Vampire Overhaul (ver. 2, OP updated!)

[The Grim Sleeper]

Good Ideas!!!

I have never played vampire but this sounds like good ideas.

200 blood
Return from the dead - Here's another backwards power thing: how is it that the changeling is able to resurrect, while the vampire, famous in mythology for being able to resurrect from the dead over and over, is not? At 200 blood, instead of dying normally, the vampire is reduced to a pile of ash. If this ash is mixed with fresh blood, the vampire resurrects, naked, reset to 0 blood. This can be done by means of gathering the ash in a beaker and mixing with blood, or if someone is bleeding and that blood is spilled or trodden into the ashes on the ground. This doesn't work with dried blood, so dying in a place caked in old blood won't do it, and vampire blood doesn't count so no bleeding on the floor, dying, then coming back to life! Also, unlike the headspider, this doesn't require any blood points, it's a passive ability once you reach 200 blood.

I need some explanation here: who would resurrect a Vampire antagonist willingly? I understand the accident suggestion, but who else would do it before the Vampire has access to thralls?
Also, are the ashes, like a reagent, infinity divisible, allowing each follower to carry a bit? Or is it just 1 'pile of vampire ashes'?
I do like the idea of a vampire cult, I just don't get how you would recruit it.

[locusts]

Before you have access to thralls, the return from the dead is meant to be accidental, which is a recurring plot point in vampire stories. A crafty vampire could use bleeding weapons to increase the chance of that happening, but given the amount of blood spilled all over the floor in an average round, there's a not unreasonable chance of that happening. I don't know where you got the idea that someone apart from a thrall, or perhaps another antagonist, was meant to do it willingly.

[locusts]

Eating hearts should add 50 points to your blood pool.

[TrustScience]

This seems a big overhaul for vampires. I'd like to point out a few current problems with vampires that imo have been overlooked with all of the other changes. IMO it affects the playability of the antag for old players and especially new players. The systems seem out of balance with all of the other excellent changes.

Speed of draining blood needs to be increased. Blood from the dead should be normal or at least 75%. Everyone always loots the blood bags because no one wants to suck the blood from people who suicide instantly, or they just stick a blood bag in a corpse let it drain and stick it into them.



You can get the new tasers + new batons. The timing seems off.

I remember vampire had the stun long enough to remove their clothing items, but this was back when you could spam remove multiple items. We had that changed to remove one at a time and now one at a time with a progress bar, so the system of the vampire is still using the old system, and with that limited time it feels too short.

Cancel stuns seems fine except the timer, it feels like the timer needs to be decreased. We have shift to run now and other stamina movement changes, feels like usability has been limited as everyone can sprint to you same with hypnotise, if you are there why not just stun baton them, maybe allow it to complete a few tiles away if the vampire already initiated it.

[locusts]

There was a lot of enthusiasm for this but unfortunately it's fizzled. I know that admins and coders are busy with real life commitments right now, but I'd like to ask what I can do to help get this idea off the ground. I can sprite stuff and help write flavour text but I don't have any experience with regards to coding.

[Berrik]

Change Mist Form to the Castlevania style teleport, complete with sound effects. This would just be a cosmetic change.

Also, mabye allow an untransformed full power vampire throw firebolts? Not as strong as the transformed state blast, but good at setting people on fire!

[Noah Buttes]

I like this idea a lot

[Superlagg]

Give the Chaplain a whip that makes candles shoot out hearts, which when eaten let them throw axes and stop time.

[Chronicpwnage]

There was a lot of enthusiasm for this but unfortunately it's fizzled. I know that admins and coders are busy with real life commitments right now, but I'd like to ask what I can do to help get this idea off the ground. I can sprite stuff and help write flavour text but I don't have any experience with regards to coding.

I am interested in helping this become a reality.
I can probably figure out the code for at least 90% of this!
Lets make it happen.
I'm Chronic on the goonstation discord


I also had a few ideas I think would make this whole concept even better.
Right now, unless you're enthralling someone there's basically no reason to leave a victim alive. You are basically like a changeling where you eat someone and then stuff their corpse in a locker somewhere.

I have three changes I think could make this very different.

First:
Shadow Guise (0 Blood Points, 90 Second Cooldown)
Surrounds your form with an impenetrable shadowy disguise for 30 seconds: You can't be examined and you appear as a black cloaked form with red eyes.
Second:
When you bite someone, blood gushes from the wound easily and feeding is very fast, the first chomp gives you 50 blood and every point from there it pours quickly before slowing down around 150 blood. By the time you reach 150 blood, if you had Shadow Guised right as you found your victim, your Shadow Guise will wear off. 
Third:
Biting doesn't require removing helmet/mask, but takes a few seconds to charge up ("Vlad von Bitesalot bares their sharp fangs!"...."Vlad von Bitesalot sinks their fangs into Hapless Nerd!" so it can't be used as a surprise instastun)

These changes make it much easier for Vampires to be a terrifying, swoop-in-and-steal-your-blood type presence on a station rather than a slightly different changeling. If you choose to be a hit-and-run vampire, there's no disposing of a body, your blood bank can run off to the medbay to recharge for a future feeding, and your cover remains safe regardless. I would even make it so that running around stealing blood this way is more rewarding (that is, faster to gain BP) than fully draining every target.

Thoughts?

[locusts]

I actually like that concept a lot as it helps to further differentiate the Vampire from the Changeling, but I think it would requires a bit of workshopping to get it gel smoothly with what's already established.

So currently, the suggestion is that the Vampire starts off weakly, and if left unchecked becomes exponentially more dangerous. For comparison, the Changeling starts off as a menace but quickly hits the ceiling of how much more dangerous it becomes after eating a few people.

