I've thought of this particular conflict before, and ended up deciding to just throw the vampire's essence drain and essence requirement out the window. It seems unnecessary with the dietary requirement already in place. Without the essence requirement, a not-poor SINner vampire just goes to the blood bank, or drains a bit from a willing person (I doubt the vampire fangirl has gone away in 2070) when they need the human blood requirement met. They supplement that with animal blood and maybe flat Sprite or sugar water. And yes, this screws up the whole Infection power thing, but we just pretty much assume any transmission of blood or sexual fluids transmits the virus. While we're at it, since we're accentuating the "vampirism as a disease" take on it, we switch out the power Mist Form for Influence, since Mist Form is a little over the top.

Has anyone else done this, or anything like it? Does this make them stronger, weaker? How much would you alter the point cost if someone wanted to play one? I realize this is some thread drift, but I hope that's ok.

Removing Essence Drain makes them weaker by a huge margin, & basically destroys them in Shadowrun.

By far the worst change you could make to vampires - it would be better to remove them entirely (which I do not, in any way, support).

Hmmm...I hadn't been planning to use them as big&scaries, or at least not big and scary from the vampirism, so maybe a lot weaker is all right. It's certainly good to know that's what's happening, though, so thanks for the heads up.

If you are not going to use Essence Drain, remove vampires entirely.

If your concern is about vampires being capable of maintaining a legal SIN, there are numerous methods for the rich & powerful to bypass the issue, so leave them unchanged.

Better yet, why don't you use the search function to look up the old threads where all this was already hashed out.

If you want me to look at older threads, provide a link & I might consider it.

Discussion on the subject, & developer input, has no effect whatsoever on my point. Pre-Augmentation, Essence Holes, by any name, did not exist in SR4. If you want to debate this, provide a RAW quote to prove me wrong.

Sorry, I've got better things to do with my time then do your homework for you, the arguements were already made and the book was already quoted. Essence Holes existed in all but name Pre-AUG.

It is not 'my' homework. You claim I am incorrect. It is 'your' homework to provide proof. All you have done so far is troll.

I feel like we're having a discussion about vampires, and in the background a barfight over essence holes is about to break out.

Megu, I did some similar fiddling with vamps in my (SR3) game. I left them Essence Drain (and Infection), but slowed their rate of Essence loss. As long as a vamp was getting blood, it's Essence didn't decrease on it's own. However-- and it's a big however-- I also gave an Essence cost for some of their powers, like Mist Form. (Senses and Immunities were always active, most everything else I can remember cost a point of Essence.) This was piggybacked with my houserule of the Regeneration power, for vamps it cost them one point of Essence per wound level. So a vamp with a regular diet of blood could stay full for a long time, but blow it all in one night and be ravenous at the end of it. Vamps that lived that kind of lifestyle were particularly dangerous, because they might be sucking up 6 points of Essence a week. (For those who thinks this sounds vaguely like V:TM's blood pool, yeah, I ripped it off pretty heavily.)

I also changed which powers vamps got and tied it to bloodlines, or specific strains of HMHVV (similar to the difference between vamps and nosferatu, but not as pronounced). Mist Form was on the list, but assumed the vamp had been around for awhile. New vamps, say those infected for under a year, pretty much just had the Senses, Immunities, and Enhanced Physical Atts. Some gave up Mist Form and got Influence, or Concealment, or something else. ("Sounds like V:TM?" you say. No comment.) Some had more severe allergies to Sunlight, the idea being the more the disease progressed, the more sensitive to light they became.

I also played pretty fast and loose with magical vamps, letting the Magic rating fluctuate with their Essence. Vamp Phys Ads had a list of which of their PA powers would function with their Essence level, so that a vamp PA might find himself spending Essence to gain vamp powers but having to give up PA powers. Having to spend a point to Regen a Serious wound down to a Moderate was a tough decision if it meant your Improved Reflexes was going to stop working. It was more bookkeeping, but I liked it.

