Necro Variant: Vampire

[Juliet Must Die]

Well... I know 1.10 is just around the corner (or is it...), but for the last couple
of weeks i've really been bored with my other characters. I therefore decided
to try something new and i came up with the following build:

The Vampire:

Skills:

20 - Teeth

The teeth is a vampires dearest property. The greater teeth a vampire has the
greater is his powers. Besides giving the vampire power, the vampire uses his
teeth mostly to show off.

20 - Skeleton Mastery
20 - Revive

A highly skilled vampire is able to drain his enemies just enough to make the living
dead. They will now be slaves of the vampire as only he can give them fresh blood
through his life tap curse.

20 - Life Tap

The ultimate curse for a vampire. Makes him able to supply booth him and his slaves
with fresh blood.

20 - Terror

Because a vampire looks like a human he can walk in the crowd unnoticed. But by
changing his appearence to his demonic side he is able to frighten even the slaves
of the prime evils themselves.

+ prerequesites

The two last ones doesn't need to go all the way to lvl 20, but i can't find any other
skills that fits a vampire. Any suggestions?

Equipment:

The goal is that every part of equipment eventually will be a crafted blood-item.
Untill then every other item is allowed.

Strategy:

The vampire will mostly depend on melee fighting and his revives. Lifetap is one of
the only curses granted to the vampire, so he has to make the best use of it as possible.

Rules:

1st skillpoint must allways be invested in teeth.

As said before the teeth gives a vampire power. Therefore no skill with a lvl 6 requirement
may be choosen before teeth has reached lvl 5. Lvl 12 skills require lvl 10 teeth. Lvl 18 skills
requrire lvl 15 teeth. Lvl 24 and 30 skills require lvl 20 teeth.

The vampire can't control his slaves (Revives) unless he is able to feed them with enough fresh
blood. Therefore no points may be invested in revive before life tap has reached lvl 5. Also the
vampire may never raise the lvl of revive to a higher lvl than life tap.

If an item with life steal is found, before a crafted item of the same type has been made, the
item with life steal must replace the item of same type that's currently being used regardless
of other prefixes and suffixes. If both items have life steal the one with the highest must be choosen.

Goal:

The goal is simple: Become a complete vampire by using only blood-crafted items and having teeth at
lvl 20. Complete the game. These goal must be achived without the use of twinking and/or boosting.

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All i need to know is if this variant has been made before and if any of you have suggestions to
additional skills a vampire might use (there must be a valid reason). I've looked in LemmingofGlory's
variant archive but i couldn't seem to find anything.

Thanks in advance!

Juliet Must Die

[BlackLightning]

Have you been watching the "Blade" series lately? :blink:
Anyway,
I like the idea, but there are just a few "wrong" things with it.
By the way, this is in no way a flame-thingy, just trying to offer some help. :)

One: Teeth is a good skill, but you need to enhance it's magic damage, one way or another. I read somewhere a while back, that one guy had dueled succesfully on Battle.net, but only after acquiring something to boost his Teeth damage.

Two: Don't, and I repeat, DON'T decide you're going to put 20 skill points into about 4 or 5 skills. It just doesn't work that quickly. You'll have to get some +skills items in order to make your build succesful. Nevertheless, since many of your skills are low level, you shouldn't have too much of a problem. Good thinking. :D

Three: While terror is good, vampires are able to weaken enemies with their bites, correct? why don't you invest several points into Weaken instead, it'll probably help you drain life much more easily, and help your minions survive longer.

I guess that's about it. Thanks for the great idea though. I might try out a vampire and tell you how it goes! Cheers!

Yeah, that's it.....

[Baajikiil]

You may want to add a few more rules to go along with the vampire theme. Just a few suggestions:

No potions at all(after life tap); vampire must gain there strength back from leaching. or...
Only red potions; bottled blood; only can be used when found from enemies.

Hmm seems like he may just become a revive necro with life tap and teeth(a slow revive necro).

Perhaps he can only revive those that he has killed himself; transfering the vampiric curse with his bite.

It seems that the idea could use a little fleshing out, but could be lots of fun.

P.S. Maybe allow blood golem in some way; it seems that a vampire would specialize in blood magic.

