Vampire: The Classquerade

Mearls made the big reveal on Monday that the vampire class was deliberately designed, as is, to try and provide a class option that could closely emulate one or more vampire entries in the Monster Manual. This is a reasonable goal that I tried to attain with my homebrew red dragon race/class; take a critter that was never intended to be played on the players’ side of the screen, and make it functional and recognizable despite a lack of flexibility.

To me, making sure that it does what the monster is supposed to do takes priority over trying to saddle it with options that do not really make any sense, but going down the vampire’s list of racial features and powers we have regeneration, necrotic resistance, radiant vulnerability, lethal side effects from the sun, the ability to drink blood/drain life, punch the shit out of people, charm them, turn into a swarm of bats, turn into a wolf and bat, and a bunch of other stuff that sounds very vampiric in execution.

You know, all the shit that this guy does not do.

The big shocker is that after providing a race, class, feat tree (though admittedly a poor one), and a multiclassing/hybrid option, that it is still not good enough for the vocal minority.

Ironically one detractor wanted a theme, which would provide way fewer options than the class iteration (like, 3-6 in total), not to mention that themes are optional rules that players without DDI accounts would likely be introduced to via Dark Sun Campaign Setting if at all, meaning that it is possible that their total number of themes to choose from would be exactly one.

But hey, it is all right because having a theme would open up more concepts, right? I mean, what if I want to play a wizard-turned-vampire? Currently my “only” options are to play a vryloka, go with the dhampyr feats, pick up vampire multiclassing as a wizard/wizard multiclassing as a vampire, or hybrid the two. I suppose I could also try combining these options to get my vampire-to-wizard ratio close to where I want it, probably exactly where I want it.

Could use a pointy hat, but that will do.

Others still cling to the misconception that it is a “poor striker”. I did some number crunching myself, and while it is not strictly as good as an optimized rogue it comes close despite lacking vampire-specific feat support. However, it is important to note that an optimized rogue should not be the benchmark we are looking for. I have also played a vampire, and it was awesome; I did not have a problem with healing surges (not that I got hit), and did an insane amount of damage almost every round. I was able to contribute without being a liability, and felt very much like a vampire in the process.

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.

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.

The Vampire "Class"

So, there’s going to be a vampire class in Heroes of Shadow. This isn’t the first time WotC tried to make a class-based progression to simulate the full potential of a monstrous creature. Like Level Adjustment before it, most of the book was a let down as most of the monstrous classes sucked if you didn’t take the “right” class (ie, stuff without level-based progressions), and many more sucked no matter what you did because by the rules you were supposed to take all the monster levels before multiclassing out.

For example, let’s say you wanted to play a mind flayer psion, because it makes sense. The mind flayer class was 15 levels, meaning that by the time you got into psion, everyone else was level 16. Imagine a barbarian picking up a level of sorcerer at level 16 and trying to zap devils with magic missiles. Now imagine that barbarian without a greataxe, rage, or damage resistance, instead flailing ineffectually with tentacles doling out 1d4 damage (plus Strength modifier…woo fucking woo).

Yeah, the class gets other abilities like mind blast, but the shitty thing is that it was based off your Hit Dice, which presented another problem with monstrous classes: you didn’t always get a Hit Die when you leveled. A level 15 mind flayer only had eight. This meant that your hit points, attack bonus, skill points, and saves were abysmally stunted in comparison to your companions, making you even more of a liability than low-level wizards. It’s a good thing you get plane shift at level 12, assuming you live that long.

As for vampires, there’s a lot of speculation going on in the forums (you just have to pick through vampire jokes and idiots who don’t understand how the executioner class works). Some people think that it should have been a race, others a bloodline tree, and still others a theme. Revenants are cool, but even with feat support lack the sort of supernatural powers that I expect out of a vampire, and dhampyr bloodline feats further illustrate that they’re just not enough, especially when you’re trying to juggle an actual class at the same time. A theme is more of what I’m expecting, but not all DM’s own Dark Sun material (or even allow themes if they do), so I’m not expecting WotC to start allowing one player to pick up a vampire theme while other players have to deal.

