Blood Magic: Casting a sorcerous gift spell granted by your bloodline or a bloodline spell allows you to benefit from a blood magic effect you know. You can typically only benefit from one blood magic effect at a time, though some feats and abilities may change this.
When it says you can only “benefit from one blood magic effect at a time,” does that refer to how many blood magic effects you can get from a single gift or bloodline spell or blood magic effects in general that’s active on you?
What I’m trying to see is if the 1 round buff blood magic effects can all be active on yourself at the same time provided I cast at least two gift or bloodline spell in a turn. For example, can I get Angelic+Draconic or two Imperial blood magic effects active on myself by casting two appropriate spells to get a status bonus to both AC and saving throws?
That depends on the effect as well as the order in which they are cast.
Certain Blood Magic effects are instantaneous, such as the Diabolic or Elemental bonus damage. Since these are instantaneous, once you cast it, you can then follow-up with a duration-based effect, such as the Intimidation bonus from Elemental, or Deception bonus from Diabolic, and then you're good. If you instead start with a duration-based effect, then try to follow-up with an instantaneous effect, the duration-based effect will end, as you are now trying to benefit from an instantaneous effect, which cannot be done, as the rules state you can only benefit from one blood magic effect at a time.
Of course, with Crossblooded Evolution, as well as Blood Sovereignty, you can benefit from both effects at once, but you will have to lose HP to do so, which is kind of a niche benefit, since Blood Magic effects only apply to one target, and aren't able to "dip" for Area spells like Sorcerous Potency can.
My initial thought on the wording is similar. I see it as equivalent to the Bard's Composition trait on their spells. Where if you cast a second spell with the Composition trait, the first one will immediately end no matter its normal duration.
So doing two things that both cause a blood magic effect that has a duration and both target the same person, the starting of the second one would end the first one.
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When it says you can only “benefit from one blood magic effect at a time,” does that refer to how many blood magic effects you can get from a single gift or bloodline spell or blood magic effects in general that’s active on you?
You missed the word typically that gives you your answer. What it really means is to delete that entire sentence from the rules as it explicitly says it is not a rule. It is effectively gibberish.
What it might mean it that you can't affect yourself twice with your own blood magic. But it doesn't really say that either. It is certainly possible to activate your blood magic up to 4 times per turn. 3 actions plus a reaction can all potentially trigger it.
Then, do they really mean to forbid two blood magic effects working at once? And if the targets are different? As you wrote, that sentence in the side box in not nearly clear. There's literally nothing on this in the 'Reading a Bloodline Entry' section. All the bloodline feats mostly deal with receiving two blood magic effects from the same activity, it's not about blood magic from consequential activities. Maybe only Blood Rising hints at the intention: 'You generate a blood magic effect you know, even if you are already under the effects of blood magic'. So maybe they really did mean to forbid two lasting blood magic effects at once.
Which still doesn't convince me that instant blood magic effects must turn off previously activated lasting one.
Looking through the actual "feats and abilities may change this" it does seem to refer to how many blood magic effects you get on a gift or bloodline spell, at least imo. Blood Sovereignty and Blood Ascension both say you "benefit from two different blood magic effects you know" specifically "when you would benefit from a blood magic effect."
That sentence in Blood Rising does throw a wrench on something unanimous though.
There's literally nothing on this in the 'Reading a Bloodline Entry' section.
That is actually really frustrating. It only appears on the Blood Magic entry in the Key Terms sidebar, which is just above the Blood Magic entry in the Reading Bloodline Entry on the same page. For a seemingly important mechanical consideration, you’d think it would appear in both.
Anyway, reading the entry under Key Terms, it reads to me as a limitation specific to when you “trigger” a blood magic effect. To me, in context with the first sentence, the word “benefit” seems to be used to imply the act of gaining or generating the blood magic effect as opposed to simply being affected by a blood magic effect.
The way I'd personally rule it is probably "you can't benefit from two duration-based blood magic effects at the same time without a feat."
