Vampire: glare and screech

[Convair880]

Hello,

I am aware that there have been plenty of other (largely fruitless) threads asking for a comprehensive overhaul of the vampire's abilities, but this is not one of them. My suggestion merely involves a minor change to Glare and Chiropteran Screech. Both are area of effect attacks, against which there is to my knowledge no protection at the moment. Flashes, flash powder, sonic grenades and the shambling abomination's screech work in a similar manner, yet it's possible to counter them in some way if you know how. In short, the current situation seems more like an oversight than feature to me.

1) Sunglasses and welding masks should block the glare.

2) Earmuffs and -plugs should block the screech. (Not sure about plugs, but muffs currently don't help.)

I don't believe this would significantly affect Count Dracula's ability to fight. He has many, many other powerful spells at his disposal. Besides, sunglasses aren't standard issue for most of the crew and people generally don't rush to the nearest set of earmuffs every time an abomination is on the loose.

Kind Regards

[epicdwarf]

While I support the earmuffs blocking the screech, I don't fully support the idea of sunglasses blocking glare entirely. The vampire would be completely screwed if he/she is discovered early on. Everyone would just grab a welding mask/sunglasses and a flame thrower and the vampire would be mostly powerless. I say that glaring a person with sunglasses should stun them like a taser shot rather then flooring them. The vampire would still have a way to escape and people get a defense from glare.

[Sundance]

I agree with everything, and those should be fixed, but it really raises an integral problem with vampire:

Vampire is invisible most of the time. A hard counter to this thermals. However now that you have thermals, you are weak to his glare. If sunglasses were implemented to block glare, then you'd have a problem of the vampire being completely invisible and wrecking your shit with a chiropteran screech.

So the cloak of darkness is also a big culprit in the vampire op. It works in the dark, yes, but chiropteran shatters lights anyway.

So an addendum to your post:

3: Have cloak of darkness only work if the vampire is in PITCH black. This way a hard counter to fighting a vampire would be to turn your pda light on so the vampire will remain visible several tiles away from you.