Proposal: Vampires as an Unlockable Race

[Fortescue]

Having defeated the Master twice now I, am sad that I cannot unlock his last feasible minion type as a player race! Let us fix that! This will also round out the Undeads by giving you a speedy, high mobility race well suited to casting Arcane spells right out the gate.

Vampire
Life: 10
Magic: +4
Cunning: +3
XP: 20%

Fear immunity (100%), great Confuse resist (70%), cannot use Infusions or be a Wilder. Sparkles (1000%).

Scaling (with level) bonus to seeing Stealthed and Invisible enemies, Infravision 8.

Starting Equipment:
Rune Shielding
Rune Teleportation

TALENTS
Succor
Passive. Killing an opponent heals you for (3%-15%) of your maximum life and restores (2%-10%) of your combat resources (Stamina, Mana, etc...). This effect increases vs. higher rank enemies, doubled for killing a Rare, triple for killing a Boss.

Duskwings
Instant. Active. Transform into a cloud of bats, gaining 200% (+100% / rank) move speed for one turn. While in bat form you become extremely hard to attack, causing opponents to target the tiles around you. You revert back to humanoid form at the beginning of your next turn. Cooldown (45 - 5 x rank).

Power in Death
Gain a passive (3%-15%) bonus to all Cold, Arcane, Blight, and Darkness damage dealt, and an equal amount of resistance to these elements.

Nightbringer
Instant. Active. Force a radius 5 area around you into complete darkness, ending all light sources for (3 + skill) turns. While under this darkness you gain 20% - 40% global speed and double the effects from Succor. Cooldown 40. If you kill a Shalore this cooldown is reset

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11:25 AM <edge2054> You could very well be like.. screw living in this tower. I'm going to take over all of it!
11:27 AM <Fortescue> I agree that is more interesting
11:28 AM <Fortescue> there is even a good lore point for your escape
11:28 AM <Fortescue> during the event described in tower notes where an adventurrer made it all the way to the Master
11:28 AM <Fortescue> just say your escape is happening during this assault
11:28 AM <Fortescue> you see the adventurer killing all your buds and are like "- that" and just hide, then leave the tower after the adventurer has gone
11:29 AM <Fortescue> while the Master is distracted
11:30 AM <Fortescue> just frame it like you were waiting for this sort of opportunity for years
11:30 AM <Fortescue> because you took Master's lessons to heart and couldn't wait for your chance to surpass him
11:31 AM <Fortescue> but you knew you could never advance yourself while stuck in the tower
11:32 AM <Fortescue> this also takes care of your motivation to come back to the Tower
11:32 AM <Fortescue> you already know about his staff of super power and you want it for yourself
11:32 AM <Fortescue> you just need to get stronger before you face him

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Grayswandir also said:

11:30 AM <grayswandir76> The Vampire should be sent to check up on the upstart necromancer that the other undead start out at. The opening screen should be you facing a skeleton/ghoul of a random class that just tore through the whole complex.

Which is pretty cool and could be your starting dungeon. The game just tells you that you ended up in this dungeon because you felt the presence of a newbie necromancer, and decided to make him your first trial since it is established that necromancers / the undead eat their own

[Davion Fuxa]

Do a quick forum search before proposing things. Vampires have been proposed time and time again.

I'll quote myself from the last Vampire Race thread:

I don't think we need a specific Vampire Player race. I'm fine with perhaps giving them some racials and making them sort of like Orcs right now (they have racials, but they aren't playable).

[Fortescue]

Do a quick forum search before proposing things. Vampires have been proposed time and time again.

I'll quote myself from the last Vampire Race thread:

I don't think we need a specific Vampire Player race. I'm fine with perhaps giving them some racials and making them sort of like Orcs right now (they have racials, but they aren't playable).

If there is player demand sometimes it is a good idea to listen when it comes to innocuous things like making a mainstay enemy race playable (as was already done twice with the other Undeads). I don't particularly love Vampires personally, but they feel very conspicuously missing from the player race line up when you look at the other options available.

[Davion Fuxa]

Their is player demand but sometimes it is a good idea to ignore players, to quote from one of the other threads again :

In this game I think it hinders the story to have vampires as a player race.

I'd note that Orcs are in a similar boat as to why they aren't a player race, story wise they don't mesh well with the game.

[Fortescue]

Their is player demand but sometimes it is a good idea to ignore players, to quote from one of the other threads again :

In this game I think it hinders the story to have vampires as a player race.

I'd note that Orcs are in a similar boat as to why they aren't a player race, story wise they don't mesh well with the game.

Ok, well I don't think bringing Orcs into this is a fair point of comparison since you can already be a Ghoul or a Skeleton. Why is being a Vampire any different from being the other Undead? I asked DarkGod and he said Vampires are just Arcane creatures with varying levels of intelligence, just like Ghouls and Skeletons. I'm not aware of them having any special significance to the plot besides The Master being one himself.

