Vampire question

[sabrinathecat]

Without devolving into the "Vampires Suck" arena (an argument I've had way too many times to be interested or entertained by, and which packs a lot of vitreous hatred), I have a simple question hopefully someone can answer quickly and easily.

The Vampire class has 3 lvl1 at-wills. Normally, I would think all three for human characters, pick 2 for non-human. However, the fan-updated off-line character builder give characters all three, regardless of race. Is this a glitch in the builder, or does the vampire class for some reason get all three at-will powers no matter what?

 

[Lindeloef]

You get all three no matter what.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, the compendium says

VAMPIRE AT-WILL ATTACK POWERS
You gain the dark beckoning, taste of life, and vampire slam powers.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

And vampires are fun to play. Ignore the CharOp-ers in this instance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And vampires are fun to play. Ignore the CharOp-ers in this instance.

Yeah, they're definitely a cool class. Could use with a few more options, but pretty nice.

 

[sabrinathecat]

And vampires are fun to play. Ignore the CharOp-ers in this instance.

I was under that impression too. They look versatile and crafty.
(As a general rule, I ignore char-oppers, as many of their arguments are based strictly on math, without factoring game-play, terrain, and other potential factors.)

Thanks to all.

 

[the Jester]

The sad thing about vampires is that you really don't get many interesting choices for your character as you go up in levels; you only have a few levels where you get to choose a power, and then you usually only have about two or three to choose from.

That aside, vampires seem like pretty awesome fun to me, as long as you are cool with being stuck firmly within the vampire shtick. One of my 4e players ran an awesome and hilarious pixie vampire who took the Lord of Hell epic destiny and ultimately became a pixie vampire arch-devil.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The sad thing about vampires is that you really don't get many interesting choices for your character as you go up in levels; you only have a few levels where you get to choose a power, and then you usually only have about two or three to choose from.

That aside, vampires seem like pretty awesome fun to me, as long as you are cool with being stuck firmly within the vampire shtick. One of my 4e players ran an awesome and hilarious pixie vampire who took the Lord of Hell epic destiny and ultimately became a pixie vampire arch-devil.

I was going to say, yes, its true, none of the classes in HoS got a lot of further support, but the Vampire did get SOME support. There are a number of MC-enhancing feats in Dragon 402, along with the Vampirism feat, if you want to mix up being a vampire with other stuff. Then of course you have a choice of Theme, PP, and ED, just like any other character if you don't wish to take the default "I'm even more of a vampire" PP and ED. Personally I'd allow a character with the Vampire class to count as having a Vampire Bloodline too, though technically you'd have to take the feat for that. This opens a number of other useful feats. Not ones that are astoundingly powerful, but some of them look fun.

Nobody in my game has ever gotten around to trying out the Vampire, but I'm pretty sure several of my players could make a good go of it. Some other cool ideas would be things like a Revenant Vampire, a Shardmind Vampire, a Deva Vampire, etc. These could all be skinned in rather interesting ways.

 

[the Jester]

I was going to say, yes, its true, none of the classes in HoS got a lot of further support, but the Vampire did get SOME support.

Depending on how tied to electronic tools you are (or how easily you can insert homebrewed material into whatever you use), you could always homebrew some vampire powers, perhaps based on the World of Darkness stuff.

 

[sabrinathecat]

There are exactly 2 power choices you get to make: lvl 2 utility, and lvl 22 utility. But yes, you get to choose race, backgrounds, themes, paragon paths, epic destinies, and the order in which you take feats. For fun, I built a lvl30, and ended up with a lot of feats that were more "boost your team mates" choices than "boost your own damage ego" optimizers.
The lack of "Vampire" feats made picking up the racial feats a lot more tempting, and I'm looking forward to the next game that starts at lvl1, so I can give this a try.
Used a pixie vampire as an npc for a few sessions, and terrified the players with the damage and personality it inflicted. The Halfling has lots of fun RP potential.

I'm working with the fan-made update for the off-line character builder, so I'm not sure what the Dragon Magazine support cut-off date is/was.