Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5663632" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, it does basically exist as a power for paragon tier Vryloka. There is also a ritual, Dark Gift of the Undying, which creates a new Vampire Lord. The 4e lore for vampires also states that they are not affected by running water, garlic, or wooden stakes. Holy symbols aren't specifically mentioned, but presumably the wielder would need to be a cleric with Turn Undead etc. There are some differences, normal vampires victims will rise as Vampire Spawn and there's a 'must rest in your coffin or be weakened' sidebar note. OTOH nothing in the 4e monster vampire lore discusses sunlight at all, the statblock just states they cannot regenerate in direct sunlight.Well, you can make another PC into a MONSTER vampire, by performing the above mentioned level 11 ritual. It is reasonable to believe this ritual is not normally available to PCs, but there's no rule stopping them from using it. The choice to make it a class was IMHO not sucky but a conscious decision to make it possible for vampires to be of any race and the idea that portraying a full on vampire as a PC required a lot more than the resources available to a race, and thus logically is a class. Given that you have MANY other options for various degrees of vampire that don't require taking the class I think this not really as unreasonable as people have made it out to be. It totally depends on the fiction. IIRC the 'Bram Stoker' vampire created new vampires by draining their blood, but depending on which movie you watch this might or might not have been strictly intentional. Likewise it was pretty vague in other legends, though in many the vampirism was a specific curse and not transmittable at all. Anne Rice AFAIK invented the whole drinking each other's blood thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was older than that. In any case, MONSTER vampires do create new vampires (albeit weak ones) whenever they feed. I would also note though that there are a LOT of different vampire stat blocks and lore scattered around in 4e here and there. It is not by any means all consistent either. The PC vampire is pretty consistent with that lore. I would just say that the developers had a lot of considerations in designing a PC vampire. It had to be able to function as a PC, and it had to not create huge problems for every DM allowing it into a game. In the opinions of most of the people I know that have looked at it they managed to strike a workable balance. I seriously doubt any vampire they could have made would satisfy anyone. I think the whole scorn thing just gets to me. It is like if a concept doesn't match exactly with a specific idea then it is bad. They did a good job within certain constraints that they felt were necessary. You have different ideas about that, and you have a specific game and style of play and players. No doubt you can decide what you want in your game, and that can be different from what the developers decided was a good addition to the game as a whole and neither of you is wrong. Within the existing 4e vampire lore seems to me to be all the elements that you're looking for. In a perfect world you'd get exactly what is perfect for YOU in the book. This is the kind of case where that just isn't at all likely to happen and hasn't happened. Wouldn't it be most productive to decide what exactly you do want and I'm sure we're all happy to chime and and tell you how much we think you're wrong! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I'm sure we are all happy to contribute ideas that will make it work in a way you want it to. I enjoy that. I enjoy doing that more than going on down the road of why the HoS vampire is bad. We'll just never do anything productive that way.</blockquote>

Verification