FowlJ's Prospective Vampirism Overhaul

[cojaca2]

EDIT: Being the genius that I am, I used the wrong username in my topic title. Please ignore this.

 

One of the things I've always wanted to change was Bethesda's idea of vampirism. It's a little ridiculous, in my opinion. After all, blood is the vampiric equivalent of food - and how many thing are stronger when they are starving?

 

(The answer is none.)

 

And so, I bring to you this day the rough draft of a complete overhaul of the system, one that aims to make vampires more powerful yet more challenging, and quite obviously more fun.

 

Table of Contents

 

- Becoming a Vampire

- Feeding, Powers, Weaknesses

- Vampires in Society

 

 

I. Becoming a Vampire

 

I don't aim to change the actual means of infection, though I may make it so that you can only be infected through actual contact, since being infected by a ball of fire from 50 feet away is a little silly.

 

The actual disease, however, will be changed a bit. It will start of as something you barely notice and escalate to something quite debilitating before finally becoming vampirism, at which point your character becomes a great deal stronger.

 

II. Feeding, Powers, and Weaknesses

 

Instead of losing all your powers when you feed, feeding will be what gives you powers in the first place. Your powers are dependent on 'Blood Points', which range from 0-600, every one hundred points constituting a 'level' of vampirism, from 0-5, level 5 being extremely powerful, level 0 conveying penalties to your character.

 

Every time your character feeds, you select how much blood to take - 25, 50, 75, or 100, one hundred points being enough to kill the NPC. Taking blood makes an NPC weaker (Taking 75 points, for example, would drop all of their stats by 75% until they recovered.) Blood recovers at a rate of 10 points per day.

 

That seems like your blood level would raise very fast, and that is because it does - However, the blood points you gain are spent in using your powers, a tough fight potentially dropping your blood level by more than one level. Additionally, to prevent a character becoming an all-powerful vampire overnight, drinking any amount of blood causes 'blood drunkenness', a period lasting for six in-game hours where you can not feed, and your health (which was fully restored during feeding) does not regenerate. Your blood points have a passive drain rate of ten points per day (Blood does not drain when drunk after feeding).

 

Each blood level, you can a number of static modifiers to your health and such, as well as unique powers which are activated using blood.

 

Level 0

 

-25 Health

-25 Stamina

-25 Magicka

 

Powers:

Night Eye (Toggle) - No blood cost

Blood Heal (Heal 30/Second) - 2 blood/second

Undead (Immune to disease and drowning) - Passive

 

 

Level 1 <-- When you become a vampire, you begin with 100 blood points.

 

+10 Health

+10% Health Regen

+10 Stamina

+20% Stamina Regen

+10 Magicka

 

Powers:

Quiet Steps (25% Muffle) - Passive Ability

Blade of Blood (Bound Sword, stronger than ordinary version, 120 seconds) - 5 blood

 

Level 2

 

+25 Health

+25% Health Regen

+30 Stamina

+40% Stamina Regen

+25 Magicka

 

Powers:

Blood Bolt (Strong Bolt spell) - 5 blood

Unnatural Charm (Persuasion is 20% easier, Haggle 20% better, 60 seconds) - 5 blood

Shadow Steps (Invisibility, 60 seconds) - 5 blood

 

Level 3

 

+40 Health

+50% Health Regen

+50 Stamina

+50% Stamina Regen

+40 Magicka

 

Powers:

Dominate (Command Humanoid up to character level, command creature up to character level +5, 60 seconds) - 10 blood

Blood Shield (Strong Ward spell) - 10 blood

Vampiric Touch (Strong Absorb Health spell) - 10 blood

 

Level 4

 

+60 Health

+75% Health Regen

+75 Stamina

+100% Stamina Regn

+60 Magicka

 

Powers:

Command (Command Humanoid up to character level +5, creature up to character level +10, 120 seconds) - 15 blood

Blood Burst (Strong area of effect damage centered on caster) - 20 blood

Blood Armour (+100 Armour, 120 seconds) - 20 blood

Create Spawn (Strong necromancy spell, 300 seconds) - 20 blood

 

Level 5

 

+80 Health

+100% Health Regen

+100 Stamina

+150% Stamina Regen

+80 Magicka

 

Powers:

Sow Chaos (Frenzy up to character level + 10 in an area around caster, 60 seconds) - 40 blood

Mass Drain (Drain Health area of effect on impact) - 20 blood

Sow Destruction (Very strong area of effect damage centered on caster) - 50 blood

 

 

As a vampire grows in power, their abilities become more costly, more powerful, and less subtle - But it is not a good idea for a vampire to try and take over a town, because their most powerful abilities can only be used a few times before being lost, along with the passive bonuses provided by the blood level.

 

In addition to their powers, vampire have a number of weaknesses.

