Vampires have to have blood because it takes vampire blood to turn a mortal into a vampire. They would have he same amount as a comparably sized human.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. Sure some depictions of vampires when injured in combat bleed like a mortal. Others on the other hand are sprayers because vampires in that world are built to bloat or whatever. And still others when they cut an artery or vein to feed a thrall into a full vampire manage to not spray but just manage the requisite drops to complete the turning. Maybe that's something to do with blood pressure, but it could also have a lot to do with blood volume.
I know these "all depends on world building" answers and digressions frustrate the OP, but really OP's question is sort of broken since it begs a bunch of other questions not really answered in the OP's game world's interpretation of vampires. Chiefmost, what is vampiric blood? Is it simply an equal liquid volume of whatever victim blood it ingested, granting it basic function through humanoid like circulation through muscles, etc ... or is burned more supernaturally by the curse of vampirism, especially when the vampire's supernatural powers are used (sort of like World of Darkness vampires blood mechanics in at least some editions of those games) so that when its blood is exhausted without feeding the vampire becomes the dessicated torpor sorts often encountered in vampire lore. Maybe the blood of its victims is metabolised upon feeding into a blood richer in concentrated vitality, so that 8 pints of human blood create two pints of vampire blood, which may last for months if it just holes up in its castle reading or lasts for barely two days if its running through night doing all sorts of supernatural violence.
All these what the OP considers non-answers are in fact license for the DM to determine it to be whatever they want it to be since there are so many ways to interpret vampire "metabolism" an arbitrary number on a board is meaningless. No one's trying to talk over their head, they're just trying to help the OP's head get to that level so they can derive an answer suitable to their actual needs. Rather than comporting their game to an arbitrary figure with no basis or rationale.
As i said, i already have the timing down. These vampires need to feed about once every 3 months (It's closer to 4, but 3 leave some wiggle room so a forgetful vampire doesn't risk their safety if they don't eat right away). I'm mostly trying to figure out how much blood they would "NEED" to consume. Like i can't imagine most vampires (even right after a feeding) are lugging around 1.2-1.5 gallons of blood, but I would also assume it's more then a pint pumping through their body.
Like why "once every 3 (or 4 months)? Why does it have to be so static unless the vampire leads a very very stable existence? Think about humans and water. Not counting vegetable and fruit and other food intake, I drink between one and two quarts/liters a day, closer to two on days I engage in more intentional exercise. Back when I was doing marathon training runs? A gallon or 4 liters a day, one of those quarts or liters actually enriched with electrolytes but otherwise water. If I were a human sized plant, my needs would be very different, and there'd be different needs as to whether the plants a succulent or a fruit bearing tree. Heck, if I was a human sized animal, I'd also metabolise water differently.
So on your scale I could see a sedentary vampire "pumping" (and do vampires have pulses?) a pint, but someone going full on 40 Days of NIght assault team vampire could well have consumed two-three gallons (maybe more because who knows how the arctic cold would effect the vamps metabolism, on the presumption that blood may be ingested exist in "thin" or "thick" states depending on how much the vampire consumes. End of the day, it's a question that's determinate on variables you don't seem willing to entertain. But it isn't a right or wrong question, it's a fun question, which is why people are answering it.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Like why "once every 3 (or 4 months)? Why does it have to be so static unless the vampire leads a very very stable existence? Think about humans and water. Not counting vegetable and fruit and other food intake, I drink between one and two quarts/liters a day, closer to two on days I engage in more intentional exercise. Back when I was doing marathon training runs? A gallon or 4 liters a day, one of those quarts or liters actually enriched with electrolytes but otherwise water. If I were a human sized plant, my needs would be very different, and there'd be different needs as to whether the plants a succulent or a fruit bearing tree. Heck, if I was a human sized animal, I'd also metabolise water differently.
So on your scale I could see a sedentary vampire "pumping" (and do vampires have pulses?) a pint, but someone going full on 40 Days of NIght assault team vampire could well have consumed two-three gallons (maybe more because who knows how the arctic cold would effect the vamps metabolism, on the presumption that blood may be ingested exist in "thin" or "thick" states depending on how much the vampire consumes. End of the day, it's a question that's determinate on variables you don't seem willing to entertain. But it isn't a right or wrong question, it's a fun question, which is why people are answering it.
