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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CLAVDIVS" data-source="post: 1992211" data-attributes="member: 17767">Actually, even drinking blood to heal doesn't work very well for the official vampire. Both energy drain and blood drain only grant 5 temporary HP, which only last an hour. As for a need to feed, Libris Mortis does actually cover that. It works almost like an addiction: They have to make Will saves to avoid Wis damage when they go without for too long, and become more mentally unstable the lower their Wis gets; at 0, they turn into a ravening beast that cares only about ending their hunger.Not my idea, originally. The vampire scion in F&F loses 1d8 + its HD each day at noon to the Thirst; it's blood drain attack drains 2d4 HP, which it gains. A decent system, but one of the weird bits is that a 20th level vampire loses 1d8+20 HP every day. Just imagine how many low-level NPC's he has to go through every night just to break even.Both the standard vampire and vampire scion must grapple and successfully pin to drain blood, and can only drain once each round they maintain the pin. I have no intention of changing that.In the MM glossary under "ability score loss", it specifies that ability damage is temporary and heals over time, and ability drain is permanent until magically restored. Vampires, and most other Con-based blood-drinkers, inflict Con drain. That's why I specified (and italicized) Con damage in my first post.I dunno, it feels more like a legacy rule than anything else. Even in 1e I wondered why there was no mention of vampired ever drinking blood. I have no real problem with the concept or mechanics of energy drain, except for the chance of losing a level for real. IMHO, the only thing that should cause an actual level loss is death and resurrection.Wasn't that off-topic, glad to fill in your blanks for you. ^_^In the cold light of the morning, I have to wonder if I'm just over-thinking this.  My biggest problem is that the need to feed scales with level but the benefit of feeding doesn't, resulting in high-level vampires who regard an entire family as a light snack. Maybe the ideal solution is to just drop the "+HD" from the Thirst rules. Logically, if simple blood volume is what matters then Con damage makes more sense than HP, since higher-level characters don't contain more blood. However, if one thinks of it as a more metaphysical "life force" being drained, and blood is simply the physical medium for accessing it, then draining HP works; there's even a precedent for higher-level chars having more life force, because they have more levels to lose to energy drain. And if I want the lifedrinker prc to work again, vampires scions drain twice as much HP as vampires drain Con (2d4 HP to 1d4 Con), so I could treat every 2 HP drained that aren't needed for healing as equivalent to 1 Con for lifewell purposes.Anyhoo, check out Fang & Fury. It's quite nifty. Instead of putting everything on the template, they only give it the most basic of vampire powers and keep it to a +2 LA. All the other vampire powers come from feats or prestige classes. Some of the classes are a bit atypical and have particular setting elements in mind; not a bad thing, mind you, but if they don't fit your campaign you may have to tweak. For example, the foundling prc (which grants shapeshifting abilities) is for elven vampires allied with the unseelie court; if you just wanted it to let vampires shapeshift, you can drop the race requirement and maybe replace the unseelie companion with an animal companion. Vampire weaknesses are also pretty extensive, but you can trim those down if you prefer (for example, I'd keep immersion and staking but drop sunlight and church bells).The only other problem I have with the book is some of the other templates (like the blood puppet and daywalker) that change all HD to d12's without making the creature undead. In fact, if I were to allow vampire PC's (or maybe even if I didn't) I'd strongly consider not changing HD from classes at all: Undead racial HD are d12's, but nothing in the Undead type description says that all other HD have to be d12's as well, any more than the Humanoid type requires all other HD to be d8's. (I won't muck with liches, tho, all those extra HP is part of the point of becoming one.)</blockquote>

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