what would happen if it added some dragon bits to the recipe. Maybe it was just what was lying around when the recipe called for some long bones to go here and there. Maybe a green dragon astronomer with an interest in technomancy has seized control of an Android-making creche and used a ritual / incantation to put some dragon-y essence into the Androids the creche was making, which, when it succeeded brilliantly, made Android Half-Dragons, and when it failed, well, those twisted mewling things are buried out back...

[Nathan Monson]

I would just consider it the result of something the android was exposed to in a previous life.

[MageHunter]

I like the idea of ley lines explaining odd connections to concepts like this.

[djdust]

Perhaps the specific strain of arcana was encoded into their engineered genes, a la Star Ocean: TtEoT.

[W E Ray]

I wonder if Reksew-Trebla has been convinced.

....I know that I can see a demon bloodline in an android -- kinda like Chucky. And Christine.