just wanted to addend with 2 bugs i found also while continuing my campaign with this mod-

1 - related to the NPCs spamming convert, i keep getting spammed with popups that (X) NPC used Blood Magic to convert You toasts. luckily i don't get converted to the original blood cult again but i am literally getting them nonstop because almost everyone powerful in the game is a blood cultist mage at this point. also every toast for these kinds of event just has the word TITLE at the top of it.

2 - related to the Ancient track for the Blood Mage trait: if your character becomes "Old" (NOT Infirm) BEFORE they get track 10 in this trait, even if they gain the trait, the -100 modifier from "Old"to negative prowess loss with age still applies. also, even if i get enough positive modifiers to add up past +100 prowess, the Old debuff seems to negate all of them. my guy didnt get Ancient until after he had lost all his Prowess to old age and so i have 0 Prowess, can't get it back.

i'll edit this post if i find any more things that might be worth giving attention to?

also not a bug but a question, i noticed that if you carve blood runes on to yourself at max power of runes, after a while the cooldown to carve max power runes comes back. you would expect that carving blood runes all over yourself is a permanent thing, so does repeating carving max rank blood runes once you have them actually do anything, or is it a waste of Lifeforce? i can't tell.

i also have the same question about the infuse Dynasty with Health modifier, because while infusing them with other bonuses removes the option as a choice, this choice seems to permanently be there. so does it stack or is it a waste to use it after one time?

thank you again!

First off, thank you so much for taking the time to play the mod and above all else taking the time to make this post. I cannot overstate how much it means to me after all the time I spent on the mod! 😁 I'm currently on vacation (hence slow to reply) but will implement your suggestions as much as I can when back!

Reading through, the religion is not fully ready yet. I think the decision/interaction is hardcoded to convert to the old religion. I hadn't tested it after reforming. So for now, I recommend not reforming it until I work out the kinks. I will disable the character interaction and make the decision have a very long cool down as a hotfix when I'm back, until I figure out a better system. Maybe converting with lifeforce is not a good interaction, and should just use the vanilla system.

The trait makes sense to not be congenital, I agree. Will change that. Hadn't thought about the search being bloated in this way! From my testing, both playing the game and letting it run for around 150 years a few times, I didn't encounter the trait being that prevalent. Not sure what that is about, but will test some more,especially with dread based characters.

I created the drain all prisoners decision as a quality of life thing for the player mainly, but looks like the ai is abusing it, so might just turn that off for the ai.

The mod idea was to be ALMOST immortal, without being fully there, as long as you maintain the balance. To have a few very long lived characters, but I didn't want then to be too overpowered. Looks like the first part works but not the second! Perhaps harder to reach, or smaller bonuses are more in order!

I did feel the same way with the late game, that something was missing, more interactions. I've got a few ideas knocking about, but any suggestions for more decisions, interactions etc let me know! One suggestion is Blood Curses, which I do like, to make it more offensive rather than just focused on the player character/dynasty.

I've looked around the game files and Discord, and a big game limitation is that there's no way to check how many of a modifier (like lifeforce) a character has. Only that they have one, yes/no. This is one of the reasons I split it out, into minor and major. One idea i had was to create superior lifeforce, which is created by combining minor and major together, and use that for more powerful magic.

The not growing old visually is part of it, should be able to look forever young. This is the Lifespan modifier, which affects how visually you age, when you start to lose health from old age and fertility. I wanted to be able out outlive my grandkids haha! 😂

And thanks for the bug report! I guess that's the ai trying to convert you, but perhaps not successfully. I'll have a look better when back!

With the old issue, I don't think there's a fix for it as far as I can tell. Some things are just baked into the game engine. Only way is to try to get there before that point unfortunately. I can double check, but quick Google/discord search I find mentions of this issue.

Blood runes, that's interesting! Didn't know but I'll check it out!

And yes, the health one was supposed to be there as a stackable one and works 🙂

Originally posted by Nicelander:

First off, thank you so much for taking the time to play the mod and above all else taking the time to make this post. I cannot overstate how much it means to me after all the time I spent on the mod! 😁 I'm currently on vacation (hence slow to reply) but will implement your suggestions as much as I can when back!

