[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[MofoMojo]

i did have a idea for vampires in the request mod thread that i did to day only 7 veiws and no reply :(

 

mabey the TS will like the idea?

 

Hey,

 

I just read your thread. So far I'm trying to do very little to change of the NPC characteristics in the original game because it requires modifying/touching the base game settings. I'm dead set on not doing that for the sake of mod compatibility. Right now, there's only one script that MUST be changed, and that's the PlayerVampireQuest script. If the choice was mine alone I'd even leave that script alone and introduce an entire new script so that the player had a choice to be either the vanilla vampire or our vampire. I'm also going to have to modify a few in game things because they grant certain abilities directly to the Player Vampire Race...I hate even having to do that. Hmmm...seperating the scripts out is starting to sound like a really good idea but then people that were vanilla vampires couldn't just switch into being outs.

 

That being said... There's no reason that this has to be the only way to catch vampirism. My original take was to implement an "Immortal Blood" type quest line where, if you've read the book in the game, one of the main characters in the story is killed by a vampire. In my case I'd model a questline around the central themes of that story and instead of being killed at the end, you'd be given the choice of being turned, or killing. Alternatively, there could be "Vampire's Blood" as a potion that gives you the Vampirism Disease. There are many things that we haven't explored yet on how the player becomes a vampire so please keep those ideas coming.

 

-MM

[phil11]

I think the option to derank (like from Sire to Fledgling) shouldn't be simply based on not feeding, but on the player's choice also. After 15 game days of not feeding, it shouldn't be possible to go from the most powerful vampire to the weakest fledgling, unless perhaps you choose to perform some vampiric rite or something additionally that would facilitate such a change. Either that, or it should be very easy to regain Sire status after you've regressed to a lower rank. Lack of blood satiation alone should not strip a vampire of his or her knowledge of arcane vampire powers. Starvation should just make the powers themselves far less potent and make the vampire weak. As I said in another thread to Jakisthe, it's not like Dracula would lose his knowledge or overall power if he starved himself for a while. He would just become very weak; it's not like he would cease to be the most elite of vampires, in rank and power.

 

Like regular leveling in the game, I think vampire leveling should be, at least nominally, a permanent thing (unless you want to do some kind of vampiric rite to lower your rank for the purposes of say, being slightly more resistant to garlic/sunlight/silver etc.)

 

Jakisthe argued in another thread that deranking is necessary to maintain balance, but I don't think it is. As long as starvation penalties are severe, there should be no reason to automatically derank a vampire.

 

Also, Jakisthe said older vampires, based on true TES lore, ought to be weaker. I guess I've watched too much True Blood or something, but this idea seems a bit backwards and ultimately only maintained for balancing purposes. Older vampires supposedly are weaker because they're less human and more monster, as if vampirism and humanity exists on some kind of continuum. I don't see it that way though. Once you're a vampire, you're a different species. Further experience and understanding grants additional power and a diminution of weaknesses. This is especially true considering that vampires are immortal and have ample time to increase said experience and understanding.

[MofoMojo]

I think the option to derank (like from Sire to Fledgling) shouldn't be simply based on not feeding, but on the player's choice also. After 15 game days of not feeding, it shouldn't be possible to go from the most powerful vampire to the weakest fledgling, unless perhaps you choose to perform some vampiric rite or something additionally that would facilitate such a change. Either that, or it should be very easy to regain Sire status after you've regressed to a lower rank. Lack of blood satiation alone should not strip a vampire of his or her knowledge of arcane vampire powers. Starvation should just make the powers themselves far less potent and make the vampire weak. As I said in another thread to Jakisthe, it's not like Dracula would lose his knowledge or overall power if he starved himself for a while. He would just become very weak; it's not like he would cease to be the most elite of vampires, in rank and power.

 

Like regular leveling in the game, I think vampire leveling should be, at least nominally, a permanent thing (unless you want to do some kind of vampiric rite to lower your rank for the purposes of say, being slightly more resistant to garlic/sunlight/silver etc.)

 

Jakisthe argued in another thread that deranking is necessary to maintain balance, but I don't think it is. As long as starvation penalties are severe, there should be no reason to automatically derank a vampire.

