Question. (D&D5e). How much powerful is being able to exchange a Hit Dice for a 3rd level spell slot as a bonus action. Side note: You don't recover your Hit Dices sleeping, you lose one per day and need 5 liquid oz of blood to recover a Hit Dice. And about the purpose of healing of HD, they are able to add half of their proficiency to the HD in short rest, also, they heal half of their proficiency bonus per turn if they have less than half of their max HP. And yes, it is another vampire class!
That's enough to make me wonder if 5e's the right choice. You seem to have a lot of hacking at the system to make it what you want to use, and 5e is notoriously bad to hack (its design goal is to be simple, adding complexity doesn't help the system out and the system is built with a lot of balance in mind - too much hacking throws off that balance and forces you to add a ton of complexity to the existing mechanics)
We have quite a few questions about running a large party (How do I run a game for a larger group?, Balancing undead encounters against large party with a cleric, How do I scale an encounter to a larger party?), which cause both balance problems in most D&D and similar game systems (due to action...
Chopping out the biggest source of magical healing and screwing with naturally available healing are big red flags in my mind - if it's just this class, then anyone playing it plays by fundamentally different rules for how they want to adventure. If everyone is this class, the whole game is different (by both a magnitude of complexity and how adventures work) -- I'm not saying you should definitely stop everything and go to another system, just that you may very well break 5e
Pathfinder does something similar - not full Vampires, but spawn-of-vampires (Dhamphir) which have some neat flavor and also can take racial feats to really double-down on the "Vampiric" nature
Full Vampires are a template that end up giving some crazy abilities, as is tradition
@GreySage This are their healing abilities link. Recovery is very WIP (it may sound a bit weird, but I think they won't be able to cast it on level 3rd, only 5ft)..
3.5 used the ECL/HD balancing mechanic to produce vampire PCs that were effectively glass cannons: ridiculously overpowered utility but also ridiculously easy to render ineffective. 4e had some success with part-vampire PCs, but both attempts to make full vampires went sideways and you wound up more effective taking a single multiclass feat rather than classing into vampire.
@EnderLook "Old" is relative. 3.5e or 4e are still very much alive - people still play them, and homebrew still comes out (less so for 3.5 since Pathfinder swooped in to take that niche)
@Delioth I'm sorry, but what is Pathfinder. I have tried to google it but I can't get any handbook. I only know it's a TTRPG. Does it has free handbooks?
Fate is the one I most often like to use if I'm not playing a d20-based game - it's solid, mechanics are simple and easy to get out of the way, but it's super-focused on narrative
Lemme see if I can get you a link to the PRD (organized by book); there's also a couple sites that have all the info in a more search-able format that's organized by "what" not "when published"
I wouldn't recommend any D&D-like system for a vampirey game though. That paradigm isn't really designed for the kinds of stories told around vampires.
@Zachiel OMG, that is Pathfinder? I've seen that website billions of times thinking it was D&D and then noticing it wasn't. The weird thing is that the page doesn't has as title Pathfinder, so I didn't know
@EnderLook Pathfinder is not necessarily railroaded (it can be, depending on the DM), but its mechanics only tell you what characters can do, and nothing about how players can influence the narrative
@EnderLook the pf in the URL stands for pathfinder. D&D (3.5e and 5e) has www.d20srd.org
There's a ton of other content that's not in there (stuff from smaller paperbacks, deemed "splatbooks"), but the game is perfectly playable with just the Core Rulebook
I'd also have to agree with @BESW though - d20 systems (like Pathfinder or 5e) assume that the players will be roughly challenged at all phases and that there are defined, concrete power levels that exist and get bigger over time. Vampire stories... don't follow those rules
@EnderLook No. Starfinder is a more recent system with totally different mechanics. Same publisher, different rules. Some say Starfinder was an early testing ground for Pathfinder 2e concepts (Pathfinder 2e is in playtest right now)
@EnderLook I don't know about the rules, but starfinder is set in space. It still has the same "the rules are there to tell you what characters can or can't do" problem.
@EnderLook What is your goal? Story about a vampire antagonist against the players? Setting where some of the players can be vampires? Setting where all of the players are vampires?
@EnderLook I'll try to translate. Does your brother want to be a vampire with vampirelike powers in a game where you still bash monsters to get more treasure, or in a game where you are expected to behave like Dracula, or like some other vampire from the movies?
@MikeQ Oh. I just was thinking in D&D5e when you and others started suggesting me other systems. My brothers idea is just to be a vampire and my idea is to run something, if it is dnd better but if not it doesn't matter. Anyway, I only play 6 D&D5e sessions and 1 my brother, so...