Thanks for taking my feedback well, and I hope you're enjoying your vacation!

Originally posted by Nicelander:

Reading through, the religion is not fully ready yet. I think the decision/interaction is hardcoded to convert to the old religion. I hadn't tested it after reforming. So for now, I recommend not reforming it until I work out the kinks. I will disable the character interaction and make the decision have a very long cool down as a hotfix when I'm back, until I figure out a better system. Maybe converting with lifeforce is not a good interaction, and should just use the vanilla system.

It is hardcoded to go back to the original religion I strongly suspect (I haven't tried either). I think either an extremely LONG cooldown, or a very high Lifeforce cost, might be a balancing fix. On the other hand, I think the mod would function fine and be just as fun without the ability at all, there's probably plenty of other fun abilities you could add to it instead while using vanilla.

Jumping around a bit to what you said here--

And thanks for the bug report! I guess that's the ai trying to convert you, but perhaps not successfully. I'll have a look better when back!

I made the same assumption, and at 250~ years in (and still playing as my OG character!), with the world ENTIRELY converted to Cult of Blood and no matter how hard I spam Evangelize every time it's available, my vassals and lands being converted back quickly, i am getting ABSOLUTELY SPAMMED with these notifications. That's fine though, I know the mod is in testing, and I'm testing it.

i also noticed that every time i get this notification, the game automatically pauses. So I keep having to spam "unpause" every single time it pops up. Which is definitely negatively affecting the flow of gameplay badly, but whatever, as I said, it's a work in progress and I get it.
this might be related to mid-late-game bugginess, but Blood Mage was the only mod I added to my "basic" playset I use for testing bigger new ones, and it didn't happen to me while I was testing Witchcraft. that still doesn't prove it's your mod causing it though, i know.

The trait makes sense to not be congenital, I agree. Will change that. Hadn't thought about the search being bloated in this way! From my testing, both playing the game and letting it run for around 150 years a few times, I didn't encounter the trait being that prevalent. Not sure what that is about, but will test some more,especially with dread based characters.

Maybe I have an idea why this is? Or two.

First, it's related to why I didn't understand why EVERY ruler (or any NPC who spammed drain lifeforce, like some Mercenary Leaders) in the whole map was a Giant after some point:into the game (maybe about 150 yrs in, just didn't mention it in my previous post as I was still puzzled).

Then I realized: The NPC AI also spams "Drain Traits" on all/any prisoners who have them at any time.So this includes draining Giants. So by mid-late game, EVERYONE in a position of high power is one! It's actually kind of hilarious but well, I'm not sure if you want to keep this feature in....?

I actually didn't want the Giant trait trait for my guy, for RP reasons, but it's kinda hilarious and silly that that this is the case. The only rulers who DON'T have this trait are ones who don't have the personality disposition to Drain people, which is mostly my hand-picked greatgrandkids at this point and no one else. But I'm also at a disadvantage by picking my grandkids who don't have the disposition to use Drain, right now, and even though most of them are blood mages congenitally they never, or almost never, use any kind of blood magic at all.

One second possible but doubtful explanation for why there are so many Blood Mages is that I've been playing with a mod that makes MY house dynasty slightly more likely to inherit congenital traits. However, I doubt this because entire kingdoms/empires I barely even touched or were out of my diplomatic range, we practically ALL filled with bloodmages.

edit: I also had this mod on when I playtested Witchcraft, and the Source trait in Witchcraft that is also Congenital, remained the rarest and hardest to get trait in the game (see later in my posts where I talked about this more) -- so I know the mod is not bugged to affect non-Dynastic characters in-game.

I created the drain all prisoners decision as a quality of life thing for the player mainly, but looks like the ai is abusing it, so might just turn that off for the ai.

I appreciate the QOL because, well, I'm busy making my empire larger and spamming the choice on prisoners individually would NOT be fun. but i agree it should maybe be turned off, or given a different and longer cooldown, for the AI. probably just turned off?

