Really, I've found that the only downside of Vamp is the opportunity cost of not having another skill set available - which is not inconsiderable - but it provides benefits as is, and is not really all that weakened by loss of food and regen. There are many, MANY ways of healing in this game. Too many. Even on GRPD, I've never once needed to have them all active at once. Eating corpses is as good as any regen/food in-between-battles heal-over-time option. And during melee, you gain back health (and later, mana) for engaging in something you were already doing for free: namely, duking it out hand-to-hand. It gives you the melee benefits from both Necro and Blood Mage in a single skill tree. This only synergizes well with a Gish build - one that's got plenty of magic power while dealing out melee damage - and perhaps needs Perception or Alchemy to back it up - but in that context it works pretty well. To be competitive with other skills, it could use some more buffs and a new capstone, but the basic mechanics are sound enough.
It's true, I don't think Vampirism is as atrocious as people make it out to be. But it is suboptimal, and in a roguelike you try to be about as optimal as you can be (assuming you go GRPD). I've gotten plenty far with vamp gish builds. Really, the problem lies in Vampirism being useful only to gish builds, and even for that it's not exceptional. I think (and don't quote me on this) it's a consensus that 1) For what it does (healing) it's not as good as it should be for various reasons, and 2) It shouldn't be solely useful to gishes, and perhaps even wizards in general. 2) might be my personal opinion only, not sure. So, for 1) it should either a) do healing better or b) do other things. I'm for a) myself, since healing is its schtick and core mechanic and I'd like to see that preserved. Else, b) suggestions have mostly been about defenses and utility. For 2), we can change the scaling, or give it another ability that not only gives it another on-hit, the second on-hit scales off of physical damage.
It is supposed to be changed so that it will scale with health regeneration stat when the third expansion is out. I reckon it'll get some more changes, too.
Well I think the biggest problem with vampirism is that is gets pulled in every direction in the game. It gains health each melee hit so you expect to melee a lot as a vampire. However your healing is based off of so you want a lot of it. However in melee you need a way to avoid damage so you either need a lot of , or +. However if you don't want to go the + because then you don't have any so you want to take a rogue path for and . Long story short you want a character with a lot of and/or , take has a lot of , and is also good at melee. That is a pretty hard thing to achieve without much pay off in return. Most builds become this poor jack of all trades. Not the best at anything but not good at anything either.
There's a suit of armor (not sure if vanilla or not) that has 12 and no magic penalty. But it is max stars, so you're not likely to get it for a while.
Best vanilla "armors" with 0 magic penalties are Armored Archmage's Robe at 5, Cloak of Sagan at 3, Armored Mage's Robe at 3, and just for good measure Scaly Hauberk of the Fish has 6 with only -2 and -1 for magic penalties.
But you can't wear horse armour. You are not a horse. That is, unless there's something you want to share with us...
Races should be added to this game, if only because it'd be a real challenge to go through the game without being able to wear any chest armors other than Horse Armor. Also it would be highly entertaining to try and use all of those pony skills at the same time. Shame you can't give the player a levitation buff without a polymorph, really.
The opportunity cost is rather significant considering all the skills you could have taken. I'd also argue that while you can grow into vampirism as the game progresses and overcome the disadvantages. It makes the early game a lot harder and the benefits are rather meager. Vampirism as it's designed now, would make more sense as a race with abilities granted for free.
People are saying Vampirism is bad early? That's odd. From my experience (and I take Vampirism fairly often) Vampirism is excellent early game, with its primary problem being poor scaling into mid-game. You do a lot of melee fighting early, and it buffs up those attacks, as well as giving you survivability at the same time. With a proper gish build (viking wizardry is all it takes for this, Warlockery helps) you one-shot early monsters.
It would be similar to Vegan's ability, but I suppose as long as you weren't forced to engage them with non melee fighting that'd work. I've (potentially unfairly) avoided Veganism because I don't really want to deal with that aspect.
Consider how much better (and very likely TOO good) necro's version of vampirism is. It's only downside is that you have to cast it every-so-often. Compared to the loss of life regen and food items along with being such a small heal in comparison, on top of the fact that Necro has so many other amazing goodies even if you're melee, it is kind of silly and ridiculous that vampirism is in the state it is in. For a while I included vamp in my gish builds, but in the end I found that it just made them more difficult to play, not less, because I had much, much better healing options from skills that didn't severely limit my character. I think that the fact that the cost is not equal to the gains, especially relative gains, is the main problem that people have with vampirism, not the cost by itself.
That's not quite the vampirism substitute you should be making comparisons off of. The main thing to consider when balancing Vampirism as a skill is, "is it measureably more powerful than Greedy Blungecaps?"
