Vampire Thrall Rework

[Skane]

At the moment a Vampire’s Thrall serves little to no purpose. They are supposed to act as mobile blood banks; but they don’t need to do so when their Vampire Master is already flush with blood in the form of relatively cheap blood vials and an ample supply of enemies the Vampire can feed freely from without worrying about weakening their thrall.

As to the current mechanical side, the Vampire loses 100% of their current blood in quarter segments to grant them up to +4 soft con. This effectively acts as a free bear’s endurance due to the ample supply of blood. Or the thrall can fill up the Vampire’s blood meter at the cost of their own con, and after a fourth feeding death, which clashes with how Arelith wants it’s players to respect death.

The very act of making a thrall doesn’t seem in-line with the lore for vampires within the Forgotten Realms when looking for lore related to it. I could not find anywhere that a thrall is made in this way; they are, instead, made by a vampire using their gaze attack, which can already be handled adequately by either the spell or RP, similar to how despite slaves being ‘forcibly taken’ the rules quite clearly lay out they need to give OOC consent.

What I propose is to replace thralls with Vampire Spawn; and to at best give them a permanent +4 mechanical soft boost to con similar to how a fully fed thrall is right now. However I think it would be fine if they had no mechanical bonuses at all; barring perhaps no longer needing to eat and drink; have them required to drink blood, all the weaknesses of the Vampire, the RP consequences of being forced to obey the every whim of your Vampire creator. Place a mechanical cap of up to three spawn, though I would personally suggest two of spawn per Vampire to prevent saturation. Maintain the strict application requirement of the Vampire as it stands; make it clear that the Spawn, though not requiring an application themselves, will be required to uphold themselves properly, remove their spawndom if not or apply a MoD.

In the instance of the Vampire master rolling, rather than having the Spawn become full Vampires, just have them lose the ‘Spawn’ template upon death. Additionally though unrelated to the suggested replacement of Thralldom, give Vampire’s darkvision

As for why any of this should be done to begin with, given the small population of the Vampire playerbase even accounting for the possible additional ‘vampires’ by virtue of their Spawn. They would affect, at most, less than 5% of the server, at least directly. However by implementing this Vampires’ have more of an island way presence, be it through the extended influence they can now reach through their ‘minions’ or that such a rework will allow them to work more openly if they so choose, perhaps vampire-hunters or cultural traditions of carrying garlic will erupt amongst the player-base. Though it’s only one more ghoul to add to Arelith’s frightful collection, a well-rped vampire and their spawn can be an almost literary horror, I think giving them the opportunity to show the player base that will benefit everyone.