Ideas to make vampires less underpowered

[Croissant]

Skip the part below, if you don't care about, why I find vampire underpowered, It's not really important !

Complaining time ! I feel like vamp is very underpowered especially when you compare them to other antags which posses similar mechanics/gameplay, in fact I'd say that as long as you have glasses vamps really aren't a threat to fight. With vamps offensive abilities being : Bouncy bats, a scream that doesn't do enough stun to actually be good for fighting and diseased touch is good but really isn't useful on the shortterm.

Suggested Changes for abilities.

Glare : Give glare the ability to ignore eye protection as an upgrade (unlock at 500 blood or so, maybe reduce the amount of stun given if the target does have glasses)

Chiropteran screech : Perhaps would increasing the amount of stamina damage dealt by it would be good.

Chiropteran screechMk2 : If It's going to get an upgrade it might aswell actually be good, maybe give a chonky amount of brain damage on top of what it already has ? I feel like the radio jam isn't really that useful, unless you're only fighting one person (Even tho you are quite litteraly inviting every player near you to come fight you)

Bat form : Making it so vamps always squeeze throught doors instead of prying them open if they can would be a good way to slow down pursuers and to compensate for the stamina cost.

Bat formMk2 : Lowering the stam cost when cloaked in darkness would perhaps make the ability more reliable to use as an escape option or to hide.

Cancel stun : Isn't the damage penalty already harsh enough without the blood cost ? Maybe would making it blood free be a better idea ?

Coffin escape : Buffing the hp of the coffin or the speed at which the vamp regenerates within it would be nice !


Abilities idea.

Summon thralls (unlocks at 30 blood, cost 80 blood, usable while cuffed) : Forcefully teleports all thralls to their master in order to help them.

Accelerate blood flow (unlocks at 400 blood, cost 100 blood, cannot be used if cuffed) :
 If used on self : Accelerates your own bloodflow to safe and beneficial levels. Solves cardiac arrest, puts both loosebreath and Oxygen damage to 0, slightly negates movement penalty from damage for 2 mins.

If used on humanoid : Spontanously Accelerates the bloodflow of the victim beyond their heart capacity. Deals significant damage to both the brain and the heart, has a chance to induce an heartattack, mimicks the effects of hypertensive for 2 to 4 mins.
Ideally this would be better if there was an effect showing that the ability was used.


Mechanic related suggestions

Make thralls unable to go hypertensive, this really feels unintended and makes thralls ability to gain more max health the more blood they have limited (this is also annoying >:c).

Make the progression bar from hypnotising invisible to other players (Isn't the loud flash sound from glaring already enough >.>)


This was brought to you by space dracula.

[Nidabutt]

Personally, I would love vampires to have mechanics involving their thralls, such as that summon thrall ability you suggested to rein in thralls that have wandered off across half the station doing their own thing while you're being beaten to death and for thralls to not be so awful to play with dying from the blood pressure increase of drinking blood to keep yourself alive.

I always have a soft spot for antags that don't just end a player's round but rather include them in the fun even if they lose the fight. To me vampires should be the mastermind type of villain, coordinating and working with underlings to take down the station - strong when supported by thralls but weak without. We already have plenty of solo antags, it would be nice to have ones that encourage teamplay more which brings out one of the most fun parts of SS13, the social interaction.

[Cal]

vampire isnt underpowered imo. they ramp up by silently killing people and form a horrific mob. i think theyre honestly pretty perfect.

diseased touch is very strong now, its a silent 10-second stunning spell that gives the victim no indication much like a ling sting

[KikiMofo]

I have a suggestion.

Laser eyes.

[Jakson]

Make hypnotize last longer, a stun baton should be a necessary part of my tool kit if I plan on bringing my victim someplace really secluded so I have time to pin them and remove their headset.

[Chayot]

I won't speak to the larger parts of this post as it's quite long and I don't want to provide a wall of text.
I disagree with much of it on the basis of balance.

For thrall-summoning, as a lowly Secoff, or even a player who managed to robust a Master Vampire, It'd be unpleasant for him to summon a horde of Thralls to himself.
How about if, similar to the Security Officers PDA function for ALERT, the Master can call for help with the push of a button.
Their thralls are made aware of his location. Any and all thralls ready and willing may respond to this call for help.
(They are not explicitly ordered to come so they can be without punishment if they ignore it, fail to see it, or don't feel like going--much like the Secoff alert)

I'd agree that the Master-Thrall interactions should encourage more teamwork than they currently do. However I think they should encourage it, not force it.

