Character Themes: Born from Shadow

Only two themes, this time? Oh well, at least they are shadow-oriented. Now if only I was able to run a L.A. Noire-type campaign that takes place in Gloomwrought (or hell, Eberron) I would be in business. I think WotC should do some sort of compilation and throw it in a book, perhaps with one of those random-background generator tables.

Student of Evard starts you out with essence of death, which deals scaling bonus damage against an adjacent creature that you hit with an attack. The damage is nice, but you also take some damage. To make matters worse, it also scales. At level 5 you gain a bonus on skill checks related to nethermancy and necromancy, and you can also use the Last Sight Vision ritual once a day for free. At 10th-level the skill bonuses double, and you also gain an attack bonus with shadow powers for the first round of combat.

• Dark Focus: A level 2 daily utility that lets you burn a healing surge for a reroll. Kind of like arcane defiling, but only you pay the price.
• Shadow Vision: A level 6 encounter utility that grants you dark vision for a turn. Lame.
• Dread Blessing: A level 10 daily utility that is similar to dark focus in that you burn a surge for a reroll, but this one targets allies, grants a bonus, and if the reroll still fails you do not expend it. Very nice.

Gloomwrought emissary starts you out with strike from shadows, which lets you lump on weakened when you hit a creature granting combat advantage with a melee or ranged attack. As a minor bonus you can also shift a short distance. Level 5 gives you a staple bonus to Diplomacy and Streetwise, while level 10 lets you reroll a Charisma-based skill once per day. Eh…could be better, but at least it fits the theme.

• Jibber Feint is a level 2 encounter utility that lets you automatically cause one enemy to grant combat advantage for the next attack levied at it.
• Ghostwalker is a level 6 encounter utility that renders you insubstantial for a turn, and lets you fly before your turn ends.
• Noble’s Decree is a level 10 encounter utility that basically lets you double your Charisma modifier for a Diplomacy or Intimidate check.

Student of Evard is pretty nice, and while the Gloomwrought emissary is thematic enough it just feels underwhelming in the same way that a 3rd Edition bard was mostly good for auto-winning Diplomacy checks.

Vampire Play Report

Last week Randy ran The Wayward Wyrmling, an adventure that I reviewed in the past and enjoyed. The adventure is basically three encounters with kobolds, including traps, difficult terrain, and a dragon (in that order), culminating with the possibility that you walk away with a pet dragon. Since we were having a few new people play, Randy prepared a bunch of Essentials-pregens…including a halfling vampire. Since the vocal minority was positive that it was too weak and couldn’t deal enough damage to keep up, I was eager to give it a shot and see how it would play out.

It did not disappoint.

The first encounter was kind of annoying due to all of the save-ends immobilizing traps, but one the cleric “found them” we were able to skirt around pretty easily. By skirt around, I mean that I was able to charge-slam kobolds for 13 or so damage with an at-will. I did one-shot a kobold when I lumped blood drain (because I wanted to play it safe). I think I got hit once, but since I didn’t roll a surge into my encounter attack, once we wrapped things up I just full-healed anyway.

The second encounter was a bit different in that we could see the disabling terrain feature this time. Running around would have taken too long, so I just sat there and spammed whatever at-will pulls the target, dealing a lot of damage and causing them to take a dive. I never got hit once or used any encounters, not for lack of the kobolds trying mind you (AC of 20 and second chance).

The last encounter allowed us some freedom in that we only had to worry about a wyrmpriest and dragon, though the river did give us pause until we realized that it didn’t do anything. As with the last encounter, I never got hit, though I did nab a surge from the kobold before polishing him off with an action point. Eventually the dragon just left, and we didn’t bother wrapping anything up because it was a one-shot introductory play-test session.

At least up until 3rd level, the vampire is pretty fucking badass. Pretty hard to hit, which meant that I wasn’t able to see how well regeneration would have helped. Had I got hit more than once, I would have started using the at-will that gives you temp hps at all  in order to give me a buffer. I am disappointed that I never had a worthwhile opportunity to take the daily for a spin. Would I play a vampire in a full campaign? Probably. There are other characters that have a high appeal, but to me it demonstrates that with the right monster you can have a viable, entertaining experience. I hope WotC puts out more in future books or Dragon articles.