EDIT: Also make some kind of ruling about mercs, which are allowed, if any, what they can use, ect..

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Juliet Must Die,

A Vampire, contrary to popular belief, can be abroad in daylight, but his powers are weakened (Bram Stoker). No Life Tap! Perhaps VERY limited (if any) Revives too; I'd be tempted to say no teeth either.

Only can revive things that were killed with Teeth: if you hacked someone with an axe, they are NOT going to come back as a Vampire!

[Albion Child]

Drinking the blood of the dead is very close to suicide, so perhaps limit teeth usage on undead.

What about other vampires (The monster class) in the game? How to deal with them?

What about the cathedral? Perhaps he is badly weakened in this area. Can't attack or run and must unsummon all revives before entering.....

The Burial Grounds (and the dungeons) shuld be very important to this guy. A fun challenge would be to force him to slay Blood Raven, her army of the dead, and all monsters in the crypt and mausoleum before investing in skill or stat points or both. After all, a vampire can''t gain strength without his coffin....

Also limit his equipment usage (before he atains blood items) lie no Angels/holy/of the heavens etc etc

Open wounds could be a "preferred" ability.

If I think of more I'll add later... ;)

[Logic_X]

heh.....the only problem with making a variant around something with so many available definitions is just that.....do you take Stoker's model of a vampire (was mentioned above)......Rice's? Classic Vampire movies (Nosferatu) ? White Wolf's (RPG company...Vamp:Masquerade, Vamp:Dark Ages, etc.)? FASA's (Makers of Shadowrun)? TSR (D&D)? Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering)?......so many choices...and I'm sure there's hundreds beyond that (because every author, game maker, etc. has a different definition of ghouls, vampires, werewolves, etc.)....maybe make one of every major group that has signifigant differences (ie "Stoker's Vampire" and "Fasa Vampire" would be two completely different things - Fasa = spread like a disease instead of through blood transfusion)....just ideas.

[Juliet Must Die]

First of all thanks for the feedback! I've taken the stuff into consideration and I've come up with the following:

New skills:

Weaken:

As BlackLightning wrote, vampires are able to weaken their enemies by biting them. Therefore weaken can only be applied after a succesful hit of teeth.

Blood golem + golem mastery (can't believe i didn't think of those myself ;) ) :

A vampire worships blood magic. And when a vampire grows potent enough, he is able to summon forth a servant made of pure blood. Furthermore he can increase his servants abilities by further studying blood magic (Golem mastery).

Summon resist:

As the vampire's powers increase, his ability to shield his slaves and servants increases with them.

That sums up the skill additions.

Rule additions:

While the potions available at the mechants are actual healing potions, it sometimes happens that a prime evil minion carries bottled blood. This is the only source that a vampire has to regain his strengt besides leeching. Therefore: Red potions aren't allowed to be bought from the merchants but can be used if found on a slain enemy.

Revive may only be cast on enemies that has been killed by teeth.

In daylight the vampire is weakened. He may only use melee combat to deal with his adversaries. No teeth, curses or minions. The vampire will still be able to chacnge into his true demonic look. Therefore terror is an exception to the above restrictions. Holy places like the cathedral and the temples in Kurast has the same effect as daylight.

The vampire has to reclaim his home (Burial ground + tombs) before completing any other quests.

Item names reffering to something heavenly are forbidden. Also, items that add points to light radius or increased damage and attack rating vs. undead and demons are forbidden.

Any other vampires that aren't on the same quest as yourself are to be considered as enemies and must be slain.

No mercs allowed. 1) No human dares to work for a vampire. He wouldn't know if he was paid to assist the vampire or to feed it. 2) A vampire preffers that his minions are without a mind of their own. This way they don't interrups his cause.

That's all for now.

I know that there's a lot of different discriptions of vampires and i must confess that I ain't familiar with many of them. Especially not the more detailed ones. I've watched Blade, from dusk till dawn and buffy the vampire slayer ;) That's basicly what my knowlede revolves around. Therefore any suggestions or corrections will be greatly appreciated! If there aren't any, I'll be off creating my vamp very soon :)



Thanks in advance

Juliet must die