The vampire starts with just 2 healing surges

[kaomera]

Regeneration doesn't function when you're on zero HP and so is pretty irrelevant - believe me without being able to be healed effectively you *will* end up there. Especially when the healer looks at you with 0 surges, there is very little they can do about it with the immense amount of nerfs to surgeless healing in 4E.

Except that any other character at zero surges (say because you're fighting surge-draining enemies) is pretty well stuck there. The vampire can stock back up, to some degree at least.

So the leader is basically forced to not only grant attacks to him, over say a thief or rogue who might be in a better position - but also make sure they heal them.

Yup. Pretty much exactly what I said. Instead of the leader getting all bugged because you didn't do what she wanted so that she could use her powers, the vampire is getting all bugged if the leader isn't catering to him... Not a good thing in either case (obviously).

Oh, and even better, it has to be a vampire at-will, so an MBA may not cut it (there may be a way around that - we'll have to see).

Or is prevented from being able to attack in the first place - such as stunned, dominated or dazed in a difficult scenario (for example). It's really swingy as a class and I honestly can't see it working very well. There has to be something really great to the vampire to make this structure work.

Oh, I agree. It's the tradeoff for having potentially unlimited surges per day. The thing is, it's not actually going to work out for you, at least not every time, and possibly not even most of the time. It's going to require some really cagey play to make work, and even then I can see the DM having to work to keep you from just going down all the time, and IMO that's no fun for the DM.

I don't even think stunned / dominated / dazed is really that "difficult" of a scenario. They're all pretty common even in paragon. Vampire needs some really good at-wills and the paragon paths had better be really dandy. I do think the class is going to be more of a "lurkery" striker instead of a more "skirmisher" one, but I also think it's going to be somewhat niche just in that the rest of the party needs to be prepared to deal with your special brand of... specialness...

 

[Aegeri]

Except that any other character at zero surges (say because you're fighting surge-draining enemies) is pretty well stuck there. The vampire can stock back up, to some degree at least.

The difference is other characters don't start the day on 2 surges and rely on having to hit to get themselves out of trouble. Even I - who runs a pretty lethal campaign apparently - have never ever been able to drain a defender or even a striker to 0 surges in the first encounter of a day. In fact, I cannot *think* of the last time I managed to accomplish this feat. On the other hand not only could I drop a vampire to 0 surges in one encounter, it's very possible he might be starting the next encounter on 0 surges. Possibly even 0 surges and just a few HP over bloodied. So effectively you have half of a striker on the battlefield.

Which is just plain sad in many ways.

 

[Mengu]

So, vampires suck. What's new?

 

[Incenjucar]

I do think the class is going to be more of a "lurkery" striker instead of a more "skirmisher" one, but I also think it's going to be somewhat niche just in that the rest of the party needs to be prepared to deal with your special brand of... specialness...

The last "lurker" class they produced was the original assassin.

 

[Aegeri]

I am really curious to see the whole class now. It's either going to be rampantly terrible or it might - in some insane manner - actually work out. Do their at-wills count as MBAs for OAs and such forth? That could really help out.

 

[Kinneus]

I want to run a game with two vampires, an Artificer with Comrade's Succor, and the world's grumpiest high-Con Defender who carries the whole dang team.

(Hopefully not literally... though after the first combat, he might have to.)

 

[WalterKovacs]

On the other hand not only could I drop a vampire to 0 surges in one encounter, it's very possible he might be starting the next encounter on 0 surges. Possibly even 0 surges and just a few HP over bloodied. So effectively you have half of a striker on the battlefield.

So, if at the end of the first encounter, and the vampire was at 0 surges, his allies would not only go on to the next encounter but refuse to give up a single surge to get the vampire up to full HP? Tough group.

Also, there is always durable. A single feat doubles his banked surges. Yes, it's forcing you to take a feat to work around a weakness (if you feel it is a weakness), but it's hardly the first class that wants to grab a feat early on to make them more durable (cloth only classes grabbing leather armor or unarmored agility). Of course, the vampire also wants unarmored agility, so it's a bit annoying that he has a couple of feats he wants to grab early to make him sturdier.

