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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5526623" data-attributes="member: 78116">You know this is a really interesting point you bring up. The vampire has its advantages, but as I've mentioned several times it has some specific disadvantages as well that really penalize the class considerably. These disadvantages uniquely penalize the vampire a lot and make those encounters considerably more lethal than they are for - well - just about anyone else. The question you've raised is interesting: If a class is poorly designed for a significant part of the game, should I change the game to fix the poorly designed class or fix the poor designed class' issue?Personally I prefer to think that when nothing else in the game is as uniquely susceptible to these things: The problem is the class. I am not going to design the game differently because Wizards makes a poorly designed class. Instead, I'll try to fix the actual problem or find a solution. It turns out that durable is a really viable solution. Another solution - a soft one at that - is to pace encounters/skill challenges with a very easy encounter (or soft enemies that can be easily hit) before or immediately after. Letting the vampire easily regain surges that may have been lost before they would run into trouble or get them out of it. This is something I often do anyway, just in case PCs suffer a bad day from the trap or skill challenge in the first place. The previous shipwreck encounter -> Skill Challenge -> Trapped Room of Doom was followed by an EL-2 encounter. Not enough to threaten the PCs, but could be hairy if they had a bad day on any of the three elements before hand. For a vampire a soft encounter like that would be almost perfect to get back on their feet and again, I designed that well before I even knew Wizards would release a class that worked like the vampire*.But of course you can just have a bad day. For most classes this is just a session spent frustrated. The problem with the core of the vampires design is this is a session spent making a new character. Because without durable, when the vampire goes wrong it goes really wrong. It's also very frustrating for the party leader to have to heal a guy from unconscious for a whole 1 HP. Only to just to go down again and anyone who has seen a leader have to do this, knows how frustrating it is for the players in question.In the end, I won't design the game differently just because of the vampire. The vampire will have to live with the considerable in built disadvantage and find a workaround. It does exist and even if it didn't, I would certainly houserule the vampire to 4 surges or something similar anyway if a PC wanted to play one.*Edit: Sometimes I do like to think I am psychic.</blockquote>

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