[Snake]

Vampire's Sanguine Crest form is not really strong enough to justify the drawbacks. I believe this race needs a few tweaks to become something people can at least consider for RP reasons.

Good things about Vampire at the moment:
- Being able to grief your allies with Confusion, because haha funni.
- Being able to freely dish out Titan Gale to allies with Confusion.

Bad things about Vampire at the moment:
- Base racial numbers that completely force them to be mages or bust.
- Biting enemies will cause you to lose a beneficial buff if they have a trait that has no requirements and a pathetic drawback of -10% status resistance. (Cursed Blood)
- Biting a Glykin will make you take a whopping 60 Light damage and not generate essence.
- Biting an enemy requires a Hit check, and can be subjected to Evade or Glancing Blow, nullifying the effects.
- Biting an enemy is a clear signal that you're a Vampire, because you can't cover that bite as something else like Poison Bite or Argent Bite. It has the bold and gold-shiny name "BANQUET" on it.
- Sanguine Crest, while a good way to hide a Vampire's vampiric side, offers no real significant boons for a Vampire and only serves as a gun pointed at the Vampire's skull if they want to use Lunar Lunatism. The stat bonuses are so incredibly insignificant while subjected to diminishing returns, you'd think you are shooting yourself on the foot. Because now you're 100% subjected to a massive healing reduction and Holy weakness at full force.
- Lunar Lunatism has too many requirements, and one is chained to a mechanic that by itself is full of problems by default. Its dependence on Sanguine Crest severely hinders how a Vampire can roleplay having it enough of someone and removing their masquerate. How things go when a Vampire decides to go all out? "oh hol' up a second, lemme bite you so I can be spooky and evil". Come on, man...
- Due to being the only race that has significant less healing from magical sources for having their kit used, they require a large HP pool. And guess what happens when "Large HP pool" meets "Poison Menov's Fang"?
- Holy weakness makes them fold like wet paper before anyone with a secondary weapon on their Item Belt.
- They're always OOCly bullied. All it takes is a metagamer to look at you doing something with your race for them to spread to the whole community and a half that you are a Vampire. Because it's just that easy to blow up the cover.
- For being 'immortal' ICly, but having their drawback apparently being a bad combatant is not really the way here. It limits people's creativity to make use the race for their own storybuilding. If 'immortality' is broken ICly, fix through lore, not by making the race under perform when compared to flipping HUMANS, who are the baseline of SL2. Like, come on man.

Possible band-aid solutions, I.E just buff the race a little bit and call it a day without utter breaking it again:
- Sanguine Crest grants +4 STR, WIL, SKI, CEL, DEF, as a base bonus. So it does not get subject to diminishing returns.
- Lunar Lunatism should grant Sanguine Crest, and have its only condition be needing your Essence above 100.
- Silvermists heals 8% of your maximum HP along its own heal, removes Poison and grants immunity to it for 2 rounds.

Long-term solutions to the bad stuff:
- Cursed Blood needs to be more hindering to the person who picked that trait, like for example, making them lose Maximum HP% or something like that. It's too 'free' a way to ruin a Vampire player's day.
- A way to get Vampires going around Glykins and Holy, be it through equipment, potions, certain conditions or traits. Meeting brick walls on your gameplay that you can't get around it is not fun at all.
- Give us some form or way to masquerade our Banquets as other racials, or straight up use other racials but instead of their bonus effects, it's just banquet's effects. Like for example, a trait that allows us to use a "Fake" Poison Bite, which works as Poison Bite, but doesn't Poison the enemy, instead it gives you some reduced Essence due to your trickery.
- Make their Immortality work another way, lore-wise, if that's the sole justification of why they should be underpowered mechanically.
- Their healing reduction sometimes ruins team play and makes your Priest sad OOCly that they can't do their job while you're around. And there were once situations where you're a Priest, and your party is composed of 3 Vampires. And all Vampires just keel over and die pathetically because you can't keep them alive. That 'healing reduction' should have a small compensation, like "Reduces Healing by X, but that extra is converted into FP and Essence." or "Converted into a Regeneration LVX for 3 rounds". I don't know if this is plausible but at least 'something'.