 

[Aegeri]

So, if at the end of the first encounter, and the vampire was at 0 surges, his allies would not only go on to the next encounter but refuse to give up a single surge to get the vampire up to full HP? Tough group.

Why should they be penalized for the Vampires terrible design choices? Also the vampire would arguably need 3 surges - 1 to reach full health and then another 2 so he isn't at 0 surges and basically a walking casualty. Unless I missed something that he can use 1 surge to recover fully between encounters (it says you can use a surge to heal fully, but does that also give the vampire back 2 surges?).

Also, there is always durable. A single feat doubles his banked surges. Yes, it's forcing you to take a feat to work around a weakness (if you feel it is a weakness)

You think starting with only 2 surges is a strength? I think there really is only one word we can adequately use to describe it

As for feat taxes, a class that is this desperate to actually hit things has a lot more problems feat tax wise than unarmoured agility. You'd pretty much need expertise and any other accuracy boosting feats as a priority. Every missed attack in a hard encounter is doubly punishing, because it can be the difference between being able to heal or not.

And then when we get right down to it, the vampire also relies on surges to boost his powers and similar at the same time. Good luck with that.

 

[kaomera]

So, if at the end of the first encounter, and the vampire was at 0 surges, his allies would not only go on to the next encounter but refuse to give up a single surge to get the vampire up to full HP? Tough group.

Also, there is always durable. A single feat doubles his banked surges. Yes, it's forcing you to take a feat to work around a weakness (if you feel it is a weakness), but it's hardly the first class that wants to grab a feat early on to make them more durable (cloth only classes grabbing leather armor or unarmored agility). Of course, the vampire also wants unarmored agility, so it's a bit annoying that he has a couple of feats he wants to grab early to make him sturdier.

The way this limitation is described I'm not certain if durable would even apply. "Drinking" from the party is a nice trick, I actually hadn't noticed that on my earlier read of the article. The question is: if you drop to zero hit points (or below) and have no surges, then what? Unless they have included something to cover that situation (topping off from a willing ally might still be possible, between encounters, but it still wouldn't help for the rest of the fight)

I think the class is still going to be pretty dicey. I foresee a lot of vampires using an action point in the first fight of the day (unless it's just a pushover) either to set a hit in or to use second wind after one... Another issue is that the regen when bloodied (I believe that's what they're talking about?) would disincentiveize actually healing the vampire while he's bloodied. Maybe they get primal-level hit points? Or maybe the class comes with enough built-in healing (or thp generation) that it won't really be crippling? I guess we'll see in a few weeks... (I really kind of want to get the book just to see how they do this now, but that's just more pressure on really, since I'll be pretty disappointed in WotC if it ends up being junk...)

 

[kaomera]

Why should they be penalized for the Vampires terrible design choices?

I think it could be argued that you're a bit too ready to assume that they're terrible design choices. I mean, you could be right, but at this point it seems to me to be a bit pointless to get this worked up about it. We'll know in a few weeks, but until then we haven't see the whole thing. It's not like the books aren't already on their way from the printers at this point. So it seems to me that it's too early to make really specific complaints, and if it's junk it's too late to fix it anyway.

It seems to me that, to work, the class is going to need to be designed to function, at least at some minimum level, without any surges. So I don't think it's going to rely on surges to boost it's powers, so much as want them. I'm kind of hoping it's not something like augmentable at-wills. It could end up being either a balance issue, or too weak to be anything but a joke, or it could be just right; we just don't know for sure how that's going to work. Likewise the healing thing. The more I look at this, the more I'm thinking that you'd want a situation where aside from emergencies you'd not want to be spending your surges in-combat for heals.

And I don't think giving up a surge to heal the vampire (by my reading I'm thinking that would be all that ability would do, I don't think it would actually allow just transferring surges) would be a big deal for most groups. You're liable to have one or two characters at any time who are using a disproportionately low number of surges. And if you aren't putting yourself at great risk I would think that you could throw an at-will the first turn or two (especially one that's going to do an extra +1d10 on a hit) and get a surge built up and be ok. And I'm hopeful that said at-will should also do something cool. Swarm of Shadows is not bad, and stuff like that should tend to both discourage and mitigate getting ganged up on. I dunno, I think it could work. (I've got my fingers crossed at least.)