@EnderLook Because it's vastly easier to make someone feel like a vampire and stay within reason and not break the system, than it is to hack away at a system (discarding many very important assumptions, possibly giving too-powerful features or removing all viability) to make someone feel like it's good
@Zachiel Morts is a free Fate setting. A generation after the undead apocalypse, a small city in the Pacific Northwest is rebuilding itself thanks to the thanksless work of government-sponsored undead-hunters. Sometimes one of the more intelligent undead joins their forces to hunt the evil/unthinking undead who threaten their way of life.
@Delioth yeah, if playing D&D he could very well be. I've had a 4e druid that was a shapechanged dragon that reverted to her true form when using shapechange, in one of my games. Not a dragon at all, but it worked: the wonders of refluffing!
@MikeQ I've got an old campaign idea about Korean vampires overthrowing both North and South Korean goverments and "restoring" the Joseon dynasty with themselves as the ruling class.
@EnderLook Or get him to play a flavor of something else - Druids aren't all nature-fanatics living in the forest. The class is the set of abilities - spellcasting, shapechanging, etc. It makes no prescription of what those abilities actually entail (if there is anything that does that, it's easier to scrap)
@EnderLook At which point the system breaks further - all these level N characters have magic items which makes them more powerful. Either A) they just plow through encounters that would be challenging, or B) You power up the encounters... and the encounters now have enough damage to just instantly kill the party
One solution might be using a system that already works like you need to: summing up advantages and disadvantages (I'm thinking GURPS now, but it still has the problems of D&D about story creation)
@Zachiel I've read a bit about GURPS. It has a Mana magic system, that is nice for by brother. But it's a bit weird. I'll have to have another look on it
It'd probably be more realistic to just do what all GM's must do at some point when new players ask for a lot: say No. Sometimes systems just can't take that and a given character can't be too far out of line with the "expected stuff" (whether with bonuses and penalties, orwhatever)
@BESW here might have some good ideas on how to work out some Fate aspects that fit the constant regeneration (probably something that recharges every scene?) and shapechange skills in a system like Fate, where the characters are way less tied to HP and other things that could get in the way of creating a character with the right aesthetics.
> Soul-sucking. When you inflict a physical or mental consequence, you can reduce the severity of one of your physical or mental consequences by one tier, provided the lower slot is available.
In Fate, for example, a character could have a trait (not sure about the terminology) that just says "vampire in disguise". Other players or the GM can use this trait to impose disadvantages on a character (in exchange for fate point they can then spend to leverage situations in their favour at a later time), for example "I will give you a Fate point if the opponent happends to be using a wooden stake as a weapon" (ok that was a stupid example)
You have "stress" bubbles, usually about three, which represents your ability to avoid lasting consequences. Attacks deal stress, which you absorb with your stress bubbles. When you take more stress than you can absorb, you choose to either take a lasting consequence or leave the conflict and give the opponent something they want.
It's a story game: the stress/consequence system asks the player "What are you willing to endure in the long-term in order to get what you want right now?"
So, maybe your vampire ran through the sunlight to catch someone, and took the consequence Seriously crispy. He could've chosen to give up and let the person get away, but he'd rather get crispy and catch the guy.
@EnderLook Please note how what BESW said compares with how D&D (or Warhammer) would deal with the same situations: "Are you willing to risk losing all your HP today or tomorrow?" XD
@EnderLook If that's what you want it to be about. Fate's not a setting, though there are a lot of setting books for Fate. Fate is a system for telling stories about characters who are competent, dramatic, and proactive, who take risks to get their goals and get in trouble for it, but are awesome enough to get out of that trouble too.
Normally a consequence like Seriously crispy might last for a few sessions. But if your vampire has the stunt I linked above, then if he's fighting someone in the next scene and they choose to take a consequence rather than let him get what he wants, he can change it from Seriously crispy to Lightly toasted and get rid of it at the end of that session.
Fate (and many, many other games that don't follow the D&D paradigm) also allows the whole group to control the narrative, the pacing... what's interesting for the heroes? Maybe needing to retreat and coming back with a better plan makes for a better scene, like in a movie. D&D usually cares more about resource management: coming back one day later is often a necessity or the result of a bad approach to the current encounter.
@EnderLook In Fate, your stunts and penalties tend to have creative names. Players usually make up the effects and names while playing. The vampire got burnt from sunlight, so BESW called it "seriously crispy".
@BESW my personal problem with Fate is that it has so many ways to model things that I get stuck analyzing which is better. Also, Fate is more of a toolbox and requires inventive ways to turn facts into mechanics.
D&D's combat is very tactical, and tends to be the focus of the gameplay
Fate is generally not as combat-centric as D&D. There's more emphasis about the players contributing parts to a story. Like everyone is collaborating to write the story together.
