Vampire race.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

Hello! I am currently playing a vampire and having a blast.

Still, some things I would change;

-Make it greater award.(keep the DM permission)

Vampires are basicly an RP cookie.
Sure, they have a load of immunities.
But their weaknesses totally even it out.
And you don't get to have gifts.

Also, This would open up vampire nest RP.

-Turn undead.

Remember weaknesses?
Vampires get that old type fear when turned.

The problem is, so many spawns have some kind of priest spamming it.

I would like to see that turned into the new type of fear.

That is all!
-Markus

[The Rambling Midget]

-Make it greater award.(keep the DM permission)

This choice is not about balance, but rarity. Vampires should not be common. They should not even be uncommon. Sentient vampires should be so rare that characters can still convince themselves that they're a myth. As a greater award, they would become as common as Tieflings were, which is to say that you'd be seeing one on every street corner.

[Spyre]

-Make it greater award.(keep the DM permission)

This choice is not about balance, but rarity. Vampires should not be common. They should not even be uncommon. Sentient vampires should be so rare that characters can still convince themselves that they're a myth. As a greater award, they would become as common as Tieflings were, which is to say that you'd be seeing one on every street corner.

Precisely this.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

-Make it greater award.(keep the DM permission)

This choice is not about balance, but rarity. Vampires should not be common. They should not even be uncommon. Sentient vampires should be so rare that characters can still convince themselves that they're a myth. As a greater award, they would become as common as Tieflings were, which is to say that you'd be seeing one on every street corner.

Precisely this.

I'm not really known the the deep vampire lore of the forgotten realms, And base my vampire knowlage on the most reliable sources: Buffy the Vampire slayer and Vampire Bloodlines (more recently Shadow hunters, I know.)

Wich make me think that vampires spread like a decease.

Building up on that:

-Fledgelings!

Maybe we could add a -sire option that turns a character into a fledgling vampire that function much like the werewolve curse does.

Anyway: Thanks for the fast reply!

[strong yeet]

I'm not really known the the deep vampire lore of the forgotten realms, And base my vampire knowlage on the most reliable sources: Buffy the Vampire slayer and Vampire Bloodlines (more recently Shadow hunters, I know.)

Wich make me think that vampires spread like a decease.

Maybe you should put in a modicum of effort and do some reading about them.

[Tarkus the dog]

I'm not really known the the deep vampire lore of the forgotten realms

You should be. You should also not base your character off of Vampire the Masquerade or any other sources if you want to be in line with the rest of the setting, otherwise you might find yourself in difficult situations. Just googling "vampire forgotten realms" and spending five minutes to read on the wiki page will take you a long way. Sentient vampires in forgotten realms are rare, they don't have huge secret societies as they do in VtM. Chances are, if one vampire is to encounter another they are way more likely to kill each other than to try to form any sort of alliance.

That said, game wise vampires are pretty broken. They are so ridiculously broken that they somehow managed to be given a pass right underneath the team's nose. It's the dragon race all over again, somehow even stronger than original dragons, and the only question is how long will it take for the team to realize this. Best case scenario they decide to put them on rotation, and the worst they actually never do anything about the race and leave it as it is. Because barely anyone plays one on the surface it's very likely that nothing at all will be done about them. For this reason, and the fact that they are pretty rare, keeping them as major reward is questionable as it is, and moving them to greater reward would be simply comedic. At any case, I think you'll have more fun with your character if you stay true to the setting they exist in.

[Cortex]

Tarkus is correct that you should study the race you want to play, especiallyl if it's a rare or a 5%. That said, you can always take bits of other media as inspiration of how you want to play a vampire, so long it's fitting of existing FR lore and how it'd apply in Arelith.

[Subutai]

That said, game wise vampires are pretty broken. They are so ridiculously broken that they somehow managed to be given a pass right underneath the team's nose. It's the dragon race all over again, somehow even stronger than original dragons

Can you go into some detail on this, please?

