Greetings!

Today I’d like to present a feature that is specifically tailored towards the ones among you who truly enjoy breeding potent dynasties - Legendary Bloodlines!

Legendary Bloodlines are modifiers that are passed down the generations from one specific character, the Founder - they work much like a dynasty, but with several more rules and caveats. They symbolize the widespread renown a certain character might have, and the staying power stories surrounding their feats are. Having a Legendary Bloodline in your character will convey a bonus based on who founded it, and there are many different Bloodlines to be found (and Founded). Bloodlines are accessed from the Character View:

Unlike traits such as Genius or Strong, Bloodlines are not genetical - Bloodlines gain their power from perception and belief; if you were a superstitious medieval warrior, would you rather fight the big burly fighter who you knew were related to Charles the Hammer, or the one you knew were not?

That very same superstition, combined with the prejudices that were common in those times, causes Bloodlines to be either Agnatic or Enatic - to breed Bloodlines into your dynasty will require you to get clever, and plan ahead if you want more than one line to run within your direct line of heirs. If a Bloodline is agnatic, for example, a man will still pass it to his daughters - but they will not pass it on to their children, that will be exclusively reserved for his sons.

Certain bloodlines, or certain effects of certain bloodlines, will only be active for characters who fulfill certain triggers - for example, Christian knights will only seek to serve a descendant of Charles the Hammer if he happens to be Christian.

It's also worth noting that Bloodlines do not give direct stat boosts like how artifacts do.

To facilitate the merging of several different Bloodlines into one direct line of characters, we’ve made it so that Matrilineal marriages transfer bloodlines that the parents wouldn’t normally be able to transfer - symbolizing that it’s less explicitly about gender, and more about who’s the dominant part in a marriage.

To see who’s a part of any given bloodline, you can view a list of the current holders by clicking a button next to the Founder in the Bloodlines View:

Though the easiest way by far is to enter the Bloodlines Ledger Page to see which bloodlines exist, how many members there are and, by clicking the entries, view who holds them.

Bloodlines stem from many different sources, but the ones I’ll touch upon today are the Historical Bloodlines. As you might have already figured out, certain famous historical characters start with bloodlines, or found them at a certain point in their life. For example, if William succeeds in his invasion of England he’ll found a bloodline. As bloodlines come and go, you’ll have a different setup depending on what bookmark you choose to start in. Here’s a few examples of bloodlines you can expect to want to breed into your own line:

Note that there will be ways to get bloodlines apart from breeding them into your dynasty, but that will be the subject of a future DevDiary.

 

[theKing1988]

I do miss the mohammed and merovingian one.

Well if they did add a Bloodline for Mohammed, then the pre-existing Sayyid, Mirza traits would become superfluous. So i would hope that they would get axed if a Bloodline for Mohammed is added

 

[Chnapy]

IIRC personal combat skill has no/little effect on battles, only duels. So the bloodline would only have an effect on intentional fighting, when the opponent would know beforehand who he was fighting. Joe Peasant wouldn't be affected by it.

Could have changed tho, in the pdxcon stream rageair says his character shouldn't lead in battle because he has -40 PCS

 

[sreckom92]

Could have changed tho, in the pdxcon stream rageair says his character shouldn't lead in battle because he has -40 PCS

Well, if he has -40 PC, then he probably has a bunch of negative traits such as Craven, which do affect tactics.

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

Well, if he has -40 PC, then he probably has a bunch of negative traits such as Craven, which do affect tactics.

"Being old" was a -50 or -40 (I forgot, I'd look again later) modifier on it's own.

 

[Rubidium]

Well if they did add a Bloodline for Mohammed, then the pre-existing Sayyid, Mirza traits would become superfluous. So i would hope that they would get axed if a Bloodline for Mohammed is added

I assume that it would be a DLC-dependent thing. If you have HF enabled, it's a bloodline; otherwise it's a trait.

Also, since lots of people have mentioned a Ptolemaic bloodline as an example of a mythical bloodline, I'll be the one to ask: would it enable sibling marriages?

 

[Mindel]

It would be nice to have a decision to revive an extinct house if you carry their bloodline and have enough prestige.

That is, to transform your house and its members to being members of the ancient house in question.

This may not have much gameplay advantage, but as a role-playing device, it would be neat to be able to bring back the Sassanids.

 

[_Perun_]

But I don't play with any magic at all on so there are no magical swords so why do swords make people better tacticians?

I dont really think that the martial stat constitutes only of the sense of tactics. If so, how would you explain high martial giving you more levies? People follow great leaders who promise them great victories. A fellow with a fancy legendary sword makes a better leader than his identical twin brother without. Also, note that high martial doesnt provide your armies with higher morale or bonus damage. Even if you personally lead an army, 16 points in martial is as good as 56. Martial =/= strategy.

 

[riadach]

But Attila was born in the CE era.

But he's not a character in the game, which would be the point.

 

[Gnostiko]

As I mentioned in the Diary itself, it's because a superstitious medieval warrior would be more intimidated fighting someone they know was related to a great hero than someone who was not. Note that the Personal Combat Skill values have been heavily revised in HF, 5 skill is very low - but it can give you that edge you need. More on this in a future DevDiary!

Does this mean personal combat/duelling has been reworked? IIRC, in the current build, Personal Combat Skill doesn't really matter for personal combat because it's largely (entirely?) RNG.