Using real world science. Human blood cells last approximately 115 days. So a vampire would need to replace those blood cells before they die. Hence the 3-4 month (minimum) requirement between feeding. I could see an argument for feeding on smaller quantities per instance; consume a pint per session, so long as you consume X pints over the course of the 3-4 months. If you could function with 4-6 pints of blood in your body, your needs to replenish (and the amount of people you would need to meet that amount) is going to be vastly different then if you need 10-12 pints. And that doesn't even account for vampires who are constantly blood doping.
While i'll probably not bother getting down to the very micro level. I'd like to avoid "It works, because I (the DM) says it to works" being used. I find it tends to break immersion,
Using real world science. Human blood cells last approximately 115 days. So a vampire would need to replace those blood cells before they die. Hence the 3-4 month (minimum) requirement between feeding. I could see an argument for feeding on smaller quantities per instance; consume a pint per session, so long as you consume X pints over the course of the 3-4 months. If you could function with 4-6 pints of blood in your body, your needs to replenish (and the amount of people you would need to meet that amount) is going to be vastly different then if you need 10-12 pints. And that doesn't even account for vampires who are constantly blood doping.
While i'll probably not bother getting down to the very micro level. I'd like to avoid "It works, because I (the DM) says it to works" being used. I find it tends to break immersion,
Again, you're presuming vampiric blood is human blood with no vampiric transubstantiation and is metabolized exactly like human's metabolize their blood. Really if that were the case, you'd have some pretty boring vampire pushovers. Basically humanoid ticks, which can be funny but not formidable.
No one, especially me, has told you to claim "it works, because I (the DM) says it works". Everything offered to you is a logic, dependent on world building with care, not an arbitrary fiat. I mean, even Blade and Morbius I think went into the "science" of vampiric blood and remarked about transformations taking place in the blood once it leaves the human and enters the vamp. But if you want to run your vampires the way the Red Cross runs their Blood Banks and call that realism, no one can really stop that.
Since blood to a vampire is a consumable, I'd still treat blood as fuel used by an engine, if I really wanted a blood mechanic that gave sense to the vampire's ecology.
Here's a stumper for you. What does blood do in a human or humanoid lifeform if we adhere to a scientific model? Blood's job is to deliver oxygen to everywhere else in the body and retrieve more oxygen from the lungs. Do vampires breath? In most lore they don't, and it would be weird if Reborn and Dhamphyrs get Deathless Nature and Vampires don't. So if the blood in a vampire doesn't do literally the one job blood has in a humanoid? What does the blood do? The answer to that question opens up a range of possibilities not covered in the Red Cross care and storage of blood guidelines. If you want to pretend to be science based, and a vampires Vo2 max is dependent on consuming blood, any villainously active vampire is going to need to drink a lot, though I don't know if a vampire's anatomy, or any undead anatomy, really thrives on oxygen, deathless nature in the Reborn and Damphyr hint probably not. So if oxygen is thrown out the window and falls, what "biologic" leads the vampire to leap through the window with rule of cool effect?
Using real world science. Human blood cells last approximately 115 days. So a vampire would need to replace those blood cells before they die. Hence the 3-4 month (minimum) requirement between feeding. I could see an argument for feeding on smaller quantities per instance; consume a pint per session, so long as you consume X pints over the course of the 3-4 months. If you could function with 4-6 pints of blood in your body, your needs to replenish (and the amount of people you would need to meet that amount) is going to be vastly different then if you need 10-12 pints. And that doesn't even account for vampires who are constantly blood doping.
While i'll probably not bother getting down to the very micro level. I'd like to avoid "It works, because I (the DM) says it to works" being used. I find it tends to break immersion,
Again, you're presuming vampiric blood is human blood with no vampiric transubstantiation and is metabolized exactly like human's metabolize their blood. Really if that were the case, you'd have some pretty boring vampire pushovers. Basically humanoid ticks, which can be funny but not formidable.
No one, especially me, has told you to claim "it works, because I (the DM) says it works". Everything offered to you is a logic, dependent on world building with care, not an arbitrary fiat. I mean, even Blade and Morbius I think went into the "science" of vampiric blood and remarked about transformations taking place in the blood once it leaves the human and enters the vamp. But if you want to run your vampires the way the Red Cross runs their Blood Banks and call that realism, no one can really stop that.