Vampire Myths

I wrote not so much a handbook–certainly not of the quality you’d find on the Character Optimization forum–but more of a primer to the vampire class, as I wanted to work on some character concepts but wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into. Some people have criticized that it is too frail or weak to be a viable striker, and after looking over every single class feature and power, I don’t think that it is the case (even given the lack of specific feat support).

Comparing strikers with reasonable optimization at 1st-level, the vampire is basically on par with everything except for an Artful Dodger rogue with an 18 in Dexterity and Charisma, and Weapon Focus (light blade) or Backstabber. When you compare dailies, the vampire does almost double damage before you consider feats in the equation (which I still was in the case of the rogue). By 11th-level, the rogue ended up being something like 5 points ahead when you lumped on all the feats and assumed that she had combat advantage, but at 15th-level the gap closed due to the vampire’s Hidden Might getting its second kicker.

So, I dunno. Looks pretty good to me. I’ve heard people actually playing the damned thing not having many complaints.

In regards to the durability thing, I think detractors are overlooking all the powers and class features that grant temporary hit points (including one of your 1st-level at wills), let you steal healing surges, and even regeneration when bloodied. The fact that temporary hit points don’t affect your bloodied condition means that you can have a lot of them, but still benefit from the regeneration. Plus, when stealing healing surges from allies they act like two. I’d totally overlooked that if you have more than your max at the end of a short rest, that you get topped off; I thought it was after combat. This makes it even easier for a vampire to abuse healing surges by just getting a couple from her allies.

That, and necrotic resistance is a pretty common energy type.

Heroes of Shadow Reactions

Due to a combination of some Heroes of Shadow reviews providing misinformation on just how much–if not all–material was Essentials only, and people who believe that stuff in an Essentials book is somehow incompatible (or even more laughably, a separate edition by any degree), I am not surprised to find 20-30 page forum threads of people bitching back and forth. Is it odd that I find it refreshing that at least some are complaining about how crappy the shade is/isn’t?

First things first (again); Essentials isn’t a new edition (or even a half edition, errata, or what the fuck ever). It’s a limited book line that just so happens to have some classes that follow a different starting and advancement structure. That’s not a bad thing, “allowing” designers to think more than a step outside the box. Yeah, past classes did minor changes, like giving you flexibility on making at-wills into encounters (most psionic classes), or giving you up to three at-wills (in the case of the druid). Using an entirely different class structure doesn’t mean that we’ve somehow stepped into a new edition.

Were things really this bad when WotC released Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic, or Book of Nine Swords? Do people even remember how much shit changed between 3rd Edition and Revised? To make things as clear as I possibly can about the content in Heroes of Shadow, virtually all of it can be used by clerics, paladins, warlocks, and wizards of any structure. There are some powers that are tied to class features, but they are way in the minority (unless your DM is sane and doesn’t mind your warlock grabbing a “binder-only” summoning power).

Second, some people are upset that the shade and vryloka have racial penalties, and/or some are also pissed at Mearls for his justifications on why shades lose all of one healing surge. I really see no problem with a small penalty here or there, especially when it’s nowhere severe enough to render the race unplayable as a specific class. I remember back in the day when a real racial penalty was having a net -2 to your stats, and no racial features of merit, or being Small with a Strength penalty and trying to play an inherently dead-end class like the fighter. One less healing surge? One? Wizards get six, though I’ve never encountered–nor heard of–an instance where one healing surge spelled the difference between life and death.

Again, this mentality just serves to irrationally straight-jacket designers. If they make a race that gets a penalty only when using spells or using melee attacks, then we’ll talk.

Others are pissed off that the shade racial is a standard action, and that it allegedly does for the most part that “anyone can do in the right situation”. I’d like to point that using Stealth requires total concealment, superior cover, or the DM’s mercy/leniency/rules ignorance. I know that at night, these requirements might not be as steep, but the fact that they can hide behind allies and create areas of dim light as a minor action at will by 6th level should not be discounted so readily (that, and all those dim-light feats). Others complain that some of the classes that the shade is good at (ie, rogues and assassins) will now have a wasted skill. While I can understand the sentiment behind this, the same thing could also be said for races with weapon proficiencies, racial features whose usefulness depends on the class you play (like goring charge), or skill bonuses for skills that you need a feat to take, or won’t ever use.

In short, I think a the vocal minority needs to take a step back and look at the larger picture. Just because WotC put some sub-classes and races with (minor) penalties in a book does not mean that other classes won’t get laundry-list power articles, or that 5th Edition is coming out, or that Mearls doesn’t listen to you (because he hates you).