[RGBDeadSilent]

As a seasoned vampire player let me throw a few things out there.

Being able to summon your thralls would be very useful, but is impossible to balance. I routinely gain like 10 thralls a shift. Sure some of them are unrobust, but just getting a few willing folks to teleport to you and to start bashing every person in sight would be a massive clusterfuck of balance. There is also of course the fact that vampire and thralls have absolutely no way to know who is who, because unlike the syndicate, we don't get a hud ID to show master vampire and thralls.

Glare going through glasses is... interesting but also I wouldn't make it stun. Goon does hard drop of equipment if you fall prone, this would basically means you see a security officer pull out a baton on you and you can, even if its a microstun, make them drop their baton instantly. Maybe if glare goes through glasses it disorients for 10s? Yeah I'd 100% go with that.

Making the screech better would be interesting. Its a very niche ability. You either use it when you're swamped so that you can scream, disorient folks and then run away. Or you use it in a fight when someone pulls out equipment so that you can cause them to drop their weapon, disorient themselves, and then they are vulnerable.

Bat form is literally their bread and butter top tier ability, buffing base batform is a no. Buff MkII to go through doors as a squeeze would be a 100% yes though.

Stun cancel is OP. regardless of what negatives could be put on it.

Coffin escape is literally only useful to meme on people by abusing the fact that vampire instantly revives in a coffin. Get hurt, coffin escape on the literal same tile you're on, succumb in coffin, step out of it at full health and prepare to bash folks in the face again with no negatives. (I think its literally admin heal levels of healing.)

Vampire shouldn't need the blood buff, Vampire should just literally not take oxy damage and they should be cold immune. Sadly I've spoken this over with folks already and the baseline is, is that vampires are aliens and they aren't immune to space.

Thralls should 100% absolutely not go hypotensive, its so dumb. Thralls should honestly get maul/consume and not bite, like the vampire. They shouldn't take the blood from the vampires meal, and should instead be eating people for their blood instead. It would also help the vampire with actually killing down individuals.

As it stands, once a vampire gets Bat Form, they are a top tier glass cannon. You can open a door and instantly meme the fuck out of the most powerful vampire instantly and they might have absolutely no chance to stop you. The Chaplain is also 100% immune to the vampire and can exploit all their vulnerabilities. And you can't even thrall the Chaplain, it brings them back to life as normal so that they can keep killing you. You can also BECOME a Chaplain via dumb bullshit and now you can have a mega valid hunter after you who is 100% immune to you. I honestly hate this, because I absolutely try to never use security equipment as a changeling or vampire, because I feel like they should be able to use the tools they are given to deal with the station. They cannot when it comes to the Chaplain. You just have to hope you have some robust thralls (Or meta and kill the robust players to thrall them, because thats so fuckin fun.)

Vamp is in a weird place, and I want to see how this thread goes.

[Nidabutt]

Yeh, reading some of the replies on here I don't think vampires are necessarily 'underpowered' it's more like a bit of missed potential and some clunkiness that should be ironed out.

Chayot's suggestion for an alert button would be a great addition as a baseline ability and should be part of their kit for sure.

Also, thralls should never be hypotensive, period. I did really like RGB's suggestion that they have a separate blood pool from bodies, I think that's a fantastic way to encourage more teamplay since currently the more thralls you have, the more competition there is for blood and it ends up screwing over the vampire themselves, which is obviously super dumb. The current blood sharing system is a huge reason thralls go solo and should definitely be changed, teamwork-based antagonists should not cannibalise the resources of allies. In addition, thralls and vampires should have icons so they can see who is in their group, I have no idea why this isn't in the game currently, nobody enjoys accidental friendly-fire or murdering allies due to not knowing who's on your team.


In my opinion, changes that should definitely be added for quality of life:

1. Alert button to thralls from the vampire, like the sec alert from PDAs.

2. Fix thralls being hypotensive, I'm assuming this is a bug.

3. Individual thralls and vampires should have separate blood pools to drink from with their victims so they don't steal resources from each other, thralls could have smaller blood pools to drink from to balance this. Thralls drink blood more slowly than vampires, the blood pool adjustment could be made so that the time it takes for both to finish drinking a body would be equal, meaning the vamp doesn't have to wait like a whole minute for the thrall to catch up drinking so they can enthrall the body.

4. Thralls and vampires in the same 'group' should have icons to make identification and coordination much easier.