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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Don't Feed the Vampires

Posted by: tisoz Feb 12 2007, 01:44 AM

Do Vampires need to feed other than to drain/gain essence? Do they need to drink blood daily, like for their daily nutritional needs?

Posted by: thewolf Feb 12 2007, 02:33 AM

I always thought that the blood was merely a symbolic component of the essence transfer, something that would bring out the emotional stress required. As far as I know, they don't need to eat or drink anything (and if they do, bad things happen: see Underworld Evolution, et al).

Posted by: Thane36425 Feb 12 2007, 02:43 AM

QUOTE (thewolf)

Correct on all counts.

Posted by: bibliophile20 Feb 12 2007, 03:05 AM

Underworld Evolution? Mind telling those of us who are fairly new and don't have the book?

Posted by: Draug Feb 12 2007, 03:44 AM

It's a vampire action flick. You've probably heard of it.

Posted by: hyzmarca Feb 12 2007, 04:04 AM

In Underworld:Evolution the half-vamp/half-werewolf dude tries to sit down and have a nice solid cooked meal. The result is a lot of vomiting.

This is not the case in SR. Vampires have Immunity to Age, Pathogens, and Toxins. Neither of these immunities negate or reduce food-related lifestyle costs. They have to eat. Essence drain simply counteracts their Essence Loss, nothing more or less. However, it is important to remember that there are no starvation rules in SR. They wouldn't be effected by a lack of food because no one would be.

Posted by: Thane36425 Feb 12 2007, 04:10 AM

QUOTE (hyzmarca)

On page 294, SR4 in the vampire entry it says that They become sick within one hour of eating anything but blood and have a really bad reaction to alcohol.

Posted by: bibliophile20 Feb 12 2007, 04:34 AM

Ah, the movie Underworld. Yes, I've heard of it. Yes, it's on my list of movies to watch. No, I have not seen it yet.

So, that is a good question: I know that ghouls can't eat anything other than raw flesh, and a minute amount of the flesh had to have belonged to a metahuman at one point, but that they still have to eat and metabolize. Same goes for wendigos, I suppose. But vampires can't just survive on blood, can they? They have to have some sort of metabolism--there isn't any comment on them not showing up on thermo, so they have to be burning fuel of some sort. Hmmm...

Going to have to think on this a bit more; while HMHVV is a mystical virus, it's still a virus... and even zombies and shedim power their bodies via their mana natures, but there isn't any mention of that sort of thing with the vampires--they aren't flesh forms (I think) and somehow I doubt that there are many magicians in the world that can permanently--and unconsciously--sustain the Nutrition spell on themselves.

Posted by: Sir_Psycho Feb 12 2007, 11:50 AM

critters, Page 46

"VAMPIRE
Vampires are humans and metahumans infected with
HMHVV. They prey on sentient beings, absorbing the life
essence of their victims along with the victim’s blood. Some
vampires refuse to drain Essence from an unwilling subject;
others revel in their role as hunters and killers. Vampires will
become sick to their stomachs within an hour of consuming
anything but blood and have particularly bad reactions to
alcohol."

Posted by: thewolf Feb 12 2007, 01:37 PM

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320691/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401855/

Not bad films to rent to pass an evening. Nothing earth-shattering, but having Kate Beckinsale to look at sure does earn a point or two

Posted by: tisoz Feb 12 2007, 09:23 PM

QUOTE (Sir_Psycho @ Feb 12 2007, 05:50 AM)

Right, I had that information as well as the description from other SR sources. But none of them explain if the vampire needs to eat other than to replenish essence.

I can see the answer being no, they only need to feed to keep their essence from falling to 0. I can also see the answer being yes, they need to consume blood 3 times a day as they are only humans infected with a virus and still need to eat even if the rules do not mention it, after all, they do not mention how much or how often anyone needs to eat.

I'm wondering just how people see it. Is the vampire out hunting nightly, or stocking liters of blood in the 'fridge? Or is the vampire able to go almost a year before restocking nearly 12 points of essence?

Posted by: cristomeyers Feb 12 2007, 09:38 PM

I can't see them stocking blood, seems they need a victim. As to whether they hunt nightly or not, it'd be personal preference. They are sentient, after all.

I remember there was a novel a while back, Terminus Experiment, that actually had people trying to make vampires that could subsist on regular food. If I remember correctly, they actually succeeded before the only new breed of vampire got firebombed to hell.

Posted by: tisoz Feb 12 2007, 09:48 PM

Ok, I'll try a bit differently.

Everyone agrees vampires need to drain essence at times to replace lost essence or they will die. Do vampires need to drink blood without taking essence just to eat comparable to how most creatures need to eat to survive? Or is essence the only nutritional requirement?

Posted by: hyzmarca Feb 12 2007, 10:24 PM

I'm going to stick by most of what I wrote earlier and say that vampires do have to eat even if it is just nutrient-enriched blood. So they would stockpile. It doesn't need to be metahuman blood and the donor does not have to be alive when the blood is consumed. That is just for essence drain.

Critters mentions other vampire variants that have non-essence dietary requirements, so that makes sense.

Posted by: Thane36425 Feb 12 2007, 11:10 PM

They feed on Essence. They don't need anything else and regular food is unpleasant to them. Stocking up on blood won't help them either because there would be no Essence to drain from it.

Posted by: knasser Feb 12 2007, 11:22 PM

In one of my rare breaks with RAW, I have thrown out all of this stuff about vampires not needing to eat. I like a little pseudo-science in my fantasy and I demand that my vampires sit down for a good meal once a night. Of course they need the essence from blood drinking, too.

