What about adding a new in-game tome dealing existential damage and with description mentioning vampires and sparkling?
Even "Vegans" can eat food for health. Vamps do not have any such luxury. Anyone who thinks they need weaknesses should play a vamp down to level 15 and see if they can manage. If they can, then discuss weaknesses to be arbitrarily added. Otherwise, this discussion is *ONLY* about boosting vampirism to make it worth using. At current it is *NOT*. That is not going to get better if we continue slamming it in the arse with the nerf hammer.
I like shwqa's idea for vampirism and wanted to offer a proposal using that as a basis. First level: Blood Sucker Disables eating and passive healing. Grants +2, +1, +1, +1, -1, and -2. 100% chance of Vampirism Attack of 2+(.1*) and drains life when you hit in melee. Second level: Corpse Drinker Grants +2, +2, -2 . Upon activation Corpse Drain (CD 15) Heals 3 (+ 0.25 × ) + for 7 grants Well Fed (+2,+3,+4, and Heals 1(+0.25 ×) each turn). Third level: Psychic Vampire +2,+1,+2,+1,-1 ,-2 and 50% chance of Psychic Vampire (unchanged) when you hit in melee. Fourth level: Transylvation +2,+1,+2,+1. Upon activation Batty Form (unchanged). Fifth level: Bolt of Sucking +1,-1,-2. Upon activation Bolt of Sucking, Mana Cost 14 (− 0.3 ×) (min 7), (Damages 3 (+ 0.70 ×)+ 100% chance of Drains Life((Only affects Animals or Others or Demons)30 (+ 0.25 ×)) +100% chance of Starts Bleeding). Sixth level: Sparkling Glamour +2, +2, +3 . Upon activation Sparkly Area Hit (CD 24), Drains Life(Only affects Animals or Others or Demons) 6 (+ 0.4 ×), Damages 6(+ 0.4 ×), 100% chance of Paralyzes for 3 turns. So the idea here is: 1) Give passive stat gain of +3, +2,+2,+2,+2, +2, +1, +3,+2,+2, +1, +2, +2, -3, and -5.2) Add a heal over time effect to corpse drinker "well fed" that also adds +2,+3,+4.3) Add a moderately efficient ranged necro damage spell that causes bleeding and has an additional drain on animals, others, and demons.4) Keep psychic vampire and batty form as is, both are useful.5) Up the damage coefficient of sparkling glamour dramatically and give it a 100% chance to stun for 3 turns. With these changes, vampirism would offer mana free healing reliably through corpse drain in addition to adding some utility to gish characters and a wide range of exotic damage resists on top of some reasonable damage and mana generation. It'd be a great swiss army knife for magic oriented melee users. Perhaps not quite as good as psionics but what is?
Well, as Omni said, this is more about making it more buffed. If you can run a vampire down to floor 15 and beat Dremdor as it currently stands, let me know. At the moment, I can't do that even on Elvish Easy, so, yeah. If I can't go anywhere on Elvish Easy with a vampire, the vampire is too weak. I think even Omni will agree with me on this. Life/energy force draining against everything but Robos, because that would be silly, and Deths, would probably be the best idea. However, I don't think we can currently make a skill not trigger on only two enemy types. The skill needs to be buffed, and to do that, I think making life leech work on more things, and a health regeneration boost would be the best idea. What do I know though, I'm not Alucard. No, I don't mean the one from Hellsing, I mean the original Alucard. The one on the right. The left is Dracula.
How about a buff with a minimal cost or none at all even that auto-consumes corpses around the vamp for health. That would prevent the infinite clicking and if scaled right it would fix everything we have against vamps at current. Fungal Arts was changed to not require clicking every corpse. Why not do the same for vamps?
We should be thinking about what the trade-offs should be for a Vampire. Vegan trade-offs are interesting and thematic. Vampire trade-offs are not, to my mind, very clear. CONS: Cannot eat any food, period. PROS: Has a modest health drain on melee attacks. That's just not a good trade-off. Cannot eat food is a HUGE penalty, so it needs to have a huge upside. Something outside skills - because every skill tree has skills! Something to offset the lack of healing - but I don't think "alternative healing" really cuts it. SO HERE'S MY PROPOSAL: CONS: Cannot eat any food, period. PROS: +10, +15, +10, +20, minor health drain when attacking enemies. You are an ancient magical being - far removed from the concerns of mortal life. You have supernatural movement, reflexes, and innate magical power. That's good, because you have a very hard time recovering from wounds - you cannot heal through normal means, and must drain life from living enemies to sustain your physical form. This doesn't "fix" the healing issue so much as give you a reason to accept the healing issue. That's some serious defensive boost there, as well as a big gain in spellpower. Would your mage want +10 out of the gate for no skill points invested? Are you willing to give up food to get it? I think this approach makes Vampirism an interesting choice to take, instead of just a way to gimp your healing.
Referencing the current PROS you mention specifically that it is related to melee attacks. On your proposed change you do not mention melee. You mention attacking. Was that an oversight or intended? I think it would fit theme and be good if it applied to any attack.