Me? I’m banking on an Essentials model because it allows them to dole out racial features at set levels, while giving you a bit to customize. This way they could deliver a core “vampire” structure, but still allow you to specialize in shapeshifting, charms, calling animals, or whatever, in a similar vein to Vampire: The Masquerade (except that you can actually use your vampiric powers). Despite their past experimentations, I’m very optimistic about their second attempt because if anything, WotC has done a remarkable job of taking races and classes that I hate, and reinventing them into something entertaining: clerics, bards, druids, and psions are all classes that I hated in earlier editions, but actually enjoy now.

Flesh Golems, Vampires, and Werewolves

Oh my.

Flesh Golem
This Monster Vault excerpt has a new stat block for a flesh golem and master vampire, as well as werewolf moon frenzy (complete with a different disease layout). One thing of note is that it looks like they’re taking the lack of fluff thing from Monster Manual to heart, as flesh golems feature seven paragraphs of text dedicated to their creation methods, and lack of biological needs and social etiquette. Aside from that, here’s the rundown of notable changes in the Monster Vault version.

• Hit points are unchanged
• Defenses are equal to or lower than the older version
• Resist 10 cold
• Fire attacks cause it to flee as a free action, and if it cannot move at least half its speed it grants combat advantage
• When it takes lightning damage it gets to make a basic melee attack
• Slam is slightly more accurate and deals a lot more damage (11 more points on average), and becomes more accurate when its bloodied
• Double attack also causes its attacks to prone targets that it hits
• Golem rampage is reworded, but basically does the same thing. The old version made it clear that it provokes opportunity attacks and attacks friend and foe alike, and while the new version uses the terms “move” and “creatures”, I think it could be easily interpreted incorrectly
• Berserk attack is unchanged

I like this one a lot more because its afraid of fire and gets a boost from lightning, like Frankenstein’s monster (which it is so obviously based off of). I also like that when it gets bloodied it gets a bit more dangerous, not just with the extra attacks it gets (good for an elite), but also because they become more accurate. This lends itself narratively to the idea of a wounded beast frantically lashing out. All these work together to mechanically enforce the core concept, and perhaps allowing players to sympathize with it if you want to make it more intelligent and/or free-willed.

Master Vampire
Vampires get a similar treatment in the fluff department, but since there’s no real cohesive vampire statblock it’s kind of hard to make a direct comparison. For example, sunlight usually destroys minions instantly, but either doesnt do anything to other vampires, or just stops their regeneration. Some are vulnerable to radiant damage, some just dont give a fuck. In the case of this vampire, sunlight deals radiant damage, and all radiant damage stops their regeneration, making it super effective.

Its claw deals more damage than an elite war troll vampire, and while its bite can only be usd on dazed, dominated, or stunned opponents the damage is insanely high (32 average) and heals him by almost a quarter of his max hit points. He can turn into a cloud of bats, making him insubstantial, stealthier, and granting him a fast fly speed. Since its supposed to be a swarm, I’m assuming the insubstantial is a fast method for saying “he takes less damage from attacks”. Dominating gaze takes a standard action to use, still works on one creature at a time, and only lasts for a turn (thank god). His last little trick is that when he is bloodied, he can turn into a mist form, which works mostly the same except that the vampire can only do it after he takes damage while bloodied. It makes him insubstantial and gives him a fly of 12.

I like the concentration of traditional vampiric themes. Other vampires sometimes had one or two abilities, but they were wildly inconsistent.

Lycanthrope
Unfortunately the only statblock is for the new werewolf moon frenzy disease. The differences are slight and only present in stages two and three; during stage 2 the victim only makes one attack when bloodied as opposed to making save each turn, and during stage 3 the victim makes a free attack each time she is struck instead of going for the closest target. To make matters worse, free attacks made in both stages are only against allies. Moon frenzy was already pretty annoying, a nice change from 3rd Edition when it could actually be quite advantageous, but now it’s even worse.