The mod idea was to be ALMOST immortal, without being fully there, as long as you maintain the balance. To have a few very long lived characters, but I didn't want then to be too overpowered. Looks like the first part works but not the second! Perhaps harder to reach, or smaller bonuses are more in order!

THIS was why I was so excited to try out the mod and and why I wanted to give feedback, because it's exactly the kind of mod I like (the concept/intention of it anyway)

Two things:

1- Re, Prowess loss: So because I had assumed the mod would harshly penalize me and I didn't even realize half the things you can do by right clicking on your character, I played through to about age 80 expecting that perhaps maybeee I would be extending my life towards 125-140ish at best. I have a mod that makes the infirm trait less common early (like getting at 55ish, which is always annoying), by the way, and so I never was and never have become Infirm.

But, since I didn't realize lifeforce buffs STACK with NO CAP ON THEM, and that the NPCs had been doing this to become semi-immortal superbeings while I had been assuming that I was just prolonging my life a bit that a succession would happen, I had been more frugal about using it, especially as I started out playing tall and expanding slowly, so during my first 80 years I never got many prisoners.

AFTER I was around 130-150yo, I began to get sus though, and I compared my stats to the stats of other NPCs who were in the same unnatural blood mage age range. Specifically, I looked at their "Old Age" debuff compared to mine.

Mine is at -100 and i have a ~+450 prowess modifier to it, but I still have a Prowess of 0.

Other characters, even if they have the "Old Age" debuff, often have it at numbers like -55 or -73. They never capped at -100. These characters are just as old as I am, but still have formidable prowess levels, due to the way that being semi-immortal just allows you to stack Prowess (and I think Lifeforce causes it to stack further? maybe? i'm tired as I write this, sorry)

so most other rulers in the world, because they started spamming and draining early, actually DO have prowess. It was very hard for me to find a blood mage character of my age who had fully capped out at the nullifying -100 Old Age debuff, which seems to be the trigger for it remaining eternally at zero.

Also, the other thing, regarding now living in a world where most foreign rulers are semi-immortal superbeings:

At first it was pretty frustrating and almost stale, because no successions were happening: The powerful blood mages would just dominate the non-mages lands until the map is maybe made up of about a half dozen-ish empires, and I noticed none of them were getting assassinated or dying of ill health or anything else really (since you absolutely CANNOT do this because of Lifeforce stacking, haha)

So I decided to take things into my own hands. I think I was about 200 years in now when I decided this. around 200 years is just about long enough to max out as many skill trees as you want, which isn't a balance issue I'm going to comment on right now, since it's OPness is fun but also it completely changes the way the game plays and makes the only relevant decision the order in which you max everything.

So I started assassinating rulers. OR trying to. The problem of course is, not only do their Intrigue stats very closely match mine, but so do many of the people in their courts i.e their spymasters (this is an assumption). Murdering or Abducting a semi-immortal blood mage ruler who has lived long enough is usually Hard or Moderate at best, even if you yourself have fully maxed Intrigue skilltree, high Intrigue stats, excellent Spymaster, etc.

After various failed attempts, I *did* manage to finally take out a significant few of them, hoping to cause some instability to break the staleness of the map state. Abduct often works much better than Murder because not only can you drain them but for some reason it just has a higher chance sometimes (don't know why, I've only played CK3 for a few months).

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with their Spymaster having high stats, or other scheme disruption benefits of being Ruler, OR that their heirs sometimes are not the spam-drain type of bloodmage,.
I noticed that it was MUCH easier to assassinate their heirs in difficulty level (if they were also long lived blood mages) first, before killing the main guy and letting succession happen. If I did that, I just removed a problem to replace it with the same problem.

That's all my troubleshooting observations for now, if I've missed any it's cuz I'm incredibly tired while writing this, sorry!

I did feel the same way with the late game, that something was missing, more interactions. I've got a few ideas knocking about, but any suggestions for more decisions, interactions etc let me know! One suggestion is Blood Curses, which I do like, to make it more offensive rather than just focused on the player character/dynasty.