 

Also, Jakisthe said older vampires, based on true TES lore, ought to be weaker. I guess I've watched too much True Blood or something, but this idea seems a bit backwards and ultimately only maintained for balancing purposes. Older vampires supposedly are weaker because they're less human and more monster, as if vampirism and humanity exists on some kind of continuum. I don't see it that way though. Once you're a vampire, you're a different species. Further experience and understanding grants additional power and a diminution of weaknesses. This is especially true considering that vampires are immortal and have ample time to increase said experience and understanding.

 

Hi Phil11, Glad to see you still around here. We'll have to get Jakisthe's oppinion on that. I certainly understand where you're coming from and your oppinion and the thoughts expressed are well respected.

 

As for the weaknesses... I can understand your point...At some point between NOT being a vampire and being a full vampire, weaknesses should be static, and you are simply able to withstand them longer because you have ....more strength, vitality, whathaveyou, the longer you have remained in that form. I get that.

 

I think the reality is that we want the game to be balanced considering all these bonuses, and we'll always fall back to that as our cop out plee rather than try to desuade or pull from various sources of lore or personal oppinions. My ideas differ in many regards as to what we're actually putting into the mod, but then...my ideas wouldn't really be all that fun. lol.

 

I'm all ears for thinking outside the box on balancing weaknesses.

 

As for the deranking, what you say makes a lot of sense.

 

The good thing is, I am making those things variable so that people can tweak the gameplay to their own liking. So far, everything is controlled via global settings. As it stands those global settings get "cooked" into game saves. So you have to modify the values in the Creation Kit before loading a save that never used the mod. Howerver... it IS my goal, something I was originally opposed to doing, to implement a book or something that triggers a menu that lets you TWEAK those settings. I don't know if it will support user defined input or slider bars, etc,. but I hope to have selectable values so that instead of having to starve for 5 days to drop from sire to progenitor, perhaps you could tweak it out to 100 days. That's a lot of in game time.

 

-MM

[MrQuest87]

 

Hey,

 

I just read your thread. So far I'm trying to do very little to change of the NPC characteristics in the original game because it requires modifying/touching the base game settings. I'm dead set on not doing that for the sake of mod compatibility. Right now, there's only one script that MUST be changed, and that's the PlayerVampireQuest script. If the choice was mine alone I'd even leave that script alone and introduce an entire new script so that the player had a choice to be either the vanilla vampire or our vampire. I'm also going to have to modify a few in game things because they grant certain abilities directly to the Player Vampire Race...I hate even having to do that. Hmmm...seperating the scripts out is starting to sound like a really good idea but then people that were vanilla vampires couldn't just switch into being outs.

 

That being said... There's no reason that this has to be the only way to catch vampirism. My original take was to implement an "Immortal Blood" type quest line where, if you've read the book in the game, one of the main characters in the story is killed by a vampire. In my case I'd model a questline around the central themes of that story and instead of being killed at the end, you'd be given the choice of being turned, or killing. Alternatively, there could be "Vampire's Blood" as a potion that gives you the Vampirism Disease. There are many things that we haven't explored yet on how the player becomes a vampire so please keep those ideas coming.

 

-MM

 

 

Thank you for reading my post :)

 

I Understand, but hope someday that you will not be infectd by a sword.

 

I like the potion idea whit vampire's blood, but that kind of potion should not be sold at the local merchant :P

[phil11]

I think the option to derank (like from Sire to Fledgling) shouldn't be simply based on not feeding, but on the player's choice also. After 15 game days of not feeding, it shouldn't be possible to go from the most powerful vampire to the weakest fledgling, unless perhaps you choose to perform some vampiric rite or something additionally that would facilitate such a change. Either that, or it should be very easy to regain Sire status after you've regressed to a lower rank. Lack of blood satiation alone should not strip a vampire of his or her knowledge of arcane vampire powers. Starvation should just make the powers themselves far less potent and make the vampire weak. As I said in another thread to Jakisthe, it's not like Dracula would lose his knowledge or overall power if he starved himself for a while. He would just become very weak; it's not like he would cease to be the most elite of vampires, in rank and power.

 

Like regular leveling in the game, I think vampire leveling should be, at least nominally, a permanent thing (unless you want to do some kind of vampiric rite to lower your rank for the purposes of say, being slightly more resistant to garlic/sunlight/silver etc.)

 

Jakisthe argued in another thread that deranking is necessary to maintain balance, but I don't think it is. As long as starvation penalties are severe, there should be no reason to automatically derank a vampire.

