Arelith

As Arelith moves away from the endless grind for mechanical improvements based on random factors (the basin rework, changes to the appraise and search skills as well as to the loot matrix), I suggest deleting the vampire race from the list of playable races or replacing it with a generic undead race that offers multiple paths, such as animated corpse, soulless immortal, death knight, (demi-)lich, lower vampire etc. that is significantly downgraded mechanically and not locked behind an application.

The vampire race is currently locked behind a random and misleading factor of earning a major award, forcing players to create multiple (sometimes over a dozen) characters with the goal of rolling them. At the same time, this is an unrealistic goal since, under current policies, only a select few or "chosen ones" will ever be able to play this race, further implying and solidifying the notion of favoritism.

I find it peculiar that a single playable race has such mechanical benefits. I will list some of them them here as a reminder:

1) Immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks: This feat alone was moved to level 15 of the Pale Master class for balancing reasons!

2) Immunity to mind-affecting effects: Higher undead and vampires in particular have sophisticated minds that should be affected.

3) Immunity to all negative energy: As far as I understand, this effectively grants them immunity to most draining effects and necromancy spells.

4) Regeneration: I am unsure how to comment on this, considering there are ways to boost it to about 20+. Combined with decent AC and saves, it results in an unkillable character.

5) Permanent ultravision: This is a relatively minor boost.

Additionally, the undead race can use the Grimoire of Maleficence, effectively allowing them to summon balors even at level one.

All in all, it is quite ridiculous to even address here. I remember encountering a vampire assassin on PGGC as a new player, and my first thought was: Is this even allowed? It is not for me to decide since even my application for an assassin token was not good enough and got rejected multiple times. However, I think that such characters probably should not be permitted. I can imagine that being killed by one in-game would feel akin to encountering a cheater, unless they live in disguise, as I would, and it was unclear why they were so powerful. PC immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks is likely not displayed in the logs.

Regarding their inherent weaknesses, there are extremely few clerics and spellcasters on the server who use spells that the revealed vampires are currently vulnerable to in order to justify even half of their mechanical benefits in my view. In fact, it is too hard for me to imagine how to do it.