[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[rptb1]

One thing I'm thinking about doing is giving every single NPC a very remote chance, when the game is started, of being a vampire or werewolf. At first I was going to each and every town and picking out people I thought would make good vampires or werewolves, but then I got the random chance idea. This way I don't know who is normal, who is vampire, or who is a werewolf, in case I get physical with someone. Do NPC vampires stay at a constant rate of fed? Meaning even though they aren't scripted to go out and feed, does the game just treat them as fed all the time?

As I understand it, the AI is goal-directed, and problem solving. A really great project would be to make the AIs of NPCs who are vampires have a real need to feed, so that they have to find paths to sleeping other NPCs (or you!) possibly with a chance of spreading vampirism. There could be a whole game in that, as either vampire or vampire hunter.

 

I really don't know how much can be done with the Skyrim AI. It's the bit I'm waiting to look at.

[MofoMojo]

Any vampire mod must include some serious disabilities and weaknesses to balance out strengths *in an interesting way*. It's no good if the weakness is "has a lisp". There's no game in simply adding + to everything. The player can already beat hundreds of bad guys in a row without dying, so why do you want to make it even easier?

 

I would like to see a vampire mod with a big list of minus signs, and a few interesting plusses that will require cunning and skill to use.

 

Otherwise, when you become a vampire, just print a message saying "You win Skyrim." :)

 

Currently I'm in the camp of little to no use of Vampiric Powers in direct sunlight. In doors, or overcast days is a completely different picture though.

If I had my way, vampires would be all but their original race in the daylight and STILL take sun damage on top of that. Again, I'm talking direct sunlight. I have this implemented on my vampire right now at even at Level 25/26 and 200 health (he was a mage before being turned) even 1 point of damage per second in sunlight gets you thinking about where to find the shade when you're travelling in the plains.

 

Here's my todo/wish list at the moment:

 

• Damage to the vampire scales UP in the sun as they level up being a vampire.
  
• Obvious and severe weakness to silver (Know this is rare but the silver hand do carry silver weapons) scaling up as they level their vampire rank
  
• Greater weaknesses to fire, again scaling up.
  
• Disabling of certain vampiric abilities if the attacker or target is carrying garlic (yes, again...I know that's rare but the Silverhand do carry garlic)
  
• Vampires must feed, or go into Blood Lust, losing access to most of their mental powers, but having an advantage in strength and speed
  
• At higher levels, vampires must actually shield their presence when entering cities. This *might* consume magica, although at a slow rate. Meaning they can't just sustain this shield forever and may need to hide to allow their magica to restore and HOPE no one finds them otherwise
  
• Hopefully implementing Radiant AI "Silverhand Vampire Hunters" to attack.
  
• Weakness to werewolf attacks
  
• Weakness to turn undead (hopefully NPCs with the ability can be configured to use it. So far I've never been turned).
   
  

 

Please feel free to contribute some thoughts around balancing. I think the mod we're planning right now will be balanced. They're certainly powerful creatures in their own right at night but I agree, with that power needs to be some equalizing of the weaknesses.

 

-MM

 

Edit: Added to the list from my notes:

Edited February 4, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

i suppose it would also be cool if one needed to be unarmed to feed during combat...

 

I'm not bought on feeding during combat, except on the occassion that your combatant is "bleeding out". Under that situation I've added the "Feed" ability in my current game, but I'll have to wait for the CK to come out inorder to make it damage them. Well, actually I might could get creative and find a solution but I think I'll wait for the CK so we have more control via scripting.

 

What do others think about feeding during combat? Should it be possible to *attempt* to feed but there's a chance that it won't be successful? Compare strength between the player and the victim and use the difference as some sort of "saving throw" or perhaps the base chance of success altogether?

 

-MM

[rptb1]

Please feel free to contribute some thoughts around balancing. I think the mod we're planning right now will be balanced. They're certainly powerful creatures in their own right at night but I agree, with that power needs to be some equalizing of the weaknesses.

I'm no expert on modern ideas about vampires, but in the old Hammer Horror days they *had* to sleep and were totally vulnerable while sleeping. So one of the challenges of being a vampire was having a very secure place to spend the daylight hours. That's often what limited them from travel, made them ship themselves around on coffins in packing crates, etc. (There's even a reference to this in Skyrim -- I won't say where.)

 

I don't know exactly how this could be turned into gameplay, but when I caught vampirism I applied this rule to myself, and it made for a very different way of looking at the Skyrim map. Venturing into territory without certain shelter was essentially impossible. At one point I had to invade an inn and kill everyone inside in order to use the bed, and of course I ought to have been discovered by a wandering traveller. This is the sort of thing I mean by an interesting weakness. It leads to different gameplay and stories to tell.

