The Immortal: Vampires

[Crothian]

The Immortal series is devoted to focusing on creatures that live forever, and will visit the life of ascendants, transcends, gods, demigods, quasi-deities and of course, vampires.

The Immortal: Vampires is first in this series, and focuses on the most renowned immortal monster of all, the vampire.

Dissatisfied with the generic vampire of the core rules? Too powerful? Too weak? Just not your idea of a vampire? The Immortal: Vampires puts a much needed spin on classic bloodsucking monster, drawing from mythology and folklore around the world, and both classic and modern popular fiction. If The Immortal: Vampires doesn't have what you're looking for, it certainly has the tools for you to create it yourself: just about everybody has their own idea of what a vampire should be, and knowing this, this product also includes a guideline to creating your own custom vampire templates.
Features

* Details vampires ideal either for play or as antagonists.
* Describes the history and mythology in brief from the dawn of civilisation to the 21st century.
* Dozens of new optional and variant rules for the core vampire and others, including feeding habits, conditional critical hits for staking and special effects for consuming the blood of various creatures.
* Rules for creating your own custom vampire template/breed if you're unsatisfied with those presented in the core rules.
* Over 25 new vampiric monsters and templates, both from the folklore and mythology from around the world and inspired by popular fiction.
* From folklore comes a host of undead from all across Europe, including the dearg-due of Ireland, the draugr of Scandinavia, the strigoi mort of Romania, and the zemu of Moldavia, to Asia in the east, including the beautiful langsuir of Malaysia and the deadly ch'ing shih of ancient China, to the Americas in the west and the bizarre Brazilian lobishomen.
* Literary vampires include the nosferatu and master vampire, straight from the pages of Bram Stoker, the demonic vampire, influenced by shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and From Dusk Till Dawn, and the romantic vampire, inspired by the works of Anne Rice, including it's own age category system.
* Each monster entry includes details on the vampire's creation, history in folklore, mythology or fiction, feeding and sleeping habits, and weaknesses, giving more detailed information than the standard monster entry.
* The Walker Through Time prestige class ideal for immortal spellcasters wishing to acquire evermore knowledge and skills.
* Statistics for the classic 19th century vampire figures; Carmilla, Varney, Lord Ruthern and, of course, Count Dracula.
* 4 completely new and original vampire gods to terrorise your campaign world, completely detailed including holy symbols, and full statistics.
* Illustrated
* 133 pages (a4 format pdf)/138 pages (letter format, POD)

 

[Crothian]

The Immortal Vampires

One of the most feared monsters in the game is the Vampire. It is a creature of man but superior to him. They live longer are stronger and are also shown at times to be much smarter. They feed of the living to sustain their own un lives. However, in most games what is presented is a small view of this ancient creature. Vampire like creatures appear in the mythologies of almost every culture yet the Vampire that is mostly seen is the one inspired by Dracula. Occasionally other types have been shown, but until now no one product has shown so many different version of the Vampire; all of them based on the mythology and stories of different cultures.

The Immortal: Vampires is a new PDF by Ultramyth. The book is written by Ben Mowbray who also wrote the first and only other book by this company, Dice and Dramatics. The book is all about role playing and does a fantastic job people new to the hobby and for old veterans. Both of their titles have managed to cover topics that have not been covered in the abundance of material in the d20 market. It is nice to see a company be able to recognize that new uncovered areas are still out there.

The one hundred and thirty three page book has a nice layout. There is not a lot of art in the book but the pieces there I do like. There are two version of the PDF. One designed for print and the other designed for on screen viewing. Both have similar lay outs and look although the one screen one does have a bit of a background and other items that make it a little nicer to look at. The file of the PDFs is pretty big being over ten and twenty megs a piece. The on screen PDF is nicely book marked and makes it very easy to move around the PDF. In a book of this size with this many items in it;
Book marks are essential. With out them the PDF would be a pain to use and would not be so worth while.

The book is all about Vampires. It starts with an introduction into Vampires that really mentions in brief all the appearances of Vampire like creatures in various cultures. It starts with ancient Egypt, India, and Greece. It mentions creatures from the aborigines, orient, and the Native Americans. The stories and creatures differ from place to place but the underlying vampire like creature is there. It discusses the vampire hunters of the medieval ages and then the vampire popularity in literature. It finishes up with Modern day books, movies, and television shows that feature Vampires in some way. It is pretty amazing that this one creature type has existed in the stories and fears of mankind all over the world for the past five thousand or more years. It is noted by the author that this book covers on corporeal vampire creatures. There are vampire like spirits and ghosts that are not included in this book.