I've looked around the game files and Discord, and a big game limitation is that there's no way to check how many of a modifier (like lifeforce) a character has. Only that they have one, yes/no. This is one of the reasons I split it out, into minor and major. One idea i had was to create superior lifeforce, which is created by combining minor and major together, and use that for more powerful magic.

The not growing old visually is part of it, should be able to look forever young. This is the Lifespan modifier, which affects how visually you age, when you start to lose health from old age and fertility. I wanted to be able out outlive my grandkids haha! 😂

Also yeah, I'd be excited for your ideas, and agree with you about the lategame state. I'm one of those players who loooves focusing on my dynasty, but that's only half of it. On the other hand, some mods, like the Witchcraft mod, are almost too harsh for me in the balance taste and don't focus on Dynasty much at all (sidenote: I HATE having to spam to educate my own heirs/family members as my dynasty grows large in that mod, idk just QOL things to consider maybe you could have a "Convert all first generation Heirs to Blood Magic" function or even a "Sacrfice yourself to convert Dynasty" thing.

Just random ideas-- not suggestions per se!

The reason I bring up the Witchcraft mod (which DOES have some great things in it, just it's a littel too much for me-- haven't tested the toned down and reworked one that's supposed to be in Supernatural yet) is related to Blood Curses, also. The idea is sound but I want to warn you about a problem with powerful Curses, which I've experienced when testing Witchcraft, and which I've heard other ppl report recently is still a problem in Supernatural:

Feuds.

So in Witchcraft/Supernatural, there are a variety of curses. Once you become powerful enough in certain skilltrees, there is literally a curse that is guaranteed to KILL someone, anyone, no matter who it is and whether they're in your diplomatic range.

So, if you don't start the game and quickly rush to keep up with the power im/balance and acquire this, what happens if mages randomly decide to Feud with you, even if you've *literally never met them* and they're out of your diplomatic range?

They spam this curse. You die. Your heir ascends. He might live for a year or two. Then they cast it again. Luckily you've got a spare son or a brother. He ascends. He lives for a little while. They spam this curse. you die. This essentially softlocks the game up until the point at which your entire dynasty is gone, even if you had hundreds of relatives, and it's not even worth playing to the inevitable Game Over/

In that mod, I even once had a powerful mage who had Feuded with me suggest to bury the hatchet, only for him to almost immediately start Feuding again within, like, 2 years. And again I'd literally like, never even met him or done anything where he lived (out of diplomatic range). Not having the spell myself and not being as powerful, I realized there was no way I could possibly win.

Summary-- Curses are fine and the concept of them is super cool, I want something offensive and I think it would make the Bloodmage mod complete, but...amyway, in fact the Witchcraft mod has some interesting curses that do things like affect fertility negatively, or give diseases like cancer to other characters. However in Witchcraft, this is basically a GUARANTEED success chance, because it's a right-click character action.It's far too OP for my taste, both as a player ability, and from all the problems caused by hostile personality NPCs spamming it once they have it.

Not sure if there's any way you can make it not guaranteed to work, but if you can, maybe have the chance start low and then go up to maybe 75% max with your progress/experience in maxing out different Blood Mage paths? And with a significantly hefty lifeforce cost, or a very long cooldown?

Also, PLEASE do not add a guaranteed death curse. I think it should be obvious why since I explained it (hopefully). I think things that could RESULT in death, like giving someone diseases, are fine though and a cool idea that I'd like to see as the other side of this mod, definitely! They just need to be balanced and tested with thought put carefully into them.

One cool thing, related to Congenital Traits, that the Witchcraft mod has, is the Source trait. In that mod, you can only start by becoming a Witch (or being one at chargen) and then you have to find the very very rare amount of characters who spawn from events or at the start of the game who have the Source trait, if you want to be able to specialize as a Mage (which is the one with the OP curses) without owning a magical artifact.