[Cortex]

I think an example is, to my knowledge, that DEX based vampires are immune to heal-based spells since they require a touch attack, thus nullifying their one weakness in combat. Could be I'm wrong and there's more to it.

[Dagonlives]

Rogue 24/6 vampires are very very potent because they have few weaknesses. Barbarian Vampire are also crazy strong. The class has all the benefits of undead and not much of the weaknesses. (Bless weapon doesn't even work on them cause they don't actually count as undead).

[Tarkus the dog]

I wanted to write a shorter post but it got larger and larger as I rambled on, so here it is:

They are immune to sneak attacks and crit attacks, they also have mind immunity, death immunity, immunity to being paralyzed or stunned. Less importantly they also not affected by poisons, disease or sleep effects but for the most part this is just a quality of life change. When their blood pool is full, which is really easy to do in PvE if you're not a mage, they also get a soft +2 to dex and con and also a +4 to con. They get +4 regen when their blood pool is at 75-99, and +6 when it's at 100.

In return, there are two spells that can instantly kill them. One is a will spell and another is a reflex spell. Heal/mass heal also affects them, and they can't travel in the sunlight. They can also be turned, but this is never likely to happen unless you run either into a smiter or a player who made their goal to be able to turn vampire PCs. Smiters becuase they have high charisma which is what you need to turn creatures. Apart from being turned a few times in PvE while you're leveling up, turn is unlikely to ever bother you. You also can't pray out of it, so there's that. They also have to drink blood, but considering they don't have to worry about food and water this is actually a positive thing. Holy grenades that rogues can throw are also pretty deadly against them ( mostly because they stack for some reason, making it so that rogues essentially counter all vampires ). Vampires also get totem form, and this deserves a topic of it's own. Simply put, at any time you can shift into a bat or a wolf (It's basically the same as druid totem shape ). This gives you hilarious amounts of AC and HP. In DnD they get Str +6, Dex +4, Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +4 and a +8 to some skills and the ability to control bats/wolves and some other animals, but this isn't a thing in Arelith.

On paper, this seems like a fair trade. You get immunities and some soft stats, in return there are spells that can seriously ruin your day. In reality, and especially in Arelith, this is barely a downside. This is why:

-Bless weapon doesn't work against vampire PCs
-The two deadly spells that can kill you are laughable in comparison to other ten one-shot spells that exist on the server that are just as deadly to other PCs, and you can also get high enough saves to counter this, also the point bellow:
-Wolf/bat form actually changes your racial type, this one actually slipped through. This means that spells that kill vampires no longer do. Relevant to this topic, rangers needs "Elemental" favorite enemy in order for the Bane of Enemies to proc on a Totem Druid that is rocking one of the four elemental forms, this probably also applies to vampires but I haven't tested it. In order words, someone needs to take a look at totem druid form
-Wolf/bat form gives you tons of AC and HP, essentially being an "oh shit" button that can get you safely out of any situation, even during timestop. Avascular mass + hellball + greater ruin + timestop + IGMS spam combo can also be countered this way, somehow.
-Like Cortex mentioned Mass Heal is a ranged touch attack and Heal is a melee touch attack, if you have high enough Touch AC you can completely ignore these spell. Concealment also gives you a 50% chance to avoid it. In DnD mass heal/heal is a serious threat because it basically one shots you, in Arelith not so much. I think it's also important to notice that non-vampire PCs can be harmed. NEP counters this, but NEP is breachable. A cleric can breach, time stop and harm someone to death just as much as they can timestop and try to do the same to a vampire with heal. Harm also heals vampires, interestingly enough, so vampire clerics are a thing. Not to say that you will never ever be affected by Heal/Mass heal as a Dex character. Basically whenever I see a cleric buff up in a massive fight I simply run away because there is no safe guarantee that they are not doing this in order to raise their touch AB

And the most important part, in my opinion: In 3.5 DnD undead creatures don't have a constitution score. I'm not a DnD nerd but if I understand this correctly what this basically means is that my 582 HP character should be having 282 HP. This is a huge oversight on Arelith's part when they introduced the race. Now the 282 HP vampire stacked with immunites doesn't look that terrifying, but at the same time fewer people would probably want to play one. I get that Arelith doesn't copy past stuff from DnD and does a lot of tweaking in order for stuff to fit with the server ambient, but there is a reason all the undead enemies you run into dungeons have barely any HP.