 

Also, Jakisthe said older vampires, based on true TES lore, ought to be weaker. I guess I've watched too much True Blood or something, but this idea seems a bit backwards and ultimately only maintained for balancing purposes. Older vampires supposedly are weaker because they're less human and more monster, as if vampirism and humanity exists on some kind of continuum. I don't see it that way though. Once you're a vampire, you're a different species. Further experience and understanding grants additional power and a diminution of weaknesses. This is especially true considering that vampires are immortal and have ample time to increase said experience and understanding.

 

Hi Phil11, Glad to see you still around here. We'll have to get Jakisthe's oppinion on that. I certainly understand where you're coming from and your oppinion and the thoughts expressed are well respected.

 

As for the weaknesses... I can understand your point...At some point between NOT being a vampire and being a full vampire, weaknesses should be static, and you are simply able to withstand them longer because you have ....more strength, vitality, whathaveyou, the longer you have remained in that form. I get that.

 

I think the reality is that we want the game to be balanced considering all these bonuses, and we'll always fall back to that as our cop out plee rather than try to desuade or pull from various sources of lore or personal oppinions. My ideas differ in many regards as to what we're actually putting into the mod, but then...my ideas wouldn't really be all that fun. lol.

 

I'm all ears for thinking outside the box on balancing weaknesses.

 

As for the deranking, what you say makes a lot of sense.

 

The good thing is, I am making those things variable so that people can tweak the gameplay to their own liking. So far, everything is controlled via global settings. As it stands those global settings get "cooked" into game saves. So you have to modify the values in the Creation Kit before loading a save that never used the mod. Howerver... it IS my goal, something I was originally opposed to doing, to implement a book or something that triggers a menu that lets you TWEAK those settings. I don't know if it will support user defined input or slider bars, etc,. but I hope to have selectable values so that instead of having to starve for 5 days to drop from sire to progenitor, perhaps you could tweak it out to 100 days. That's a lot of in game time.

 

-MM

Hey again MM, and thank you for your courtesy and prompt reply. After having read through this thread, I'm watching this mod like a hawk on cocaine, since it not only seems like the most ambitious vampire mod, but also the most well thought-out and professional. It's very apparent to me that you're a script/mod genius and the vast majority of Jakisthe's ideas are frickin great.

 

Great idea to make some of the settings modifiable! That would be very welcome.

 

As far as balancing weaknesses, perhaps simply having far more enemies would do it, as you kind of suggested yourself earlier. Most people hate vampires, especially very powerful ones. Having extra, high level/ranked, elite Vigilants of Stendarr and Silverhands randomly attacking you would be pretty cool. You could also have them form hunting parties that ambush you, e.g in the middle of a dragon fight.

 

You could set it so that, in every town, you have a chance of being 'marked' for death by Vigilants and Silverhands, which would ultimately lead to hunting parties after you. This chance to be 'marked' could depend on several things. One of them could be how many people you feed on, especially in fairly rapid succession or in a specific location repeatedly (like if you tried to level up by draining the guard barracks in Whiterun). Another way to get marked could be to have two flat, global percentages in every town for when you're using and not using your Mask Identity ability. Getting 'marked' for death wouldn't mean that every NPC attacks on sight (it could be separate from the AoS you get when starved), since it would only apply to Vigilants and Silverhands, factions dedicated to the extermination of Vampires. So when using Mask Identity (or whatever you're calling it, I forget), you may only have a 5% chance of getting marked for every 4 game hours in a city. Without Mask identity, the chance for being marked could be like 40% or higher, depending on how blood sated you are.

 

If you actually do get marked for death, your rank as a vampire will determine how large and equipped the hunting party is. The Vigilants and Silverhand may determine that your threat as a Progenitor is quite significant and send a small army of garlic carrying, silver-equipped, elite warriors and mages.

Edited February 29, 2012 by phil11

[Jakisthe]

Right! Hi everyone. Wow. Go away for a few days, and it darn near explodes...awesome!

 

Anywho, since I disappeared, seems to be a large list of things for me to address. I'll just make a list here, since trying to keep track of all....5 or so pages since I last posted >_>. I likely won't get to all of them (such is the life of a full time student), but I can at least come back, edit this post, etc.

