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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6230620" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 348: October 2006part 3/6Bestowed curses: In the old days, Bestow Curse and Cause Disease were some of the scariest spells around in the hands of an imaginative DM, for you could all too easily stretch your imagination to inflict effects that weren't lethal, but quite possibly worse than death for their victims. In 3e, of course, they're obsessed with balance, and so this is not an option. But there's still demand for inventive results than a generic penalty to ability scores, so here's a list of alternate effects you can inflict on someone with bestow curse, or it's higher level variant which they also add here. So this is a bit dull, but handy because it lets you know exactly what you can get away with under the current ruleset, which should help defuse any rules disputes on the subject. As Sage Advice's continued appearance every issue shows, they're never going to get everyone to agree perfectly on what the rules really mean, and if they're good or not, especially since WotC is so keen on radically reworking the rules for each edition, but by doing articles like this, at least they're trying. Bloodlines: Vampires still haven't lost their popularity all these years later. In fact, thanks to Twilight, a whole new generation is just being introduced to the idea of vampire as forbidden romantic figure. So I'm not at all surprised to see another set of vampire variants. We've already had several extensive articles on weird blood-sucking undead from around the world. Can this contribute anything new to the pot? Savage Vampires are your basic stalkers in de niiight, jumping on people, quite possibly in animal form, and ripping them to shreds to sate their appetites. Meh. Shadow Vampires fade into the darkness and teleport through it, making them scary and mysterious, but thankfully even more vulnerable if you can turn the floodlights on them. Terror Vampires aren't so interested in feeding on blood or life force, but fear itself. (reflected mechanically as wisdom damage) This means that unlike some other vampire variants, they'll never be able to overcome their monstrous natures. (although they might be able to turn them to good by playing batman and only scaring other things of darkness) However, the need to keep their victims alive and mess with their mind for quite a while is an exploitable weakness, especially if you remember not to split up the party. And at least they don't drain levels. So these are pretty obvious alternate archetypes, that don't come anywhere near the imaginativeness of previous articles on the topic, but they're done well mechanically. Scary and mysterious needs to be balanced with working well in game, and at least they've got that in their favor.</blockquote>

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