Blood Talents??

[imported_Rasyr]

I am currently working on the race creation rules for the next issue of Libram Novus, and I got to thinking that perhaps I should include some Blood Talents. Like the xx-blood feats from d20, these would be talents that grant the character some sort of racial affinity with another race.

I got to thinking about this as I was also thinking about having the "Half Races" actually be just another type of regular race. For example, if you look at the setting Shadow World, you have races such as the Sulini or the Ky'Taari - entire races that are all Half Elves (or Half-something). Why couldn't Novus have something similar. And if it did, then why not also introduce Blood Talents similar to the Feats d20 has. The idea itself is not and cannot be copyrighted, so there is no issue with introducing such concepts/ideas.

For example, a character might decide to have a Dwarf character who has Halfing or Elven Blood. There could even be a Dwarf who has both Halfling and Elven blood in his ancestry.

There could be 2 levels of Blood Talents. Major and Minor. Major Blood Talents give a +/- 2 points to stats, and up to 10 points worth of racial abilities (at half strength of the normal racial abilities) and cost 10 CP. Characters who have Major Blood Talents are treated as being fully of both their base race and their Blood Talent Race for all effects that target that specific race (i.e. a character with a Major Demon Blood talent would be treated as a Demon for reactions by Devils, and for the damage dealt by a Divine Bolt and protection from evil spells).

A Minor Blood Talent would give +/-1 to stats, and have 5 points worth of racial abilities (at reduced effectiveness), and would be less affected than those with a Major Blood talent (i.e. with Minor Demon Blood, the Divine Bolt would do 1.5x normal damage instead of double damage), and items that are only used by a member of a given race (such as the "Elfstones of Shannara" only being usable by Elves) would require a Will Save to activate them each time.

Thoughts? Comments? Additional Ideas?

[samwise7]

I always liked the idea of blood talents.  As long as the execution of them is simple, quick, and easy to understand I say go for it. 

[imported_Rasyr]

I am figuring on building them sort of like a quasi talent bundle, and specifically defining how they are built so that GMs can build them for their own races as well...

And unlike how they were presented in a previous game that I wrote, they will incur a cost relative to their value since these will basically add on to the base race.