9 hours ago, sfRattan said:

I've been working on a way to do Vampires and may be play testing what I have so far this weekend. I've found that it works better as a career or as a specialization acquired in the narrative rather than as an Archetype. Archetypes are equivalent to species, and vampirism is something a GM might want more than one species to be able to contract. As my phrasing implies, I lean more in the direction of vampirism as a naturalistic disease (think "I am Legend," novel not film) rather than as a supernatural curse. However, I'm trying to keep what I have in a toolkit form that could work for either.

The only thing I've set in stone is that if you take "Vampire" as a career, the skills are: Athletics, Brawl, Charm, Coercion, Coordination, Perception, Stealth, and Vigilance. If a character is made into a vampire, they get "Vampire" as a sort of specialization and may choose three skills from that list as additional career skills (rather than 4, as in SWRPG, because there was often likely to be overlap of career skills between career and specialization).

I've also made vampiric hunger strain based:

• A vampire adds 10 to its strain threshold, but may only recover strain by:
  • Spending Advantages in combat (game balance would break otherwise), though a vampire must spend 2 Advantages to recover 1 strain in this way.
  • Feeding on a living creature.
  • Hibernating for a significant length of time (a week or more).
• For every 5 points of current strain, a vampire upgrades the difficulty of all its Cool, Discipline, and Resilience checks once.
• Once a vampire's current strain is greater than half its threshold:
  • Its Presence rating increases once.
  • Its Willpower rating decreases once (to a minimum of one).
  • If Willpower would have decreased to zero, a vampire becomes rabid.
• Once a vampire' current strain exceeds its threshold:
  • It may, continue to act and suffer strain for a short time, but...
  • It must immediately make a Hard Discipline check, and either hibernate soon or become rabid as a result.

Rabid vampires are mostly handled narratively, and it's exactly what it sounds like. A vampire must reduce its current strain to equal or below half of threshold, either by feeding or hibernating, to recover from rabidity.

Hibernation alters the healing rules, which I'm playing around with the details of but suspect will be a better way to make them more resilient than increasing Characteristic ratings.

Feeding is attacking living creatures with fangs to heal strain based on damage dealt (post soak), or wounds on a Triumph, which must be used to trigger a critical injury before healing any wounds. I like the idea of a Vampire using Discipline instead of Brawl for its attack if it wants to inflict strain while healing, rather than inflicting wounds. We'll see how that works.

Other than that, there are a few specific unique abilities I've named:

• Strength, Speed, & Senses . A vampire's Brawn and Agility are Super-Characteristics (GCRB p.251). A vampire also adds 2 Boost dice to its Perception and Vigilance checks.
• Burned by Sunlight . When entering direct sunlight or high powered, ultraviolet light, a vampire must make a Hard Resilience check, suffering wounds equal to Failures rolled (ignoring soak) and strain equal to Threats rolled. On a Despair, the vampire immediately combusts, suffering 3 wounds per minute (ignoring soak), or per turn in structured encounters, so long as it remains on fire.
• Near Immortality . Vampires do not die of old age or by natural means. If a vampire is killed normally, it merely enters hibernation. Vampires only die permanently if decapitated, incinerated, or pierced through the heart with a wooden stake.
• Ancient Vigor . As vampires age, they become more powerful and acquire greater control over their feeding and hunger. For every fifty years of its vampiric lifespan (not counting its mortal life), a vampire adds 5 to its strain threshold. For every hundred years of its vampiric lifespan, the amount of current strain required to upgrade the difficulty of Cool, Discipline, and Resilience checks (see above) increases by 5.

I've gone in a rather different direction than the OP and all of these things are subject to change based on play testing, but hopefully it will serve as fodder to inspire other people's design work and game play.

Glad to see I wasn't the only person at work. The idea of it as a career is neat, especially in Vampire centered settings. I was looking for a sort of thing that can be applied to any character at any moment for plot reasons of my campaign.

I do like the wording "or high powered UV light" for non-fantasy settings.

I finished my template which can be found here:

or in the master resource list

3 minutes ago, Zalakoth said:

Glad to see I wasn't the only person at work. The idea of it as a career is neat, especially in Vampire centered settings. I was looking for a sort of thing that can be applied to any character at any moment for plot reasons of my campaign.

