I'm working on a new Shadowrun campaign which is going to have some elements ispired by the movie "Underworld". I'm wanting to "adjust" the Vampires found in the Critters book to better match those from the movie. It will be my first Shadowrun game in YEARS, so I am not completely familiar with the rules, and wanted to ask for some assistance.

The current way Regeneration works (drawn together from the Critters book and the Shadowrun Companion) is that you roll when you receive deadly damage, and on a "1", you don't regenerate. This increases to a "1" or "2" in the event that some/all of the deadly damage received is from a source that the character is allergic to, or that causes massive tissue damage (fire, explosives, etc).

I would like a better way to represent the Vampires ability to be hurt by, but shrug off and later heal "normal" damage. I'm going to play around with letting the character's become infected at some point, and I would hate for a single roll of 1 or 1-2 to completely wipe out their character.

I considered giving the vampires complete immunity to "normal weapons", but they will also be wearing armor. Immunity gives the vampire an Armor Rating equal to his/her Essence Rating - add armor on top of that, and the vampires will almost NEVER take normal damage.....I want a happy medium.

Weapons based on Ultraviolet Light wouldn't automatically destroy the Vampire, but the would definitely bypass any kind of immunity.

Any ideas for making this work ? Thanks!

One solution would be to give the vampires adept powers of pain resistance (so they can shrug off the hits) and enhanced healing so they can recover more quickly after the fight is over.

Completely bypass Shadowrun. Go right to White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade instead. The rules there are built around vampires being the PC's, and are less critter-ish as a result.

Besides, you may as well go directly to the source Underworld was inspired from in the first place.

Riiiight too bad vampire stole it from Anne Rice who stole it from Bram Stoker whole stole it from Ledgends of Vlad The Impaler...

Someone reads Penny Arcade.
Regardless, think about what you just said, Melkor. You don't want someone to get wiped out by an unlucky roll of a 1 or of a 1 or 2.
Remember that these rolls only happen after taking Deadly damage in the first place. Deadly damage in a single round, no less.
Unless you're having the players unarmed against flamethrower-toting enemies, or fighting military helicopters on foot, hopefully they can keep from just being "wiped out" due to being "unlucky".

~J

Yea, its a 2+ save to regenerate ONLY if youd normally be dead. Theyre not any weaker than normal SR characters, but to top things off they heal every round. And then, if they get to deadly damage in one round by chance, they only actually fail to regenerate on a 1 (or a 2 if the npcs are gunning for you). Now, even if they get a 1, they dont die. They just lie there and bleed to death like a normal character. A little magic or biotech and theyre back on their feet and gtg (comparativly anyways). Vampires are very tough unless you know exactly what to do and get the plan into action fast, and even then they can be big trouble if theres more than one. A group of PC vampires would be powerful indeed....

Right, someone gets blasted for deadly damage, in most cases that's it, game over.
A vampire gets a 66% chance to get up and shrug it off. 83% if it's just gun play.

That's pretty good odds. As long as the players keep being straight, wearing armor and trying not to get shot in the first place they should be ok. The yutz who decides -"Hey I've got regeneration, I don't need no stinkin' tactics" and runs around in firefights wearing evening wear, gets what he diserves!

Thanks for the replies.

I don't have my Critters book with me at the moment. Can someone explain the healing that Vampires get every turn ?

I don't remember reading that.

I'd have to agree with Anymage... go play V:TM if you wanna be a party of bloodsuckers. Now, if you wanna combine a vampire or two with the world of Shadowrun, that's different. Personally, I think playing vampires would be dull. There's little to no risk of getting killed... if you're gonna play the diseased predator, ghouls are much more fun. And typically much more unhinged... Muhuhahahaha...

Vampire regeneration is basically:
Roll initiative and replace all your damage at the same time.

Nasty.

That being said I have a more organic method for vampire regen. I take the Regenerating creature's Body plus 10 (Which is how many boxes he can regenerate under normal circumstances, 10 plus overflow which is equal to body) and divide that between however many passes there are in the combat turn. If the vampire has 12 body, thats 22 total regen. If there were 3 passes he would regenerate 7 boxes of damage at the end of each pass, both physical and mental. Since a vampire normally as 15-18 body that's ususally in the neighborhood of 25-28 regen divided by the number of passes. If it's a really powerful vampire than the body, can get as high as 12, for a 24 total.

Players in my game rarely, very rarely mess with regenerating creatures if they can help it.

Thanks again for the tips/information folks.

I would like to make the vampires lose blood as they are wounded, and thus lose essence so that they might need to "recharge" by feeding on blood to regain essence after being seriously hurt.....any suggestions on how to make that work ?