In that mod, I had a wife with that trait after a long time, and I noticed that she only very rarely gave birth to children that had Source. The same went for other NPCs who had children, most of their kids didn't. Source also seems to have different levels to it like the regular positive/some negative traits do- i.e Minor Source is the equivalent of "Pretty" or "Quick".

so maybe you could, instead of just not making the Blood Mage trait congenital, find a way to increase its rarity (maybe it's just a case of that in Witchcraft you can't use a right click decision to instantly make someone into a Witch/Mage and so NPCs don't spam it), keep it congenital but also divide it into the three tiers of positive traits, as well as finding some way to make it more rare (which because of playing Witchcraft I know must be possible? Comparing that at 200~ years into Witchcraft, there were like, 6 or less characters in the world who were Sources. But now I'd say over 75% of people in the world are Blood Mages after the same duration of time)

and, like I mentioned briefly, Magical Artifacts and certain unique events exist in Witchcraft. So does the ability to challenge another mage to a mage duel. These are all very cool ideas imo, maybe you would consider some or all of them? Maybe some kind of Ritualistic Blood Mage duel would be neat.

Oh and since I mentioned the various tracks of Blood Mage trait experiennce, I think it would be neat if it was clearer what type of actions (beyond attuning, because the attuning screen seems to be the only one that indicates what they do) lead to gaining more experience in each of them? It took me a while to get more than a vague idea of it, especially in regards to Benediction (because of my playstyle)


also the coding issue about Lifeforce sucks, but it is what it is, you work with what you've got. Splitting it was a good idea. I wonder if there are any more ways it can be split? Or if a penalty can be triggered after X amount of Lifeforce has been reached by a character that starts *debuffing* them in a balanced or flavorful RP way (maybe going mad lol? Drenched in the blood of dozens of souls, the words of the Gods begin to make you do increasingly erratic things; perhaps you begin to blood-let yourself excessively, perhaps you suddenly make decisions that cause harmful "accidents" to befall your loved ones as you spiral into delirium....uhh, just another idea I came up with on the spot! Take it as you will lol

Also, bug report I noticed but forgot to mention until I started continuing my playtest today: Drain Trait results in you losing a Level of Devotion, even if you belong to a religion which you are founder of and has no head (My Divergent version of the Cult of Blood)

It would make sense for if you were Catholic, so I think it should lose you devotion then, but as a literal Blood Religion not so much...?

Not sure if this happens when you do it as Default COB

extra thought about how the COB religion has negatively effected gameplay:
because it currently spreads so powerfully fast to cover the entire world map no matter what you do, even though the idea of having Christian Syncretism is good in theory, what actually ends up happening is that whether you're default COB or divergent, because those become the ONLY religions on the map really fast, you CANNOT holy war anyone at all (unless you created a religion that considers COB hostile i guess, but that goes against the sort of RP idea i think?)

Thanks again for the feedback, really appreciate all the playtesting! The mod is still in development, so all feedback is incredibly valuable!

For the next update, I'm in the process of overhauling the religion, so most of the issues with that should go away. It will be its own family, and the decision is only available if religion is not that family. The convert with lifeforce has been removed, think better to just use the in built options. Mass Drain lifeforce is now only for players, and AI should only minor drain prisoners for now, as it's spamming it on all family and court members, even though in theory i'm telling it not to in the code. Default chance 20, and Knights, family, councillors have a negative -100 chance, but it's still happening!

Haha! Funny to hear about everyone becoming giant. I guess it's part of it, if you can drain it you can become it. I could make it more tricky to become, but in general the more traits you have, the harder it is to trait drain. One thought I had was that unsuccessful drains should leave the victim wounded, so they are more likely to die in prison.

Ill have a look at source in the witchcraft tree, see how it's done. I've already made it less likely to appear, I got 250 blood mages in the world after 200 years, 10 of them over 100 years old, oldest 180

I've just tested prowess loss, and it works for me. Gave a 70 year old man the trait, maxed the xp, and they are not losing it.

For the prowess on lifeforce, I planning on reducing it. Minor won't give prowess, and major only gives 1. And adjusting the benefits it gives, to balance a bit. Perhaps it gives 1/3 rather than the current 2/5 lifespan, for example. And in future, combining them into a superior one, to cast major spells, which could give 5 years.