I dunno, +10 spell power would get me to take vampirism but not invest any points into it. I'd just take vampirism for the stat boost and grab fleshsmithing. That would no doubt buff my favorite mage I guess. I feel like vampirism was intended as a gish alternate healing path. I don't like the idea of simply turning vampirism into another astrology where you take the skill set and never invest any points into it. I'd like to see vampirism made into an alternative to psionics. If vampirism did grant the melee enabling healing it should grant and it's utility was tweaked just a little on top of the melee mana generation I feel it would open up some fun builds. Especially if the mana generation lets you skip blood magic on those builds. It'd love to trade out psionics blood magic for say, viking + vampirism with enough healing from vapirism and mana from psychic vamp to stay in melee with buffs up on top of a little casting.
I still think giving them a health regeneration buff makes sense. And magic power boosts works, but only if you think all vampires are mages. They're not really mystical. They're just the undead who have brains, and don't try to eat the brains of the living. And they're not skeletons. Liches are the ones with magical power. A vampire with a magical power boost might as well be called a lich-in-training.
DavidB1111: Vampires are set in the Mage archetype, and for good reason. Vampires have traditionally had magical abilities of some sort. Transformation, mind-altering, levitation, and some form of life-stealing are all very traditional powers for them. Liches are a more pure magical undead, but trying to claim vampires "are not really mystical" is... bogus. They are easily one of the more supernatural of common undead, only being beaten out by ghosts and liches in that regard. (I would argue against liches being common if I didn't already know any better. Voldemort and Sauron both prove that wrong.) The thing about vampires being mages in fantasy settings is almost an inevitability. None of their intelligence is sacrificed when turned, and they gain incredible, potentially infinite, longevity. When spellcasting in a setting is primarily limited based on who can dedicate themselves long enough to study, vampires become a natural fit due to having all the time in the world to study. When a vampire doesn't age, there's no need to exercise, weight lift, or do anything to build muscles. It just isn't necessary. So without an inherent need for either, a vampire is faced with improving itself either through some form of martial art (I don't mean unarmed, not all martial arts are hand to hand) or through learning to command powers that physical exertion is just not capable of on its own. Tell me honestly which kind of power would be more appealing to a creature for whom there's no need for fitness. The reason most vampires are not otherwise spellcasters in popular fiction is because most settings they appear in are low-fantasy in which magic other than whatever actually animates the vampires is either rare or non-existent. A vampire in a high-fantasy setting almost always knows some sort of spellcasting. The simplest way to represent this tendency is to give them spellcasting related stat bonuses, either in the form of Sagacity, Savvy, or Spellpower. And if one really wants to nitpick, the only qualifier for being a lich is not being a spellcasting undead. It's being a type of undead anchored to this world to prevent passing away even when otherwise destroyed, usually through use of a phylactery. A lich could easily be a fast talking, manipulative assassin or a powerful warrior. Look at Sauron. I like the ideas of Shwqa and jhffmn the most. Jhffmn's ideas are really solid, but I rather like the flavor of normal health regeneration for vampires being disabled until they feed. For one thing, it makes health regeneration bonuses from Vegan, equipment, and certain abilities not useless for a vampire while still requiring a vampire to periodically nom on something. Shwqa's proposed method of doing that sounds really simple and elegant to me.
Er, I'm afraid I must disagree. The very definition of a lich is this. I was not entirely correct on my vampires are not mystical. However, any fantasy game that sets them as only mages is basically doing it wrong with a capital W. Mages cast spells. Just because a vampire has some mystical powers does not make them Gandalf the grey. A lich is a spellcaster. A vampire is a warrior/rogue. Just because they know some magical abilities does not make them a mage. Except I have never heard that being the case ever. I'm not joking either. I have never heard of vampires being mages. THey have superhuman speed, superhuman agility, superhuman strength, superhuman intelligence, and you're telling me they're mages and not warriors? A vampire can tear a car door off it's hinges, punch a hole in the side of a building, throw knives with pinpoint accuracy, and you're telling me they're mages? That is the most egregious waste of potential in existence without fail. There will never be anything ever until final heat death of the universe that is a more egregious waste of potential. I can list a dozen games at the very least where Vampires are not mages. Name me 5 games where they are mages only. Neverwinter Nights has no Vampires that cast spells at you. They attack you with swords. To my knowledge. Vampires in Heroes of Might and Magic series don't have spellcasting abilties, and wield heavy swords. This is simply two games. A vampire can wield a greatsword in one hand, do you really think they would waste their time learning magical spells? Because that to me is absurd. They could dual-wield greatswords as simply as you hold rocks in your hand, and still be able to whip out a throwing knife and hit you with it from 500 yards away. I know my undead, and vampires being mages are the exception, not the rule. Mages have less defense in a physical fight than a piece of paper soaked in lighter fluid in a blast furnace inside a pool of lava inside the center of the sun has a defense against being on fire. Why would a vampire choose that?
