Vampire in play

[pauljathome]

In a normal campaign I could see some issues with a vampire PC. But in LFR it's basically a mismatched assortment of oddballs every time, so a vampire doesn't strike me as that odd unless the party also had a religious type of Kelemvor who might not like the walking dead being around them.

The OP's post sounds more like a problem with a group that were all like "Lawl new Vampire class what a scrub". Now the class itself might be underpowered but all I got from the initial post is that the other players (keep in mind this was an LFR game so it's random who turns up) were being stupid and trying to come up with reasons to screw over the vampire PC simply because he was a vampire PC.

The exact opposite, actually. We were going through gyrations trying to figure out WHY we weren't killing the Vampire. In character (I'm playing a Good aligned druid) of COURSE I'd kill a vampire. They're evil bloodsucking abominations against nature. Why the heck would I ever go adventuring with one? At best I'd pass on this mission and go on the next mission that comes along.

Part of the problem is that a vampire is more obviously a vampire than things like revenants are instantly obvious. Even commoners recognized one pretty easily.

In game we just totally ignored this. In LFR one has little choice but to do that. But it was a glaring disconnect.

And then, as a "reward", we got to play with a character that just didn't "feel" like a vampire in any meaningful way. The player didn't really enjoy it because he couldn't do the "cool" flavourful things that he wanted to do (be centuries old, smell blood were the things that came up during the session).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And if he'd done that he'd STILL be worse at perception than the human cleric who trains in perception and STILL be worse at history than the human wizard who trains history.

This has nothing to do with the vampire class at all. This is a genral design flaw of the skill proficiency system.

Classes should give bonuses to certain skills just like Races do. Skill training should only give another +2 bonus. Classes should increase their main skills with some little bonuses per tier.

So you should get +2 from race, maximum +5 from atttribute and at least +3 for being a class skill. and another +2 from skill training and maybe another +2 from skill focus. You should get only a small number of skill trainings at level 1 and bonus feats to get skill training/fokus at some numbered levels (maybe X3, X6 and X9)

+2 bonus to class skills at level 11 and 21.

This way you would allow anyone who is from the right class to have its +5 bonus without effort. And other classes can only get to +7 maximum (eladrin education to arcana and shade stealth training as the only exceptions coming to my mind)

the +2 bonus per tier makes sure classes with perfect stats for the skill are not surpassing your classes bonuses.

 

[Zaran]

I haven't looked at the class but does it actuallly have sufficient skill slots to pick skills like History and Perception?

Even though I'm a HoS-Hater, I haven't seen any real design flaws with the Vampire because like it's been mentioned, they have access to both Perception and History.

Then again, if he actually had a backstory thought up like it sounds (being hundreds of years old) that's more than I have seen with alot of players. Most players I have seen make the Class first and then come up with a backstory after several sessions. The fact that this guy had a story and was trying to roleplay a few hundred year old vampire shouldn't be derided for not having the skill slots for History.

 

[Moorcrys]

I play LFR. It's a carnival of unthemed races and classes jammed together session after session. I don't see why your party would be so against playing with a vampire in your group in LFR... I have to run around with gnolls, orcs, and minotaurs frequently. What's the difference? And revenants are ok?

"Oh, well, that's the good undead abomination with us... not the bloodsucking undead abomination... there's a HUGE difference you see."

 

[Klaus]

Replying to several posts at once :

I disagree with this. Yes, the player could have gimped his character and bought up wisdom and intelligence a little and bought skills that don't actually synergize with the mechanics of a striker very well.

And if he'd done that he'd STILL be worse at perception than the human cleric who trains in perception and STILL be worse at history than the human wizard who trains history.

Personally, I find it hard to accept fluff that says "I have this really, really good sense of smell" when the rules say "No, you actually don't".

And I find it hard to believe that my vampire character is strong when he can't smash open a door or open a jar of peanuts .

As for that WOTC article, suddenly because there is a Vampire PC the world shifts and my 5th level character with Arcana and Religion as trained skills doesn't know anything about vampires? Yeah, right.

