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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 682649" data-attributes="member: 2067">Actually, Felon, I think you missed the mark a bit.The point of Savage Species isn't to change the ways monsters work. It's to allow you to play monsters as PC's. One way to do that is an ECL. Another way to do that (if you don't want to wait for the full ECL) is to break down the monster into a Monster Class, which would gain it's abilities over the course of many levels. Then, ya slap a level adjustment on the end to reflect the power of the class, and BAM.Both types of vampires in the MM are a special case.In one instance, you have a vampire spawn, which is effectively a pseudo-vampire that some of their fatalities are turned into. Since a Vampire Spawn is basically beholden to the vampire that created it, it doesn't make a very easy PC concept ("Sorry, guys, no dungeon for me, I have to sweep the master's pantry and help him seduce an englishman tonight. Blah!").The other one would be the Vampire template.The thing about the vampire template is that no levels are gained to gain the powers that the template applies...effectively, there's no way to break it down into a slower progression...you simply get the powers, and BOOM. No HD. No BAB. No saves. ONLY supernatural powers. And those, all at once (not over the course of time). About the only thing you can do with that is slap an ECL on it, because there's no progression of abilities. It's all of a sudden.Savage Species didn't want to rewrite what a Vampire was in D&D (or any other monster for that matter). It basically boils down to that a Vampire Spawn makes an awkward PC (and so the space was devoted to other races), and the Vampire template can't be really made gradual and steady, or it'll become something different than was in the MM (which they certainly didn't want to do).So, while it would be possible to whip up a handy-dandy Vampire Template ECL, or (better yet) a Vampire Spawn monster class, the writers just didn't feel that the VS warranted space, and...Well, I dunno if they provided a Vampire ECL. They probably should've, but if they didn't, it's probably related to their theory about undead as heroic PC's (whicih I give a big <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> to).</blockquote>

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