For blood curses, I completely agree with you. I do not want insta-kill buttons. That's no fun. If I wanted that, i'd play with debug mode on :) The offensive is low on the priority list, lots to do on the main character/dynasty first. But something I want to do at some point.

Drain trait, causes you to lose a level of devotion, when you are draining the highest rank of the three levellable traits: so genius/herculean/beautiful etc.

If you hover over each trait track, there's a small text box that explains how you gain xp in it :)

Hope that answers everything!! :D

Hello,

Here is my feedback about the mod:
- it's very pleasant to play
- it tends to be a bit overpowered (but maybe i'm biased in this opinion, as I was playing as Byzantine, I could easily obtain tons of Piety to quickly develop my blood powers and conducting and winning many wars, I could have a neverending supply of prisoners from who to absorb lifeforce)

I have several suggestions to improve the mod:
- remove christian affinity to the cult of quintessence (actuallu, i still play with blood cult, so maybe you removed the affinity with christiany already?). It's thematically aligned with the norse mythology, which has no common ground with christian faiths. Also, removing the christian affinity would raise the difficulty.
- I think there are too many holy sites, for too many bonuses
- reduce prowess bonus (except for the blood knights): it's just too easy to reach 100+ prowess. Just having the "no loss prowess with age" bonus is already good enough. Maybe if you implement your "greater lieforce" idea you could have it add a bonus to prowess? But "lifeforce" seemed to easy to obtain for it to provide prowess bonus.
- it's too easy to steal lifeforce from prisonners. Maybe there should be consequencies. For example: people in your kingdom that don't share the cult of quintessence faith could have negative opinion if you start to suck blood of prisonners. Public hanging or beheading is one thing, but being led by a blood sucking / life stealing eldritch sorcerer might lead to a bit of anxiety.
- on the other hand, a ruthless leader could decide to conduct a round-up and mass emprison people in his kingdom, just to collect their lifeforce. This could be a decision that grant huge amount of tyranny and lots of negative opinion.
- offer more blood magic interactions, such as the possibility to heal or empower distant people if they are also blood mages. This ability could be opened by a building feature (a "Blood Ziggurat"?). Like that, you could heal a diseases vassal for example. It could cost additional Lifeforce to do so.
- it should feel more special to drain lifeforce from another blood mage, especially if you drain a mage stronger than you. It could provide some xp in various blood magic xp tracks and as well as one or several empowerment, but it could come at risk if the target has more xp or tremendously more lifeforce than you do.
- extend golem lifetime. I supposed they would be more durable, if not immortal (but they might require an upkeep in lifeforce)
- some offensive (but not broken) powers such as minor drain at a distance or inflict various sort of wounded status to target at a distance. This could be locked behind a building and cost heavy piety amount.
- a compatch with "Morelifestyles", to cover the new lifestyles with the ability that let you improve a lifestyle

Happy to discuss it with 🙂

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it! And glad you are enjoying the mod!

I'm still working on balance, but it's quite tricky to balance meaningful rewards from interacting with the system + living a longtime/forever haha! Work has been a bit too busy lately, so haven't had as much time.

I'll have to test removing the Christian affinity. When the religion was in its earlier iteration, I felt I couldn't play in Europe. I'd get holy war declared, hated, raided and killed quite early. This felt like a way to dial back the hatred, to allow you to actually play there. Perhaps not as much of an issue now, but not sure.

For the holy sites, I've removed quite a few of the and changed the benefits to lifespan/health/disease. Is that the case for you? Ask since you mentioned that the older religion was still active, which in hindsight was quite OP to get an extra skill point!

The prowess, do you still find it easy, despite just 1 point per lifeforce? I play unlanded often, so prisoners are not as easy to come by. Perhaps needs revisiting, or just remove it completely.

Agree that there should be more negative repercussions for draining. Perhaps it should be duel-based, like draining the wanderer from strolling. Cause some negative modifiers if fails.

Love the idea that draining lifeforce from another blood mage should be more impactful. Perhaps it could serve as a shield, so if you have lifeforce and get drained, you lose the lifeforce without dying.