 

[knppel]

Good point indeed. Time to roll eyes over myself for that mistake to take game logic in account.
I still fail to see how an ancestor's reputation actually contributes to a character's personal combat skill, though. It just makes no sense to me- not to speak of legends that no one outside of the county of XY has ever heard of but I'll not even go there- better stick to wonder why having a grandmother whose extensive baggage train caused a crusade to go slower than it could have makes me a better fighter.

 

[Masternachos]

You can make achievement "I will bring together all of them" where it will be necessary to collect all blood lines (or a certain quantity).
I'll take care of this after the release of DLC)

Call it Blood Bank.

 

[Rhipeen]

Any love for Bohemia? Premyslid dynasty is there in every possible start, even in the latest date you can start in, there are still living premyslids (even though female and one branch family in Moravia) Even one of the more important HRE emperors, Charles IV, was more keen on his Premyslid heritage instead of his Luxembourgish one, also having saints in the family tree was also a nice +) also, will the Bohemian borders be ever fixed?

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

I dont really think that the martial stat constitutes only of the sense of tactics. If so, how would you explain high martial giving you more levies? People follow great leaders who promise them great victories. A fellow with a fancy legendary sword makes a better leader than his identical twin brother without. Also, note that high martial doesnt provide your armies with higher morale or bonus damage. Even if you personally lead an army, 16 points in martial is as good as 56. Martial =/= strategy.

Doesn't martial above 20 eliminate the negatives associated with a leadership trait?

Like, normally an offensive leader does 25% more pursuit and 10% attack at the cost of 20% defense.

Hitting 20 in Martial removes the -20% defense hit in battles (and anything above 10 reduces the penalty).

 

[Silversweeeper]

But I don't play with any magic at all on so there are no magical swords so why do swords make people better tacticians?

Good question. I feel that they shouldn't do that (and modding it out (in non-magical cases; I always have supernatural stuff active for everyone, so I don't mind magic being present) is part of my long, long list of "Stuff I'm doing for my personal mod (when I have the time)") if it is just a sword with no innate powers, but the devs have decided that you somehow become a better commander with some weapons without magic, so they seem to hold the view that it makes sense for it to work like that.

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

Wow! collecting the bloodlines sounds fun.

It practically begs for an achievement focused on having a character with an unusually large number of bloodlines.

 

[Kardo]

In mods, but I don't think any are in vanilla; in our tests when we had bloodlines that were cognatic they'd just spread far too wide. We're talking several thousand living people with the bloodline a handful of centuries down the line.

Well millions (If not more) of people are descended from Genghis Khan in Mongolia (And I think China), so it's not too unrealistic.

 

[silverwing96]

Will the bloodlines be applied retroactively? Like, if I'm a descendant of Basileios Makedon in the male line, when I load up my save in Holy Fury will I see it?

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

Will the bloodlines be applied retroactively? Like, if I'm a descendant of Basileios Makedon in the male line, when I load up my save in Holy Fury will I see it?

I've got a feeling that this is going to be one of those "we broke your game" kind of DLC patches.

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

Sorry if this has been asked but don’t have time to read the whole thread right now but can there be negatives from a bloodline or only positives?

Detrimental bloodlines would be phenomenal.

And not just a line from a tyrannical or genocidal bloodline that generates terror in others and bad relations.

But also lines of monarchs notorious for:

1. madness (multiple monarchs with Lunatic);
   
2. catastrophic mismanagement (ie vassals break away repeatedly, longterm debts, continual theft of artifacts, etc);
3. failure in wars (multiple war losses, especially when you had substantial numerical superiority);
4. early death (multiple generations snuffed out at age 30 or younger);
5. impotence (multiple failures to generate heirs);
6. cowardice (major retreats during battles, continually hiding, etc);
7. and other legendary, sustained ineptitude or failure.

 

[Raga-Zun]

Psychological impact. They're making your opponent worse, not you better.

Would you want to fight the direct descendant of Ragnar Lodbrok in single combat?

That doesn't make sense, it wouldn't mean anything. Some Viking raider lands on the shores of Egypt and says "I'M DESCENDED FROM RAGNAR LODBROK, FEAR ME" and the soldiers of the Sultan look at each other in confusion, shrug, and chop him up. Even in the british isles, if you'd even heard of Ragnar Lodbrok (you're overestimating people's knowledge of history here) what the heck would they care if some scrawny short man turned up who claimed he was descended from Lodbrok? Being descended from someone like that doesn't have THAT much of an effect if any effect at all on people's psyche. You're overestimating superstition too, or misplacing it, more accurately. A brave warrior will fight with confidence a man who claims descent from whoever he wants, because at the end of the day, all that will matter is skill, and being descended from someone doesn't give you any skill. If you're going to keep these combat additions, which i think is a bad idea, you should at the very least make them smaller. 8+ combat skill justified by everyone supposedly being scared of you is ridiculous.

Edit: Equally it's as likely if not more likely that the prestige, honour and boasting rights you'd get from killing someone descended from a famous figure would encourage the ordinary person to kill them in battle. I know i've made good points here and i don't think they should be ignored, but in the end it's up to what the paradox team want to add, but i don't think there's a justification for this addition besides wanting to put it in the game - and like i say that's enough, but that IS the justification, not logic.