Am I the only one who doesn't like the D&D Vampire? (Pointless rant, I suppose)

[mmadsen]

I ask you this: How is this vampire going to Feed all of these spawn? People have been posing the question about a simple Vampire having to drain all this con from people to survive, how the heck does that same vampire feed 80 spawn?

If we assume that Vampires can go into a kind of torpor, I think that gets around the huge numbers of human prey they might need otherwise.

There was a comic, I don't know what it is, but the vampires don't create other vampires; after feeding, they behead and burn the corpse. Simply because, more vampires means more competition for Food. If humans are Food, you don't want more of your kind getting there before you.

I strongly suspect that those Vampires who do spawn more like themselves will vastly outnumber those few Vampires who don't.

Equally, I don't see How a vampire is going to go to every house in the village, knock on the door, say 'Hi, let me in', and proceed to eat the entire village before daybreak, THEN bury the entire village, to create his spawn. That seems a little... Work Intensive. First, he has to be invited. Then, he has to dominate each person to keep them from screaming. Then, he has to drain them, and kill them, do this 79 more times, and then bury 80 people.

I didn't think he had to do it all in one night.

I don't care if it's a spawn, a 3 year old doesn't make a good spawn, or a 70 year old grandma.

Why don't old folks make decent Vampire Spawn?

 

[Xarlen]

If we assume that Vampires can go into a kind of torpor, I think that gets around the huge numbers of human prey they might need otherwise.

Well, sure! But, the origional arguement didn't mention this. A torpor is just fine. The only problem is, you need to make sure there's someone to protect you, while you're in stasis.

I strongly suspect that those Vampires who do spawn more like themselves will vastly outnumber those few Vampires who don't.

Eh? I don't follow.

I didn't think he had to do it all in one night.

The origional arguement on this was that he did it in one night. Even if he Didn't do it in one night, I don't see him killing Half the villlage, then going back the next day and not expecting people to be Prepared (Even your commoner can create a wooden holy symbol of some good god). True, he Could bury them the next night.

Why don't old folks make decent Vampire Spawn?

From a purely rules groundpoint, bad Str and Dex. Those old bodies aren't used to anything agile or strong, and therefore their hitting and damage would be worse off, as would their dex. So we're looking at, from a commoner, a 7-9 Str and Dex. Even with a vampire spawn template applied, this doesn't strike me as very good.

From a gaming aspect, I'm not really going to be That fearful of grampa if he was a vampire. Sure, that'd be a sneaky surprise, but from a combat perspective, I think the spawn would be weaker then your average one. Let's put it like this: If you were recruting an army, would you include old people, or would you look for those around 16-30 in years?

 

[mmadsen]

I strongly suspect that those Vampires who do spawn more like themselves will vastly outnumber those few Vampires who don't.
Eh? I don't follow.

My point was a bit Darwinian. Vampires who spawn Vampires who themselves are more likely to spawn will have far more offspring in the future than those who don't.

Any kind of Vampirism that compels you to create more Vampires is much more likely to spread and force out less procreative strains.

 

[Voadam]

On the spawning,

If a vamp killing somebody causes them to come back as vamps unless something active is done to prevent it then vamps who don't know the angles will probably kill in their hunting bloodlust and create more vamps who are similarly ignorant. And so on, and so on. Can a newbie vamp kill and drain the first random people they encounter, generally yes. You need disciplined and knowledgable vamps to contain themselves, or efficient vampire predators (PCs or heroes as an ecological factor for a world?) Otherwise you can easily have an undead plague killing every body in a large area if things are used as presented in the standard undead set up.

 

[Xarlen]

Voadam cleared it up for me, thanks.

Well, it also would depen on your area, no? If you're, say, the only vampire on an island, then there you go. Unless other vampires migrate to your area...

 

[Ciaran]

Funny this should come up - but just the other day I added "New Vampire Template" to my "Things to Do" list for Aquerra. . .

I want a more classic and fearsome vampire. . .

I hate you. Very, very much.



- Eric

 

[mmadsen]

I hate you. Very, very much.

I'm guessing you play in nemmerle's campaign, Ciaran...?

 

[mmadsen]

If a vamp killing somebody causes them to come back as vamps unless something active is done to prevent it then vamps who don't know the angles will probably kill in their hunting bloodlust and create more vamps who are similarly ignorant. And so on, and so on.

Good point.

Can a newbie vamp kill and drain the first random people they encounter, generally yes. You need disciplined and knowledgable vamps to contain themselves, or efficient vampire predators (PCs or heroes as an ecological factor for a world?) Otherwise you can easily have an undead plague killing every body in a large area if things are used as presented in the standard undead set up.

Has anyone run an Undead Plague adventure? Back when we were doing the Iron DM Home Game, I immediately thought that that was the way to use Ghouls. Why ignore the consequences of undead spawning?

 

[Kerrick]

I'm recently come to this discussion, so I only scanned over some of the replies. I do, however, agree that the 3E vampire sucks. Like most of the other monsters in the MM, there are NO RPing notes. Energy drain AND blood drain? WTF?
You add in a few levels of fighter and/or mage, and you've got a monster that could easily rip a party apart, if played properly. The key words here are if player properly; the MM is simply a list of monsters to throw at the players, with little thought to making them true adversaries, and like someone mentioned before, it's a crutch for lazy DMs.
Ok, before I get sidetracked on a rant about the MM... I've long had an interest in undead in general and vampries in particular. A few years ago, I stumbled across a netbook on vampires, written in some other format (I think it was WoD - it described vampirism as a virus?), and I decided to write a netbook for the generic AD&D vampire. I included new rules for feeding (CON loss according to the amount of blood drained), creation, powers gained with age, different powers from the norm, different species, etc. The 2E vampire couldn't drain blood, so I created a variant that could, and made the energy-draining type a weaker species (a greater wight, if you will). Incidentally, my rules for blood drain and feeding are remarkably similar to the RL 3E rules, which I hadn't seen until I read them here.
The 3E version of the Vampiricon is being written for publication, but you can find the 2E version here: www.geocities.com/mistmane/vampires.zip. It doesn't have all the stuff that's in the 3E version, but it's got enough that you can wreak havoc with your players - most of it is generic information.

 

[mmadsen]

Like most of the other monsters in the MM, there are NO RPing notes.

The Monster Manual would be more useful with a few plot hooks and suggestions with each entry, wouldn't it?