A part of the reason some interactions aren't available to distant characters is both roleplay and practical. I didn't want the AI spamming some interaction to a character half way around the map, but focus on something closer. I'm still learning about AI interactions, still find them tricky. I know I can limit it to player only, but i wanted the player and Ai to be on even footing, as much as possible. Perhaps I could balance it in another way, will have a think. But offensive magic in general I like the idea of. Could also allow for another track in the trait, as it feels distinct from the rest.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

Hello,

My pleasure for the feedback.

Regarding Blood / quintessence cult:
1) on a pure lore point of view, given the practices of Blood Cult and blood magic, it seems entirely natural to me that there is a natural hostility with christian faith
2) removing Christian Synchretism would indeed raise the difficulty. It would need to be playtested, but I think it would be a nice way to balance Blood magic. Also, the player could decide to have his charater create a toned down version of blood cult that is more sympathetic to christianism, or islam, etc.
=> Perhaps have a rule that let the player decide if they want native tolerance by christian or not?

On a side note, I found it surprising that the blood cult was rooted in Norse mythology. Although said mythology and faith was quite bloody in itself, I didn't get the same vibe when it comes to Blood cult. How about to root that faith into something more edgy such as the antiquity cults of Moloch or Baal? Those irl faith existed some 3000 years ago and these divinities were later labelled as demons by Judaism / Christianism. That would be a thematical fit imho.
Or come up with an entirely original background for this faith?

My point about the holy sites is that, although you toned down their effect (actually, I have yet to check what are their effects in my main playthrough, since i started with the end of april / early may version of your mod, before you rework religion). But nonetheless, there are so many holy sites that as soon as you start painting the map, their bonuses pile up dramatically quick. Afaik, no other faith has so many holy sites.

Regarding prowess, i'm biased. I'm 150 years into my game as the head of Byzantine Empire. After many large wars, revolts, upheavals, schemes against me, I've drained over 300 prisonners. And I currently sit atop 200+ lifeforces. So, yeah, to me, this piled up quite big. I can understand this would be less extendive in an adventurer style game, and it's my plan for my next game. This being said, maybe you could cap the prowess bonus to +10 or +20? That is already quite a large bonus if you ask me.

Redarding distance interraction, it's mostly me who wanted to heal a cripple or diseased offspring. Once they are vassals, even though both characters are at the same event, I can't heal them and i was a little bit frustrated by that 😄.

To mitigate AI doing long distance healing all around the map, perhaps you could lock it down behind a building with a certain level of development. You could also limit it to other characters having the blood magic trait: only blood mage could handle the lifeforce that is sent to them over a distance in order to heal them. Non blood mage characters could lack the control required to have their body healed at a distance.

re: I'll have to test removing the Christian affinity. When the religion was in its earlier iteration, I felt I couldn't play in Europe. I'd get holy war declared, hated, raided and killed quite early. This felt like a way to dial back the hatred, to allow you to actually play there. Perhaps not as much of an issue now, but not sure.

and ofc the lore points that Legion made:

i haven't replayed this mod since you updated it, so my comments are based on my previous experience of the old version which was like a 200-250 yrs play in the end.

I literally NEVER encountered this problem because very early on I just started converting ppl to Cult of Blood and then my own custom divergent COB religion, and it spread so quickly like a virus that there literally WERE NO CHRISTIANS left to declare war on me VERY QUICKLY.

so, i thought this might be worth a reminder regarding playstyle choices.

was just checking out this thread again bc i was considering trying the updated mod now but i like a lot of Legion's suggestions honestly. sometimes it's fun to be overpowered AF, idk you could always fork the mod into an OP version like it is now and one with a slightly raised difficulty if you felt like you had the energy or will to do so...

as i said at some point in my original feedback, sometimes i am playing and just want have fun being OP, other times i want a real challenge but still find the mod concept very compelling and prefer it in concept / execution to other mods like Supernatural or Witchcraft (though i like both those mods too, it's just there's certain things about them bothering me more)