The Tavern

Ok, similar thread in CYC got ignored because of no arguments from my part, so here it is, serious thread about making vampires playable and cool.

Remove bloodless, give vampire rC+ , rN+++ and rTorm in any state, so the difference between thirsty and full will be rPois, regen, stealth, bite and forms.

- No-regen is stupid and annoying, Vampires are not dwarves (who have heal wound ability to compensate no-regen) and can not play without resting. (well under certain circumstances clearing spider without blood in one attempt is real, but overall it is not)
- Dwarves already have no-regen, so there is a huge thematic overlap with them
- Branches such as spider, tomb, ice cave, slime pits, crypt and whole extended are VERY tedious without kiku, clearing spider requires 2-4 attempts (and searching for blood in a different branch inbetween) depending on char strength, and clearing tomb...well...its easier to just forget about golden rune...
- Extended without kiku is a freaking torment
- Blood problems are forcing player to pick kiku/makh if he wants to play vp comfortably
- Situations when you are low on blood and hp (so you have no choice but to wait for passerby on a cleared floor) are annoying
- Whole blood management is still overly complicated and hard to grasp to new players

While not specifically to say that your suggestion is bad or good, i would point out that i never have any problems with vamps in spider, usually i walk in with a stack of around 20 blood potions, and the non poisonous corpses in there are usually sufficient for my resting needs.

Pan isn't really a problem (demonspawn leaves perfectly drainable corpses) and hell, while more annoying, leaves some corpses for draining.

It is really just crypt/tomb where corpses are particularly tough to find, and not even totally missing, just rarer.

None of that means the game wouldn't be better the way you suggest, it just means that lack of corpses isn't a particularly good justification for change.

I wrote that spiders are hard for Vp not because I just assume so, it is because I have actually experienced tedium of clearing spiders in several attempts while playing weak combo like VpFE or VpWr. Same goes for Crypt and especially Tomb. Pan was so annoying that I gave up on Vp extended after that game. Bloodless serves only to irritate Vp players thats why I suggest removing it.

I experienced problems as Vp in Spider too. It took me 2 visits to clear Spider 1-3 and 2 more visits for last floor.

Vampires have fun bite mechanic. At thirsty and below they can get health and satiation by stabbing. Seriously, try playing stabber character with Uskayaw/Hepliaklqana and you will see that slow regeneration and stab healing transform gameplay amazingly. Lack of regeneration wouldn't be such a problem in extended if vampires were permitted to drain undead and demons.