For example, once we had a player who was The Incredible Hulk in a superhero game. One of his aspects was "Hulk Smash". It took a while to figure that we could compel him to smash more things than he wanted to, in order to introduce problems that we as a group needed to solve. Without that, the fiction had him go uncontested and easily reach a lab to get some items we needed. With that, he ended up breaking the thing.
If the story would be more interesting with a fight, then the collective makes a fight happen. But random extra fights for XP should never happen. Notably, there aren't explicitly rewards just for having a fight.
Uh, I shouldn't have started with "for example"... it looks like I'm talking about what BESW just said... my last post was more of a continuoation of my previous one.
The nature of the story can be primarily social, or physical, or whatever. It's about people getting into conflicts in order to achieve their goals, and often making bad decisions because of their personalities and values which make it harder to get to their goals.
Because Fate's mechanics are based on phrases the group comes up with, you can use the same basic rules to model an argument between friends, a political debate on the floor of the senate, or a laser-gun fight over a lava pit.
@BESW yet, while in D&D acting along your personalities and values and making bad decisions is detrimental and prevents you from getting to your goals, in Fate you get rewarded for this behaviour.
In any of those situations, the outcome will be less about "which player chose the better argument/allies/guns" and more about "which character is more invested in the outcome and is willing to risk more to get it."
It seems to me or in Fate the GM doesn't make the story? It seems like players build by pieces it, making solutions or adding problems by themselves. Isn't that dangerous?
It's also really hard to come up with a character that just doesn't work in Fate, back to your issues. A vampire character can play fine with others; he's just got an aspect that says he is one, then he is. Good or bad; he can exploit that fact for advantages, and others can exploit that for their own advantage.
@EnderLook In D&D it would be dangerous, because D&D is about combat and survival and winning. In Fate, it would be dramatic (and therefore fun!) because Fate is generally about building a story.
In fact, it's quite awesome. Takes a lot of the pressure off the GM and helps remind everyone at the table that they're there to have fun playing a game with friends, not to win an abstract conflict against rivals.
@EnderLook Basically, if you start with a pre-made plot like D&D often wants you to (and much of that is because it takes time to plan encounters, so you need to do that in advance) then derailing the plot is dangerous. If you start from a tense situation and build from there, it's just like having a lot more heads throwing their good ideas on the table. Sure, it's not a thing everybody likes (as I said, it requires improvising).
@BESW and of course there's still players who like winning conflicts against rivals, but I would suggest playing Agon to them.
@BESW For example, let me tell you something that happen the day before yesterday. A friend of mine come home to make a Final Practice Work for school. I don't know how we were talking about Macroeconomics (for the homework) when in a moment we jump to explaining him how to play D&D, and he was willing to join. When I told him about aligments, he said he wanted to be Evil in order to backstab players and betray them. In that moment I realised that I couldn't let him play with us.
His destructive nature could arruin everything. And you are talking about letting him run the story???
D&D (and similar games) generally don't have a safe method of resolving character-vs-character drama. Fate does, as long as all the players agree to it.
@EnderLook Anyway, before playing I suggest using the Same Page Tool in order to make the desired party relationshiph explicit. Beware! It is not a survey, it's more like "this is what we will be playing, do you understand and agree?"
There are no game rules that can protect you from people who want to make real-life people unhappy, because they aren't playing the game everyone else is: they're using the game system as an excuse to justify bullying.
Here's my cardinal rule of gaming, for players and GMs alike: Make sure everyone is safe and happy, in that order, and talk with the group about what will help keep them safe and happy.
(Another thing about not-D&D games, btw: many of them require far fewer players for the mechanics to work properly. Fate can work with just one player and one GM, though it's really better with at least two players.)
@EnderLook I found Fate much easier to read in theory than Dungeon World, but more difficult to get to the table. Both of them seriously require throwing D&D ideas out of the window.
@EnderLook The reason there is that it is precisely not D&D, so when you read Dungeon World after that, you have gained a bit of an eye for Non-D&D collaborative storytelling things and other general Non-D&D stuff, and will hopefully be less confused that Dungeon World is sometimes like D&D and sometimes not.
(and once you have gone full circle, you might find things like DW vampire playbooks – I cannot say anything about its quality, but there are good Dungeon World supplement playbooks for sale, so if – after all of this exploration – that is what you and your brother want to do, it may be worth a look.)
@BESW Inspired by Skill in a LRP I played where in my down-to-earth faction “appropriate roleplaying” was usually “shout at them until they cave and go back to the front line”, I also had a 5E paladin who would ‘shout at people until they regain hit points’ for laying on hands.