Heroes of Shadow Review

I was able to snag Heroes of Shadows yesterday from a premier store, but unfortunately had to work most of the day so couldn’t get around to it until 3am on Saturday. My first Mountain Dew-addled impression is that it seems a bit starved for page count, weighing in at 160 pages. But hey at least it’s hardback, something we haven’t seen since Dark Sun Creature Catalog. As the name implies, this book is all about the Shadowfell and shadow power source, providing flavor and mechanical content for players that want to manipulate shadows, drain the life out of their enemies, play around with undead, or just play a fucking vampire that can actually do vampiric things.

First things first, I want to get something out of the way that I read last week (and has subsequently spawned expansive forum threads): this is not an Essentials book. Yes, there are some builds and features that are limited to the mage class (school specialization) and warpriest class (death domain features), as well as a few new subclasses derived from the paladin and warlock. However, the majority of the mechanics–feats, powers, paragon paths, epic destinies, and races–can be used by anyone, as can all of the flavor content. This book does an excellent job of providing plenty of material both sides of the fence, such as it is.

I’ll get more into this after the review. For now, let’s take a closer look at the book.

Chapter 1: Into the Dark

The first chapter is six pages of flavor concerning shadow magic, specifically it details how shadow magic interacts with arcane and divine magic, and various ways one can discover or learn to use it. Several pages of this were previewed here, which basically accounts for half the chapter. The other half briefly touches on the Shadowfell, as well as ways that shadow magic can lure desperate people into its dark embrace.

Chapter 2: Shadow Classes

Unsurprisingly, this eats up over half the book. It not only contains four new classes, but additional options for clerics, warlocks, and wizards, beyond what you could already crib from the aforementioned subclasses. This is probably the source of the Essentials sentiment, as the “classes” aren’t really new classes in so much as subclasses.

The executioner seems to be entirely unchanged from it’s digital counterpart, and I’ve already blogged at length about it in the past. Suffice to say I like it a lot more than its predecessor, and I highly recommend giving it a shot. 

Blackguards are basically the darker reflection of a stereotypical paladin, specifically the cavalier build. Instead of championing a virtue, they embrace a vice, with domination and fury currently your only two options. Their striker mechanic lets them add their Charisma modifier to damage, but only against targets they have combat advantage against, and one of their damage kicking powers requires you to declare it before attacking (though I’ve already seen mention of frost-cheesing them on the forums). On the flipside, they have hit points out the ass and can wear heavy armor, making them the most durable striker I’ve ever seen. 

The vampire has also had plenty of preview coverage. In a nutshell, it is a shadow striker that starts out being able to deal necrotic damage with a touch, deal bonus damage by draining the life force of an enemy, and transform into a swarm of bat-like shadows. At higher levels you can change into a bat or a gaseous form, or dominate creatures with your gaze. At higher levels, these core abilities basically improve. It’s formatted Essentials-style, so the only real customization you get is which bloodline you choose when you hit paragon-tier.

The binder is an Essentials-warlocks subclass with the controller role. They can only pick from the gloom or star pacts, which determine your encounter attacks and summoned allies. I really like the new star pact stuff: the at-will prevents a target from seeing any allies more than 3 squares away, conjure up a zone of tentacles at level, banish creature to the Far Realm, gain psychic resistance, conjure up aberrant constructs that consume souls and give you powers, and more. Shit, yes.

Clerics get a bunch of new daily prayers, warpriests get the death domain, hexblades also get the gloom pact, warlocks and wizards get lots of spells, and mages get both the necromancy and nethermancy schools. Again, a lot of stuff we already knew.

Chapter 3: Races of Shadow 

Like the executioner above, the revenant is DDI-content transitioned to paper (which I’m sure people will bitch about). It is almost entirely unchanged, except for the floating ability modifier that we already knew about. Since they’ve been around for awhile I won’t really bother going into detail, since by now you should already know if you like or hate ’em. 

Shades are humans that traded part of their soul for a sliver of the Shadowfell’s dark essence, which makes them insanely stealthy: not only do they get a floating bonus to Dexterity, they also have a racial bonus to Stealth and have an at-will racial utility that lets them make a Stealth check as a standard action, so long as they have any cover or concealment. Aside from their healing surge penalty, they can also swap out utility powers as they level up in exchange for racial utilities. This adds a degree of flexibility that I wouldn’t mind seeing in other races (even ones that have already been published).