 

-The omnipresent leveling/hunger/deleveling issue. Frankly, this is the most difficult thing to work around. Wiseman had some excellent ideas, and he did send me his stuff, but as MM can attest to, I am slow to respond, an issue which has only been exacerbated as of late as I contend with an incredibly difficult semester. I will say this though, in regards to the human-vampire spectrum: I had always thought of vampirism as a mutation. Best as I can tell, it started as a vague way of describing disease, which would suggest it's, well, just that: a disease. While the idea of having them as an entirely separate entity is interesting, the way of reproduction, the progression, the in-game lore, and the transmission all seem to suggest that it is a disease. Plus, and although I'm not a doctor and this is obviously not a real condition, I just think it's more likely to contract something which is a mutation than it is to completely switch species...since I think that's impossible (and geneticists out there?)

 

-Balance: The second most prevalent issue! Mainly, I want to keep this mod about a different way to play...not just giving the player a ton of power. Well, yes, they'll have a ton of power, but people complain enough about the lack of difficulty, and I am a big fan of balance/weaknesses. Not to say that I'm against "wackier" weaknesses "Hey Jakisthe, you should have a chance that the weather can rain visible and dodgeable garlic which is auto-picked up when it hits you!" (which would be awesome, tbh, but VERY lore shattering), but there will be weaknesses. Big ones.

 

-getting vampirism: As MM said, there will be more than one way. Perhaps by quest, perhaps by getting bitten whilst fighting a vampire, perhaps etc etc. Quests are down the line though, and secondary to making the vampire in the first place. Besides, with all my ideas about clans/holy cities/fighting for control, we'd have to hit quests eventually :P

 

-Playtesting: I'm doing it! Slowly but surely...although, MM, you caught the biggest thing I was going to say and emailed an update. I think you can guess what I'm referring to, lol.

 

-Time slow: Time slow actually makes a massive change, and the length it lasts for can be something of an illusion, since [i think] the game refers to in-game seconds instead of real time seconds..so 2 seconds at half speed is actually 3 seconds of real time half speed since the game autodilates it. Anyway, I dunno about making them faster while it lasts. The player does move at a decent clip already, and as MM (again) pointed out, it's to represent the players speed, not the worlds slowness. Still, things to consider...I don't know if it's possible, but a spell with different levels of charge, perhaps? So the first level could drain x stamina for y speed, and the second level could drain x+u stamina for y+v speed...Yeah that doesn't sound possible. Not with one hand, anyway.

 

-PhaseWalk: Yes, the idea here was to prevent, say, players from out and out breaking stuff...like, for instance, if they were in the Markarth prison/mines quest, and simply teleported away, I suspect it could have some serious ramifications..but since it's impossible to check what's "off limits" contingent on a players individual quest progress, I guess..use discreetness? Lol. Will require testing...

 

-Names: Levitate>Messner (ala Meissner, which is magnetic levitation in super conductors at extremely low temps...and vampires are cold!), fog>caligas (latin for fog+an s for that "gas" connection), slow fall>FromGrace(puns! yukyukyuk)

 

-BloodRend costs: I fiddled a bit, and how about it costs L per second, and drains (ln(L))^(1+.025*L) HP per second per target, and costs ((T^(1+.001*T))/T)^300*L for every target T(arget) past 1? L is player level...I THINK that's somewhat balanced. I think. Ramps up in power, increasing costs relative to level and targets, and isn't too powerful at low levels. So, at lvl 50, it'll cost 50 per second for one target (or 75 per second for 2) and drains ~43 HP per second from each? Of course, I may just be overcomplicating things...AS USUAL.

 

-Dragons Blood to activate spells: good idea! Hmm...

 

-The countless others I missed.

[MofoMojo]

Jakisthe! Welcome back from the dead, or at least student zombie hell for a small bit. I don't have much time but just wanted to give a quick update.