I definitely understand that vampires are the in thing right now. I (mostly) think that implementing them as a class wasn't the right design choice. I think the old 3rd edition method of applying a template was just better (albeit it had lots of problems). And yes, this DOES mean that a starting 1st level character cannot be a vampire. Deal.

If you think training Perception and History is "gimping" the character, the class is not at fault.

And you seem to be forgetting the Level 4 utility that lets a vampire make Strength, Athletics and Endurance checks with a +5 bonus (+10 if you spend a healing surge). That means your wimpy vampire can batter down a door as if he were a fighter with Strength 20 (or a Strength 30 giant if he spends a surge).

You also must remember that a Wisdom 20 cleric trained in Perception isn't a regular Joe. That's a divinely-powered character whose senses expand into the Astral Sea. The Intelligence 20 wizard is a genius with perfect recall that has pored over books for most of his life. You can match either simply by being who you are. It's like Dracula matching wits with Van Helsing, or Angel discussing magic with Giles or Willow.

 

[pauljathome]

If you think training Perception and History is "gimping" the character, the class is not at fault.

And you seem to be forgetting the Level 4 utility that lets a vampire make Strength, Athletics and Endurance checks with a +5 bonus (+10 if you spend a healing surge). That means your wimpy vampire can batter down a door as if he were a fighter with Strength 20 (or a Strength 30 giant if he spends a surge).

You also must remember that a Wisdom 20 cleric trained in Perception isn't a regular Joe. That's a divinely-powered character whose senses expand into the Astral Sea. The Intelligence 20 wizard is a genius with perfect recall that has pored over books for most of his life. You can match either simply by being who you are. It's like Dracula matching wits with Van Helsing, or Angel discussing magic with Giles or Willow.

The gimping is way more putting points into intelligence and wisdom than buying the skills. Without a decent stat bonus the difference between trained and untrained skills is basically "Well, I suck a little less".

I wasn't playing the vampire so I didn't know about the utility. That does help somewhat.

 

[CelticMutt]

I might have suggested just that if it weren't for the fact that Wizards decided to make Vampire a class, rather than a race. Redemption is a rather good character arc but, if everything that the character is and does is based on that fate, how do you 'fix' it?

The only way that I could see, would be running right into Epic and killing Orcus.

They DID make a vampire race - the Vryloka. It's in the same book as the class.

 

[pauljathome]

I play LFR. It's a carnival of unthemed races and classes jammed together session after session. I don't see why your party would be so against playing with a vampire in your group in LFR... I have to run around with gnolls, orcs, and minotaurs frequently. What's the difference? And revenants are ok?

"Oh, well, that's the good undead abomination with us... not the bloodsucking undead abomination... there's a HUGE difference you see."

I haven't played that much LFR but from what I've seen its nowhere near that bad around here. There has been one revenant character but my character didn't know it was a revenant until AFTER we'd done the PC bonding thing.

I just glanced at the compendium for Revenants. Its extremely contradictory in how it describes revenants. They first say that "Revenants do not appear as undead horrors" and then describe an appearance that is pretty clearly that of, uh, an undead horror.

The player was assuming that he could pass for human and I never realized until just now that maybe that wasn't quite so obvious.

I'm probably showing my age but "Vampire" also has a LOT more emotional resonance and baggage with me than "revenant".

I also was NOT the only one at the table to have the same reaction. Even the player of the revenant (he was playing a different character) reacted in a similar fashion. As did the GM.

For the record, I've always thought that 4th edition has gone WAY too far in making monstrous races socially acceptable. I played in the Giant modules when Drow were first invented. The reaction to a Drow walking into a bar should be one of sheer panic. Kill it if you can, flee if you can't. The vampire just brings out that reaction in spades.

 

[Ryujin]

They DID make a vampire race - the Vryloka. It's in the same book as the class.

More of a creature with a vampiric bloodline, but that doesn't seem to be what we're discussing here. We're talking about the Vampire class.

But how would you handle a Vryloka (race) Vampire (class) getting rid of his 'curse', anyway?

 

[P1NBACK]

I don't get why a vampire would be trained in History just because they have lived for a long time... I can barely remember what happened to me 10 years ago, let alone 100s of years.