Vampires

Blades in the Dark
#1

BitD Vampires appear to be quite a bit different than traditional vampires, and since one of my players might soon go down that road, I’m curious about how the community portrays vampires in their games. Specifically…

How does a vampire feed off of life essence? What does that look like? Do your vampires have fangs? If they don’t suck blood then I assume they have no need of them.

Do your vampires have any of the traditional immunities? Do they take normal damage from things like bullets and swords?

Do they cast reflections?

Ultimately I’ll answer these questions for myself in my game, but I’d love to steal some good ideas from other game masters.

Also, just to confirm, when a player ports their old character over to the Vampire playbook, do they simply get an additional dot in all actions? The playbook comes front loaded with a filled in dot in every action, so I assume that’s how it works. However, when using the Vampire playbook on Roll20 it comes up with no action dots filled in at all. Is that just an oversight? I assume it must be since the instructions on the playbook specifically say to add all of the PC’s current action ratings to the ratings on the Vampire playbook.

1 Like
#2

I suggest you to read pag. 218 (BitD v.8.2). You don’t gain additional dots in ALL actions.

About the other details, sadly I never had a long played campaign, so for now I have no cool details about the vampires in Doskvol.

#3

In my recent series one of my players played a vampire. I went with what the books states, that every predatory behavior can serve as a feeding methods - they encountered vampires that simply canibiliazed people to vampires with more obscure tastes.
Take into occount that vampires are quite powerful (if an advanced PC turns into one you can except much more rolls of 4-5 dice). Play on the vampire weaknesses (I simply took the ones in the playbook as the existing banes), threatning them often to negate that and make sure that they will always fear the Spirit Wardens picking up their scent.

1 Like
#4

Yes, duh, you are, of course, correct. I just glanced at the long list of Actions with a starting dot and thought it was ALL of the Actions.

So to rephrase the question, when the PC ports their character to the Vampire playbook, do they simply get an additional dot in Hunt, Prowl, Skirmish, Attune, Command and Sway?

#5

Well, that, and all the other rules and aspects stated in the same page, and in the first Trait you get, Undead.
Aside for all those things… nothing else :grinning:

Of course, as the GM, you should ask lot of interesting questions about the various vampire facets, so the whole group can be on the same wavelength when the vampire does/can’t do something in fiction.

#6

I’m a bit curious here: was that an enjoyable game for the non-vampire players, too?
Maybe you can elaborate a bit how you pulled that off, please?

I ask because in my groups the power gamer tends to become a vampire and after that it’s more of V & the band and less of The Crew.
So, lately I’m thinking more about all are vampires (or at least some kind of undead) or nobody is.

#7

When the scoundrel turned into a vampire the history of the crew was already quite long, and the second player’s PC had deep ties to it (the original members kidnapped them when they were a child), was quite advanced and as deranged as the vampire. Since the PC was so advanced, the power difference wasn’t significant, and their connection to the crew and both having no boundries mitigated possible collisions. Furthermore, the players were story-focused, so everything added well.

I don’t believe I was responsible for the results - the circumstances worked in our favor. The only advice I can think of is that PCs should get the chance to turn into vampires when most PCs are advanced .

1 Like