Also, I really liked the visual of the Werewolves in Underworld being able to "cling" to walls....and the Vampires being able to fall from heights and land "in a walk" without taking damage....This seems a little far-fetched for something caused by a virus (but hey, how much in Shadowrun ISN'T far fetched - and besides, vampires can assume a mist form based on Critters can't they ?) Any idea on how to handle these aspects in the rules ?

As for the couple of posters who said "Go play Vampire: The Masquerade".....While I appreciate your "advice", That really has nothing to do with the topic, or the questions I asked. Let me explain the campaign idea so you will see that Vampire: The Masquerade has absolutely nothing to do with the game I am planning to run. I don't want to play anything other than Shadowrun at the moment.

The Vampires I will be using are the result of a virus, and they are more "mutated by the virus" than walking dead.....I'm not saying that I'm going to make the character's all Vampires, but I am going to make catching the virus a real possibility for the players.

The players are going to be part of a group whose purpose is to hunt down those infected with the virus and "contain" them....At some point, it might be interested to throw in undertones from Underworld - what if one of the characters becomes the thing the other characters are hunting ? What if one of the characters develops a romantic relationship with someone who is infected ?

Thanks again. Cheers.

As for injury<->essence loss, I don't see a very good way to do that unless you want to make regeneration cost essence. There's an optional adept power called Adhesion out there that you may want to look up for clinging-to-wallness. Other than that...
OMFG GO PLAY WHITE WOLF YOU FSCKING LOOSER N00B!
*Ahem*

~J

Just remember, being a vampire, being infected doesn't turn a person into a slavering beast. It's not like in "Buffy" or "from Dusk 'til Dawn" where the infected at once becomes a beast.

Once they have been "turned" and have had the initial feeding(in our world that's drain 3 essence points from what ever comes to hand) they are who they were. It's not like the infected, making out with his girl friend suddenly rips her throat out with a really bad hickie.

Same morals and hopes only now they are really limited by sever allergies and the real strain will come when they have to feed to keep going. They don't go berserk at the site of spilled blood, but might find it shameful for team mates to see them "dining" or team mates might think nothing of meeting in a restaurant, and that will remind the infected of what he lost.

I was going to suggest stronger muscles and physical capabilities to reflect the "jump off a huge building and land in mid-strut", but either the footgear is the strongest stuff known _or_ they have some means of slowing critical acceleration.

Or just chalk it up to a "every character gets one special spiffy schtick".

-Siege

Bah - if you're going to steal vampire powers, steal them from RIFTS. Now THOSE guys were bad-bass mofos. Complete immunity to normal weapons. Rapid regeneration from special weapons. Near-instant shape-shifting. A hive-mind mentality. Super intelligences.

Yeah, baby. Bring on the squirt-guns!

So they were morlocks?

That's nothing. I was 15 the last time we played RIFTS, and so the genius of power-gaming was not tempered by physics.

Remember that vampires were invulnerable? Remember that they could shape-shift instantly?

We used to force them into bat-form, wrap metal around them, and fire them from our railguns.

Mid-flight, they'd shift into human form.

BAM! A 160lb man hitting the target at Mach 3. That's from a 8 ounce bat. Our childish physics told us that the vampires would hit the target 320(!) times harder than a normal rail-gun bullet. Kerpow.

Gotta hate the conservations of energy and momentum

~J

Oh, it's the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy that'll really get you.

Like the time Colossus climbed a hill in steel form, and then converted to human form. Radiated heat all over the place ...

Speaking of which, I've come up with a theory based on the fact that some things can shapeshift without having unusual mass for their new forms: magic and mass can be related, which means that magic and energy would be related, which provides more interesting possibilities to Atomagic.
E=MC^2, but what does Magic=?

~J

Since magic can do work, I'd suggest that maybe it's just a type of energy. Magnetic energy, light energy, electrical energy - it's just another type.

OR. Maybe magic is a form of energy, but it's quantumly different from radiation. The other side of the 'quantum foam', so to speak.

OR. It could be like light. It acts like energy when you perceive it, but it acts like something else when you perceive it a different way. Just like light can be a particle or a wave, but not both.

The new formula is (E=Mc^2)*FU where FU is a value controlled by magic that can never be determined by scientific explanation and will drive scientists to drink.

What would the virus infection do to a Character or NPC's attribute scores and Racial Maximums ?

Any ideas/suggestions ?

Technically nothing, they remain unchanged but the virus adds there essence on top of all their physical attributes.

No, vampires only have Enhanced Physical Attributes(Strength) - Nosferatu have Strength AND Body, but only twice per day each.