[Poruku]

I feel like I'm the only person speaking in favor of vampires every time this comes up, but really I think vampires aren't that bad. Banquet is a good ability because of the poison or charm you can apply with it, combined with the healing and essence. Silvermists is a good heal and overall I think vampires are a good class for doom walling such as with bk/hexer, because the sustain you get. They have good powers, and I feel people overplay their weaknesses. But they do have more weaknesses than most races. I think people often fail to take into account the fact banquet does a lot of different things at once.

Ultimately, I like vampires as they are. I don't think it's unfair to get hard countered by a glykin because that just makes sense. I don't think it's unfair to get countered by an exorcism weapon either.

And well if you're not building SAN on a vampire of course it's gonna suck.

HOWEVER I agree they are weak, and I feel like they deserve to be much stronger than this. Banquet is not reliable enough, sanguine crest is not strong enough, lunatism doesn't do enough. Their lore power isn't very useful in practice because people can simply capture them when they win. Unlike liches, their immortality power is more of extra steps to deal with than a protection.

I think they simply need some overall buffing, with exorcism being nerfed versus vampires.

[adamkad1]

Also, can we actually punish people for applying OOC to IC? SS13 has something called 'metagrudging' but I guess it wouldn't apply because you cant prove someone is shunning someone for ooc reasons... Unless you force them to provide a valid reason to not like the person. They'll probably come up with some nonsense tho...

[Kazzy]

Vampires issue at present is the fact it's a spellcaster stat block with basic attacker traits and abilities.

The solution, the REALLY EASY SOLUTION, would be to have Vampire and Vampire (Caster), ala Felidae and Gremalkin.


Edit: And that's ignoring completely peoples habit of metagaming racial traits. But that's not a mechanical issue as much as it is a community issue. I use the poison fangs to masquerade as a wyverntouched on my vampire and pretty much rely on people not metagaming to ruin the fun.


Edit edit: And while we're at it, can we make Feeder better than Loaf of Bread levels of post combat resto, please? It doesn't even trigger off of Gourmet or Meat Lover.

[Tana]

I was so very tempted to make a snarky post in response to this thread, especially knowing these threads have almost no chance of being seen for two-three months(or longer), but I'll instead make a few points that aren't snarky.

1.) Crest really doesn't give much. To make use of crest, you'll need most of the stats it buffs, while likely not using some of them. It's capped at +2, whereas a base-san kael that gets bonus stats will be getting significantly more, for literally zero drawback. Ultimately, you will likely get 1 or less actual stat point in stats you're using when using crest, in exchange for... The inability to be healed, and a 75% bonus damage multiplier being slapped on you. Great.

2.) There is no RP benefit, as per the rules, for being a vampire. If a situation would kill a human character, it will kill your vampire, and you get no special exception for vampirism. With no RP benefit, there's even less reason to have vampires as hyper-gutted with an incredibly potent weakness for using their race as intended. You cannot even point to age as a reason; Anyone can be just as old as a vampire with any number of dev-approved handwaves, or if you really must, GM approval.

3.) Base stats are skewed away from what their racial kit demands. Not necessarily the worst ever, but it's not quite spiked enough anywhere to really commit to any build well.

The best way to use a vampire right now mechanically is to take fasting, and just ignore that you are mechanically a vampire. This... Kinda sucks. And I say this as someone who did high san builds or bust back before a lot of racials were normalized. The move to GR2 has also screwed over the few ways you could do a high-SAN build, leaving it incredibly difficult to be a basic hitter with high san outside of very, very few builds. Typically, something aimed purely at skill, since it's mandatory.

[FaeLenx]

I feel like most of the first post focuses on 'vampires can't stay hidden and use their full power and their abilities aren't strong enough to consider the drawback of being discovered' a few times at least, but the problem with this mentality is that there is no drawback to being discovered. It is not illegal in the main area of the game to be a vampire. People can't kill your character over it, deny you mechanical options that are available to any other player, or do anything to you. The most they can do is switch to holy damage in a duel just like someone could switch to fire damage against a doriad or whatever else have you if they have the option.

There is no reason a vampire should be stronger than any other race because of some head canon that they have any sort of masquerade in how this game actually functions. If you want to RP it that way personally you can, but it shouldn't affect balance discussions or even gameplay in that regard.

Changing their base stats and getting them in line with other races would be great, though, but monstrous races don't need monstrous stats because that's just not the game we're playing here.

