Vampire blood simplification

[Shard1697]

1. There are a lot of creatures which normal races can butcher and eat, but vampires cannot get blood from, which usually doesn't make sense and is a needless difference. Maybe this is connected to what things used to be "dirty" meat, maybe there's a special "bloodless" tag-but many things vampires can't drink from seem like they would have blood(like right away in the earlygame, you can't drink blood from worms or slugs, even though they leave a blood splatter and normal species can eat them just fine). And in on the reverse, there are things vampires can drink from but normal races can't eat(ex:kobolds).
Let vampires drink from anything that drops edible chunks instead.

2. "You stop drinking. All the blood drains out of the corpse!" <- this is really annoying, and it should at least ask you if you want to stop drinking, y/n
or it shouldn't exist and the player should only feed via potions, and 'e' should work for drinking blood potions to streamline

3. More of a fix, but give vampires blood instead of chunks when they use animate skeleton.

inb4 "remove food/vampires instead"

[yesno]

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19464

agree

another helpful thing would be to spawn some blood shops in place of food shops as vp, bc otherwise you often have to save blood in the form of living orcs or elves in branches in order to tackle branches without much blood (like spider and swamp branches)

[PleasingFungus]

Maybe this is connected to what things used to be "dirty" meat, maybe there's a special "bloodless" tag-but many things vampires can't drink from seem like they would have blood(like right away in the earlygame, you can't drink blood from worms or slugs, even though they leave a blood splatter and normal species can eat them just fine)

it's because they're tagged neither "warm blooded" nor "cold blooded"

they don't actually leave blood spatters when you hit them, and the 'blood' under their corpses is green, not red

not disagreeing wrt proposed changes (i refuse to have opinions on vampires, they're too complicated for me to have design opinions on), just clarifying the current situation.

[Shtopit]

Make maggot blood have weird effects and work like a chaos potion!

[archaeo]

Most of these seem like reasonable quality-of-life changes.

That said, the game will be better when the entire species' design is vastly simplified. Vp is fundamentally about transformation between sets of different resistances, weaknesses, and speed. Decoupling that from hunger states and substantially simplifying the "forms" would go a long way toward making Vp a species I was interested in playing.

[yesno]

i don't think blood from worms / slugs / spiders makes sense tbh, i like OP's proposal 2 though.

[yesno]

Most of these seem like reasonable quality-of-life changes.

That said, the game will be better when the entire species' design is vastly simplified. Vp is fundamentally about transformation between sets of different resistances, weaknesses, and speed. Decoupling that from hunger states and substantially simplifying the "forms" would go a long way toward making Vp a species I was interested in playing.

tbh in actual play vp is fundamentally about hexes and stealth apts, and batform, and people just get distracted by hunger states, which you can mostly ignore and play normally. with most vampires you either stay thirsty all the time (weak char/stabber, wants stealth, stab healing and batform) or alive all the time (strong char, wants regen, just plays like any normal character that happens to get resists if it gets hungry).

[Shard1697]

Even as a stabber you can just stay alive all the time, honestly.

Most of these seem like reasonable quality-of-life changes.

That said, the game will be better when the entire species' design is vastly simplified. Vp is fundamentally about transformation between sets of different resistances, weaknesses, and speed. Decoupling that from hunger states and substantially simplifying the "forms" would go a long way toward making Vp a species I was interested in playing.

This may be true-I feel as though maybe Vp should just be able to switch between forms for a hunger cost or something, because if you actually try to micromanage food it can be pretty annoying.

i don't think blood from worms / slugs / spiders makes sense tbh, i like OP's proposal 2 though.

Why not? It's not like they follow normal "what sustains vampires" rules anyways. Traditionally vampires can only drink human blood, and in the occasional piece of vampire media where they can drink from animals it usually makes them sick in some way. But in crawl you can drink from all sorts of animals without issue... I don't think drinking blood from a rat or yak is very different from drinking from a worm, both are breaking "canon" vampire rules anyways so if you're not gonna stick to that ideal you might as well make it more convenient+consistent with the rest of the game. And

I think this is just something that might feel weird because it's not how it's been in the game, but if it were changed people would get used to it quite quick(and knowledge of what is edible would carry over from other species then, instead of having to learn a new set of rules).

they don't actually leave blood spatters when you hit them, and the 'blood' under their corpses is green, not red

That's the blood I was referring to, yes.

[Shtopit]

It's actually called ichor or hemolymph, BTW.

[yesno]

Traditionally vampires can only drink human blood, and in the occasional piece of vampire media where they can drink from animals it usually makes them sick in some way.

shard1697 come on now, you've got anne rice and vampire: the masquerade and buffy to contend with on this point. honestly have you even MET a vampire irl? i'm not sure you're qualified to discuss this important issue.

[duvessa]

honestly have you even MET a vampire girl?

[Shard1697]

I think I knew like 3 of those in highschool

[Rast]

I think I knew like 3 of those in highschool

I was going to post something here but the mods would just delete it.

Anyway yeah vampires are annoying. In practice I play them like humans that regenerate and have good stealth apt but constantly have to bottle and drink blood.

[Shard1697]

I mean, among other things, I just wanna be able to drink from tarantulas/orb spiders, so that if I get spider I don't have to leave partway through to go bottle some monsters so that I can regenerate health

[Laraso]

I mean, among other things, I just wanna be able to drink from tarantulas/orb spiders, so that if I get spider I don't have to leave partway through to go bottle some monsters so that I can regenerate health

Vampires are actually kind of fun to play up until you hit the lair branches, at which point you're frequently reminded that ctrl+q exists