Vryloka are humans that made a deal with an enigmatic entity known as the Red Witch, giving them some vampiric benefits without the drawbacks. Actually, they do heal less hit points when burning healing surges while bloodied, but that’s not anything major. This makes them the second race to have some sort of penalty, after the shade, and like shades can also power swap class utilities for racial utilities.

Other races—like dwarves and halflings—get about a page of flavor support each  (touched on here), as well as explaining how they came to live in the Shadowfell and how they cope with it.

Chapter 4: Character Options 

The last chapter is pretty small, and features ten paragon paths, four epic destinies, two pages of feats, and a smattering of new gear.

Most of the paragon paths are pretty flexible, requiring only training in a couple skills or a class from a specific power source (like arcane or primal). Of particular interest in the shadow dancer, which requires you to have any sort of teleportation power and be trained in Stealth. Its abilities focus on teleportation and concealment, allowing you to do stuff like teleport when burning an action point, and gain combat advantage after teleporting. Also, none of its powers or class feature are linked to ability scores, making it usable for plenty of melee-based characters.

The epic destines have abilities that gain benefits when other characters with the same epic destiny are nearby. For example, the Keeper of the Everflow’s level 24 class feature lets you regain hit points equal to your healing surge value once per day when you’ve been dropped to 0 hit points. If there are other Keeper’s in the encounter, you gain 5 temporary hit points for each allied Keeper.

Yet again, a lot of the feats have been previewed already. Some are alright, but many are highly situational, especially the ones that only operate in dim light or complete darkness (like Shadow Blood, which lets you heal 5 more hit points when you use second wind). Even so, Holy Symbol/Ki Focus Expertise are pretty rad.

The new gear basically does minor magical stuff: blessed soil stops undead from rising from graves that you sprinkle it on, while a ghoul candle doesn’t provide illumination for the undead (nifty way of being able to see in a dungeon without alerting everything else to your presence). The poisoner’s kit just lets you make poison.

My gripes against this chapter would be that things seem to be jumbled together. Some epic destinies bleed onto other pages, as opposed to starting on their own page (and making it easier to read). Otherwise, there’s a lot of fun stuff here, except for some stuff in the feats section.

Conclusion

This is a really well done book, and one of my favorites. Whether you love or hate the Essentials line, there’s a lot of great content for fans of clerics, warlocks, and wizards that have been waiting for necromantic options. The way I look at it is that even if you don’t like the warpriest or binder, you can still use those powers for a cleric or warlock respectively.

What WotC did with this book is actually convenient: if I want to make a cleric that can fiddle with undead, I have two options. I can play a warpriest and go with the Death domain, thereby having a nicely packaged character concept, or I can play a cleric and just pick the prayers that I want. The same goes with the blackguard, binder, and both of the new mage schools.

Essentials and non-Essentials content is only different to those who make it different. All the rules of the game are exactly the same, it’s just that some classes advance different. It’s kind of like how the druid got three at-will evocations, while other classes just got two, or how most of the psionic classes don’t get encounter attacks (but the monk did). The martial classes out of Essentials are in the same boat, just by a wider margin.

I don’t care for most of the martial classes out of Essentials, but the warpriest, hexblade, and executioner are all damned fine. What I’m really saying is why not have both? The cleric nowadays has a shitload of prayers to choose from. I have a lot of diversity when it comes to thinking up a concept and choosing class features and prayers to help emphasize that. If WotC wants to design a suite of storm-based prayers, that’s cool. I can get my Sehanine (or Melora, or Thor, or whatever) on. If they wrap them up in a class, though? Even better, as now I have two ways of going about the process.

Reviews by Other Bloggers:

• Weebeegamers

Heroes of Shadow RPG.net Compilation

It’s not much, but I sorted through the (currently) seven-page thread on RPG.net.


RACES
Revenant is a reprint sans all the feats. Other races have zero feat support. Boo.


CLASSES
Assassin (Executioner)
As was confirmed awhile ago, it is the Essentials version. Good.

Paladin (Blackguard)
Apparently, these guys are pretty durable strikers, with paladin armor proficiencies and healing surges. On the downside, their striker damage only kicks in when they have combat advantage, and is also ability score-based. However, their vices give you ways to deal some extra damage, so it may not be as bad as it seems.


