How Would You... #1: Bloodreading

[Black Rose]

The first in an ongoing series of me asking Herodom Assembled how the heck you would represent a power idea I've come up with. I'll probably be putting this up in the Fantasy Hero sub-forum, too.

The basic idea is this: the person can, at will and without any real effort, simply know about the general strengths and weaknesses that come from your "blood", as defined back in the 19th century, as well as familial origin - Hmm, halfblood, and your family comes from France and... Belgium? No, Luxembourg, that's it. This is for a somewhat more serious version of the Harry Potter universe, so being able to detect pureblood, halfblood, and mudblood is a breeze. If the person takes a moment to concentrate on a single person, they can learn more detail - strong in Charms, weak in Defensive magics, especially Wards, and a predisposition to overeating. Avoid the tarts, old boy. If the person actually took the time to meditate on a real sample of blood from their subject, they could know almost anything that could be justified as being "in the blood" - interesting Malfoy... did you know about fifteen generations back some Sidhe blood got mixed in? Explains your oh-so-distinctive hair and eye color, I guess. I daresay you could breed for the next millennium with Weasleys and not los- Malfoy? Was it something I said?

So, does anyone have some good ideas? The only thing I could come up with was Sense (obviously), but I never quite got a writeup that felt... right.

[Cosmosemeritus]

First thing that struck my mind was Mary Poppins' measuring tape

Sounds like two things are occuring in your well-written description. First there's a sense that's used to gather information about a person's bloodline; sounds like its bought with discriminatory and analyse at the very least. There's also an interpretation being made about the composition of the blood; and that sounds like a skill to me.

Of course you could do it as retro- and limited pre-cognitive clairsentience. The character knows about the subject bloodline's past and gains some insight into its future.

I suppose the difference would be that a skill represents knowledge that matures with age while the clairsentience power might better represent an inherent ability to intuitively interpret the data.

[Bloodstone]

Sounds like a pretty simple Detect, possibly with a skill required for proper interpretation. Since the greater detail requires more time and effort, perhaps you could buy Descrim and Analize seperate with additional limitations.

So, something along the lines of:

Basic Bloodreading: Detect Blood Purity

Advanced Bloodreading: Discriminatory for Detect Blood Purity; Concentration

Blood Meditation: Analyze for Detect Blood Purity; Concentration, Extra Time

[Black Rose]

Sounds like a pretty simple Detect, possibly with a skill required for proper interpretation. Since the greater detail requires more time and effort, perhaps you could buy Descrim and Analize seperate with additional limitations.

So, something along the lines of:

Basic Bloodreading: Detect Blood Purity

Advanced Bloodreading: Discriminatory for Detect Blood Purity; Concentration

Blood Meditation: Analyze for Detect Blood Purity; Concentration, Extra Time
Except it's not just blood purity; there's also an ability to interpret geographical origin and possible hereditary strengths. Granted, I think much of the ability will be rolling against a Bloodreading skill to interpret the information, but if the character has the knowledge to understand what they're 'reading, they could plot a target's geneology back for tens of generations.

Would it be cleaner to simply set each "thing" that can be detected for as a seperate Sense? It would certainly be more expensive, but I've never been sure when to use the "Sense Additional Thing" trick. That would mean:

Sense Blood Purity (telling the difference between Miss Weasley and Miss Granger in a dark room)
Sense Lineage (telling the difference between Malfoy and Potter in a dark room)
Sense Hereditary Gifts (this is a concept of my own devising - the idea that family lines can develop certain natural gifts, and if the right sort of mates are chosen, these will grow stronger. Forex, the Weasleys could be considered to have a certain gift for fertility.)
Sense Magical Strengths and Weaknesses (picking up Longbottom's gift for Herbalism and utter lack of talent in Potions, or Malfoy's talent for the same, or Potter's knack for DADA, etc.)

While this would allow for having 'readers with strengths in picking up one thing or another, is it the cleanest way to do it?

[Bloodstone]

Well, you could break idt down as multipe detects, but I think that might be over complicating the issue.

Take Normal Vision as an example. It gives us the ability to recognize a wide range of information sight. But in the end it would still be built as a Detect. Mind you, it's a Detect vs a Large Class of Things and with lots of nice Sense modifiers, but it's still a singe detect as opposed to a series of different detects to determine things like color, shape or distance. Many other things can be determined by sight, but often that comes down to individual skills and backgrounds.