What this proposal changes is the starting goal for the Vampire. Instead of killing people, you're much better off draining some blood and letting them be on their way, as you cannot be identified. This raises some questions that need to be addressed:
- What is the end-goal for the Vampire in this case?
- If it's simply to accumulate blood, this change works in favour of that, but renders some of the higher level abilities somewhat superfluous.
- If it's simply to kill people, that doesn't really differentiate it from most of the other antagonists.
- At what point should the vampire switch from simply drinking blood to outright killing people, and what is the benefit?

I personally think a mix of objectives would work best, but the vampire needs a clear goal that separates it from the rest of the antagonists; something that is fairly difficult to achieve, but acts as an automatic win scenario for the Vampire.

My suggestion is this: the vampire's major objective should be to defile the chapel. After achieving Vampire Lord/Lady status, the vampire is not only able to walk freely inside the chapel, but also gains an ability to permanently taint it. I'm not completely sure what this ability should be, my current idea is a heavy blood cost ability that requires you to stay still, or at least inside the capel for some time to work, but promoting blood sacrifices from something the crew does sometimes for fun to an actual game mechanic might be workable. 

After completion, the whole station should became an infinite spawning ground for monsters that will harass the crew, reminiscent of a disaster round. This is a clear win state for the vampire, and on round completion the stats will say that the vampire has won and gained dominance over the station, regardless of whether the vampire completed any of their other objectives or is even alive or dead. If a vampire achieves this goal, they can respawn in the Chapel indefinitely without a loss of maximum blood, though they start at 0/max on respawn and will have to regenerate it in order to further terrorise the crew. The shuttle is called automatically and cannot be recalled so that shitters can't prolong rounds into infinity. After this point, for the rest of the round the goal for the rest of the crew is simply survival.

This achieves several things: 
- It creates conflict in an area of the ship which is usually more peaceful (chaos tends to centre around medsci, sec or the bridge).
- It's a clear-cut goal for the vampire, which gives the crew a scenario to work against once it has been confirmed there is a vampire aboard.
- If the vampire wins, it creates a fun mini-disaster round for surviving players, as well as rewarding the vampire for winning with free respawns.
- It promotes the vampire to arguably the most dangerous antagonist on the station in the endgame, achieving the stated design goal.

There should be other objectives on top, these are optional though and randomised at round start.
- Obtain X number of maximum blood points.
- Enthrall X number of crew members.
- Kill Crew Member X. (If there is a Chaplain at round start, killing the Chaplain should always be a listed objective)

Other misc stuff to do with chapel defilement:
- Portals summoning monsters over the whole ship is my intention, but should be a different set than the ones seen in disaster rounds, eg. Ice Spiders, Wendigoes, Killer Tomatoes, Man Eaters, Angry Bats, Zombies, etc. Anything "monstery".
- Considering my initial proposal includes automatically allying the Vampire and Wraith, perhaps some sort of benefit to the Wraith should be included too. Infinite respawns for the wraith too would be the obvious choice. Perhaps defiling the chapel automatically creates a random antagonist chance for dead players and the result is always wraith.
- There should be a system in place to prevent people from simply camping the Vampire on respawn. Perhaps constant damage for anyone not allied with the vampire while inside the chapel.
- Destroying the chapel would be too cheap of an option to prevent the vampire from winning. Maybe the amount of time/resources to taint the chapel goes down depending on how destroyed it is. A tainted chapel restores itself and shouldn't be able to be destroyed.
- A new tileset for a tainted chapel would be neat!
- Though a respawned vampire should start with an empty bloodpool, it should regenerate naturally now that they hold domain over the station.
- Corrupted announcement messages or AI laws would be an interesting thing to tinker with.

[Frank_Stein]

I also like those ideas. Hit and run vamps are more interesting.

Here's an idea for an objective: Make ascending vampire lord status require a blood ritual, involving the simultaneous sacrificial deaths of several people.

Easiest way for this to occur is for the vampire to enthrall people and then order them to gather for said ritual.

[locusts]

I think a blood ritual works better for tainting the chapel, Vampire Lord/Lady works better as an achievement for accumulating so much blood. Bear in mind that to even begin tainting the chapel the Vampire would have to accumulate 1500 blood.

Here's a concept for how tainting the chapel with blood sacrifices could work.
- The Vampire places a mark (Vampire's Taint or something, I know I'm typing "taint" a lot please don't laugh) in the Chapel. This has a blood cost and cannot be removed.
- This starts a hidden counter. Once it reaches, let's say, 10, the mark reaches maximum power, the chapel is defiled and the Vampire has won.
- Bringing a body and placing it into the mark (grab and click) consumes the body and increases the counter by one.
- If someone dies inside the chapel, that increases the counter by one. The body can also be fed to the mark, as above, for two points total.
- Feeding a live person to the mark gives you three points.
- The mark is initially visible only to the vampire, but becomes visible to mortals and grows in size as it gets fed.
- Potentially, the Vampire could sacrifice blood points to increase the counter. 500 points to increase it by 1 seems reasonable, and can't be regenerated back very quickly.

[atomic1fire]

inb4 genetics and chemistry unleashes it's own methed up super cyborg hulk chaplain in order to combat the vampire.

Overall though I like the idea of a vampire revamp.

Although I think it would be a little bit more entertaining if vampire also had a second mostly cosmetic beast mode that was the result of being eaten by a changeling which used both dna and blood. A shampire if you will. Mostly because I really like the name shampire.

[Wraithcraft]

vampires are now op and can only be defeated by someone with the last name joestar

[Mageziya]

vampires are now op and can only be defeated by someone with the last name joestar

I mean, Dio's outfit is an achievement unlock for surviving a round as a vampire.