Can the Vampire Class make new vampires?

[1of3]

I don't have access to my books, and I only glanced through the Vamp class.

Can it make new vampires? Spawn minions, etc?

You can ask the same for any class. Can a cleric initiate someone? Can a warlock help someone forge a pact? Can a fighter train someone how to fight?

 

[Bold or Stupid]

How is it not the case? Is there any penalty for not drinking blood? There is not. Thus they can choose when and ho to drink blood logically, not in a limited way.

Sure, fluff what you like, but the class does give perfect control.

No blood drinking, no healing between encounters... seems like a penelty to me.

 

[Scribble]

And there is no logical reason for it that I can see, since blood from friend or foe should be essentially interchangeable in one's diet. It's as absurd as saying the sliced white Wonder Bread* at Tom Thumb grocery is nutritionally different from the sliced white Wonder Bread at Kroger or Aldi.

Except it's the supernatural, not science. One is taken in anger, the other freely given.

Were I playing a vampire PC I would play up the idea that when I use my powers in combat I get a bigger "rush" but I can also feel myself slipping away.

 

[braro]

Except it's the supernatural, not science. One is taken in anger, the other freely given.

Were I playing a vampire PC I would play up the idea that when I use my powers in combat I get a bigger "rush" but I can also feel myself slipping away.

Yes, this. The act of being given blood by an ally, and the act of taking it, are different. It may also take more power to force it; you aren't just taking blood, you are taking life force.

Also, -nothing- stops you from tying up a guy and then, during a double short rest (rest, take actions, rest again), hitting him with blood drain. It just takes time between when you can do it.

 

[Umbran]

However, there are numerous examples of protagonist vampires who have all the same abilities, limitations and drawbacks as either 1) the traditional Dracula style Western vampire or 2) all the antagonistic vampires within the same "fictionverse" as the protagonist.

Yes. And it takes an extremely good writer to keep that character in the forefront, and not have those "restrictions" either be ignored or circumvented when inconvenient, or just outright boring and repetitive.

The basic template of a vampire is that of a monster - it takes a lot of work to turn that into a long-lasting protagonist, even more to make it into one that works in the context of a particular game ruleset.

Now, you may prefer they took the road of, "if you can't do it right (for my value of right) then you shouldn't do it at all," but I expect some folks would prefer a playable half-right that isn't particularly abuseable in the system. This is for them, not for the purists.

And there is no logical reason for it that I can see

Shouldn't (the fluff of) magic work more on emotion and symbol than on logic?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Shouldn't (the fluff of) magic work more on emotion and symbol than on logic?

Sometimes "It's magic." makes sense as a reason why something works the way it does, like when a Stone Golem- a solid stone carving, not an articulated mechanism- can move without their legs and arms breaking off. Sometimes "It's magic." sounds more like a handwave.

I think that in this case, it's more the latter than the former.

Also, -nothing- stops you from tying up a guy and then, during a double short rest (rest, take actions, rest again), hitting him with blood drain. It just takes time between when you can do it.

True. OTOH, gaining certain benefits from drinking from allies only doesn't make them seem any less parasitic than the real vampires.

While I said I would play this class before certain others, my gut feeling is that because of those "ally only" mechanics, the vampire class won't play the same in every group. For example, I don't see good odds of other players in my group letting a vamp feed on their PCs.

 

[Scribble]

Sometimes "It's magic." makes sense as a reason why something works the way it does, like when a Stone Golem- a solid stone carving, not an articulated mechanism- can move without their legs and arms breaking off. Sometimes "It's magic." sounds more like a handwave..

Heh... Conversely NOT explaining a supernatural entity's supernatural stuff through use of magic makes me cringe almost as much as the idea of a metachlorian count.

 

[braro]

While I said I would play this class before certain others, my gut feeling is that because of those "ally only" mechanics, the vampire class won't play the same in every group. For example, I don't see good odds of other players in my group letting a vamp feed on their PCs.

You know, I was re-reading the vampire from a combination of this thread and watching Dyland Dog with my wife, and realized something I missed. I may also be misinterpreting the rules since I am not looking at them now, so if anyone corrects me I will edit my post to reflect it and give them cred for it.

You probably can have a perfectly viable experience without using your buds' healing surges.

So long as you have 1 additional healing surge above your default at your short rest, you get all your HP back.

So, assuming you do not need to spend a surge during combat, using blood drinking once gets you full HP. Even if you spend a single surge, using blood drinking once, and then another on a disabled prisoner after, gets you up to full HP.

Multiple uses of blood drinking further enable this, meaning that you could spend four surges in combat with two uses of blood drinking, and only need three prisoners and 15 minutes to get back to full health.

Which, of course, runs the risk of your vampire ending up coming across as a very very bad man, and thus maybe not welcome in the group to begin with, which actually enforces your point.

 

[mneme]

@Dannyalcatraz, I don't see why vamps need rules for creating new vampires. If you create a new vampire, it's not a character under your control (that bit of the fiction isn't kept, at least not strictly). It's either a PC who has taken a multiclass or hybrid vampire, or an NPC that the GM can modify as needed to express that they're a vampire now.

IOW, it's part of the fiction, not the rules. D&D4 rules don't specify that characters need to sleep, and don't specify how any other class trains new members of that class -- but you can still do it in a game. A priest preaches and teaches; a monk or fighter trains his or her students' body; a vampire exchanges blood with his "trainee" and slowly turns said person into a vampire. All of these are part of the narrative; none are part of the rules, nor need they be.

 

[mneme]

Also, -nothing- stops you from tying up a guy and then, during a double short rest (rest, take actions, rest again), hitting him with blood drain. It just takes time between when you can do it.

Actually, this falls nicely into "bag of rats". A GM might very well let you do this once (as as expressed by the designer, doing it once is intent), but that's totally discressionary and any GM worth his or her salt will call BoR on repeat tries.

Actually, I think ti's not unreasonable to treat Blood Drain as draining off a healing surge (and I think that probably should have been its effect to begin with, though it makes things more complicated). That one doesn't usually bother to keep track of surges for NPCs is probably why it doesn't (plus the fact that you get three uses of BD against a high level solo and the party might contain multiple vampires, but said solo only has 2 surges)