Sorcerers as Super Heroes
A plethora of bloodlines exist for the Pathfinder sorcerer. It's obviously something that's caught people's imaginations. I'd know, having written a few myself. It's also an easy and cool way to individualize a character within a generic class.
What occurred to me while working on a recent sorcerer bloodlines piece was maybe there's an easier way to build the things. The supplement I was writing took the angle that abyssal, infernal, undead, etc. were too general as bloodline concepts -- that within a specific category such as "undead" there existed ghouls, liches, and vampires, all of which would imbue a sorcerer with slightly different powers. The same goes for other magical inheritances. If your father was a balor demon, wouldn't you expect to have different powers from the guy sired by a succubus? Yet, constructing a bloodline for every possible undead, devil, demon or angel would be tedious.
It put me in mind of Champions, the superhero RPG. In Champions you buy powers for your character from a generic list. The player determines how they manifest, what energy they channel, etc. This allows great diversity within a basic set of rules. (I played Champions in the 80s and still have my boxed set and it's the version I still play every now and then with my son, so anything I write about the game here relies on that edition.)
The sorcerer could use the same system. A set of guidelines that set rule specifics without flavor. The player would decide what the numbers mean.
For example, at 1st level many sorcerers get some form of ranged attack that deals 1d6+1 points per two levels. A player might page through a monster book and decide he wanted a bloodline based on the howler.* He tells the DM he would like to have a focused howl that deals 1d6+1 points of damage to one target as a ranged touch attack. As an alternative, the player might instead decide to give his sorcerer the ability to shoot quills from his hands with the same effect. Both are powers of the howler. The specifics don't really matter since, as I like to say, "It's all just numbers."
I thought it might be interesting to construct a chart that would allow a player to design a sorcerer from the ground up. I'll see what I can come up with in the next few weeks.
What occurred to me while working on a recent sorcerer bloodlines piece was maybe there's an easier way to build the things. The supplement I was writing took the angle that abyssal, infernal, undead, etc. were too general as bloodline concepts -- that within a specific category such as "undead" there existed ghouls, liches, and vampires, all of which would imbue a sorcerer with slightly different powers. The same goes for other magical inheritances. If your father was a balor demon, wouldn't you expect to have different powers from the guy sired by a succubus? Yet, constructing a bloodline for every possible undead, devil, demon or angel would be tedious.
It put me in mind of Champions, the superhero RPG. In Champions you buy powers for your character from a generic list. The player determines how they manifest, what energy they channel, etc. This allows great diversity within a basic set of rules. (I played Champions in the 80s and still have my boxed set and it's the version I still play every now and then with my son, so anything I write about the game here relies on that edition.)
The sorcerer could use the same system. A set of guidelines that set rule specifics without flavor. The player would decide what the numbers mean.
For example, at 1st level many sorcerers get some form of ranged attack that deals 1d6+1 points per two levels. A player might page through a monster book and decide he wanted a bloodline based on the howler.* He tells the DM he would like to have a focused howl that deals 1d6+1 points of damage to one target as a ranged touch attack. As an alternative, the player might instead decide to give his sorcerer the ability to shoot quills from his hands with the same effect. Both are powers of the howler. The specifics don't really matter since, as I like to say, "It's all just numbers."
I thought it might be interesting to construct a chart that would allow a player to design a sorcerer from the ground up. I'll see what I can come up with in the next few weeks.
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