Vampire Revamp

[Stryxic]

So, this was based off a discussion we had in Discord yesterday. A few of us felt that the vampire could use a bit of a rework, so we started brainstorming ideas to possibly stick into a patch and make it feel a bit more of a unique antag.

As is, the main problem seems to be it's not very vampire-like. Some suggestions that were made already -

• Draining blood could turn the player into a zombie - mbc
  Possibly similar to the changeling's ability to have players as part of its hivemind, the vampire could have the choice to bring its drained victim back as some kind of weak thrall. They'd probably need to be very obvious, and not be as good as a regular person so as to not invalidate thrall
  

• sucking the heat out of the air and slowing everyone in the vicinity down would be neat - Rookie
  If paired with the vampire having a resistance to the cold, this could be a very useful way to slow people down, or to let the vampire escape more easily.
  

• Make it so vampires can only be killed by a wooden stake through the heart and only if they're already recovering in their coffin - Noah Butts
  My takeaway from this was for the vampire to have a coffin that it places, so that each time the vampire is killed, it slowly starts to regenerate in its coffin, a bit like a cloner. This would definitely make it more classical vampire like, requiring a search of the station to find where the coffin is, and destroy it/kill the vamp inside it. In order to stop it just putting it somewhere unreachable, maybe forcing it to be on the same z-level, or have the vampire place it at roundstart, similar to a blob.
  

• immune to poisons due to their systems being shut down so nothing would really go through their body - Drago
  Maybe not being immune, but possibly having some resistance. If you have a ling and a vampire meet 1 on 1, then it's probably going to end up with the vamp being eaten by the ling, because even a rather powered up vamp can't do a huge amount about the neurotoxin sting.
  

• maybe the detective can get a set of vampire hunting gear - Drago
  Not really specific to the vampire, but maybe something fun if the vamp needs to be staked.
  

• Blood Regen
  Similar to the blob, changing the vampire blood mechanic so that they regen blood points up to the total they've absorbed over the round.
  

• Corrupting the chapel
  Once the vampire gets to 1000 blood, they can place a 'mark' inside the chapel, that the vampire can grow through some mean. Once the chapel is corrupted, a disaster lite starts. The shuttle is called, robots are emagged, wraiths can appear, and mobs friendly to the vampire and hostile to players appear.
  

• Dominance
  The ability to make mobs such as skeletons, zombies, monkeys, etc friendly towards you.
  

• Weakness to fire
  Similar to lings, fire affects vampires more severely.
  

• Anaerobic metabolism
  Vampires are dead, so they shouldn't need to breathe
  

• Escaping handcuffs
  Similar to a ling changing their arms and escaping handcuffs, a vampire turning their hands to mist to do the same
  

• Glide
  A toggleable ability that allows them to ignore floor hazards, such as banana peels, ice, etc
  

• Eating ghosts
  Giving vampires the ability to see (and eat) ghosts, restoring blood points. This turns the ghost into a 'lost soul', and cannot be eaten again
  

• Bringing the dead back as ghouls
  Similar to draining their blood turning them into a zombie, but as a separate ability that can bring any dead into a non-contagious zombie
  

• Turning into a beast
  Similar to the ling's ability to turn into a horror, when the vampire gets 1000 BP they could turn into their own form of monstrosity - Dealing massive bleeding, and summoning monsters.
  

• Allying with Wraiths
  As both wraiths and vampires are undead, they have a natural alliance. They could communicate and team up.
  

• Creating a cloud of fog
  

• Being able to dash
  

• Using coffins as teleporters
  

• Vampire activation only happening after the antag's first death
  

• Special anti vampire armory equipment
  

If you have any more ideas, please feel free to chuck them in here!

[kyle2143]

I like these ideas. Some of what you said reminded me of an older vamp rework suggestion post by locusts:
https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=7953

Zombie/weak thrall sounds fun. I like when antagonist kills people and keeps them in on the fun.

I really like the immunity to poisons. Maybe they should be completely immune to any effects of any reagents, but will have a passive heal in the dark or a coffin and get healed from sucking/ingesting blood.

I'm not sure about the Cold Air temperature thing. Screwing with atmospherics that way usually leads to a room or hallway being irreparably "vented" since lowering the temperature lowers the gas volume. Maybe just setting the temperature of all nearby Mobs to 0K or something.

Also, I think garlic should have some effect on vampires. Like you can ward rooms with garlic making vamps weaker there like wraiths and salt, or holding garlic or throwing it at vampires does more damage to them.

[CandleCandleCandles]

I like the weak thrall idea the most. Like kyle said, being able to keep someone in the fun is appreciable - when i compare vampire and changeling rounds, one of the things I much prefer about ling is the hivemind plus limbs allowing victims to continue to play a role in the round.

Immunity to poisons sounds good but I'm sure could also be easily hideously broken in some way. Resistance sounds more like it, or perhaps immunity to certain aspects of poisons, such as an immunity to chemically induced knockout from panc, neurotoxin, capulettium and such. Mainly as a manner of supernatural stamina but on a gameplay perspective making it a bit less likely to just be easily taken down without escape.

Coffin is interesting - an "escape plan" of sorts is always welcome for antagonists imo. It shouldn't be made too hard to find the coffin, or perhaps it could be only limited use.

The other ideas don't particularly catch my fancy much, but I'd be interested in seeing what others have to think about it, especially those who have had plenty of experience playing vamp.