Not surprising there is a great section on Role Playing a Vampire. I say not surprising because of Ultramyth’s first book being all about role playing. The book discus=es some good bits about the Vampires background of family and how s/he become a vampire. There are some simple questions but many options for different types of personalities that Vampires can have. It has information on feeding habits, lair, wealth, and the psychology. The psychology is very interesting because things like living for ever and alignment can be a bit more difficult when applied to these creatures. It also goes into many different archetypes. Of the nine types only the self loather is really one I was not expecting but even on the other eight like the Beast and the Vengeful they are described in a very good way.

One of the great things the book does is break down the Vampire from the Monster Manual and make it now a creature filled with options. This allows vampires of various abilities and power levels to be built. The powers are expanded upon and the ones that can be varied like damage reduction do have different options listed for them. In addition to the many powers there are also weakness listed as well. The book then goes to age variations making a very old vampire of a few millennia really something to be greatly feared. There is even information on curing vampirism and redeeming a vampire. There are different appearances of vampires as well from demonic, to bestial, to even angelic. There are also a lots of different options to make each vampire different looking. Many of these can also be easily applied to any humanoids as Vampires in look a lot of times are very human like. There are then options for different ways to prevent vampirism. The options in this part of the book are a amazing and I have yet to even cover them all. There are salient abilities for the very powerful vampires that include some really cool abilities like telekinesis and photographic memory. None of the abilities are extremely powerful but make the vampires different and with varying abilities that need to be watched out for.

Next are some really interesting optional rules. The first set deals with different ways of becoming a vampire. There is the traditional ways like being bitten but also magical rituals and the possibility of someone just being so evil they become a vampire. Some of the ways are fast and other can be slow over a period of time. One option I really like is that the blood of different creatures has different effects on the Vampire. With the sheer number of different kinds of species the vampire has a choice of I really like that there can be a difference and a reason for seeking out to feed on one race over another based on what the blood can do for the creature. There are also rules for critical hits against a vampire. There are rules for different methods of feeding and gaining some power with the moon . There are options of racial variations so that an elven and dwarven vampire are different. There is a nice option for slower rates of healing so that the fast healing of the vampire is not as power an ability. It goes into different material s that can be used against a vampire and even some artifact and magical weapons. There are a lot of different options and abilities packed in the first few sections of the book. And with just these options this book is very good.

But the book is not finished there. Remember all the different typed of vampires that the book mentioned at the beginning? Well, they are stated up. Each gives more information about each one and then full states and descriptions. There are twenty two different types of vampires presented here. There is one prestige class presented here that can be used for a Vampire but is equally useful for any naturally immortal race. The Walker Through Time is a class that gains bardic like knowledge lore and abilities and secrets that represent their long live.

The book also gives stats for vampires out of literature. These characters are some of the earliest that represent a vampire in books. The first is Carmilla from the 1872 book written by J Sheridan LeFanu of the same name. There is Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel written in 1897. There is also Varney the Vampire by the 1847 book of that name by James Malcom Rhyner. And there is Lord Ruthern from the 1819 book The Vampyre by John Polidori. All four are nicely described and represent what the books describe and not so much on other sources. Lastly there are four vampire gods. There are stats of the gods for people who use them but even for people who do not the information in them is very nice and complete.

This was an exhausting book to read. There is a lot of information and cool options that are presented here. The Vampire is given the most thorough look that I have seen. It has great use for historical games as well as pure fantasy. The vampires in here could even be used in modern of futuristic games with a little work. The Vampire is adaptable fiends that fits in many places, many times, and even many genres. This book does a great job with e versatility of the creature. The book is easily a five star production as it is filled with great and useful information, the lay out and book marks are very well done, and the options for a print and on screen version make it usable by anyone. For anyone that wants to use Vampires or present a vampire that is different from what people are used to then this book is simply a must buy. The content and creativity and research in this book are very impressive.

 

[trancejeremy]

Nice review, but one major nitpick - it was Lord Ruthven, not Ruthern

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Ruthven


(Sorry. But some people like baseball trivia. I like vampire trivia.)