 

I checked into what it would take to build out a menu for customization of these settings. It's completely doable, and I have a very quick proof of concept done. It's not much FUN to do but it's doable. Let's just say it takes a lot of message boxes, box buttons, and scripting to show the right box, and update the right global value. It will be in there. There will be a single config button to reset ALL values to the values that Jakisthe and I agree upon, and there will be indicators on each of the selection that show what the defautl values are. To the best of my knowledge, I cannot show what the CURRENT values are in Message Boxes, but I haven't investigated too deeply. There will NOT be deep customization options. There will be perhaps 10 variances per menu item. For instance days to starve from Master to Risen might have the following options:

 

NEVER
1 Days
2 Days
3 Days (Default)
4 Days
5 Days
10 Days
20 Days
50 Days
BACK

 

I'll even support a setting for going back from being a vampire to cured through starvation, but understand that's just for people who might want it...this will default to NEVER. Essentially if you want to never starve back a level, you can config it. If you want to only be able to starve back until you're a Sire, you could config it, if you want NEVER derank at all, you can do it. Similarly, all the hunger drops, satiation levels, satiation increases from feeding, and how many times you have to feed (and FEEDKILL) will be configurable. However, this probably won't make it into the initial preview release I'd like to do.

 

So... there are certain immersion breakers out there. Hunger is important to keep up with but I don't want to create a GUI for it because that will kill people with custom GUIs but we need a way to track it. There's some immersive effects we have with regards to hunger that I've mentioned before, the Detect Blood for instance. But I think it's very important to keep track of it some other way to along with other details. With that in mind, I will have a .... journal... of sorts that can be read that will detail what your current Satiated level is (out of the maximum), how many times you've fed at your current level, and how many times you've drained someone dry and killed them (at your current level) so that you don't have to go do stupid things like look at quest vars in the console or global values. In regards to message box configuration, I will also show what your current settings are in this "Journal". It'll probably be marked as a quest item so you don't accidentally lose it! I investigated the possibility of doing this and quite honestly, I think I can hook that up in 1 nights work.

 

On the Blood Rend. It's impossible to accurately identify how many people it's impacting so we'll need to keep the formula a bit....leaner. Well...I guess technically I could keep track of it in a global by incrementing a global value by 1 with each new target and decrementing with each lost target but I doubt that it's thread safe to do that and might be very wonky....eh...we could probably give it a try. The alternative is to have the main cost of channelling the spell low, but have the drain cost per second per target high. Instead of 20 to channel and an additional 5 per target, we could make it 5 to channel and 15 per target.

 

Oh and just a fun jab...Jakisthe, if you want me to use formula's like that you're going to have to explain them to me! :) I debug software for a living but I'm no math expert.

 

Edit: Glaringly vague status update. Out of 211 items I'm currently tracking as work to do, 171 of those have been done. That's 81% completion of the base implementations!

 

Edit: Another for humor:

 

-Playtesting: I'm doing it! Slowly but surely...although, MM, you caught the biggest thing I was going to say and emailed an update. I think you can guess what I'm referring to, lol.

 

Yeah, it kind of sucks being a vampire and having no fangs upon which to feed. :)

 

-MM

Edited February 29, 2012 by MofoMojo

[thatperson14]

Awesome job, can't wait to see this put to use in game.

 

Yeah, it kind of sucks being a vampire and having no fangs upon which to feed.

 

Agreed. There was a mod in morrowind that sort of fixed that issue. About a minute into this video.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6c39Y_Lq9A&feature=fvsr

[deama]

Deama,

 

I had to make a correction there. The Vampire's Speed is given at the 4th stage, closest to the end. I could make two additional spells that slow down time at 10% and 20% and we could give those to Risen's and Master's. I would likely leave the stamina drain and mana costs at exactly the same values, and just simply lower the speed bonus to reflect that younger vampires aren't quite as adapt.

 

What do other's feel?

 

Yeah, I would agree, you probably should do that :P

 

I think the option to derank (like from Sire to Fledgling) shouldn't be simply based on not feeding, but on the player's choice also. After 15 game days of not feeding, it shouldn't be possible to go from the most powerful vampire to the weakest fledgling, unless perhaps you choose to perform some vampiric rite or something additionally that would facilitate such a change. Either that, or it should be very easy to regain Sire status after you've regressed to a lower rank. Lack of blood satiation alone should not strip a vampire of his or her knowledge of arcane vampire powers. Starvation should just make the powers themselves far less potent and make the vampire weak. As I said in another thread to Jakisthe, it's not like Dracula would lose his knowledge or overall power if he starved himself for a while. He would just become very weak; it's not like he would cease to be the most elite of vampires, in rank and power.

