[Wixvhen]

I like how Banquet works, but at the same time, I've constantly wondered why something that is quite literally consuming blood (supposedly it's not, but holy blood burns in my mouth when I use it) isn't touching hunger at all... What I'm suggesting is that Banquet also serve as a 'hunger quenching' effect when used in combat... FOR THAT BATTLE ONLY. I/E A one off 'not hungry' if the person is hungry that round. Once the battle ends they heal (for a minimal amount of maybe... 5% 3% or something else ridiculously low, but worth it to use time and again since it's not a typical food) and their hunger's back at empty again. The hunger filling effect is omitted if the person ate food already.

Affected Skill: Banquet
Requirements: Hunger = 0
Effect: When Hunger is at 0, this skill is has an additional hit penalty of 5-10%, but restores hunger by 1.
Amount Healed: 2-10% HP/FP

---OR---

New Skill: Quench Hunger
Requirements: Hunger = 0 Essence = 100
Effect: Quench your hunger with the essence of others, filling you for ten battles (OR 50-100% HP/FP for one battle)

Reasoning: Banquet is currently used as a dark attack (with a minor penalty) to circumvent weapon durability loss. I rarely if ever see Silvermist or Lunar Lunatism used outside of fresh blood in the game. It's essentially just used to get that stat boost and then ignored. Hell, if done properly, it could be tuned down so that people can't rely on it for durability free melee. As is, banquet's broken in a few ways, both good and bad, but ultimately useless for it's original purpose of using the race skills for health/power (since most people just rely on class skills instead). This change/add-on would give it a use outside of combat that would give dungeon goers and event fighters long term viability at the cost of losing stats for a short time.

[Sarinpa1]

Banquet has a hit penalty when used, causes darkness damage which most have some sort of gear againts because hexers are a widespread thing and hunger mechanic is completely unrelated to combat, only to after-battle.
To add, hunger doesn't give you any penalties in combat, so your "reasoning" that Silvermist and Lunar Lunatism aren't used (Which they are.) seems rather irrelevant.

Changing this around just so vampires get a terrible alternative compared to food and get further hindered seems unnecesary. Their longevity in combat from IC standpoint already is represented by HP and FP recovery via the mentioned skills.

[111none]

May I push a suggestion?
Instead of using it as a combat mechanic, perhaps, may it be a subtle Ic reminder that the vampire needs to feed?

Like this:
You feel thirsty

You feel a slight itch to feed on the closest person.

Your urging to feed on something

Blood! Must. Feed..

[Sarinpa1]

Vampires can go on without feeding for months as far as I know.

[Neus]

Personally I'd like to revisit Vampires at some point in the future and give their racial abilities a more clear and concise operation, as well as modernize them as far as power standards are concerned. Because, as you've pointed out, there's some conflicting official information about Banquet that originally rose from wanting to make it a less restrictive ability (for example, using Banquet on Jammers to get essence would likely be the way any 'newbie' vampire would start trying to fill their essence meter. But Jammers don't have blood in the traditional sense, so it working on them if it were blood sucking would not make much sense. But Glykin share a unique relationship with Vampires because their blood can't be drank by them. But that doesn't make sense if Banquet doesn't have to suck blood! And so on).

[111none]

Perhaps then, could banquet be reworked to something akin to life drain?
Split the damage between pierce and dark. And the damage formula become (1/4Level+Essence)/ + (STR/10), and no more than x percent of total VIT?