I have a PC that is currently a vampire using some rules I homebrewed. I won't get too much into detail, but there is a mechanic shamelessly stolen from VTM where the PC has a pool of blood, and every morning they must roll a d20 and score 11 or higher or be forced to expend a blood point.
But when the question of feeding came up at the table, another PC said that the vampire PC could simply feed of them every morning. In the homebrew, it deals a bunch of damage and reduces the max hp of the victim by the same amount, but as I keep thinking about it, the stronger the PCs get, the less of an impact the morning feeding will have, but it also raised the question of biting and drinking from someone in combat. Why should a Archmage be better at being a blood bag than a Veteran.
In 3e/3.5e, vampires don't drain levels, but they drain Constitution by 1d4. So it got me thinking, would it be overpowered for the vampire PC to drain 1 constitution everytime they successfully feed on someone. I feel like it shouldn't affect combat much (or at all, really), since killing something by draining it of constitution when only dealing 1 damage every round (if we assume they successfully maintain a grapple that is) would take an estimate of between 10-15 rounds.
I feel like there should be som restrictions however, like not being able to drain CON from a gargantuan creature, and might even drain more CON from smaller creatures. I don't know, what do you guys think?
The issue with this idea is that, while it wouldn't be all that strong if this was a solo game with only that vampire PC, draining CON would ultimately lower a monster's health by considerable amounts, especially at higher levels. Maintaining a grapple and draining the CON from something with, let's say, 25HD on its stat block could effectively dynamically lower its maximum health pool by 125 while the rest of the party is still beating on it within a minute of combat. While they could likely do the same amount of damage or more with their normal abilities, this becomes more effective if your party has to retreat or regroup. That monster now has 125 less max hp than the first time, and your party has all of their resources again to fight it. That's mega unbalanced, tbh.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
As the title said.
I have a PC that is currently a vampire using some rules I homebrewed. I won't get too much into detail, but there is a mechanic shamelessly stolen from VTM where the PC has a pool of blood, and every morning they must roll a d20 and score 11 or higher or be forced to expend a blood point.
But when the question of feeding came up at the table, another PC said that the vampire PC could simply feed of them every morning. In the homebrew, it deals a bunch of damage and reduces the max hp of the victim by the same amount, but as I keep thinking about it, the stronger the PCs get, the less of an impact the morning feeding will have, but it also raised the question of biting and drinking from someone in combat. Why should a Archmage be better at being a blood bag than a Veteran.
I had been toying with the idea of having the bite attack deal different amounts of damage depending on the number of hit dice the target has, but that felt convoluted. But then I stumpled upon this deep-dive into the D&D timeline of vampires (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/dwbd04/dreadful_hunters_of_the_night_with_insatiable/).
In 3e/3.5e, vampires don't drain levels, but they drain Constitution by 1d4. So it got me thinking, would it be overpowered for the vampire PC to drain 1 constitution everytime they successfully feed on someone. I feel like it shouldn't affect combat much (or at all, really), since killing something by draining it of constitution when only dealing 1 damage every round (if we assume they successfully maintain a grapple that is) would take an estimate of between 10-15 rounds.
I feel like there should be som restrictions however, like not being able to drain CON from a gargantuan creature, and might even drain more CON from smaller creatures. I don't know, what do you guys think?
The issue with this idea is that, while it wouldn't be all that strong if this was a solo game with only that vampire PC, draining CON would ultimately lower a monster's health by considerable amounts, especially at higher levels. Maintaining a grapple and draining the CON from something with, let's say, 25HD on its stat block could effectively dynamically lower its maximum health pool by 125 while the rest of the party is still beating on it within a minute of combat. While they could likely do the same amount of damage or more with their normal abilities, this becomes more effective if your party has to retreat or regroup. That monster now has 125 less max hp than the first time, and your party has all of their resources again to fight it. That's mega unbalanced, tbh.