 

Weakness to fire: A vampire has weakness to fire equal to ([10 - BloodLevel] * 10)

 

Weakness to magic: A vampire has weakness to magic equal to ([5 - Bloodlevel] * 10)

 

Sun damage: A vampire out in the sun loses 10 blood points per second, and 20 health per second once their blood points are gone.

 

III. Vampires in Society

 

Now, people tend to get a little worried when they wake up and find a bloody wound in their neck, so they will report it to the guards. If they are relatively unharmed, and no one else has been having these complaints, the response will not be too serious, but if they are badly hurt, if many people have been bitten, or people have died as a result, the alarm in an area will raise higher. What does alarm do? The more alarmed you make a city, the more guards they will have patrolling areas at night, and, when the problem is bad enough, the more experienced vampire hunters they will recruit. In an area where alarm is very high, vampire hunters will be found wandering in groups of three to five in the area around the city, as well as through the city streets themselves. If a city is left alone, alarm will eventually drop back to normal.

 

I admit I have not thought out the full method for alarm to work, with all the numbers and such, but that is the basic idea.

 

 

 

This idea is far from finished, but I wish to post what I have so far and get some feed back or suggestions.

 

Thank you for your time.

Edited November 21, 2011 by cojaca2

[Galacticat42]

Sounds good so far, perhaps you could go look here for some inspiration. It was and still is the best vampirism overhaul mod for Oblivion.

[elricshan]

What about giving more magic regen t at stage 4-5?

[Zangetsu21]

This sounds really awesome. I don't know why Bethesda can't get vampires right. I remember in Oblivion I had a mod called "The Vampire Experience". It added an amulet to your inventory and allowed you to become a vamp whenever you wanted and then map hotkeys to abilities such as bare fangs, fast sprint, high jump etc. I do hate the sun damage though, only because of the time scaling. I added a mod in Oblivion to make the scaling real time. It also had an ini which you could edit to suit your liking, including removing sun damage, the ability to fast travel during the day etc. Maybe if a time scale mod can be added (mine was real time 1min real life was 1 min in game so the nights lasted much longer)

 

Perhaps instead of eliminating sun damage completely it could be made that when you reach level 4 or 5 of vampirism you can walk in the day, just a suggestion.

 

That's my input, this mod sounds great so far. Can't wait for it!

[XunAmarox]

Personally, I'd like to see stronger faster more resilient vampires (that don't have their hp/stamina stop recovering during the day). Like, move speed of 200 or so vampires. It'd be like the True Blood style vampires.

 

And add more damage to their attacks (melee or magic), and make them attack faster and have a fairly high chance to evade. These could increase or decrease based on difficulty setting.

 

I think such things like I mentioned would make vampires truly a force to be feared when you come across them. Not just some slightly buffed bandit-type run in. No, no... it would be a terror rivaling even dragons and giants.

[elricshan]

when this mod is out i wil be soo happy!! but why are there health, and stanima regen planed but not magic?

[cojaca2]

I never really planned adding more magic regen for two reasons - Firstly, the thing that I like about vampirism in bethesda games is the stealth aspect. Now, one could argue that the powers gained at later stages of vampirism take away from the stealth a great deal, but that leads to point number two: The vampire's powers are designed to be more-or-less a replacement for magic, with the trade off that using them too often will weaken you. Your powers would be stronger than the magic equivalent, but would take away from your blood, which will be a much needed resource. (I may implement death by starvation and other hunger penalties, but that would likely be an optional thing.)

 

As for the sun damage - I want to keep the sun damage, but I could perhaps see if I could make it so that your blood points drain based on the game clock, rather than the real time clock. Again, this would likely be an optional plugin for those using different timescales.

 

 

The goal is to make vampires that are strong and yet still balanced - a major part that still needs to be worked out is vampire hunters, who will become more powerful and more numerous as you continue causing trouble in an area. They will play to your weaknesses, using fire and magic, and generally be quite tough.

 

Now, vampire speed and such is definitely something I was thinking of, but I've been second-guessing myself as to what Skyrim will allow, since it used to be so easy with the attribute system, which no longer exists. That's probably silly of me, though, I doubt it's really too hard.

 

Additionally, I should see about setting up a vampire hunters guild.

Edited November 23, 2011 by cojaca2

[davi22pd]

maybe u can look on terran vampire revive by WarRatsG ( http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/410370-terran-vampires-revived/ )

[XunAmarox]

There already is a vampire (and other unholy creatures) hunting guild. I don't know if you can join it though.

[Shinjolfr]

Here's another idea:

 

What if feeding gave you these "blood points" that were the equivalent of perk points/shouts.

Then you could pick and choose what type of vampire (magepire/thiefpire/warpire) that you wanted to be.

Think "Breton Alchemist becomes Vampire with enhanced strength perks - now he casts spells - hits you with a two-handed warhammer - and drinks your blood to heal.

Or have it like the shouts where you gradually unlock vampiric powers (probably much simpler).

Have the powers unusable again unless you feed. (Think blood points as a new type of Magicka - vampire related abilities only)