 

I encourage you all to think well beyond combat. How do we make an entire vampire play experience by changing the rules?

[Jakisthe]

Well, so far we've quite a few changes beyond combat. Didja read the first post of mine? Admittedly, pretty long, but hey! Plenty of downsides to being a vampire. In addition to what MM said, I have:

 

-Food is useless

-Potions are useless

-Garlic in your inventory hurts you, and can even kill at high enough levels

-Glare increases (which is a tricky matter)

-Dealing with water (which is trickier. So far, we've found out that Tamrielian vampires can apparently swim, but whether this is from carrying some grave dirt, or if they simply sink to the bottom, we can't say)

-Stamina loss from health loss

-Massive glare and damage from being around divine shrines

-Cannot cast restorative magic, can't assist allies

-Even coming near a temple makes it more likely for people to discern your true nature and heighten odds that bounty hunters come after you

 

Of course, the exact values need tweaking, but I imagine that would change things up quite a bit. You'd have a harder time seeing in the sun,

 

 

Now, going back to the absolute oldest vampire lore, vampires were "merely" blood-drinking demons, and even when the modern day vampire was first envisioned in the 1819 book The Vampyre and then given the common tropes of the genre in the 1847 Varney the Vampyre, none of them necessitate a need for sleep, in fact, the Varney story makes a point to say that the coffin went unused. A lot of my ideas drew from all kinds of lore, but mostly it's been semi-modern, with small easter eggs tossed in for more recent renditions.

 

Of course, that's not to say there's not lore saying vampires needed sleep, or that the Tamrielian vampires don't need it (although the book in-game alludes to the fact that it was simply easier than walking in the daytime), but the way I see it, vampires sleep because that's a great way of waiting for the sun to set and for people to sleep...and if they did so in the sun, they'd be damaged.

 

As for changing the rules...well...that's what we're aiming towards! Being in the sun will be, at the very best, draining to the vampires abilities, and potentially even lethal given the level of brightness. Wildman has a very interesting idea about the need to feed, which would remain an ever present part of a vampires routine lest they go insane and suffer all kinds of interesting [and very well thought out] effects. Then there's the idea of the daedric blessings...which I'm just learning about, but that's an entire shift to evil instead of the Nine Divines. That would require a shift, especially considering the dangerous of even approaching the temples and shrines. At least...I hope it would.

 

 

...and no, I didn't randomly reference those books/dates off the top of my head, impressive though that would doubtless be, I researched them just now to make sure I was right :rolleyes:

Edited February 4, 2012 by Jakisthe

[elricshan]

Maybe making npc vampires stronger to?

[MofoMojo]

Well, so far we've quite a few changes beyond combat. Didja read the first post of mine? Admittedly, pretty long, but hey! Plenty of downsides to being a vampire. In addition to what MM said, I have:

 

-Food is useless

-Potions are useless

-Garlic in your inventory hurts you, and can even kill at high enough levels

-Glare increases (which is a tricky matter)

-Dealing with water (which is trickier. So far, we've found out that Tamrielian vampires can apparently swim, but whether this is from carrying some grave dirt, or if they simply sink to the bottom, we can't say)

-Stamina loss from health loss

-Massive glare and damage from being around divine shrines

-Cannot cast restorative magic, can't assist allies

-Even coming near a temple makes it more likely for people to discern your true nature and heighten odds that bounty hunters come after you

 

Of course, the exact values need tweaking, but I imagine that would change things up quite a bit. You'd have a harder time seeing in the sun,

 

o

Now, going back to the absolute oldest vampire lore, vampires were "merely" blood-drinking demons, and even when the modern day vampire was first envisioned in the 1819 book The Vampyre and then given the common tropes of the genre in the 1847 Varney the Vampyre, none of them necessitate a need for sleep, in fact, the Varney story makes a point to say that the coffin went unused. A lot of my ideas drew from all kinds of lore, but mostly it's been semi-modern, with small easter eggs tossed in for more recent renditions.

 

Of course, that's not to say there's not lore saying vampires needed sleep, or that the Tamrielian vampires don't need it (although the book in-game alludes to the fact that it was simply easier than walking in the daytime), but the way I see it, vampires sleep because that's a great way of waiting for the sun to set and for people to sleep...and if they did so in the sun, they'd be damaged.

 

As for changing the rules...well...that's what we're aiming towards! Being in the sun will be, at the very best, draining to the vampires abilities, and potentially even lethal given the level of brightness. Wildman has a very interesting idea about the need to feed, which would remain an ever present part of a vampires routine lest they go insane and suffer all kinds of interesting [and very well thought out] effects. Then there's the idea of the daedric blessings...which I'm just learning about, but that's an entire shift to evil instead of the Nine Divines. That would require a shift, especially considering the dangerous of even approaching the temples and shrines. At least...I hope it would.