Since blood to a vampire is a consumable, I'd still treat blood as fuel used by an engine, if I really wanted a blood mechanic that gave sense to the vampire's ecology.
Here's a stumper for you. What does blood do in a human or humanoid lifeform if we adhere to a scientific model? Blood's job is to deliver oxygen to everywhere else in the body and retrieve more oxygen from the lungs. Do vampires breath? In most lore they don't, and it would be weird if Reborn and Dhamphyrs get Deathless Nature and Vampires don't. So if the blood in a vampire doesn't do literally the one job blood has in a humanoid? What does the blood do? The answer to that question opens up a range of possibilities not covered in the Red Cross care and storage of blood guidelines. If you want to pretend to be science based, and a vampires Vo2 max is dependent on consuming blood, any villainously active vampire is going to need to drink a lot, though I don't know if a vampire's anatomy, or any undead anatomy, really thrives on oxygen, deathless nature in the Reborn and Damphyr hint probably not. So if oxygen is thrown out the window and falls, what "biologic" leads the vampire to leap through the window with rule of cool effect?
I feel like you are really trying to have a "gotcha" moment. But we can just as easily take your own argument as to why my version is kind of dull and stupid, to deconstruct the usual lore around Vampires. Like most lore implies that vampires do not require food to survive, an undead body doesn't require nutrition for survival after all. A vampire isn't going to suffer scurvy, due to a lack of vitamin C in their diet. So why do they even require blood at all? Are vampires anemic according to general lore?
Or by your own line of thinking, vampires are just cars and blood (specifically sapient being's blood) is gas. So vampires are cars that get TERRIBLE miles to the gallon, have to stop at dozens of stations every time they go out, and must be driven nearly constantly. in your version, blood somehow transforms/mutates into something considerably more powerful, once it leaves a sapient creatures body.... but also apparently it can't be gotten via a blood bank, the process only works if the blood is violently stolen; and has to be consumed immediately to have any effect. Why is the immense power via a transformation/mutation something that can only happen when a vampire feeds? Can you imagine having to deal with all the super powered wildlife, because it managed to get a taste of sapient blood? Do you not see that your version of the mythos sounds just as pants on head stupid, when you break it down?
I do think it's kind of funny that you have basically answered your own question as to the point of blood in a non humanoid lifeform. It circulates things around the body, carrying enriched X, and removing depleted X and/or waste product Y. You can literally take the word oxygen out, and replace it with mana/ichor/shim-sham-shadu... and suddenly it all makes sense, because it's freaking fantasy.
In the end, i don't think we are going to agree on anything. You seem to want to run your games a certain way (and you are more then welcome to do just that). I want to run mine a different way. I personally think having undead that have evolved beyond the cut and dry "evil thing that murders to sustain itself" make for much more interesting story lines.
So i will once again ask that you simply stop responding to my posts. It never feels like our conversations lead anywhere productive
If you die by losing half your blood, and to become a vampire you need to be killed by a bite from the vampire, then logically a vampire is made when someone has less than half their blood left, but is magically not dead. The curse saves their life, but condemns them to always crave blood, because they don't have enough to live. So I would say that a vampire would have anywhere from half the normal amount (when they are full) to none at all (when they go into stasis until they get blood). When you see cliche'd vampires being unboxed and draining everyone nearby, t's because they were in this stasis mode until blood was available. I would also say that they can neve rgo above half-full, because then they would stop craving blood.
This leads to a curiosity, that if the curse were somehow bypassed and a vampire were filled with blood, would the curse break? Could be a good plot point.
Vampires DON'T produce new blood. If they were bitten and transformed into a vampire, then they would have 10 pints minus however much was drained by the vampire that transformed them.
If the vampire was a corpse turned through some dark magic, they would have to be FRESHLY DEAD. This is because livor mortis sets in fully after just 8-12 hours, and also because he body quickly begins expelling all sorts of nasty chemicals that would make being a vampire an infeasible concept. With that said, either 10 liters, 10 pints minus anywhere from 1 to nearly 6 from fatal wounds, or none (Part of funeral preparation is draining the blood).