First, I feel it necessary to point out that claiming someone is wrong is not the same as insulting them. If it was the same as insulting them, that would make you a hypocrite for insulting me by telling me I'm wrong. A disagreement is just that, a disagreement. Second, who do you think you are to dictate what a certain creature MUST be like in ALL CASES? Who are you to invalidate fantasy settings in which characters don't behave in the way you dictate? Given that vampires are by definition sentient, naturally they would differ from one another and not all be cardboard cutouts. I was very careful not to speak in absolutes about vampires and pointed out an exception to the popular style of lich. So why are you speaking in absolutes? Authors and game designers are the ones who decide what their vampires are like, clearly, and Gaslamp Games has very clearly decided on leaning them towards Mage. You are certainly right about vampires traditionally possessing superhuman strength, but that isn't a necessity to all settings and would in fact be a balance issue if vampires were good at everything. Besides, speaking in DoD terms, their strength would be an augmentation and suggest gish, not warrior.
Please go back and reread my post because I have only now finished editing it perfectly. It's just it doesn't make sense for vampires to be mages. That was my entire point. You were the one to tell me I was wrong, and that vampires are mages. I can counter that with over a dozen examples. The majority have them as fighters, not mages. This game making them mages put this game as the exception to the rule. They do not have enough magical powers to make them actual mages. To me, a vampire only using magical powers makes as much sense as Dredmor himself joining the Catholic Church. Because I am a Sith, and only Sith deal in absolutes. I'm not exactly trying to fight you to the death over this.
Actually SilvasRuin, you were the first to state an absolute. Do not get upset that David said you are wrong on that. I think there is room for all points of view. I just happen to agree more with him on this matter. But none of this matters. In DoD vampires are a wizard skillset. 'Nuff said. Everything else is irrelevant. *Edit* David Ninja'ed me in the post.
Good point. I think we should all move away from this awkward discussion, and calculate ways to balance the skill set without giving them the ability to cast 9th level cleric spells from Dungeons and Dragons like Implosion, and really, why give the Cleric an instant death spell like implosion anyway, Gary Gygax? After all, I'm a bit bull-headed, and I wasn't born as a Taurus.
Please don't hold it against me for responding to your post as I originally saw it and not knowing you were still editing. I strongly agree with your use of the word only in this statement. Honestly, a vampire that manages to live for a truly extended period would make little sense as anything but a gish, because why limit themselves to one talent when they can learn them all? This quote of yours you added actually exemplifies this: For clarity, I was pointing out justifications for them being spellcasters or having spellcasting talent, not trying to state all of them are. I did pile it on too strongly, and it wound up looking like I was arguing for the extreme rather than merely providing a counterbalance. I did not. "Almost an inevitability" is only almost an absolute. But in all seriousness, I fouled up when I didn't say being a gish was the near inevitability. I did not get upset, by the way. The hypocrite statement was merely an attempt to point out the... oddity of that statement I quoted. My closing point was trying to point out the "everything else is irrelevant" bit, but I clearly didn't put the right emphasis on it. Oops. I've got waaay more complaints than that... my biggest being the absurdity of the amount of pigeonholing he was guilty of. (Entire races being of one alignment? Whaaat?) Which is a large part of the reason I felt so strongly about playing devil's advocate here. But now that we've both clarified ourselves, I'll assume we agree to disagree and both recognize that Gaslamp Games decided on its archetype?
I still would like to see vampirism as a largely classless skill that synergizes with all archetypes and changes your playstyle (more active, fueled by fighting) via a poorly scaling melee buff and in-combat healing. I don't want to see it become a one skill-point wonder, though. The scaling on health regen is a single buff. I'm not sure just how much more we need. And, it bears repeating, I don't think it's a very good idea to instate radical changes. That's just me, though.
Well it may have been the result of me reading the posts at just the right point of edits, it looked like you stated an absolute first. But like I said, it does not matter. I do entirely agree that Gaslamp Games made the call and that is where it is. Now back to fixing this. I am not too sure about the buff on any grounds other than the fact that it is a wizard skill. But it will already have some as a result of the given for each point spent in the skill. If I understand correctly, as things are, is entirely ignored by anyone with the Vampire skill. They are hard-coded to not regenerate naturally and to be unable to eat. It cannot be modified by us. If we were wanting to change any of the way that aspect works, the game executable would have to be modified. So this makes it irrelevant to our discussion. We can and should ignore entirely for this reason. I do however think that there may be a way to add a buff or two that helps fix things. But they will have to be balanced perfectly and no-one is going to easily agree on what is reasonable here. I suggest we start small. Allow Vampires to have a low-level hungry buff that regenerates one per turn while costing one per turn. We can later change this if it plays as too potent or too weak still.
To be fair, now that you explained it better, it looks like all I did was misunderstand you. Sorry for the whole crazy insanity thing. Also, please ignore any nuclear missiles heading for your house. My bad. That works for me.
What if the second skill scaled to "level" of monster eaten? Not sure if monsters are rated in any way here. If they are lets say eating a normal diggle gives 3 health where as a arch diggle farther down gave you 10 or more considering how big melee health pools can get. Thinking more along the lines on how archeology scales with items on different floors.