Vampire
Apparently, you only really get to pick feats, ability scores, and utility powers. The two paragon paths let you choose to be more “Lestat (beguiler)” or “Nosferatu (stalker)”; everything else is static. All the powers have the Implement keyword, and vampires get both ki focus and holy symbols. Their Dex-based melee basic attack has a push 1 effect, and there’s an at-will attack for each Non-AC Defense. Highly mobile, can shapeshift, climb walls, etc. Lot of stuff we already knew.

Warlock (Binder, Star Pact, and Gloom Pact)
Controller subclass of the warlock. Lots of powers flavored as summons, and it gets a 9th-level summon (same as the hexblade). Appears to have single target, high damage control.
The gloom pact involves making a bargain with a Shadowfell creature, and grants “lots of cold and necrotic damgae”, as well as allowing you to summon dark creepers and sorrowsworn.
The star pact gains more tentacle-themed powers, including a 1st-level encounter zone.

Warpriest (Death Domain)
People who were looking for a necromancer with a leader role will purportedly be pretty happy with this. One of the abilities allows you to use healing word as an Immediate Reaction after killing a target. At 10th-level, you automatically kill minions adjacent to you.

• Servitude of Death (level 5): A single target, ranged attack that brings the target back as an undead minion that is dominated by you after it dies. It’s a little worse for wear (-2 to all defenses), but otherwise this is a pretty rad power.
• Blackened Soul (level 2 daily): You allow a dying ally to burn two healing surges, and they gain a power bonus to attack and damage rolls (but also grant combat advantage) until they are healed to full.

FEATS
Holy Symbol Expertise: Scaling bonus to attack rolls, and enemies you hit cannot gain combat advantage against you, unless you use a power that causes you to grant combat advantage.
Ki Focus Expertise: Scaling bonus to hit, with a scaling bonus to damage against bloodied enemies.

Heroes of Shadow Feats

The last preview for Heroes of Shadow showcases a bunch of feats. I like a lot of them, but some of them seem very…focused. For example, Legioncaller of Moil gives your summoned shadow critters a bonus to attack rolls and defenses, while Executioner of Undeath lets you reroll any damage dice when attacking undead once. While both are focused, Legioncaller of Moil differs in that you have greater control of how it applies to your characters, as well as when it will be used. With Executioner of Undeath? That depends on what the DM throws at you (as well as, I suppose, your knowledge of what the campaign/adventure will be about).

Another potentially problematic feat is Ghost Scorpion Strike. The compendium lists 264 monsters with insubstantial somewhere in their stat block, plenty of which are in Seekers of the Ashen Crown, Scepter Tower of Spellgard, or other WotC adventures. At least 41 of those are wraiths of some sort, many of which have necrotic resistance and poison immunity. This might be fine for wizards packing disrupt undead or mages with the right specialization to ignore necrotic resistance, but honestly how many of these do you expect to fight? Same goes for Tainted Wounds. Yeah, stripping away healing is all well and good, but there isn’t exactly a plethora of monsters with regeneration (or any other healing abilities).

Despite a handful of feats that will invariably be added to the pile of trap options, there are a few really good ones in the mix. I particularly like Spectral Step, which makes you insubstantial whenever you burn an Action Point. It only lasts a turn, but taking only half damage from basically everything can be a big help when you need to move, or setting up readied actions for area-effect attacks. There’s also entire categories of feats that we only see by name (except for the Revenant Racial, which already exist). Shadowborn and Winterkin feats will give you thematic abilities associated with the Shadowfell. How well they will compete against other options? We’ll see, though many Multiclass feats just don’t seem to cut it nowadays.

Design & Development: Heroes of Shadow

Robert addresses–for the most part–why they didn’t go the route of a necromancer class, and the differences between necromancy and nethermancy. When 4th Edition came out there was a distinct lack of spells that could be said to fit the theme of a necromancer, and people waited for the day when WotC would finally get around to releasing a necromancer class–or, more likely, an article featuring a shit-ton of spells for the wizard. Well, they did, kind of, but some people are pissed off because it’s being doled out Essentials style. My question is, why?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a fan of most of the Essentials classes. Not because they are necessarily worse off than the rest, but because they are, well, boring. Slayers and knights basically do what fighters did, only in a more convoluted manner, but they lack the variety of encounter and daily exploits that help distinguish them. Others like the mage and hexblade are perfectly serviceable, as they provide solid, interesting concepts that I like. Even if you don’t like any of the Essentials classes, you’re forgetting one very important thing: wizards and mages can interchangeably pick up spells from one another. In fact, this holds true for all Essentials classes, and I myself have a cavalier with plenty of paladin prayers.