 

[Crothian]

Actually, in the PDF it has Ruthren. So I fixed my reference to that to match what is in the book. But thanks for the link, interesting stuff.

 

[Ultramyth]

Update on The Immortal: Vampires

Since the review, a number of changes have taken place in the product.

Firstly, the pdf distribution has now a printer friendly version, and a fully bookmarked optimised pdf that should load considerably faster. The download in total is now smaller, and the page count is 137 instead of 133 due to a change in formatting from A4 (international standard) to Letter. A number of issues have been resolved.

The book is also available in print via RPGNow!'s print on demand services, and previous customers are able to purchase copies at a substantially discounted rate.

Furthermore, there is a web enhancement out, and a preview both now available on the rpgnow product information page.

 

[Crothian]

The review has changed to reflect the current version of the book which did fix the few problems that I had with it. The book is easily deserves 5 stars now and is simply a great book on Vampires.

 

[Ultramyth]

Cool, thanks for updating it. Any chance to change the status to released?

 

[Crothian]

its a problem with the system, none of the new books we add can become relased, we are hopefully going to fix it at some point.......

 

[Joël of the FoS]

The Immortal, a book on vampires by Ben Mowbray

The Immortal, a book on vampires
Author: Ben Mowbray
Type: Accessory – monsters
Format: 136 pages, PDF netbook
Release date: 2005
Summary of content: a netbook developing vampires and their powers.
Distributor: it is available at http://www.rpgnow.com
Rating: ****

Joel of the Fraternity

This good sized netbook is all about vampires. While not made for Ravenloft in mind, many of its features can be inserted in a Ravenloft campaign. The main thing I liked is that many of these vampire strains are low powered, and easy to adapt to a campaign with proper background.

Ben has read the 1800's vampire novels, as well as modern ones, and he offers many templates derived from literature, like the great Carmillite vampire (from the LeFanu’s Carmilla novel). The author explores many facets of "classic" literature vampirism, each with its own personality and tailored abilities. It also features different vampire folklore from our world.

The book content in more details:

- 5 pages on vampire literature review, offering more on vampirism in ancient lore and classic vampire novels.

- 35 pages on the vampire monster, providing more options on roleplaying vampires, feeding, lair, wealth, vampire psychology. This part deconstructs the CR of the monster manual vampire, enabling a DM to tailor a vampire for his own campaign with great ease. It also proposes new vampire powers and weaknesses, using the same method, making it easy to set the CR of a new vampire. The same table is made with age categories, and a list of salient powers with each age category. Follows it is a short discussion on a vampire’s soul, appearance, notes on sleeping and feeding requirement, becoming a vampire, blood draining, etc.

Most of these discussions are interesting to read and offer good options. The list of powers is endless and surely would fit any DM’s need for something new about blood suckers.

- 60 pages of new vampire strains follow. 25 types of vampire are discussed, like the Algul (low level encounter: a ghoul-like vampire), Baobban Sith (an enthralling, dancing fey, waiting for you to get charmed to drain you), Cambion (son of an incubus!), the great Carmillite Vampire (a vampire that likes to charm and deceive), Demonic Vampire and Incubus/Succubus, Dhampir, Master Vampire (think Stoker’s Dracula), Nosferatu (think Stoker’s Dracula’s brides), Romantic Vampire (Anne Rice’s vampires), etc. The book covers vampires from the world: Ch’ing Shih (China), Dearg-Due (Celtic), Draugr (Scandinavia), Estrie (Hebrew), Lamia (Greece), Langsuir (Malaysia), Necurat (Romania), Rakshasa (India), Strigoi Mort (Romania), Upier (Poland), Vampir (Serbia), Vrykolakas (Greece), Zmeu (Moldavia).

This material is good inspiration for Ravenloft, but as well good material for MotRD. Most of these monsters are well made and can be easily inserted in Ravenloft, and many can be used with low-level PCs.

- The last part of the netbook is about well known vampire NPC (Carmilla, Dracula, Ruthren (from Polidori’s The Vampyre), Varney (from Rymer’s Varney the Vampire) and vampiric gods (the first being Egyptian vampire gods, inspired by Rice I guess).

The art is fun, naïve and mostly enhance the book (the Lilith picture is … interesting). The cover is great, I like it a lot.

For Ravenloft: The book is a worthy companion to the VRGttV, as this netbook offers many ideas and 3rd ed stats. Recommended.