That's the idea behind taking "Vampire" as a specialization rather than a career: you can do so part way through a campaign, gain all a vampire's unique abilities and mechanics, but only a three of the career skills and no free ranks. I'm also trying to avoid any narrative descriptions of one vampire creating another and just say it involves the new vampire character taking "Vampire"as a specialization after the event.

I'll be sure to let you know how play testing goes!

3 minutes ago, Zalakoth said:

I finished my template which can be found here:

or in the master resource list

That link looks broken to me, but the thread itself is visible on the forums.

7 minutes ago, sfRattan said:

That's the idea behind taking "Vampire" as a specialization rather than a career: you can do so part way through a campaign, gain all a vampire's unique abilities and mechanics, but only a three of the career skills and no free ranks. I'm also trying to avoid any narrative descriptions of one vampire creating another and just say it involves the new vampire character taking "Vampire"as a specialization after the event.

I'll be sure to let you know how play testing goes!

That link looks broken to me, but the thread itself is visible on the forums.

A lot of times how I see people approach it, is a base minimum effect of becoming a vampire. (Sunlight and Blood stuff) and then if the character chooses to embrace their dark powers gaining the specialization that gives them abilities

8 minutes ago, Zalakoth said:

the character chooses to embrace their dark powers gaining

SHHHHHHHH! Not done yet... ;-)

Some good thoughts especially from sfRattan who seems to be doing similar to me (I've been thinking of vampires in movies to think how to make them work for RPG settings, especially as there are some key vampire characters and the like in Descent which is the inspiration for my current project.)

For flexibility I think it would be good in conjunction with the thought processes above to consider have you ticked all the various boxes for the 'state' of being a vampire, werewolf, similarly 'afflicted/enhanced', does the solution arrived at for it work for all these situations. It may actually benefit having different options- perhaps it can be a career or species when it fits, but if, as has been suggested, there's a one-fits-all clip-on solution that could be the best.

Something that solves all the essentials such as is it their natural state (they've been this way and entered the world in this form) or has it been 'given' to them such as by magic, some dark ritual, being bitten etc.

Is it the main essence of their role/being (such as it is for Dracula, the key aspect of their nature), or something secondary or even lower in importance to their main role in the story?

If it is a 'gift' is it an unwanted one? How might they unburden themselves of it? (allowing for the flexibility of a narrative system)

Or is it a gift they see as a benefit and want to make the most of (near-immortality?, extra strength or endurance? and so on)

If a 'gift' is it temporary or permanent? (a curse for example may wear off), does the condition become more pronounced over time (such as the fly transformation in that gone-wrong experiment) or is it immediate?, are there intermediate stages?

In all three cases what are the pros and cons, what survival essentials are there?

Some of the questions have been explored but there may be others, specific campaigns may give ideas, perhaps vampire blood is toxic to some species or some species could be toxic for the vampire.

Does the inflicted party want to be proudly transformed striking fear into the hearts of other beings or keep it secret and hidden for fear of repercussions or somewhere in between?

As one of many examples if it were a modern setting and it's someone in a really key public office maybe they want to keep it as under-wraps as possible, if they're someone gang-leader-minded or who otherwise benefits from being able to pose a threat to, and intimidate some/ impress other persons they come into contact with however this could be the best kind of kudos they could hope for and they want everyone to know it and fear it. Whatever the situation it will give the gm and players plenty that could go very wrong or very right because of this state of being!

What are their new motivations- for example for vampires- just to feed to stay alive or do they also have reason to turn others into their kind to grow their numbers?

And there remains the question of handling transformations- the werewolf in human/ wolf/ changing form or the vampire in bat or scary smoke creeping under the doorway form. And mummies could be even more fun (gradual growing strength/ return to life, the fact they can be in an immortal or a mortal state. Can they do really realistic things like turning into impossibly large sand clouds looking like their face? Tch, some people's egos! Until someone reads them the right ancient tome bedtime story and they find out far from only being the beginning actual death is very much the end, or is it.....

THREADNECRO!

Now that we have Realms of Terrinoth , we can answer (at least the Lyncanthrope) question: the shapeshifting talents!

If you get turned into a werewolf, as a GM, I'd give you the tier 1 shapeshifter talent and dock you the 5XP for that session. Easy as pie!

If you want to get control of your changing, then you need to acquire the tier 2 Shapeshifting (Improved) talent.

If you don't have RoT, the tier 1 is identical to The Beast Within ability of the mongrels. And the tier 2 improved version is identical to The Human Spirit ability.