Talk:Grey Vampire (3.5e Race)

RatingsEdit

Ganteka Future favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!

Wow, I can't believe I never rated this. Now, there have been a lot of attempts at making vampires in D&D before. Wizards of the Coast tried to make it work for players... but didn't exactly do it well. Of all the version of vampires I've seen and read, this one still sticks out in my mind over two years later since its publishing as the best, marrying the flavor with the mechanics for why it sucks blood, giving them options for roleplaying and doing cool thematic vampire stuff without stuffing them with level inappropriate abilities or crippling them with obscene penalties. If you're looking to play a vampire character, give this a read.

	Leziad favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	What Gan said.

	Spanambula favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	What Gan said as well. I'm trying this as a PC and I'm loving it so far. Nothing too bad.

	The-Marksman favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	Wow! That is such a great take on vampires. It fits in basically all the lore of vampires, its very powerful but not to the point of being over powered or game breaking at all. The blood pool allows you to have a reason other than lore to feed and makes you feel like a vampire must feel, being a slave to the hunger. Excellent work!

	Fluffykittens likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	The most reasonable attempt at building a vampire race I've seen, relatively balanced (unlike the WOTC vampire attempts), and different enough from being alive (unlike the Frank Trollman vampire). The only thing keeping this from a fave is the use of LA instead of racial HD.

Blocked Rating	Awfulfalafel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	The reason listed does not sufficiently justify the rating, and the rater has not responded to a request for additional information.Very unbalanced.

Race?Edit

is this a race or a template? the whole subtype thing makes me question it. If i make a half orc grey vampire do i get the half orc abilities and these? --NameViolation 23:10, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

As written: It's a race that has the Undead type and a particular racial subtype usually given to humanoids. The Human, Elf, Orc, etc. subtypes don't grant any abilities, so no, you don't get anything other than "counts as an Orc for some stuff". --Quantumboost 23:37, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

It's a race. It's similar to dragonborn (or more appropriately Hellbred from Fiendish Codex II) in that while they were an "elf" or an "orc" to start, all their traits save what kind of humanoid they were are lost. As Quantum said, all it does it make you count as a X race, which is good f you still want to be the elf-only arcane archer and you were an elf.... and bad if you havea ranger with favored enemy humanoid (elf) because it still works on you. -- Eiji Hyrule 23:42, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

Power CommentsEdit

I think this race is way over powered for only a +2 level adjustment -- compare to the Svirfneblin, which has a +3 level adjustment. Especially if the campaign takes place underground, where natural sunlight is almost non-existent. I would argue at a +4 level adjustment, and even then reduce uses of spell like abilities to 1/day, and animal form to 1/day per 5 HD (minimum 1/day) for maximum duration of 1 hour/5 HD per use. Awfulfalafel (talk) 01:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I find comparing it to WotC material is a terrible method. WotC has not been kind, sane, or balanced when it comes to doling out LA be it too much (most things) or too little (that pikachu thing, the Beguiler). A better test is how does this hold up to a human PC at level... 2... 3... whenever it comes into play.

At ECL 3, that means I should be holding my own again the Wizard with Invisibility and other 2nd level spells, the Warblade and his Mountain Hammers, and more. It means I should be fighting Werewolves, Undead Ogres, and Allips... and winning most of the time (or 50% of the time one on one).

Class levels are valuable, and by choosing Gray Vampire you don't get as many as others, so what you DO get needs to make up for the loss. The loss of hp, of BAB, of saves, the whole thing, not to mention class features. And don't forget to sign your posts. You can do so by writing ~~~~ at the end. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:26, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

What other race gets unlimited at will spell-like abilities, unlimited shapeshifting, amazing damage reduction, +10 to stats, darkvision, natural attacks, and built-in cheat death, all for only a +2 level adjustment and a few minor inconveniences that are easily countered by abilities granted automatically anyway? Awfulfalafel (talk) 01:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict!) Hey, I'll step in and add some stuff/reaffirm a second opinion here. Race design when using LA is difficult to say the least since adding enough features to counterbalance loss of HD, HP, base attack, base saves, skill points, max skill points, class features, feats and suffer delayed access to prestige classes (due to the loss of those previous features) causing lots of problems and making it difficult to judge at a glance. Comparisons to existing material is often the easiest, but also really inaccurate. Official published material is notoriously poorly designed (that is to say, designers who've been doing homebrew enough know best to stay away from that when looking for good material as a reference). They mostly forgot how to balance against everything I just mentioned in that list. Even when not forgetting to do that, it's still difficult, because for the most part, Level Adjustment is dumb. Enough ragging on that and on into what this race does offer in exchange for those things. It should really get A. Enough features for a standard LA 0 race -and- B. Enough features to make it playable at whatever ECL it's gonna be. With LA +2, that's about 4 class levels worth of stuff but only so that it's equivalent to the power a 3rd level character would be at when paired with it's first class level HD. Did you catch that? Sound crazy? Yeah, like I said, balancing ain't easy. So, it gets:

Some +2 ability score bonuses spread across some stats. Since D&D is a game about maxing out your specific best abilities and playing to that for your character's survival, that's rather underwhelming, especially for LA+2. The bonuses are nice, don't misunderstand, but when it comes to maxing out those stats for survival, stuff like orcs getting +4 Strength don't make the grey vampire particularly threatening. They do however, make it open to lots of character classes, which is good design.

Standard sizes and speeds for LA 0 races, so nothing special.

The d12 HD thing seems nice, but then you aren't getting that nice fixed Constitution boost living standard races get. You also lose your nice -10 HP buffer. Bit of a draw on that one really in the end, when it comes to the Blood Pool. However, you need to do work to maintain that Blood Pool, you'll probably manage okay. On the point of Blood Pool, it really is an elegant solution to vampirism for players. Becoming inert is especially nice since it means you don't lose your character, but also means you might end up getting totted around by your party if you fall in combat until your vampire powers reactivate you.

Eiji knows I don't like natural attacks, but whatever, it's just a slam that's real basic and probably won't get used... and then the bite, which seals the deal for vampires doing vampire things. If you're dealing bites, the added Constitution damage is basically just in the place of what normal damage might be dealing if you were grappling for fighting reasons anyways. Typically if you're gonna be grappling, you're gonna be doing it to pin opponents for coup de grace reasons anyways. Since the grey vampire doesn't get anything special to help with that, it's all on the character side (and likely to be slightly more difficult, missing two class levels for alternate grappling character builds who are themselves not vampires).

Oh hey, Damage Reduction against silver. Nice, not spectacular, but nice. About what you'd expect for having a race with two fewer HD that its contemporaries/companions.

Blah blah blah turn resistance blah blah sunlight blah unique vulnerability. Yeah, they have drawbacks. Most races don't. Keep that in mind.

The meat of power comes really from spell like abilities. The alternate forms are nice, but they're utility or escape. This however does mean that you'll be able to fly much earlier than normally available. However, as an alternate form, you likely won't be blasting out aerial artillery. There's probably a way to do so, but being two classes behind to do so isn't exactly optimal. Charm person at will however, is gonna be awesome for a long time running, at least on peons. Eiji also forgot to mention something like "caster level equal to character level" or something like that. Shame on him. I'd really be more happy with 1/minute or something like that to prevent spamming, but whatever. Usability of racial features is good. If you're not using it, it's wasted power.

In conclusion, it stands pretty well at +2 LA. Anything more is certainly too crippling to use (LA +2 in general is about the maximum of usability and balance anyways with lots of write-arounds and special rules to correct stupidity). It certainly has a few features. The biggest early-game potential for problems being the spell-like abilities which drop off in usefulness at higher levels. It's designed to be more of a tank in most cases (curse you silver!), able to take a few hits, which is good for casters... who'll be two levels behind that haughty gray elf wizard. As far as being a vampire is concerned though, it's got the goods. Take that, elf! --Ganteka Future (talk) 01:08, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

+10 to stats?... oh, I see, you're adding them all together. The answer is a wizard of any race with darkvision you like. The spells aren't at will, but they don't need to be. You only need "enough". After all, if you only need three spells a day, having 3 or 3000 does you no better. So what does the level 3 wizard have? Shapeshifting (alter self), DR (various ways, pick one), bonuses to stats (animal's X spells), natural attacks (race, alter self again, fist of stone, pick one), built in cheat death (all sorts of things, the abrupt jaunting conjurer comes to mind), with no inconveniences and with the BAB/skill/hp advantage.