 

Like regular leveling in the game, I think vampire leveling should be, at least nominally, a permanent thing (unless you want to do some kind of vampiric rite to lower your rank for the purposes of say, being slightly more resistant to garlic/sunlight/silver etc.)

 

Jakisthe argued in another thread that deranking is necessary to maintain balance, but I don't think it is. As long as starvation penalties are severe, there should be no reason to automatically derank a vampire.

 

Also, Jakisthe said older vampires, based on true TES lore, ought to be weaker. I guess I've watched too much True Blood or something, but this idea seems a bit backwards and ultimately only maintained for balancing purposes. Older vampires supposedly are weaker because they're less human and more monster, as if vampirism and humanity exists on some kind of continuum. I don't see it that way though. Once you're a vampire, you're a different species. Further experience and understanding grants additional power and a diminution of weaknesses. This is especially true considering that vampires are immortal and have ample time to increase said experience and understanding.

 

yes, that is pretty much the same way I was thinking; hope its possible!

 

PS: I kept on reading that you guys kept on having a lot of balance issues, I was thinking on making a vampire covenant that gave you specific rules to obey, if you break a rule you would have a choice to either pay a fine (I was thinking about this, maybe it shouldn't be a fine, maybe some sort of ritual that permanently made you weaker? Or maybe make the player wear garlic for a day or so) or die (as in being in a wanted list). The rules should be quite strict.

 

PPS: I was also thinking on contacting the guy that made "unholy darkness" for oblivion, he had some good vampire ideas implemented.

 

Agreed. There was a mod in morrowind that sort of fixed that issue. About a minute into this video.

 

wasn't it Oblivion not Morrowind?

Edited February 29, 2012 by deama

[MofoMojo]

Deama,

 

I had to make a correction there. The Vampire's Speed is given at the 4th stage, closest to the end. I could make two additional spells that slow down time at 10% and 20% and we could give those to Risen's and Master's. I would likely leave the stamina drain and mana costs at exactly the same values, and just simply lower the speed bonus to reflect that younger vampires aren't quite as adapt.

 

What do other's feel?

 

Yeah, I would agree, you probably should do that :P

 

Ok, I'll work that into my TODO list. I think it makes a level of sense and actually the idea bore out of the whole "vampires should get faster" speed multiplier bonus debacle to begin with... for some history on that - I purposefully haven't implemented actual speed bonus multilpiers because I didn't want them to be permanent modifiers. I know how to make them toggleable now, but prior, I was concerned that say.... a theorertical 3x speed bonus would not be much fun to have to contend with from a control perspective. For instance, times where I want to peer over the edge into a chasm....oops. I accidentally ran off because I'm 3x faster!

 

I think the option to derank (like from Sire to Fledgling) shouldn't be simply based on not feeding, but on the player's choice also.

 

yes, that is pretty much the same way I was thinking; hope its possible!

 

Ok, I'm sticking to my guns on our default behavior for now, but ... this will be mitigated by the work I'm doing to make this customizable. There will be an ingame method to customize those options (see previous thread). It likely won't make it into the preview release I'd like to do shortly.

 

PS: I kept on reading that you guys kept on having a lot of balance issues, I was thinking on making a vampire covenant that gave you specific rules to obey, if you break a rule you would have a choice to either pay a fine (I was thinking about this, maybe it shouldn't be a fine, maybe some sort of ritual that permanently made you weaker? Or maybe make the player wear garlic for a day or so) or die (as in being in a wanted list). The rules should be quite strict.

 

Well, we're not really having balancing issues, so much as we want to make sure things stay balanced. We'll start having REAL balancing issues once playtesting really gets underway and with more people than just myself and Jakisthe. But keep the ideas coming!

 

 

Yeah, it kind of sucks being a vampire and having no fangs upon which to feed.

 

Agreed. There was a mod in morrowind that sort of fixed that issue. About a minute into this video.

 

 

Just to supply some context around the comment. In one (or more) of the releases I sent to Jakisthe to test over the weekend the Feed and Vampire Feed Attacks didn't work so uh... hehe...not really much you could test. That being said, since the vampires are all races it might be fairly easy to actually extend the teeth and open the mouth a bit to reveal the fangs. I'm trying to figure out how to create blood decals as I'd love to .... bloody the place up a little after feeding during attack, or at least with Blood Rend... I can see feeding as being a little less bloody when the victim is at rest.

 

-MM