Hmm - I just looked in the Critters book, and it only says 'Enhanced Physical Attributes' under Vampires no limitations... So, is there an errata for this, or did they decide to suddenly make vampires that much more lethal in SR3? (All previous sources has had them with Enhanced Strength, and nothing else, for those who only play SR3)

Does that mean that in SR3 they divide their total essence between all physical attributes as you (the GM) see fit ?

That means they have to drain an insane number of people a month, meaning they would be hunted down and killed in record time.

And yes, in 3rd edition you add their essence, which can be up to 12, to all three of their physical attributes. This is whjy I keep saying, my group does NOT fight vamps if they can at all help it.

That means they have to drain an insane number of people a month, meaning they would be hunted down and killed in

One could certainly have a vampire off-shoot or mutant which requires essence every day. And yes, it would become an immediate problem. It would make an excellent story hook - the PCs could be hired by real vampires to hunt down the mutants, since they're giving vampirdom a bad name.

OR, you could generate further story exploring the more subtle vampire variants.

PS: 15 body, 15 quickness ... eeek!

Body 15 Quickness 15 Pshaw ;) Thats for an average human... Think Leon, from The Professional or Jet Li turned

Send...more...paramedics...

-Siege

We need a bigger gun.

Seems weird to me that they'd make Vampires so much more powerful in SR3... It evens them out against Nosferatu (which were the most badass vmpires previously) and suddenly puts them miles ahead of Banshees and Wendigos...

I'm hoping it was just a mistake; that they forgot to put (Strength) in after the Enhanced Physical Attributes.

*goes to check errata*

Shadow, nice... hardly see any quotes from Split Second.

Losing 1 point of Essence per month would mean that a Vampire could technically "fill up", and not need blood for 12 months.....That seems like a long, long time to me when they have so many other advantage.

To top that off, if they get to add 12 to all physical attributes that month, then 11 the next, and 10 the next, etc., etc.....That's just too powerful for my campaign.

I'll be splitting essence between physical attributes, and requiring a much higher consumption of blood (1 Essence lost per day as I suggested above).....To make up for it, I'll probably say the virus kills most of those infected with it outright, so very few vampires survive. Then the effect of increased feeding on a given population would be less......hardly noticeable in a major city.

Thanks again for all of the ideas/replies.

also remember you may want to notice you are fundamentally changing the way vampires work in another way. The blood really doesn't do anything. Vampires get nothing from dringking blood, and only a small token amount of blood is consumed while feeding essence. Vampires do not need blood to survive in SR, they need essence.

Melkor, I've worked it out with my SR GM that I could play a Vampire Mage in our group. A LOT of the problems that come with being a vampire are balancing when you make sure to play them up.

First, I don't know who told you that vampires get a boost to ALL their physical attributes when channeling essence, but me and my GM agreed that using essence will only fuel ONE attribute at a time. Once per phase, as a free action, this empowerment can be changed to a different attribute, but the effects last at least one round. So if that wimpy guard your vampire is about to strangle with your boosted strength breaks off a wooden leg and tries to stab you, you're stuck dealing with that low Body till the next round.

Second, and this is something that needs to constantly be enforced, remember that normal vampires CANNOT casually pass through wards. Even light wards are stop signs for them as they're Dual natured. Most places(banks, security conscious hotels, etc, etc,) have at least light wards to keep out snooping wizkid mages and shamen.

Next, remember that there are magical groups who can pinpoint vampiric activity. If character's start racking up body counts in feeding and not taking any means to disguise or destroy their corpses, they should be visited by these group often and painfully. Don't be afraid to smack down powergamers who want to stay at the top of their game.

And lastly, stick to the monthly feeding system, but add a twist. Channeling the stolen essence from others should deplete their stores. An easy rule of thumb is that after movng essence a number of times equal to the character's stolen essence rating, the vampire loses 1 full essence point as it is lost in the constant movements. So starting off with 12 Essence, after switching essence from attribute to attribute 12 times will leave a vampire with 11. Of course, the vampire can feed to restore this loss, but if he goes over the maximum essence, the rest is wasted and he's just got another corpse to bury.

Hey trembler, vampires in 3rd edition are no longer dual natured. I had this slapped upside my head a while back and it really surprised me. They have no problem at all with wards.

Also, in SR vampires are functionally immune to sunlight, as their moderate allergy gives them a light wound from a full minute of exposure, while they regenerate all their damage every 3 seconds, including their allergies. They may peel a bit, but it will never actually do damage or smoke. A moderate allergy is not even jokingly threatening to a regenerating creature.

Vamps in SR are really NOT vamps like in other fantasy or sci fi sources.

My GM and I are still working off the 2nd ed critters book. I didn't know that 3rd ed critters was out yet.

It's not... kind of... A critters book comes with the 3rd edition GM screen and that's where my info is from.

Yeah, IMHO that makes them one of the biggest, nastiest threats in SR3.