Right, so if you only need "enough", why invite the possibility of abuse with unlimited usage? Awfulfalafel (talk) 01:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a little disingenuous to say the shapeshifting is all that unlimited. Unlimited in use, sure, but limited to 3 simple forms, forms which already have existed in familiars, animal companions, and summons since level 1. The most useful forms are the wolf, for a limited combat potential, and the bat, for flight. However, alter self once again appears to offer us not only combat potential and flight, but huge AC buffs and other abilities, all while maintaining the power to speak in most of their non-animal forms.

Also, what the edit conflicter above said, +4 Stat is exponentially more valuable than two +2 stats, and so forth. D&D is a game where specialization is king. Also, thanks for catching the CL thing Gan.

There's a hidden downside to the darkness at will thing opposing the danger of the sun. Unless the campaign is vampire friendly, which is fine, you'll look mighty suspicious walking into town with a haze of darkness around you all day. Most vampires probably don't want others to know they're vampires, so using their sunlight defenses will be conspicuous. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 01:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Let's not forget about the other advantages of undead traits -- immunity to all mind-affecting effects; immunity to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects; immunity to critical hits, ability drain, energy drain, damage to physical ability scores, fatigue, exhaustion; no need to eat, breathe, sleep. Awfulfalafel (talk) 01:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Aye, undead traits are worth about a solid LA 1 there, that's where half of it comes from. As reference I point to Necropoliton, a LA 0 template that is technically LA 1 with built in buyoff (you lose a level for obtaining it). That one has all the boilerplate benefits and downsides of undeath in it. The other half of the LA mostly comes from Charm Person at will, utility shapeshifts, and blood pool. The rest is gravy. Yes, even the +2 bonuses, at this level, is gravy. DR makes up for the lack of hp you normally have. Etc. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 01:37, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I get the feeling this isn't resolved for Awfulfalafel yet, so I'll add just a bit more to hopefully clear up this balance confusion. Going from looking at official Wizards of the Coast Level Adjusted races and then going to something that's had time (and not publishing crunch pressure) to be developed and weighed (especially now that the game system has been out so long and people understand it pretty well when designing for it on a daily basis like Eiji has been for the last 4 years... which sounds like an exaggeration but really isn't) can be rather jarring, so try to focus on why things are weighted with power when designing things. As for the undead traits, the big ones there are mind-affecting effect immunity, immunity to ability score damage and immunity to critical hits (which is really just a luck thing more than anything). Most of the other stuff rarely comes up to really be worth all that much weight. A character might get a disease or poisoned once or twice... over the course of several dozen encounters, and when items/spells are cheap and available to easily remedy this, circumstantial stuff like that hardly matters as a racial bonus. Mind-affecting effects are common in that you might run into one every few encounters or so on someone in the party, so it's good to have, but not great like an AC boost that's gonna get used all over the place or something like that. DMs kinda tend to adjust what they throw at players anyhow, not that I'm using that as an excuse for giving a race a bunch of abilities, I'm certainly not. It really boils down to DM counters. If a DM has enough options to screw with the PCs (and even on the flip side where the PCs need to attack a grey vampire NPC), that they still have options available to optimally target and deal with characters in game in a plausible/fun for everyone fashion. Because grey vampires have immunities, they also get those drawbacks, unlike common races which tend not to have things like that. That is to say, situational bonuses and situational drawbacks don't make the grey vampire ahead of the game for a comparable character of his ECL.

Charm person still seems to be a sore spot so I'll elaborate a little on that too. This is a spell usable at will. It targets humanoids and makes them like you. It'll be cast at a lower DC (because of that LA+2) than comparable casters who've had access to the spell from 1st level. Sure, you could get a cult of humanoid followers you'd have to refresh into liking you every few hours...which is surprisingly less convenient than just hiring some goons with your pocket cash that 3rd level characters will have at that point. It's not that awesome and really just ends up being a fun ability to use to vamp it up.

The vampire hibernation thing was a point of concern also I believe from what was mentioned a bit ago. This ability really ends up coming down to: Did everyone else in your party die? If yes, you're also dead. Did one guy survive with enough mojo to take care of your unconscious corpseness? If yes, you're also alive... er, undead, whatever. Did you fall from orbit without checking your parachute in a freak stunt sponsored by Red Bull and you plowed your way into a chinese fishin' trawler on the way down, sinking to the bottom of the ocean while at -40 hp? If yes, then congratulations, you should have used feather fall.