Hope that I gave some clarification! Now I'm in the mood to add biologically accurate vampires to my campaign...
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I don't know if that's necessarily true. Sure some depictions of vampires when injured in combat bleed like a mortal. Others on the other hand are sprayers because vampires in that world are built to bloat or whatever. And still others when they cut an artery or vein to feed a thrall into a full vampire manage to not spray but just manage the requisite drops to complete the turning. Maybe that's something to do with blood pressure, but it could also have a lot to do with blood volume.
I know these "all depends on world building" answers and digressions frustrate the OP, but really OP's question is sort of broken since it begs a bunch of other questions not really answered in the OP's game world's interpretation of vampires. Chiefmost, what is vampiric blood? Is it simply an equal liquid volume of whatever victim blood it ingested, granting it basic function through humanoid like circulation through muscles, etc ... or is burned more supernaturally by the curse of vampirism, especially when the vampire's supernatural powers are used (sort of like World of Darkness vampires blood mechanics in at least some editions of those games) so that when its blood is exhausted without feeding the vampire becomes the dessicated torpor sorts often encountered in vampire lore. Maybe the blood of its victims is metabolised upon feeding into a blood richer in concentrated vitality, so that 8 pints of human blood create two pints of vampire blood, which may last for months if it just holes up in its castle reading or lasts for barely two days if its running through night doing all sorts of supernatural violence.
All these what the OP considers non-answers are in fact license for the DM to determine it to be whatever they want it to be since there are so many ways to interpret vampire "metabolism" an arbitrary number on a board is meaningless. No one's trying to talk over their head, they're just trying to help the OP's head get to that level so they can derive an answer suitable to their actual needs. Rather than comporting their game to an arbitrary figure with no basis or rationale.
Like why "once every 3 (or 4 months)? Why does it have to be so static unless the vampire leads a very very stable existence? Think about humans and water. Not counting vegetable and fruit and other food intake, I drink between one and two quarts/liters a day, closer to two on days I engage in more intentional exercise. Back when I was doing marathon training runs? A gallon or 4 liters a day, one of those quarts or liters actually enriched with electrolytes but otherwise water. If I were a human sized plant, my needs would be very different, and there'd be different needs as to whether the plants a succulent or a fruit bearing tree. Heck, if I was a human sized animal, I'd also metabolise water differently.
So on your scale I could see a sedentary vampire "pumping" (and do vampires have pulses?) a pint, but someone going full on 40 Days of NIght assault team vampire could well have consumed two-three gallons (maybe more because who knows how the arctic cold would effect the vamps metabolism, on the presumption that blood may be ingested exist in "thin" or "thick" states depending on how much the vampire consumes. End of the day, it's a question that's determinate on variables you don't seem willing to entertain. But it isn't a right or wrong question, it's a fun question, which is why people are answering it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Using real world science. Human blood cells last approximately 115 days. So a vampire would need to replace those blood cells before they die. Hence the 3-4 month (minimum) requirement between feeding. I could see an argument for feeding on smaller quantities per instance; consume a pint per session, so long as you consume X pints over the course of the 3-4 months. If you could function with 4-6 pints of blood in your body, your needs to replenish (and the amount of people you would need to meet that amount) is going to be vastly different then if you need 10-12 pints. And that doesn't even account for vampires who are constantly blood doping.
While i'll probably not bother getting down to the very micro level. I'd like to avoid "It works, because I (the DM) says it to works" being used. I find it tends to break immersion,
Again, you're presuming vampiric blood is human blood with no vampiric transubstantiation and is metabolized exactly like human's metabolize their blood. Really if that were the case, you'd have some pretty boring vampire pushovers. Basically humanoid ticks, which can be funny but not formidable.
No one, especially me, has told you to claim "it works, because I (the DM) says it works". Everything offered to you is a logic, dependent on world building with care, not an arbitrary fiat. I mean, even Blade and Morbius I think went into the "science" of vampiric blood and remarked about transformations taking place in the blood once it leaves the human and enters the vamp. But if you want to run your vampires the way the Red Cross runs their Blood Banks and call that realism, no one can really stop that.
