- Nov 8, 2020
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I saved this one for last on purpose.
Literally let them select any traditional vampire ability and customize their own type of vampire and allow them to spec into and away from weaknesses. The key thing is the player is customizing their build, but no one ability should outshine those on the exterior classes, the vampire's strength comes from it's versatility and mixing and matching abilities to suit their needs.
While at a base they might be horriffic looking, you could spec make them appear more humanoid/attractive or alternately, more bestial and terrifying.
Don't want to fly with bats? What about mist? Werewolf running? All of them? Whatever!
The key thing is the player gets unlocks as they progress and key builds will allow them to be versatile in many situations. This also allows them to fill any particular role in a party. I'm also a big believer that ability unlocks should be part off a quest chain, particularly for immortal undead, making them have a narrative impact as you unlock and achieve more things.
The key thing with being able to spec into vampire weaknesses and take extra faults for the character appropriate to vampires is that it allows them to have more points to dump elsewhere, and since they are versatile this is important since they can expand on more branches for trees, the branches just aren't as long.
Overall this means they will have many ability trees to spec into, but the trees won't have as much maximum impact and depth as trees of other classes.
The one thing I would keep constant is that they start with either vampire bite or kain style blood drain as preferred, and then can spec to increase that and blood is their main source, only from the living/recently dead. The kain style blood drain also has a stun associated with it and requires a maximum health threshold. This doesn't consume the corpse, just the blood, allowing that the corpses can be drained presuming it's a corpse of a living creature. Summoned creatures on death would prevent drinking from the dead, consumed corpses also would as well, which is why this action can be performed at low health rather than when dead like other actions of classes. Consuming the soul as a wraith also wouldn't affect the corpse.
how other abilities play out can be widely varied but generally they start on the weaker spectrum and grow gradually rather than other classes that start moderate and grow to legendary if specc'd properly.
Want to be a tank? Sure, grab some durability and bloodlust. A pet class? Grab some charm abilities. A blaster? OK lots of ways to go about that. Scrapper? Healer? Also doable. Do whatever with your build, you can fill any role. This also allows that vampires are somewhat mercurial in nature as they might shift specs reasonably often. I'd suggest allowing them to respec as normal at a player hub, but also give them a free daily respec at coffin sleep completion if desired.
the key limitation with vampires is that we have limited slots on the action bar (I think it was 5 that I counted) due to console integration, thus it's likely key that these action bars can be hot swapped, not just for vampires but for any class really.
PC might end up with a different integration, but the key is that players need to access various abilities in general and the amount of abilities they have access to likely exceeds 5, so it might say, make sense to put your toggles on a non active action bar that is last in swap rotation, while being able to swap to different needs for different situations. If players unlock additional hotkey action bars as they progress I'd suggest that vampires get a bonus one as a freebie.
Literally let them select any traditional vampire ability and customize their own type of vampire and allow them to spec into and away from weaknesses. The key thing is the player is customizing their build, but no one ability should outshine those on the exterior classes, the vampire's strength comes from it's versatility and mixing and matching abilities to suit their needs.
While at a base they might be horriffic looking, you could spec make them appear more humanoid/attractive or alternately, more bestial and terrifying.
Don't want to fly with bats? What about mist? Werewolf running? All of them? Whatever!
The key thing is the player gets unlocks as they progress and key builds will allow them to be versatile in many situations. This also allows them to fill any particular role in a party. I'm also a big believer that ability unlocks should be part off a quest chain, particularly for immortal undead, making them have a narrative impact as you unlock and achieve more things.
The key thing with being able to spec into vampire weaknesses and take extra faults for the character appropriate to vampires is that it allows them to have more points to dump elsewhere, and since they are versatile this is important since they can expand on more branches for trees, the branches just aren't as long.
Overall this means they will have many ability trees to spec into, but the trees won't have as much maximum impact and depth as trees of other classes.
The one thing I would keep constant is that they start with either vampire bite or kain style blood drain as preferred, and then can spec to increase that and blood is their main source, only from the living/recently dead. The kain style blood drain also has a stun associated with it and requires a maximum health threshold. This doesn't consume the corpse, just the blood, allowing that the corpses can be drained presuming it's a corpse of a living creature. Summoned creatures on death would prevent drinking from the dead, consumed corpses also would as well, which is why this action can be performed at low health rather than when dead like other actions of classes. Consuming the soul as a wraith also wouldn't affect the corpse.
how other abilities play out can be widely varied but generally they start on the weaker spectrum and grow gradually rather than other classes that start moderate and grow to legendary if specc'd properly.
Want to be a tank? Sure, grab some durability and bloodlust. A pet class? Grab some charm abilities. A blaster? OK lots of ways to go about that. Scrapper? Healer? Also doable. Do whatever with your build, you can fill any role. This also allows that vampires are somewhat mercurial in nature as they might shift specs reasonably often. I'd suggest allowing them to respec as normal at a player hub, but also give them a free daily respec at coffin sleep completion if desired.
the key limitation with vampires is that we have limited slots on the action bar (I think it was 5 that I counted) due to console integration, thus it's likely key that these action bars can be hot swapped, not just for vampires but for any class really.
PC might end up with a different integration, but the key is that players need to access various abilities in general and the amount of abilities they have access to likely exceeds 5, so it might say, make sense to put your toggles on a non active action bar that is last in swap rotation, while being able to swap to different needs for different situations. If players unlock additional hotkey action bars as they progress I'd suggest that vampires get a bonus one as a freebie.
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