So to sum it up, most of their downsides can be mitigated and most of the time you will much more benefit from your pros than suffering from your cons. The only time I nearly died on my character is because I accidentally grenaded myself with a holy flask, otherwise I don't remember being dropped down to injured once apart from randomly messing in the arena. It's not that difficult to play around your weaknesses, and the only time you're in trouble is when the enemy deliberately knows what they are up against and are ready for you. In this case you have very little chance of winning, so you're better off just calling it a day and going anywhere but where they are. You basically have to be some DirtyDeity-tier mechanics abusing aim-boting wall-hacking Elf-ERPing ( and also getting away with it, of course ) tier in order to play around a rogue and a wizard stacked on undeath to death followed by a cleric, and I don't use this terrible joke that no one is probably going to get since it's an inside joke of an inside joke very lightly. But biggest pet peeve of mine is the sunlight, it's really difficult to find any roleplay outside of the Underdark. Every time I log into my character to find it's hour 6 in game I tend to log off right away. It's a downside of playing an undead creature directed not only at the character itself, but also at the player, and this is super vexing, but I know what I signed up for so rather than outright complaining I'm elaborating as to why I don't play my character as much. In my opinion, the vampire race ( or any UNDEAD race ) should have never been introduced in the first place and it's also very difficult to balance it on Arelith. The fact that it's so vexing to play the race that half of the time can't access the good 65% of the server is one way this balances itself out, but again the player is targeted as much as is the character. Similarly to how drow work, except drow don't take sun damage in the sunlight. But there are people ( unlike me ) who have an easy time playing in Andunor, so for them sunlight isn't even a thing. Also I forgot to mention that darkness spell doesn't help against the magic damage you take in the sun, and the fact that the thrall system is so pointless and uninspiring that it makes me genuinely sad. Not to bring any IG info OOC but there literally is no point in having a thrall from mechanical standpoint. It's all for Roleplay only, the Thrall/Vampire bonuses either get are short-lived and not worth it resource-wise. I'm not sure what else to add except to say that I hope in the future Arelith will be more considerate when introducing major races, although a very, very small part of the entire PC population, vampires are in a very peculiar situation and probably why very few talk about these issues in the first place. I can't say I didn't like playing my character, even back when you'd die in Shadovar if you dared traverse it in middle of the day, but I know that there is a better way to make the race enjoyable to both the player and others who encounter it, but as usual Arelith's players are those who test things, and it is really hard to tell by looking at paper alone how things will work out.

[xanrael]

And the most important part, in my opinion: In 3.5 DnD undead creatures don't have a constitution score. I'm not a DnD nerd but if I understand this correctly what this basically means is that my 582 HP character should be having 282 HP. This is a huge oversight on Arelith's part when they introduced the race. Now the 282 HP vampire stacked with immunites doesn't look that terrifying, but at the same time fewer people would probably want to play one. I get that Arelith doesn't copy past stuff from DnD and does a lot of tweaking in order for stuff to fit with the server ambient, but there is a reason all the undead enemies you run into dungeons have barely any HP.

You're partially right. They don't have a con score but vampires switch all their Hit Dice from whatever they were to d12s. Magic effect stacking also works differently in PnP. Generally you'll see classes like wizards and rogues gaining HP while barbarians and fighters lose HP when turned into vampires.

Using PnP for "balance" advice is a bit of a bad idea as the game is built around a team of people overcoming challenges together as opposed to pitting them against one another and makes zero attempt at balance within the party. Not that you have to play it that way, or people don't theorycraft monk versus fighter etc, but its not the design direction of the game.