Aside from people pretending that they’re somehow Essentials-exclusive, I also take issue with the irrational reasoning that a few people are using to conclude that WotC is just “afraid” of making new classes, and deliberately misinterpret Robert’s writing when he said that they didn’t want to restrict powers to a specific class. Before, necromancy was but a school of magic to help categorize spells for game elements that interacted with them. If you wanted to play a necromancer, you were a wizard (specialized or otherwise) that had a list of spells lumped in the necromancy category. You didn’t have to, actually; it would be an easy feat to label yourself as such simply by picking up a couple spells that let you conjure and/or animate undead.

What WotC has done is provide a method to cater to everyone. If you like Essentials, you now have two new mage schools that let you play a necromancer (or nethermancer). If you don’t you can just play a wizard and use the spells. They don’t, as one poster suggested, need to “make a feat” or anything like that. They work perfectly fine, I assure you, even in Character Builder. If you like mages and wizards? Well, then you just have a compelling choice to make when rolling up a character. Now that we’ve got all the bullshit out of the way, let’s take a look at the actual article.

• Necromancy and nethermancy are divided into magic that let’s you create undead, destroy flesh, and drain life, or magnify a creature’s fears and manipulate shadows, respectively. In a similar vein, necromancy spells will focus on dealing necrotic damage, while nethermancy will largely inflict psychic damage.
• Now, a lot of creatures (particularly undead) have necrotic resistance, so one of the new cantrips is disrupt undead, which is an auto-hit at-will that strips away five points of necrotic resistance. Also, it can be used as a minor action, meaning that you reliably use your attacks on undead without too much trouble. While it doesnt’ scale, a mage feature will apparently let you simply ignore necrotic resistance later on.
• One of the new at-wills, rotting doom, deals necrotic damage, and if the target is undead also imposes vulnerable 5 to all damage. To make matters worse, it also prevents them from regaining hit points in any fashion. Holy shit, that is awesome, especially because the latter part is an effect that applies to all creatures.
• Energy drain is back as a level 29 spell that stuns a target, with an aftereffect that slows, weakens, and imposes a penalty to attacks, defenses, skill checks, and ability checks that stacks on each failed save. If you miss, it instead deals some necrotic damage. Oh, as a built-in effect you gain temp hp equal to your surge value.
• Summon shadow servant lets you summon a creature (presumably from a range of stat blocks that weren’t shown). As with other summons, you have to use your own actions to control it. Unlike other summons, however, it persists even after combat is over (but goes away if you’re dropped in combat, dismiss it, or use the spell again).
• For paragon paths, Robert mentioned that the necromancer option will let you turn dying creatures into bombs, protect allies from dark magic, and conjure up a squad of five skeletons at once. The nethermancer option, on the other hand, will make it hard for enemies to see, crush them with tentacles, and let you utilize your allies senses.
• Finally, finger of death was also previewed. This level 25 attack deals 10d6 damage, plus 20 extra if the target is bloodied by the attack, and kills them outright if their hp total drops to 20 or less. If you miss, it does half, but the instant-death is an effect so it’s all good.

Heroes of Shadow: Vryloka

While this excerpt has a bit of flavor content for all the races that will be featured in Heroes of Shadow, it also showcases the racial features of the vryloka, meaning that we now know what to expect out of both of the new races (assuming revenant doesn’t see any radical changes). In short, they’re humans infected with vampirism, making them similar in concept to tieflings or shifters.

• +2 Charisma, +2 to either Strength or Dexterity
• Speed 7
• Low-light vision
• +2 Perception and Stealth
• Blood Dependency: When bloodied your healing surges heal you for less. Ouch.
• Human Heritage: You get a racial bonus to pretending to be human.
• Living Death: You’re both alive and dead, and get to pick how an effect applies to you in case it matters.
• Necrotic Resistance: 5 + 1/2 your level.
• Vampiric Heritage: You can swap out class utilities for racial ones (two of which are also shown).
• Lifeblood: Once per encounter when you kill or bloody an enemy, you can shift your speed, gain temporary hit points, or gain an attack bonus for a turn.