[Wraithcraft]

maybe the coffin could respawn the vampire over the course of a minuteish or two, like the cloner. it would require blood points to place down, only one could be active at a time and after being used the coffin would lose its powers. this makes it (hopefully) less painful to fight against if the vampire hides it in some obscure corner of the map because they'd have to return over and over again, coffins would start piling up and now people would know to look for one after the resurgence of vampire shennanigans

[Frank_Stein]

I feel like vampire needs more evasive actions and minor offensive. Like, they should be the most ninja like of the antags, stalking their prey. Like how instead of relying changing their disguise the way a changeling does, their main method of defense should be lots of cunning escapes.

Like, turning into a cloud of distracting bats, creating clouds of vision obscuring fog, getting a vampire dash that lets you speed past or away from people and objects, using coffins as teleporters, etc

The challenge to beating a vampire wouldn't be about overpowering them so much as it would be about containing them to an area long enough to overpower them.

[LovelyMimic]

(...)Like, turning into a cloud of distracting bats, creating clouds of vision obscuring fog, getting a vampire dash that lets you speed past or away from people and objects, using coffins as teleporters, etc

Coffin teleportation sounds so dumb, I'm absolutely in love with the idea. I have no idea whether having to drag extremely visible coffins from chapel maintenance to various points of the station would be worth it, gameplaywise, but the idea is solid gold

• Make it so vampires can only be killed by a wooden stake through the heart and only if they're already recovering in their coffin - Noah Butts
  My takeaway from this was for the vampire to have a coffin that it places, so that each time the vampire is killed, it slowly starts to regenerate in its coffin, a bit like a cloner. This would definitely make it more classical vampire like, requiring a search of the station to find where the coffin is, and destroy it/kill the vamp inside it. In order to stop it just putting it somewhere unreachable, maybe forcing it to be on the same z-level, or have the vampire place it at roundstart, similar to a blob.
  

I imagine it could sorta work like this. The vampire starts the round with one use of a "Place Coffin" ability. The vampire's coffin (which is a distinct object from the coffins by the chapel) must be placed on the station(?), can only be pushed and dragged by the vampire who placed it, and acts as a sort of cloner for the vampire in the event that they are killed. As the vampire accumulates blood, they can gradually earn additional uses of the ability, to place additional coffins, and can teleport between coffins (while alive) for free.

[warcrimes]

I think vampire would be cooler with a gestation / turning period.
Like, you start human but with the knowledge that you've been infected, and then upon your first natural death, you go into the ghost / overmind mode where you get to place your coffin. Also your regular human corpse turns to ash.

Until that transition, you're still an antag, but you're just human, so you won't be caught by sizzling in space or anything- but no powers.
You can go about doing dark murdery things, and when you're eventually caught / revenge murdered, boom! puff of smoke, dust in the wind, time to be undead boioooo. Spooky. Narrative. Cheap, Fast, and Easy to Do™.

[MrMagolor]

Armory should contain garlic smoke grenades in the special equipment crate.

Originally I said .22 silver but then I realized vampires aren't werewolves

[Stryxic]

Oops, forgot to check this thread for a little bit.

I'll create a list of the ideas y'all have suggested (along with collating the ideas from the old revamp thread) here, then append it to my OP as well.

• Blood Regen
  Similar to the blob, changing the vampire blood mechanic so that they regen blood points up to the total they've absorbed over the round.

• Corrupting the chapel
  Once the vampire gets to 1000 blood, they can place a 'mark' inside the chapel, that the vampire can grow through some mean. Once the chapel is corrupted, a disaster lite starts. The shuttle is called, robots are emagged, wraiths can appear, and mobs friendly to the vampire and hostile to players appear.

• Dominance
  The ability to make mobs such as skeletons, zombies, monkeys, etc friendly towards you.

• Weakness to fire
  Similar to lings, fire affects vampires more severely.

• Anaerobic metabolism
  Vampires are dead, so they shouldn't need to breathe

• Escaping handcuffs
  Similar to a ling changing their arms and escaping handcuffs, a vampire turning their hands to mist to do the same

• Glide
  A toggleable ability that allows them to ignore floor hazards, such as banana peels, ice, etc

• Eating ghosts
  Giving vampires the ability to see (and eat) ghosts, restoring blood points. This turns the ghost into a 'lost soul', and cannot be eaten again

• Bringing the dead back as ghouls
  Similar to draining their blood turning them into a zombie, but as a separate ability that can bring any dead into a non-contagious zombie

• Turning into a beast
  Similar to the ling's ability to turn into a horror, when the vampire gets 1000 BP they could turn into their own form of monstrosity - Dealing massive bleeding, and summoning monsters.

• Allying with Wraiths
  As both wraiths and vampires are undead, they have a natural alliance. They could communicate and team up.

• Creating a cloud of fog
  

• Being able to dash
  

• Using coffins as teleporters
  

• Vampire activation only happening after the antag's first death
  

• Special anti vampire armory equipment
  

[Lady Birb]

Oshan-specific idea: While vampires should still be burned outdoors on the station zlevel, they should be able to explore the trench safely, as the trench is too deep for sunlight to penetrate.

[Recusor]

Special anti vampire armory equipment - I think that it should be tricky, but doable, for normal crew to sharpen wooden stakes some how, maybe out of wooden tables, chairs or floor tiles? Maybe using a new, or hard to get tool of some kind?

[Stryxic]

Well, maybe something as simple as using a knife on a log could make a stake? That way, Botany would actually have to make something - Like Kyle did, with having them grow the anti-werewolf plant.