How is a vampire possibly worth +8 LA?

[Stalker0]

Actually, the vampire will suck at that, too. His Diplomacy, Gather Information, and all Knowledge skills will be eight ranks behind a standard-race character of the same ECL. I'm guessing that, if you're playing an urban based, socially plot-driven campaign, those skills will all be pretty critical, and the vampire won't be worth half a damn at any of them.

The simple fact of the matter is that there's nothing a vampire PC can do that a standard-race PC can't do much, much better.

Who needs diplomacy when you have dominate

And yes while a wizard can cast dominate, he CANNOT cast it at will. And there's no comparison. Even if you can cast the spell 3 times per day, it doesn't give you the freedom that at will does.

 

[Question]

I havent noticed the power creeping in WOTC supplements at all......i have liked that WOTC is publishing more and more useful feats, instead of ones that are so insanely situational it might as well be a house rule for a single campaign, or ones where the only reason you would take it is if you HAD to(for another feat or PRC), or you really liked the flavour.

What should be a "perfectly viable race" is debatable. IMHO if something has a LA, it should be playable. Things like solars have no LA for a reason. Also there could be interesting RP/gameplay situations with vampire PCs.

Dominate does not fully replace diplomacy. A key function of diplomacy would be getting NPCs to help you or to not hurt you. If a solar comes calling, do you really want to try to dominate him/her.......or use diplomacy to try and weasel out? Do you really want to try and dominate a powerful ruler who is likely shielded with powerful magics, and risk tipping your hand? So on and so forth.

Oh and a wizard can cast dominate ENOUGH times so theres not much difference. If a wizard wants to dominate shopkeepers into getting free stuff.......he can do so.......and have more than a week to get away. A high level wizard could hit every valuable shop in a metropolis within a week, and be away with another week's headstart on any law enforcement attempts to get him. He can still dominate enough guards in the king's palace to sneak in if he wanted to, and chances are would be better at using this against powerful NPCs with SR or high will saves, and it would last over twice as long as a vampire PC's dominate.

Technically speaking a astral deva's continual flame is more abusive. Lets see, 6 seconds to make one ever flaming torch(or rough equavelent), lets say 2 weeks making these for sale, how does this compare to profession or craft checks?

 

[Grog]

Who needs diplomacy when you have dominate

And yes while a wizard can cast dominate, he CANNOT cast it at will. And there's no comparison. Even if you can cast the spell 3 times per day, it doesn't give you the freedom that at will does.

If the vampire starts running around dominating everyone he sees, he's going to get found out in a hurry. Remember that it only takes a DC 15 Sense Motive check to discover that someone's been dominated - even a 2nd level character could make that check by taking 10. The vampire will quickly find himself with the city guard and probably clerics and/or paladins from some of the local churches/temples hunting him. So much for the urban based, plot-driven campaign.

 

[monboesen]

What should be a "perfectly viable race" is debatable. IMHO if something has a LA, it should be playable.

Even if you might like that, that is simply not the way it is. Some abilities, creatures, templates etc. tends to to be fun when a opponent has them but breaks the game when in the players hands. Dominate at will, the vampire spawn thingie and energy drain are abilities that can bend some types of games out of order.

Therefore the Vampire must have a high ECL. If you and your DM then agrees that those abilities doesn't have much impact on your game, by all means reduce the ECL to a value that you think will fit better.

In the rules they have to choose the ECL with the worst case scenarios in mind. For instance in my games the Vampires official ECL of +8 would be more or less spot on. I just know that several of my players would be able to get a lot of mileage out of the vampire abilities and some of them could completely wreck the game with a vampire pc.

Things like solars have no LA for a reason.

Thats easy. A solar casts spells as a 20th level cleric and surpasses a 20th level cleric in any possible way. Of course it should not be playable except for a epic game.

His Diplomacy, Gather Information, and all Knowledge skills will be eight ranks behind a standard-race character of the same ECL. I'm guessing that, if you're playing an urban based, socially plot-driven campaign, those skills will all be pretty critical, and the vampire won't be worth half a damn at any of them.

He will do fine with Bluff and Sense motive most of the time, dominted victims will tell him what he wants anyway. And even when he needs those other skills it will be the same as in any other group, if you need a character with a good gather information skills you arrange that one of the other characters does that. What the vampire's skill bonus means is that you can play a vampire fighter or monk (possibly the best classes for it) and still be pretty good at social stuff and sneaking. In effect you will end up being something aking to a rogue. Less than stellar combat ability, a nasty circumstantial special attack power (energy drain instead of sneak attack) and decent skills (but not as good as a true rogue)

The vampire will quickly find himself with the city guard and probably clerics and/or paladins from some of the local churches/temples hunting him.