The two featured racial daily utilities are unnatural vitality and bloodwolf form. The first triggers if you kill a nonminion enemy, and gives you a bonus against death saves and ongoing damage, as well as allowing you to ignore many of the basic needs of mortals, such as eating, breathing, and sleeping. It lasts until you take an extended rest, which makes it a good thing to do as soon as you are able to. The other one only lasts for an encounter, and lets you change into a shadowy, wolf-like form. In wolf form, you gain darkvision and a hefty skill bonus to Athletics, Perception, and Stealth, and can ignore difficult terrain. On the downside you can’t attack, but you can switch back and forth throughout the encounter. I dunno, this seems pretty limited.

It’s an interesting race that puts in a minor penalty, which is something that hasn’t been seen since the shade (also in this book). I’m curious as to how far WotC will go with this sort of thing. It’s not a huge deal, and I don’t mind setbacks so long as they don’t invalidate a race from going into a class. Like, this makes them only slightly less than ideal for a defender class, though I’d say lifeblood makes up for it. What I’d hate to see are extremes like the halfling from 3rd Edition, which basically made it impossible to be a fighter or barbarian.

Excerpts: Heroes of Shadow, Shadow Classes

Assassin blah blah paladin blah blah, vampire. Finally, we get a peek at their level 1 capabilities.

Vampires are shadow strikers keyed to Dexterity and Charisma, which was what I’d expected. Likewise, it utilizes the Essentials progression model, giving you lot of class features at level 1, but without any choice on the matter, and aside from a Utility Power gained at level 2, seems to dictate basically everything else about you as well. That being said, let’s see what a newly created vampire has at her disposal.

While At-Will Powers is listed, none are featured. That sucks. The daily power has the implement keyword, but no mention as to which they will use, or if they can use weapons (or are supposed to). Also, the table of contents mentioned two separate builds, which might mean that you might get abilities not mentioned here (like how warpriests and mages get bonus shit based on their domain or school). It might also function like the knight/slayer, in that there will be two entirely separate sections. We’ll have to wait and see.

That being said, here’s the featured features.

• Child of the Night: You’re undead, so you don’t need to breathe and you don’t age, but you do have to sleep. You also have darkvision, resist 5 necrotic, vulnerable 5 radiant, and both take radiant damage and are weakened when in sunlight without some kind of protective covering, like a cloak (which is what I guessed yesterday). So far, so good. I don’t mind being immune to sunlight so long as you meet such a simple condition. It would make it very difficult being a vampire otherwise. I know some people are going to be pissed off about this, but just fucking change it so that being in direct sunlight hurts you no matter what.
• Blood is Life: You can snack on an ally while taking a short rest to regain hit points equal to two of your healing surges. I don’t know why it repeats the benefit. Also, if you end a short rest with more healing surges than you’re supposed to have, you lose all of the excess ones, but regain all of your hit points. Very nice.
• Enduring Soul: You gain regeneration equal to your Charisma modifier when bloodied. Wow, especially given that Cha is a secondary stat, it’s going to scale pretty damned high at later levels. Kinda makes me not want to play a shifter with this, however.
• Hidden Might: You gain a scaling damage bonus to all your vampire attacks equal to your Charisma modifier. This is basically their striker bonus, and is on par with a sorcerer, so nothing new here.
• Vampiric Reflexes: This gives you a small AC boost when you are wearing cloth armor/no armor, and aren’t carrying a shield around. Basically keeps you on par with other strikers. I’m guessing they won’t start with any armor proficiencies, either. 
• Blood Drinker: An encounter attack that lets you automatically deal bonus damage on a hit with another attack, and you gain a healing surge. This is basially power strike by another name, with a small bonus. Seeing as it doesn’t require you to have grabbed a creature on the previous round, I highly approve.
• Swarm of Shadows: A daily close blast 3 attack that turns you into a swarm of shadows, deal lots of damage (plus ongoing damage), teleport, and become invisible for a bit. This looks very brutal, especially because it only targets enemies.

And then the excerpt wraps up with something about warlocks and the other classes that we already knew. I’m really liking the vampire, and it provides a foundation for building other monstrous classes. It reminds me of having Savage Species “back in the day”, and I’m looking forward to seeing what custom classes others make.