[Davion Fuxa]

The thing about Ghouls and Skeletons is that they were made to fit the story - they come in as being 'An Accident' from an incompetent Necromancer; who happens to have a special item that lets them pass off as Human. Vampires need to also fit in so that they don't clash with the story, or more specifically the Lore and how they are portrayed in game - Elder Vampires for example now further pushing the concept that they lord over the Undeads.

[HousePet]

And as DarkGod will say, symmetry does not make a good game.
Just because Skellies and Ghouls are playable, doesn't mean that Vampires would be a good idea.

Also, there is a future Undead campaign to consider.

[Zireael]

The thing about Ghouls and Skeletons is that they were made to fit the story - they come in as being 'An Accident' from an incompetent Necromancer; who happens to have a special item that lets them pass off as Human. Vampires need to also fit in so that they don't clash with the story, or more specifically the Lore and how they are portrayed in game - Elder Vampires for example now further pushing the concept that they lord over the Undeads.

The player would be a normal vamp, not an elder, and the same accident story could be used for vamps, too.

[HousePet]

One generally doesn't reanimate vampires from dead corpses though.
Unless things are different in this world?

[grayswandir]

The player would be a normal vamp, not an elder, and the same accident story could be used for vamps, too.

You could specifically be a lower-caste vampire with a grudge against The Master, and then get swept up into the normal storyline somehow.

[Marson]

Worth noting: in IRC, DarkGod mentioned that vampires are very much monsters (Nosferatu), not the "can masquerade as sexy humans" variety.

One generally doesn't reanimate vampires from dead corpses though.
Unless things are different in this world?

Even if vampires are created via bites, a necro could infect a live person using one of their minions. At first I wasn't keen on a vampire player race due to several of the issue people have mentioned. I do think a "vampire reject" could work though, or as gray suggests, they could get a new starting story.

[Fortescue]

Replaced Special Reserve:

Power in Death
Gain a passive (3%-15%) bonus to all Cold, Arcane, Blight, and Darkness damage dealt, and an equal amount of resistance to these elements.

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Shibari pointed out that even without access to healing Infusions I was putting too much emphasis on healing abilities to make this race appealing. Between Succor and Duskwings you should have plenty of survival boost, so now we'll add some (primarily) offensive power to the mix.

[edge2054]

Vampires should have negative light resist. They should also have cold resist and nature resist, possibly gained threw talents.

I see no precedent for fear immunity or free stealth detection, though stealth detection on a talent makes sense to me since they're supernatural predators. They do however have 100% blindness and confusion immunity, gain these could come from talents.

All Vampires learn Blurred Mortality. I'm guessing this is meant to handle the hard to kill thing. An innate die at talent instead of a necromancer sustain would make sense here. They also get a base life regen of 3. These two effects could probably make one talent.

Vampiric Gift is another talent they all get. Again this is a necromancer sustain that could become a passive vampire talent. They also swing drain life. Again maybe these two ideas could be merged into one talent.

[Fortescue]

11:25 AM <edge2054> You could very well be like.. screw living in this tower. I'm going to take over all of it!
11:27 AM <Fortescue> I agree that is more interesting
11:28 AM <Fortescue> there is even a good lore point for your escape
11:28 AM <Fortescue> during the event described in tower notes where an adventurrer made it all the way to the Master
11:28 AM <Fortescue> just say your escape is happening during this assault
11:28 AM <Fortescue> you see the adventurer killing all your buds and are like "- that" and just hide, then leave the tower after the adventurer has gone
11:29 AM <Fortescue> while the Master is distracted
11:30 AM <Fortescue> just frame it like you were waiting for this sort of opportunity for years
11:30 AM <Fortescue> because you took Master's lessons to heart and couldn't wait for your chance to surpass him
11:31 AM <Fortescue> but you knew you could never advance yourself while stuck in the tower
11:32 AM <Fortescue> this also takes care of your motivation to come back to the Tower
11:32 AM <Fortescue> you already know about his staff of super power and you want it for yourself
11:32 AM <Fortescue> you just need to get stronger before you face him

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grayswandir also said:

11:30 AM <grayswandir76> The Vampire should be sent to check up on the upstart necromancer that the other undead start out at. The opening screen should be you facing a skeleton/ghoul of a random class that just tore through the whole complex.

Which is pretty cool and could be your starting dungeon. The game just tells you that you ended up in this dungeon because you felt the presence of a newbie necromancer, and decided to make him your first trial since it is established that necromancers / the undead eat their own

[astreoth]

yeah looking at the code its pretty clear that darkgod is planning a vampire race may only be available or made once he starts work on the undead campaign though.

if you really want a vampire race now though best way to get that would be to do what none of the other vampire request threads have done make it an addon if its thematically and mechanically sound enough could ask darkgod about getting it in the main game.

if you want code examples pretty sure theirs a wight addon with its own starting zone you could look at.