Hello! One of my players is interested in becoming a vampire! How could I make this work? Give him a list of vampire skills/inventory similar to crown/skull lists, only attainable once he acquires 25 hero points? I’d love some ideas of what these skills could be!
Path of Vampirism, could use some ideas!
Alex
#2
You might solicit input from your player instead of just handing him a menu. “Hey, when you think about playing a vampire, what are some of the things you see your character doing?” This happened in one of our games, and the player wanted to apparate like in Harry Potter and reappear somewhere else. We never would have had that cool ability without the player’s input, so I would start there and then build your menu of choices.
Androsynth
#3
The Lore (just got my book yesterday and read this part) indicates that a vampire goes through a process of growth if serving Lord Bloodywhatshisname (the big bad vampire lord, whose name escapes me) before becoming a full blooded vampire (and you get burned alive if you fail…) so that could easily be the crown & skull replacement, even if the character disagrees with the ethics of said Lord. The Lore also says that many non vampires follow him seeing him as a change/bastion of control in a hostile world so the character doesn’t have to be evil. You could have those stages of service gatekeep some cool abilities, and the passing or failing said tests is just full of potential story hooks too.
As to skills, to keep it simple, how about making a generic ‘vampirism’ skill that works a lot like the existing magic system? Just limited to a set of basic vampire abilities that mimic basic spells like: mist form, animal form, resistance to holy, powers linked to blood/combat/speed and so forth. You could go all in and have some ways to customize those ‘basic vampire powers’ with bonuses and disadvantages like ‘-3 doesn’t work during the day’ or ‘+3 only takes 1 phase to activate instead of 2’ and so on. YOu’ll have to pay attention to balance. Get player input.
Then have the more powerful abilities kept behind that 25 hero point where he has to choose between the Lord Bloody-whatsit-guy and maybe some new vampiric character you create for the campaign that represents a more of a lawful vampiric path (and whom finding is a story hook all it’s own).
Or, alternately, I’d just keep it the crown and skull choice but skull is the exiting Lord, and crown is some new, hidden, more lawfully driven order of vampires and their leader who work from the shadows to uphold law. Or something of the kind.