So, How Do Your Vampires Attack?

[Shaira]

Hi everyone, me again with a "rules-as-written" question, ;-)

How to ITL vampires attack in your games? I like the way ITL vampires work, but it's not clear in the RAW how they usually attack, and if their "need to drink blood" is in any way linked to an attack.

So, do your vampires attack with weapons, magic, etc, as any other character, and just drink the blood of victims outside of combat? Or is their blood-drinking a kind of "drain blood" ability which can be used as an attack? Are they combat-oriented, or more subtle, using mind control, seduction, hypnotism, etc?

Cheers,

Sarah

[phiwum]

That's something I've puzzled over as well.

Seems to me that even in common lore, the vampire bite isn't a usual combat move. It's done through seduction or while one sleeps or something similar. I've decided to adopt a similar strategy, so that vampires are armed and fight normally. They could bite a pinned victim. Perhaps they could bite a sleeping victim (with an IQ roll to see if the victim awakens). Maybe a vampire (or a nosferatu from Book of Unlife) would have a skill for seduction or other kinds of hornswaggling so that the victim allows the bite.

I don't have a stock set of rules, but try to come up with something that fits my story. A sleep spell for a wizardly bloodsucker would come in mighty handy and fit the overall theme of a night visitor.

[Shostak]

I prefer vampires to be more like the Striga and Bruxa encountered in The Witcher books, capable of clawed attacks, but much more dangerous in HTH with their bite.

For something similar to the subtle, Dracula-type vampire, take a look at the Psychophage in Hexagram 6. In the same issue is the Nychta, a form of Nightgaunt that drains ST from its victims with an innate Drain Strength spell.

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by Shostak

I prefer vampires to be more like the Striga and Bruxa encountered in The Witcher books, capable of clawed attacks, but much more dangerous in HTH with their bite.

Cool! So how are you playing them? A single attack of either claw or bite, doing modified hth damage? Are you using the RAW limits on blood drain at all?

Cheers,

Sarah

[Shostak]

I give them ST-based damage with claw bonus (I assign +2 for this) and Brawling's dirty fighting bonus (+2), so a ST 20 Bruxa inflicts 2d+1 with claws. I give their bite +2 on top of that, making it very, very dangerous. I let them make two attacks per round, but with the standard DX adjustment for dual attacks. They can only bite in HTH. If you use the pinning rules from ITL, they will try to render their prey "helpless" that way and then bite them to death.

[TippetsTX]

We had a previous debate on this topic on Facebook over a year ago that some may find useful.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/141064...2312310099581/

[Steve Plambeck]

Vampires are a can of worms, or so I thought after deciding to use some when I was running a campaign back in the 90's. First, I decided to write house rules so I'd be prepared for anything that came up. I reread Bram Stoker and made notes. I reread the St. Germain novels and made notes. I checked several more books and made notes. I re-watched Hammer films and made notes.

I turned all the notes into TFT rules and typed it up. It covered everything: garlic, mirrors, the effect of stakes, silver weapons, feeding and going unfed, sunlight, native earth, crossing water, holy talismans, hypnosis, controlling wolves, turning into bats, turning into mist, etc, etc, etc. When I was done it was nearly 10 pages, typed, single-spaced. I couldn't believe it.

It made my head spin. It was such a headache I deleted the whole vampire encounter from the campaign. And here I'd made little tiny wooden coffins and drawn a crypt I never used.

Gave me a new appreciation of simple monsters, like gargoyles and snakes.

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

Vampires are a can of worms, or so I thought after deciding to use some when I was running a campaign back in the 90's. (snip...) Gave me a new appreciation of simple monsters, like gargoyles and snakes.

:D I get your point entirely, but they're such a cool addition to a game I've been really racking my brains to work them out. I love Shostak's take on them, like the Striga from the Witcher - that's really fired them up for me into a bad-ass foe.

One thing that's not clear from the RAW is whether or not TFT ITL vampires continue to age naturally. If they *don't* (and there's nothing in the rules to suppose this is correct, only real-world vampire lore), then they can get very powerful indeed. I was sketching out some rough stats for a vampire in my campaign. Here she is:

THE FELFANG VAMPIRE
A couple of hundred years old.
ST16 DX14 IQ18 MA10 Mana 36
Talents: Brawling, Courtly Graces, Toughness II
Spells: Avert, Blast, Control Person, Diamond Flesh, Freeze, Glamor, Staff of Mastery, Summon Wolf.
Attacks: Claws in melee for 1d+4 damage; in HTH, bite for 1d+2 plus 4pt blood drain; Staff of Mastery 2H 1d+4 damage (as club); occult damage 1d+2 (costs 1ST).
Defenses: 2 hits damage reduction due to Toughness.
Special: Heal 1 ST / 2 turns; unaffected by garlic and holy objects; levitate; -4DX in daylight and can't levitate.
Tactics: In melee attacks to kill, strike with Staff of Mastery for 2d+6 damage (costs 1ST). Against a stronger foe, freeze foe before feeding (4 damage for 2 turns, or 1d+6 per turn in feeding frenzy). Failing that, drop Glamor to cause fear attack before launching into HTH, trying to pin foe and enter feeding frenzy (especially effective against a weaker foe).

That's just a sketch - I haven't really looked at optimisations yet. I'm thinking she'd have a bunch of magical protections, more spells and talents, Stone Flesh rings, etc, and of course some henchmen. But even in embryo she's a pretty tough cookie.

Cheers,

Sarah

[amenditman]

I have a really nasty, ancient wizard as main enemy in a game I ran. I tried to come up with what they would do to enchant their staff over time.

here is what I came up with
Staff Enchantments
Spell Shield 1fp/turn
Reverse Missiles 1fp/turn
Stone Flesh ofp
Dark Vision 0fp

[Steve Plambeck]

Vampires can be as powerful as the GM wants when they're NPCs, and FELFANG is a lovely example of that.

But if vampirism is propagated by the usual trope, the victims may rise from the dead as new vampires, then things could get dicey (no pun intended) from the gaming perspective.

We probably don't want PCs just lining up to die by vampire bite in order to come back as much more powerful PCs, do we? One solution of course would be a blanket rule: if a PC rises as a new vampire, they are automatically reclassified as an NPC and belong to the GM now rather than the player.

That seems to be a very cheap way out though. It would be much, much more interesting if a dead PC could come back as a vampire. Maybe the player wouldn't want the character anymore and just abandon them, but then maybe they would want to keep playing them, and all the new challenges they'd have to adapt to could make for a really good story. Would their friends turn on them, or accept them as they are now? There'd be advantages to having a vampire in the party for night time missions and adventures, but terrible disadvantages while the sun was up! Will the party lug a cart and coffin on all their travels, so their undead friend can come along while sleeping by day? But my, what a wonderful sentry she'd make when you camp for the night! Then of course there's the matter of keeping her fed... oh dear oh dear.

To make this doable, house rules would have to be written to govern the whole conversion process. What are the odds they'd rise, and what would the modifiers be to that roll? Do they come back stronger, or faster, and if so just how much? Not too much, or the game is unbalanced.

Newly made vampires might be very limited in any special powers. But those powers, such as levitation, could be made available through age and experience points. There could be a small list of Talents available to only vampires - that sounds like fun.

Imagine talents where the first prerequisite is: you're dead :)