Since blood to a vampire is a consumable, I'd still treat blood as fuel used by an engine, if I really wanted a blood mechanic that gave sense to the vampire's ecology.
Here's a stumper for you. What does blood do in a human or humanoid lifeform if we adhere to a scientific model? Blood's job is to deliver oxygen to everywhere else in the body and retrieve more oxygen from the lungs. Do vampires breath? In most lore they don't, and it would be weird if Reborn and Dhamphyrs get Deathless Nature and Vampires don't. So if the blood in a vampire doesn't do literally the one job blood has in a humanoid? What does the blood do? The answer to that question opens up a range of possibilities not covered in the Red Cross care and storage of blood guidelines. If you want to pretend to be science based, and a vampires Vo2 max is dependent on consuming blood, any villainously active vampire is going to need to drink a lot, though I don't know if a vampire's anatomy, or any undead anatomy, really thrives on oxygen, deathless nature in the Reborn and Damphyr hint probably not. So if oxygen is thrown out the window and falls, what "biologic" leads the vampire to leap through the window with rule of cool effect?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I feel like you are really trying to have a "gotcha" moment. But we can just as easily take your own argument as to why my version is kind of dull and stupid, to deconstruct the usual lore around Vampires. Like most lore implies that vampires do not require food to survive, an undead body doesn't require nutrition for survival after all. A vampire isn't going to suffer scurvy, due to a lack of vitamin C in their diet. So why do they even require blood at all? Are vampires anemic according to general lore?
Or by your own line of thinking, vampires are just cars and blood (specifically sapient being's blood) is gas. So vampires are cars that get TERRIBLE miles to the gallon, have to stop at dozens of stations every time they go out, and must be driven nearly constantly. in your version, blood somehow transforms/mutates into something considerably more powerful, once it leaves a sapient creatures body.... but also apparently it can't be gotten via a blood bank, the process only works if the blood is violently stolen; and has to be consumed immediately to have any effect. Why is the immense power via a transformation/mutation something that can only happen when a vampire feeds? Can you imagine having to deal with all the super powered wildlife, because it managed to get a taste of sapient blood? Do you not see that your version of the mythos sounds just as pants on head stupid, when you break it down?
I do think it's kind of funny that you have basically answered your own question as to the point of blood in a non humanoid lifeform. It circulates things around the body, carrying enriched X, and removing depleted X and/or waste product Y. You can literally take the word oxygen out, and replace it with mana/ichor/shim-sham-shadu... and suddenly it all makes sense, because it's freaking fantasy.
In the end, i don't think we are going to agree on anything. You seem to want to run your games a certain way (and you are more then welcome to do just that). I want to run mine a different way. I personally think having undead that have evolved beyond the cut and dry "evil thing that murders to sustain itself" make for much more interesting story lines.
So i will once again ask that you simply stop responding to my posts. It never feels like our conversations lead anywhere productive
If you die by losing half your blood, and to become a vampire you need to be killed by a bite from the vampire, then logically a vampire is made when someone has less than half their blood left, but is magically not dead. The curse saves their life, but condemns them to always crave blood, because they don't have enough to live. So I would say that a vampire would have anywhere from half the normal amount (when they are full) to none at all (when they go into stasis until they get blood). When you see cliche'd vampires being unboxed and draining everyone nearby, t's because they were in this stasis mode until blood was available. I would also say that they can neve rgo above half-full, because then they would stop craving blood.
This leads to a curiosity, that if the curse were somehow bypassed and a vampire were filled with blood, would the curse break? Could be a good plot point.
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Well, it depends on how they became a vampire.
Vampires DON'T produce new blood. If they were bitten and transformed into a vampire, then they would have 10 pints minus however much was drained by the vampire that transformed them.
If the vampire was a corpse turned through some dark magic, they would have to be FRESHLY DEAD. This is because livor mortis sets in fully after just 8-12 hours, and also because he body quickly begins expelling all sorts of nasty chemicals that would make being a vampire an infeasible concept. With that said, either 10 liters, 10 pints minus anywhere from 1 to nearly 6 from fatal wounds, or none (Part of funeral preparation is draining the blood).
Hope that I gave some clarification! Now I'm in the mood to add biologically accurate vampires to my campaign...