 

 

...and no, I didn't randomly reference those books/dates off the top of my head, impressive though that would doubtless be, I researched them just now to make sure I was right :rolleyes:

 

Glad to see you around and SO thankful you mentioned those additional weakness. I completely forgot to include some of those as they're on my disadantages list (but others weren't). I really should just consolidate those two lists.

 

-MM

[elricshan]

Well, so far we've quite a few changes beyond combat. Didja read the first post of mine? Admittedly, pretty long, but hey! Plenty of downsides to being a vampire. In addition to what MM said, I have:

 

-Food is useless

-Potions are useless

-Garlic in your inventory hurts you, and can even kill at high enough levels

-Glare increases (which is a tricky matter)

-Dealing with water (which is trickier. So far, we've found out that Tamrielian vampires can apparently swim, but whether this is from carrying some grave dirt, or if they simply sink to the bottom, we can't say)

-Stamina loss from health loss

-Massive glare and damage from being around divine shrines

-Cannot cast restorative magic, can't assist allies

-Even coming near a temple makes it more likely for people to discern your true nature and heighten odds that bounty hunters come after you

 

Of course, the exact values need tweaking, but I imagine that would change things up quite a bit. You'd have a harder time seeing in the sun,

 

 

Now, going back to the absolute oldest vampire lore, vampires were "merely" blood-drinking demons, and even when the modern day vampire was first envisioned in the 1819 book The Vampyre and then given the common tropes of the genre in the 1847 Varney the Vampyre, none of them necessitate a need for sleep, in fact, the Varney story makes a point to say that the coffin went unused. A lot of my ideas drew from all kinds of lore, but mostly it's been semi-modern, with small easter eggs tossed in for more recent renditions.

 

Of course, that's not to say there's not lore saying vampires needed sleep, or that the Tamrielian vampires don't need it (although the book in-game alludes to the fact that it was simply easier than walking in the daytime), but the way I see it, vampires sleep because that's a great way of waiting for the sun to set and for people to sleep...and if they did so in the sun, they'd be damaged.

 

As for changing the rules...well...that's what we're aiming towards! Being in the sun will be, at the very best, draining to the vampires abilities, and potentially even lethal given the level of brightness. Wildman has a very interesting idea about the need to feed, which would remain an ever present part of a vampires routine lest they go insane and suffer all kinds of interesting [and very well thought out] effects. Then there's the idea of the daedric blessings...which I'm just learning about, but that's an entire shift to evil instead of the Nine Divines. That would require a shift, especially considering the dangerous of even approaching the temples and shrines. At least...I hope it would.

 

 

...and no, I didn't randomly reference those books/dates off the top of my head, impressive though that would doubtless be, I researched them just now to make sure I was right :rolleyes:

 

but aint it dracula that is the mothern vampires father? that is what people are saying and i have even read it and it have a lot of similarities (yes i read the original in english even if i am from norway)

[MofoMojo]

but aint it dracula that is the mothern vampires father? that is what people are saying and i have even read it and it have a lot of similarities (yes i read the original in english even if i am from norway)

 

Well, it's certainly the most recognizable literary vampire form, but there is much in lore about Vampires that was written prior, and certainly more that followed after. A lot has changed and certainly introduced many different ... traits ... amongst literary, cinematic and even vampire lore. Is he the Father in the sense of "The Creator" no. I think he's the "Father" of modern day vampirism as a form of fiction, yes, although he was not the first literary vampire, as Jakisthe points out.

 

Jakisthe, correct me if I'm wrong here. I think what we are attempting to do is not adhere to a single archetype of Vampire, but certainly introduce some of the more classical elements, and modern elements. And rather than simply sticking to even just Slav'ian lore, we're also including TES lore. There are many tribes of Vampires in TES which all have varying abilities (and weaknesses) that can be utilised. While the most modern vampires all owe a lot to Slavian legend and lore, we have many types of lore, Chinese, Slav, American, other. Similarly, TES has many tribes of different types of Vampires in the various provinces all with their own strengths and weaknesses.

 

Not sure if I'm answering your question there. Let me know if I'm in left field somewhere playing ball with my self. :)

 

Edit: For clarity

 

-MM

Edited February 4, 2012 by MofoMojo

[elricshan]

i know that there are diferent literature of vampires that is older but he is the most famous i think.

 

but back to the vampires maybe have a spell thing that gives the player of the ebony cuirass (the one that goes black) and is named something like melt with shadow. it increases sneak weary mutch and reduses the damage from the sun. (or similare efects)