Dark Legacy MUD Forum

How many epic vampires do you really see around who are vampires for a reason other than simply as a statement? Now think about how many <50 vampire mages you see. Vampirism has become more of a levelling trick than a lifestyle choice.

The first reason I see is the lack of real advantages at night. As far as I have seen, vampires gain no advantage at night yet still are harmed at day. Are vampires not creatures of the night?
My Solution: Perhaps they should gain +1-5 (depending on level) complexity at night, or even a percent (5-10% maybe?).

The second reason I see is the lack of any decent spells to use. You have Create Skull...okay, this might be nice if I could always drink the blood, but as it is, it is more efficient to just 'feed.' Also, lifetap? It uses more blood to cast than it gives you...if you get lucky and it actually works. Summon Guardian? These guardians seem to be more of liabilities. Temple of Flesh? Come on! On top of these, you don't even get a decent blood complexity to strengthen these spells (Could someone please check whether epic levels even raise it?)
My Solutions:
A) Rework these spells so that they are no longer spells, but rather skills that the vampire has. Create skull becomes a skill in which you rip the head off of a corpse and drink your fill of its blood. Lifetap could be a better version of feed that you gain at level 50 that will do a decent amount of damage while fully filling your blood, but with some small disadvantage to it. Summon Guardian could become a skill to summon a guardian.
B) Make these spells worthwhile. The first step towards this would be to make Blood a main complexity. This isn't your profession, this is your lifestyle, why would you focus on other things instead? Past this, you must makes spells useful. Create skull would be able to be drank at all times and would give some type of bonus when you drank this blood (without overpowering, maybe a decent duration hit regen affect). Lifetap would work differently, it would expend a SMALL amount of your hp to regain blood. It would take 10% from you, a larger amount from your enemy, and would restore your bloodpoints. Temple of Flesh would gain some kind of secondary effect as opposed to its current, useless, fear effect.
A+B) Make Summon Guardian change with either fecs or levels. It starts with a skeleton, zombie at 1 fec, lesser vampire at 2, werewolf, greater vampire, lich, demon, devil. The other option, if blood spells were removed, would be to have it change with every 5 levels (and get slightly stronger into the epics).

My third reason is that meleers really gain no advantage at all from being a vampire. Why would a meleer become a vampire, to take some damage during the day? This does not make any sense.
My Solution: Gives vampires some type of gimmick polymorph skill. At level 1, they would have access to polymorph into a bat, gain fly, but be set to a small size...only really useful for transportation or for a caster. At level 11, they would gain the ability to morph into a black cat. This would lower strength by a point or two but increase dexterity sufficiently. At level 21, they would gain the wolf form; while in this form, they would gain a small amount of strength and dexterity but also gain a melee skill called 'bite' which would do a decent amount of damage and drain some blood from the enemy a certain percentage of the time, but they would either lose some complexity or lose the ability to cast altogether. Another idea for wolf form would be a hastelike effect. At 31, they gain the shadow form. This form would increase the fire and sun damage they take while letting them dodge more attacks, but also lose attackroll or damroll. Successful hits may also cause more damage. The final form they gain would be golem at level 41. In this form, they would gain a mentionable amount of strength and constitution but would lose an amount of dexterity. They would also gain damroll and damred while losing attackroll and mobility.



In this note, I discussed possible addition for vampires. I have more ideas, but I have run out of time for now. I will post again later to add more ideas.

Having their nightly armor and regeneration bonus would also help fighter types(it's listed somewhere but not added).

Having increased weapon speed at night would also help. .2 or .4

having bloodpoints means something would also be important and need to be looked at:

1) no lame casting of blood to drink, if you want blood, you go out and get it
2) when you are out of blood points, you can still fight, but no more special abilities until your bloodpoints are back
no spells, no abilities, no skills
3) no infinite mana, no bugs/loopholes to continue giving you infinite mana

Vampires seems more of a class (new abilities, although most are broken -and hopefully soon 'fixed') and race (bloodpoints- over mana, other advantage/disadvantage). Vampires have plenty of ideas developed to be their own race. Either that, or extremely 'hard' to cure instead of a switch on and off (quest maybe)... and/or on a timer for lets say at least 10 hours of game time (a player becomes a vampire, then didn't like it and ask for bloodpurge, total time: 2 minutes? : / Also, their blood complexity probably needs a relook.

If it's still 60 points of blood, I think it should be extended, perhaps to 100 or so (2 for every level, essentially) and have casts cost 30% more than they do. This'll keep the non-killing/idle/active doing other things vamps from running outta blood so soon. This has always been my beef with vamps. Blood runs out in no time flat when just walking around. I also think, if they're in a dark room, underground, or somewhere shady, they should still recieve their bonuses, rather than just at night (12 hours is relatively quick in MUD time).

as for bloodpoints they dont really matter you can feed and get them back easily and as for the being out of bloodpoints and no casting and such thast is one of the perks instead of mana you use hot points it is your choice if you want to use hp or mana if you do make it so once out of bp you cant cast you need way more bp compairitve to the amount of mana a normal player has but whats the point of vamping them they get no other perks other then that second vampire complex needs to be looked at and the spells they get no vampire spells are worth while with a complex of about 43 for pixies you cant even break peoples saves with that its absolutly useless, and i agree with quintos (for once in my life and i hope its the last) vamps do need some kind of bonus at night because it sint fair we get penolized during the day and no perks at nigth in the help file it says they do but i see none