Vampire

This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Vampire (monster).

Vampires are bloodsucking undead monsters, much feared and hunted by adventurers everywhere even though they make formidable adventurers themselves. They straddle the line between the living and the restless dead; the longer they go without blood, the more exaggerated (and monstrous) their undead traits become. When they are well-fed, however, they take on the semblance of life, regenerating rapidly but losing their undead abilities. They also gain a variety of vampiric quirks and powers with experience. Their aptitudes favor Stealth, Dodging, Hexes (currently they are the best in the game with an incredible +4 aptitude), Charms, Necromancy, and Short Blades over heavy melee or ranged combat.

Vampires cannot actually starve to death, but being completely bloodless will halt all natural healing (including the Regeneration spell), posing a threat to their survival all the same.

Innate Abilities

• See Invisible: Vampires have supernaturally acute eyesight.
• Fangs 3: Vampires have razor-sharp teeth, allowing a bonus Unarmed Combat melee attack.
• Although they can drink potions normally, vampires cannot eat food of any kind. They gain nutrition by feeding (press e for eat) on appropriate corpses, potions of blood, and potions of coagulated blood. Clean corpses and the contaminated corpses of sentient monsters can be fed upon at any time, while poisonous corpses can only be consumed if Thirsty or less. Heavier corpses provide more blood than lighter ones. Your satiation level determines which intrinsics you receive at any given time (see chart below).
• Vampires can use weapons of vampiricism more effectively; the brand always triggers and they gain twice the normal amount of HP per attack when striking opponents that leave clean corpses (as well as a small amount of satiation if the target is clean, contaminated, or poisonous).
• Being undead, vampires may not worship Zin, Elyvilon, or the Shining One.
• Vampires are vulnerable to holy wrath-branded weapons, as well as the Sunray and Dispel Undead spells.
• Vampires can never cast Borgnjor's Revivification, Death's Door, or Necromutation. Nor can vampires cast the following when satiated or thirstier: Dragon Form, Ice Form, Spider Form, Statue Form, Stoneskin, Beastly Appendage, Blade Hands, Cure Poison.
• At level 3, vampires can change to Bat Form when below full satiation. This allows faster movement, but disables most items, spellcasting, and weakens melee attacks. While in Bat Form Dexterity is increased and Strength is reduced.
• At level 6, vampires can create potions of blood from viable corpses, allowing you to save snacks for later.

Hunger-Dependent Stats

	Alive	Full	Satiated	Thirsty	Near Bloodless	Bloodless
Metabolism	Very fast	Fast	Fast	Normal	Slow	None
Regeneration	Very fast	Fast	Normal	Slow	Slow	None
Stealth Boost	None (18)	None (18)	None (18)	Minor (19)	Major (20)	Large (21)
Spell Hunger	Full	Full	Full	Halved	None	None
Poison Resistance	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Immune
Cold Resistance	None	None	None	1	2	2
Negative Resistance	None	None	1	2	3	3 + Torment
Mutation Chance	Always	Often	Sometimes	Never	Never	Never
Non-Physical Mutation Effects	Full	Capped	Capped	None	None	None
Potion Effects	Full	Full	Full	Halved	Halved	Halved

When Satiated or below, vampires:

• Cannot go berserk.
• Cannot transform, limiting the usefulness of their +1 Transmutations aptitude.

When Thirsty or below, vampires:

• Regain some HP and nutrition upon completing a successful stab against an enemy whose corpse they can drain, whether the enemy dies or not. This is one of the few ways for Bloodless vampires to heal.
• Can feed off poisonous corpses, although they will not drink past the lowest possible Satiated value.
• Can use the Bat Form ability.

When completely Bloodless, vampires:

• Cannot regenerate HP, naturally or through magical means (ring or spell), though other methods of healing are available.
• Cannot be poisoned, and will not suffer loss of HP from any existing poison, but the poisoned status itself will not be removed.

Preferred Backgrounds

Vampires prefer to become Monks, Assassins, Skalds, Enchanters, Stalkers, Summoners, Necromancers, and Ice Elementalists.

Due to their undead nature, vampires are prohibited from becoming Priests or Healers.

Level Bonuses

• Vampires gain +1 to a stat of your choice every 3 levels.
• Vampires have average HP and MP.
• Vampires gain 4 magic resistance per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Vampires start with the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions:

• Vampires start with potions of blood instead of rations.
• Vampires start with 1 level of Unarmed Combat if their background does not normally include that skill.