Posted by: hyzmarca Feb 13 2007, 12:08 AM

QUOTE (Thane36425 @ Feb 12 2007, 06:10 PM)

They feed on Essence. They don't need anything else and regular food is unpleasant to them. Stocking up on blood won't help them either because there would be no Essence to drain from it.

While they feed on essence, that really only counteracts their essence loss. It doesn't counteract their dietary needs. In fact, Critters states that some cultural metavariants of vampires have dietary requirements other than blood. Some require salt, for example.

Posted by: Tanka Feb 13 2007, 03:03 AM

Just because they don't eat regular food doesn't mean their stomach never starts having those annoying hunger pangs.

Posted by: Sir_Psycho Feb 13 2007, 03:35 AM

Hunger pangs for a vampire is when their essence drops below six.

The real problem here I think is the rate of essence loss. In current rulings, they can live a very long time without feeding.

Posted by: Mercer Feb 13 2007, 05:58 AM

I've covered this before http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=13599&st=50, but this is the most relevant passage:

QUOTE (mercer)

I took a page from WW blood points, and let vampires "spend" essence to activate their powers. Increased Physical Attirbutes wasn't always active, they had to burn a point of essence to get it going. Regeneration was the same way, one point of essence for a wound level. Vampires could be baddies, but they couldn't keep it up for very long (at least not without feeding), and activating powers took an action. The only Always Active powers were therm vision and their immunities. By making vampires a little more scalable (meaning their power level and not the ease at which they could be climbed) and more customized, I got a lot more mileage out of them. I never had a player play one, but I wouldn't have been against it. I think it came out pretty balanced. (I had more detailed files, but I've been on a year or so break from SR and I'm working from memory here.) I also mixed up the critter powers a bit. They all started with the vision mod, the immunities and the ability to spend essence for Str or Regen. After that, their powers could express in different ways (similar to WW disciplines, though instead of "bloodlines" it was variant strains of HMHVV... which is kind of the same thing).

One of the things that did is Vampires went through Essense a lot faster. I added a rule that vamps could stave of Essence loss by drinking blood, mainly because I've always liked the imagery of a vamp with a refrigerator of Red Cross blood bags, and wanted there to be a reason for them to have one. So a vampire could feed up to Ess 12 and stay that way all year by drinking blood, but then blow through 6 points in one combat. Below half max Ess is when Vamps start getting more animalistic, and at 1-2 points they are ravening monsters that will feed on anything. (Though they may regret it when they're done.)

All that said, getting back the original question, I've always treated it that vamps can't digest food. Because of the disease, their bodies don't function like they used to, and Essence and blood is how they sustain themselves. The exceptions are the vamp breeds with odd dietary requirements, there's the one that needs salt, and another one that eats hearts rather than drinks blood; but like I said, those are the exceptions. There are the odd vamps that can keep food down, but thats more like a vamp party trick, they don't get any sustenance from it. (It's a useful trick for blending into non-HMHVV society, as most people will not think the guy packing down the canapes is a vampire.)

I don't think this is a right/wrong question though, rather its one of those details that can be left up to how a GM wants to treat it. I prefer vampy vamps, other GMs might like less vampy vamps. Its all good.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Feb 13 2007, 06:23 AM

Vampires must feed, either by sexualizing women or by using their sexualized charms to lure poor, chaste, innocent men away from the path of virtue.

~J

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Feb 14 2007, 03:59 PM

There is nothing about them needing to ffed. The rules go out of their way to say they cannot eat or drink. blood is only symbolic of the exchange. It seems the changeto their biology means they do not/cannot take in food.

Posted by: Sir_Psycho Feb 15 2007, 02:08 AM

That's true. They do not have a dietary requirement of blood, drinking blood is simply their method of extracting essence, creating an empathic link.

Posted by: Tanka Feb 15 2007, 03:31 AM

The biggest argument I can see for "only have to eat once a month", is thus:

Assume they must eat thrice a day. Assume there are five vampires in the Barrens (just for kicks, say).

If they get a different victim every day, it's gonna be 5,475 victims (365 days/year * three meals/day * five vampires).

That's 5.5k cases of "dude, where'd you get that nasty bite?"

Sixty of those cases will either end up dead/a vampire (if a vampire snacks on a mook with Essence one or less) or feeling less like themselves after receiving this mysterious bite.

Now, if they made a new vampire, that's another mouth (ha!) to feed. And in their first month of existance, you know they'll want to get their fill. Assume an average Essence roll (2d6, so 7). That's either five people drained of one point, one person drained of five points, or whatever. That could very well be another five vampires made, or one, or however many based on number of mooks and Essence they have.

See where the math starts to increase fairly significantly?

Given those statistics, you'd think there'd be a really, really heavy bounty on vampires.

OR!

Paranoia! The vampires own several large blood banks. Most of the donations don't go to third world countries and areas in need of medical supplies, they go to the bloodsuckers themselves so they don't have to risk exposure by feeding on over 1,000 people per year, each.

So, sure, they might get hungry. So they just make sure to have some raw meat waiting, drip it, and guzzle the blood from it. After all, who'd suspect some pasty guy in a leather coat at the grocery store as being a vampire? He just looks like one of those freako trideo game players.

Posted by: hyzmarca Feb 15 2007, 05:39 AM

Dude, they can just buy blood from a fraggin' butcher shop. Heck, vampires don't have to feed off of metahumans at all. Everything alive has essence, even meat animals.

Posted by: Fix-it Feb 15 2007, 06:54 PM

vampire cattle ranchers.