While a player in one of my games was building a character using the ancestral bloodlines redesign, he asked about the lack of aberrations on the bloodline list. Of course, the simple answer was that the original author didn’t include any, and I haven’t created any new bloodlines (just changed the system to use them). That’s not a great answer though.
If you think about it though, aberrations aren’t really the type of thing that one would expect to be able to readily crossbreed with other races or integrate with them in any way without causing horrible mutations and terribly debilitating side effects. They certainly wouldn’t pass on standardized traits in the way that other creatures might, meaning that one or more aberration-based bloodlines wouldn’t make much sense.
Of course, I already had a system setup to handle such random and debilitating changes: Mutations.
Of course, we already have the Beneficial Mutation feat to grant 3 Mutation Points, but really… Beneficial? That’s no good! It also requires that you already possess at least one mutation, so it’s not really a good entry point for several reasons.
Thus the Aberrant Bloodline feat was created, a feat which grants a variable number of Mutation Points (from 3 to 6) based on the harmful mutation it also inflicts. It also serves as the prerequisite feat for all other Aberrant Feats, much as the other Heritage Feats are the prerequisite for their respective bloodline abilities.
Rather than a specific bloodline and related bloodline abilities, the Aberrant Bloodline feat inflicts mutations and grants access to a collection of feats which further warp a character who takes them.
The Aberrant Feats
These feats are all express different aspects of a character’s aberrant heritage and offer a fairly wide range of effects for a grouped set of feats, as appropriate to the wildly varied aberrations out there.
Mutation-Granting Feats
Unnatural Mutation is the counterpart to Beneficial Mutation, except that it grants an increased number of MP based on the number of Aberration feats a character possesses, granting you the ability to gain additional mutations. Basically, this feat says that the more warped your body becomes, the more your body warps.
Anomalous Wild Shape also grants MP to gain new mutations, but these mutations apply only to wild shape forms. Mutations are normally suppressed while not in your normal form. This feat makes your alternate forms also have mutations, and they might even be different than your normal ones.
Mutation-Improving Feats
Carrion Scavenger requires the Strong Immune System mutation and grants improved abilities for it while Ductile Limbs grants an additional ability thematically related to the Elasticity mutation.
Tentacled Horror gives a character with a tentacle even more tentacles (note that most mutations, including the Tentacle mutation, can only be taken once) while Horrific Consumption allows a tentacled creature to consume the brains of creatures they grapple.
Deformities
The Physical Deformity feat can be taken multiple times, each time giving a different physical deformity. This feat can grant a number of different effects from changing basic character traits to granting specific mutations. This feat doesn’t really add anything truly strange or aberrant, like gills or extra eyes or tentacles. Rather, it simply warps a creature’s normal body, giving both benefits and drawbacks.
Miscellaneous Aberrant Feats
Tainted Integument gives a scaling natural armor bonus based on Aberrant feat count.
Aberrant Body functions exactly like the Psionic Body feat, except that it grants extra hit points based on the number of Aberrant feats you possess.
And finally, since we just mentioned psionics, Warped Talent is an Aberrant version of Wild Talent (though a character technically can take both) which grants a scaling number of power points and a psi-like ability via inflicting a specific mutation.