But let's be honest, if anyone ever manages to trigger even one blood magic effect it would be a minor miracle. Never done it except on my Phoenix sorcerer (and I guess in another situation but the effect wouldn't have done anything), never seen it done, and I have a sorcerer fetish. I suppose there's a possibility that I triggered blood magic at some point and forgot about it.
Triggering two simultaneously seems nearly impossible in practice. I guess it has some "build around me" potential but the benefits are relatively minor so...Why?
Triggering blood magic is really trivial. Have you never seen sorcerers using their focus spells? Because each time they do, they trigger blood magic. Also each granted slot spell triggers it. While not all granted spells are great, still surely some are used sometimes or even frequently.
If you mean actually declaring and using blood magic, that's another thing. Because yes, a lot of effects are rather weak and more importantly very short being 1 round in duration. So they are very forgettable. Ratio of player's mental load to usefulness of effects is rather high.
With a few exceptions, premaster focus spells were not great, so...Yup, hardly ever. It would not surprise me if the median number of uses of most premaster sorcerer focus spells for many players is zero. I used the demonic teeth one once as a joke, and I used rejuvenating flames pretty much just because I could. Tried steal shadow a few times but I guess I forgot about blood magic. Used ancestral memories on a Seoni pregen, but not in combat...
Some of the focus spells did get changes in the remaster, though, and some are actually very useful for triggering blood magic. And clearly in the remaster they really leaned into the feature, for whatever reason. But yes, agree, with perhaps one or two exceptions, kinda forgettable still.
Back to the original question. The full sentence is, "You can typically only benefit from one blood magic effect at a time, though some feats and abilities may change this." Seems clear to me that you need a feat (Blood Sovereignty, for one) to benefit from more than one effect at a time. I don't read "typically" as flavor text, personally, because the atypical situation is subsequently explained later in the sentence.
If someone went for it I might be so shocked I'd just let it happen, though.
With a few exceptions, premaster focus spells were not great, so...Yup, hardly ever.This seems a combination of encountering not the strongest of bloodlines and underestimation of sorcs' focus spells. Because sorcerers' focus spells aren't the weakest.
Steal Shadow is kind of decent. And Rejuvenating Flames is focus point AoE healing which could double as light AoE damage, doesn't look that bad either.
As written above, seems it's better to look at the whole section.
Back to the original question. The full sentence
Just revisiting this, I ran a game today and a player triggered blood magic not once, not twice, but thrice. Which was hands down a personal record, for running or playing.
I agree with you that some premaster sorcerer focus spells were okay. I tried steal shadow in an AP game a couple of times but never stole a shadow, sadly. One of my characters recently got it, hopefully it works better at lower levels though I'm tempted to redo him as ann imperial or draconic bloodline or something... And I do use rejuvenating flames, it's kinda usable. Just remastered my nymph sorcerer, gave up crossblooded evolution despite wanting to take it for a new blood magic effect, after realizing I'll rarely ever trigger it...Then ironically got a potentially functional focus spell with advanced bloodline instead. But ask me how many times I've used nymph's token (zero) or dim the light (spoiler alert, also zero, though there's a cute combo one can do with it). I used ancestral memories with Seoni once, that's actually a nice spell. And I used gluttonous jaws once as a joke, not because it was a good idea.
Back to the question at hand though, I've been thinking on this and if it ever did come up, I suspect it would depend on the order and duration of different effects, for me (as mentioned early on).
Preremaster, triple 1-action Harm seemed pretty popular among undead sorcerers. Always paired with the damage bonus blood magic effect for the best bang for the spell slot, the blood magic duration stacking wasn’t an issue. The temp HP blood magic effect overrided itself with temp HP’s own rules anyway.
Now that they can get other blood magic effects, they’ve got a bunch of other options to weave in. Although, as a touch range gimmick, triple Harm with Explosion of Power will be an obvious blast.