And at this point he either uses his powers to flee and return a hundred years later when everybody has forgotten him. Or start making vampiric spawns out of commoners (of which the majority will die from just a touch of level drain) and let them run amok in the city (creating wights) while blackmailing the city powers to stop the clerics/paladins to end this menace to the population. (this actually happened in one of our games, just with the twist that the players where the ones hunting the vampire. In the end we had to give up, too many innoscents were killed, the cost to catch the vampire simply got to high).



IMO the main point is that the official ECL is not something that should be considered set in stone. If you (in theory or practise) finds that it is to high for your type of game change it.

 

[Herobizkit]

Change it. Simple as that. Here's what I did.

I followed the Vampire template as presented in d20 Modern. The write-up gives you a list of all the vampiric abilities and all the vampiric weaknesses, and basically allows you to customize a vampire of your own by trading out powers and weaknesses. For every weakness you remove, you remove one power as well.

In some vampiric legends, vampires only receive their powers at night. They can walk around freely in sunlight during the day, but cannot access their vampiric powers at all during that time.

Create a template for vampires based on Vampire Spawn. In a Buffy-esque game I ran, I used Vampire Spawn as the bum vampires that poofed in one or two hits, while I reserved the actual template for Head vampires.

There's also an old Dragon magazine #313 with write-ups for half-undead templates. One of 'em was a Katane , a half-vampire.

 

[Grog]

He will do fine with Bluff and Sense motive most of the time, dominted victims will tell him what he wants anyway. And even when he needs those other skills it will be the same as in any other group, if you need a character with a good gather information skills you arrange that one of the other characters does that.

And this other character will have Bluff and Sense Motive skills almost as good (or possibly as good, depending on where he puts his extra bonus stat points) as the vampire's, meaning his overall social skills will be much better than the vampire's, so again the question is, what can the vampire do that this other character can't do better?

And at this point he either uses his powers to flee and return a hundred years later when everybody has forgotten him.

So the vampire has been effectively removed from the campaign. The vampire's player will have to make a new character at this point, so what was the point of creating the vampire in the first place?

Or start making vampiric spawns out of commoners (of which the majority will die from just a touch of level drain) and let them run amok in the city (creating wights) while blackmailing the city powers to stop the clerics/paladins to end this menace to the population.

Even if this tactic works, it means the campaign has been ruined. The other players will probably be pissed at the vampire's player for scuttling their wonderful urban-based, socially plot-driven campaign and turning it into an undead armageddon, and the DM will definitely be pissed at the vampire's player for ruining all the work he put into building these social and political plot threads for the players to follow. This doesn't seem like an option that would make for a happy gaming group.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Even if this tactic works, it means the campaign has been ruined. The other players will probably be pissed at the vampire's player for scuttling their wonderful urban-based, socially plot-driven campaign and turning it into an undead armageddon, and the DM will definitely be pissed at the vampire's player for ruining all the work he put into building these social and political plot threads for the players to follow. This doesn't seem like an option that would make for a happy gaming group.

Bingo. And a Vampire player could do this incredibly easily. This is why the Vampire has LA +8. Give it a more attractive LA, like, say, LA +4, and you'll see people playing Vampires and then opening a can of undead armageddon on the GM's campaign when the chips are down.

 

[monboesen]

This doesn't seem like an option that would make for a happy gaming group

Exactly. And that is why the ECL of +8 should ring a warning bell. As I stated above I consider a high ECL a sign that essentially reads "Stop and think real hard, this creature is likely a hassle in normal games and we have to consider if it will fit into ours".


A vampire is a powerful being, just in other ways than standard characters. You need to think about how those powers will affect the campaign before letting one in.

 

[Grog]

Bingo. And a Vampire player could do this incredibly easily. This is why the Vampire has LA +8. Give it a more attractive LA, like, say, LA +4, and you'll see people playing Vampires and then opening a can of undead armageddon on the GM's campaign when the chips are down.

Well yeah, a player who didn't care about anyone else's fun except his or her own might do that. But that type of player can probably find a way to ruin a campaign no matter what kind of character he's playing.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Well yeah, a player who didn't care about anyone else's fun except his or her own might do that. But that type of player can probably find a way to ruin a campaign no matter what kind of character he's playing.

They might not ruin the other players' time necessarily, if they save it for when the chips are down though. The vampire character can be open about it to the other characters "Look guys. I'm a vampire. I generally don't plan on creating an army of spawn, but if we ever come across something that is too hard to beat, I'm willing to do it, and we should be able to completely slaughter the opposition that way as 1000s of vampire spawn back us up."