Putting their weakness in line with other races if it's not already would be a good idea, and throw them a resistance against dark if they don't already have it.

[Tana]

I feel like most of the first post focuses on 'vampires can't stay hidden and use their full power and their abilities aren't strong enough to consider the drawback of being discovered' a few times at least, but the problem with this mentality is that there is no drawback to being discovered. It is not illegal in the main area of the game to be a vampire. People can't kill your character over it, deny you mechanical options that are available to any other player, or do anything to you. The most they can do is switch to holy damage in a duel just like someone could switch to fire damage against a doriad or whatever else have you if they have the option.

As someone who has actually played a vampire, this is just plain not true. It is legal to murder vampires in the most-played place in the game (Sigrogana, or to be more exact, killing a vampire is barely considered assault), people can and will hunt you down over it ICly and OOCly, and vampires are legitimately more prone to being permakilled and easier to permakill than other races, as per rules.

People love to put together anti-vampire gank squads, because a lot of people who play the game absolutely hate that vampires are in as a race, period. This is only going to pure lethal intent, too; If we are to push to mere being hated ICly, being outed as a vampire tends to screw you over; I've seen people jumped in public, beaten to near death, and thrown in Arjav without having even defended themselves from the attack, due to being only suspected of vampirism, not to get into the OOC hate you get for playing one if you're not friends with a ton of people OOCly.

You also can't compare a 15% weakness to a 75% damage multiplier. You can absolutely deny mechanical options to vampires with nothing more than a trait it feels like everyone takes, even if it makes no IC sense at all. With how many characters run around with cursed blood, it's something of a wonder that the hospitals aren't always full.

[FaeLenx]

Make a character and go try to gank any of the known vampires that wander around and see how well that goes for you. Or can anyone who has gone on these vampire gank squads confirm that this actually happens regularly? I've always felt like this game has had a severe lack of conflict and sometimes punishes people for rabble rousing or having extreme character opinions that lead to conflict. If this has all happened then maybe I'm just wrong. If it's so common then someone who has murdered/beaten/hunted vampires and been endorsed by the guardship would probably be able to say how well that time goes for them.

Also, nobody has an OOC grudge against a fantasy race. Or I can't fathom why someone would.

Will still agree that Sanguine Crest sucks, though. Mechanically they need a buff, but a lot of the sentiments around it and how much of a buff they need seem farfetched.

Remaking them entirely to focus more around a masquerade and unveiling themselves similar to some sort of Death Knighting steroid would be a neat idea, though.

[Autumn]

Will still agree that Sanguine Crest sucks, though. Mechanically they need a buff, but a lot of the sentiments around it and how much of a buff they need seem farfetched.

Remaking them entirely to focus more around a masquerade and unveiling themselves similar to some sort of Death Knighting steroid would be a neat idea, though.

I agree with this pretty heavily, I think that reworking vampires is actually a pretty good idea given that somewhere most players feel that vampires actually fall short of being considered strong, Vampires are supposed to be strong, not Lich or Dullahan strong given their respective RP opportunities become more limited, but should be considered a force to be reckoned with by the general adventuring populace anyways due to their cunning, and 

That is ICly what they are at the moment, and their current thematics are pretty good, but I think you can further Augment vampires by actually not augmenting them at all, let me explain.

I propose that Vampires be given a choice at character creation of any race they desire (Or at Air if they have not chosen one.), choosing said race will give them a specific skill from that race, and unlock their racial part icons in the mirror (Erasing the need to have them all available from the get-go), no strings attached you just get that skill, it would be predetermined as to not create spellthief scenarios where vampires suddenly become the best Leporidae of ever, for example:

-Choosing Wyverntouched would give them Poison Bite, but not Venom Drive/traits etc.
-Choosing Felidae would give them Fleetfoot but not Instinct/Golden eyes etc.

And so on and so forth, after this you could start buffing passives like Sanguine Crest to have +5 all stats and increasing healing gained from Racials/Vampiric sources by 25%, but it'd disable the ability to use your racial's ability for some time as you've entered a bloodfueled state.

And these are all just random numbers I'm throwing out here for the sake of it, like none of these have to be concrete or anything.

[Tana]

+1 if the race choosing lets me finally have vampire naga that slither : (