To finish here, if there are concerns about stuff that hasn't been convincingly addressed yet, let us know. Air your thoughts as thoroughly as you can. Discussion helps. --Ganteka Future (talk) 06:40, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

When it comes to drawbacks, most other races have negatives to attributes that offset powers or other abilities given.

Gaining the benefit of high constitution from blood pool is another sticking point for me -- you can effectively turn a dump stat into a powerful primary one (putting your 8 in con, only to have it nullified by undead traits and then replaced by something that can get to +3 at first level and only goes up from there). And, if you have access to lesser restoration, you could abuse an imprisoned victim indefinitely, making sure to always have full blood pool points no matter what your level -- two uses per day averages 5 points of restored con to your victim (which you could then suck), more than offsetting your daily loss of 4 blood pool points. In this way, you'd only have to abduct a new victim once every generation as your prisoner dies of old age. If you had create food and water, you wouldn't even have to go out of your way to feed your prisoner. Net result: it is very easy to have very high hp, even after accounting for lost HD due to LA. At 20 HD and 35 blood pool points, you could have +12 hp/HD on top of base hp (12 + 19d12) for a total of 366 HP on average -- way more than any 20th level wizard would normally have (who can't kill you with instant death effects to get around the high hp).

Please understand that I am only so critical because I believe there is real potential here and want to see it actually get to a point of balance. -- Awfulfalafel (talk) 11:01, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

No need to apologize, we understand. Critique is the point, after all. That said, a counterpoint: don't forget it gets harder to raise the higher level you go. At 20th you need 4 Con per blood point (it's in the Natural Weapon info), so to go from 10 to 35 you will need to drink 140 Constitution. Hope you brought extra wands, as this will be an expensive habit! Well alright, presumably you won't be losing your blood pool too quickly if you keep away from wounding weapons and the like, so if you lose only 1/day, that means you only need to drink 4 Con. That's still at least 1 wand charge a day though. After two weeks of adventuring that's wasted money keeping you alive.

The wizard is the wrong comparison to bring to though, since, while I did compare it to a wizard, its not a caster really and probably makes a bad one with that LA 2 on there. You probably want to compare to the Fighter or Barbarian. And remember he can't use Tomes or Items of Con, since he doesn't actually have a Con score. The blood pool is scaled to reflect that, ending up just under a comparable, Con-using mortal.

Actually, the whole "keep a prisoner" thing is very apt, as that's exactly the kind of evil stuff I expect a bloodthirsty vampire to pull, with all the dangers and threats of keeping someone locked up has. Worse if they're traveling on adventure... for the same reason you don't bring followers to a battle, you want to keep your bloodbag out of sight and out of mind, and it'll be hard to secure if they break from your grip. That kind of risk/reward is intentional. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 11:21, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Did the Masquerade pathfinder game inspire this race?--Franken Kesey (talk) 13:29, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The what what game? Nope. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 13:58, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Fast HealingEdit

Why is it dependent on the being at 0 life status. I think that the flavor of the vampire as written is the elite fighter, not the instinctual beast. -k2/CTLC, your choice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.197.244.229 (talk • contribs) at

You are not familiar with the lore of wounded vampires returning to their coffins to respawn? -- Eiji-kun (talk) 23:39, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Dark SanctuaryEdit

If your sanctuary is destroyed or you are forced to relocate, is there a commensurate cost (gp/xp/time) to setup the new one (after the 1 month lockout)?

Just the time of vulnerability (1 month) and the minor cost of obtaining a suitable container for your body (negligible, unless you feel fancy and want to get an adamantine coffin with traps and wards and gold spinning rims and stuff).-- Eiji-kun (talk) 02:00, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Response to RatingEdit

One of the ratings opposes the article with very little actual justification. Ignoring the fact that is is pretty much wrong and that +2 LA is a pretty steep cost to pay for even nice things, I just think it should be struck for not clarifying much of anything. It's just a shitty rating, through and through. - TG Cid (talk) 13:50, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I figure I'd bump this comment since striking ratings is the topic of the week. To the rater's credit, he did converse some in the following posts. It should really be in the rating though, so, whatever, I'll leave that to someone else to resolve here. --Ganteka Future (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

It's the three year bump! -- Eiji-kun (talk) 05:31, 25 September 2016 (UTC)