Difficulty of Play

Not having a real food clock allows you to play cautiously or abuse powerful spells without fear of starvation. Beyond that, so long as you play to your aptitudes and take advantage of your special abilities, you can do very well. Bat Form is a decent means of escape when dealing with melee opponents, and while a vampire's Spellcasting aptitude is nothing special, they are outstanding at Hexes and do well with Necromancy, Charms, and Transmutations (though this last one requires careful hunger management and use of bottled blood). Couple their Hexes proficiency with their exceptional Stealth (especially when Bloodless) and you have an unparalleled sneaky stabber.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	-1	Armour	-2	Spellcasting	0
Short Blades	+1	Dodging	+1	Conjurations	-3
Long Blades	0	Stealth	+4	Hexes	+4
Axes	-1	Stabbing	+1	Charms	+1
Maces & Flails	-2	Shields	-1	Summonings	0
Polearms	-1	Traps	0	Necromancy	+1
Staves	-2			Translocations	-2
Unarmed Combat	+1			Transmutation	+1
		Fire Magic	-2
Throwing	-2	Ice Magic	0	Invocations	-2
Slings	-2	Air Magic	0	Evocations	-1
Bows	-2	Earth Magic	-1
Crossbows	-2	Poison Magic	-1	Experience	150

Strategy

Used wisely, your adjustable undead nature can give you a wide variety of crucial immunities as you need them; used poorly, you end up unable to heal and eaten by yaks. Early on you'll likely want to keep your levels high enough to maintain your faster-than-average HP regeneration, dipping into Thirsty for poison resistance and the boost to Stealth as needed. Depending on your skill selection and the branches you explore, you may find these undead advantages become more and more desirable the deeper you get. A Bloodless vampire is one of the stealthiest characters possible, letting you stab your way through most challenges. The Lair is much easier when you're poison resistant and stealthy, and provides significant XP and loot early on. Immunity to negative energy and torment can make the Tomb and the Crypt much more manageable. Exploration of the Hells also benefits here, even moreso when braving Cocytus thanks to your two ranks of cold resistance.

Beyond that, the lack of a food clock means that you can spam high-level spells, hunger-inducing MP channeling, and powerful rods without fear. Since your Spellcasting aptitude isn't anything special, this makes playing a caster much more affordable. The exception to this is vampire transmuters, who will have to keep themselves at least satiated in order to cast much of anything.

Your innate escape ability, Bat Form, is usable only at Satiated or less. Experiment with it in safety to find out how much it reduces your carrying capacity. An Overloaded bat is not going to escape anything. Raise strength or limit the weight of what you carry as needed.

You can cope with the loss of HP regeneration while Bloodless in a number of ways.

• Reusable options available regardless of god choice include Stabbing corpse-providing enemies, casting the Vampiric Draining spell, or wielding a vampiricism branded weapon. A wand of healing is nice for emergency healing, as are potions (though these only function at half power).
• Worshipers of Kikubaaqudgha can get a pile of corpses delivered almost anywhere to easily manage your satiation level; this has the advantage of providing out-of-combat healing on demand (as opposed to most of the other options that all require the presence of enemies), and the disadvantage of wasting time as you hunger back down to an undead state.
• Worshipers of Yredelemnul can use his Drain Life ability to steal HP from all enemies in your line of sight, but this doesn't effect demons, the undead, plants, constructs, or holy opponents.
• Makhleb provides the most consistent healing, as killing anything has a good chance of healing a significant amount of HP. Since you likely won't be consuming as many corpses as other characters, you can send him plenty of blood sacrifices (though if you do need to take a drink every now and then, save the larger corpses for yourself and send him the smaller ones). One downside of this ability for Necromancers or Summoners is that, while Makhleb acknowledges allied kills through Piety gain, he does not grant HP for such kills.

Fun Fact: Makhleb also provides another benefit for vampires. Unlike most forms of magic, combat Invocations are not disabled while in Bat Form. While Bat Form is normally only used to escape dangerous situations, this allows you to kite opponents, spamming them with summoned demons or blasting them with bolts of random destructive energy. Just bear in mind that your AC is minimal in this form, and ranged or smiting enemies will still take shots at you.