I used some vamps as big bads (not so much as villains per se, but just for general badassery), while the younger vamps made good rank-and-file. I ran two main vamp-centric runs, the first was "Brittany the Vampire Slayer" (referenced upthread), the other was the sequel which was more a rip-off of "John Carpenter's Vampires" and "Blade II", although I think in that one the runners were working for the vamps.

For more V:TM crossover goodness, or at least odd serendipity, please note that Vampiric Pawns (from PAoE) correspond closely to V:TM's ghouls, whereas the Nosferatu (also from PAoE) are a lot like a V:TM vampire clan, the name of which escapes me right now.

I think you mean the Nosferatu clan?

Not ringing any bells.

Much weaker, far less a supernatural horror element which I suspect was the intent. This mod basically makes them a slightly bigger badder Ghoul that catch fire in the sun. Not that I would hesitate for a second to toss such a thing in my game but it would not be taking the place of the vampires as writen. As presented Vampires (and their ilk) are terrifying - they need to eat your... soul? spirit? life force? *how much cyberware I can have in me before I co crazy and die track*?. For the record I LIKE that this stat is nebulous and ill defined while being agonizingly important. Ya know, kinda like life...

Slicing and dicing the rest of the powers I do from time to time and I make sure anyone with the fitting backgroud skills know that the book vamps are "default" (What do you mean this one can BREATH FIRE!) - it is a magical diesease after all.

As a side note I keep vampires in my games VERY rare, the saner and more humane ones (notably rarer still) hanging around sapient ghouls and other very fringe communities, avoiding contact with the "norms" and doing everything they can to avoid killing and infecting others. The PC's are basically never going to run into most of those vamps that are out there. The ones they do run into, the more common stripe: some variation on cold killer or crazed beast - Hannabal Lector comes first to mind for where I'd start - Yes I eat "people" if you want to call these individuals I feed on "people", I can see his soul you know. It burns so bright but illuminates naught. Snuffing out his candle can only make the world a better place. There are so many sheep and shepards in this world. And I choose wolf. (GM clears throat, "Roll initiative" end of a several session cat and mouse game comes to fruition: boss fight ensues, afterwards I ask for various stats from the PC's (body from anyone actually struck in melee), roll some dice, make some notes, chuckle softly and smile etc.)

I am very much intrigued by your solution, Mercer. I've got some Vampire vets in my playgroup, they'd probably appreciate that. And it'd allow both powerful vampire opponents and vampires who aren't on a draining spree. I'll definitely think about borrowing some of those elements.

But I think I'm on Screaming Eagle's page. It does make them less supernatural and scary, but maybe that's the point, and interesting. Pulls it back towards the integration-with-society issues, and that alienation from society aspect, be it from being SINless or ork or vampire, seems a lot more thematically intrinsic to the setting than the asceticism vs bestial desires themes you get from vampire stuff traditionally, while still keeping the vampire aesthetic. Am I making sense here or am I just being verbose?

Then I got nothing! Except maybe nWoD Nosferatu.

All you need to do with that one is give them Cannibalism/Power Bleed metamagics. I did that with a troll western drake adept, and he scared my group for a long time, even though the fight only took 3 combat turns (6 vs. 1 aren't good odds - for the 1).

The second paragraph under Critter powers actively encourages this.
There is a similar quote in SR4.

Nice try, but where I come from the person making the utterly preposterous claim is the one who has to provide proof, it isn't merely a case of first come, first serve. However, in the interest of speeding things up a bit I'll give you a hint, look at the rules governing how Essence Loss from Bio and Cyber interact, that should set you on the right path.

You do not seem to 'get it'.

I provided a claim (that is correct). Others have disputed it and been unable to counter it.

You claim I am incorrect - it is you who must provide proof of such. In some circumstances, you might get away with trying to force me to prove it, but as my stance is not a rule, but a lack of a rule, this cannot be one of those times.


Provide a SR4 quote to support your claim, or shut the fuck up. Essence Holes, by any name, did not exist in 4th Edition prior to the release of Augmentation.

Of course they did, otherwise the Essence Loss from bio and cyber wouldn't act the way that they do.

And in this case you are basicaly claiming that sky is green so it is up to you to prove that the rules are broken to the point that something as basic as upgrading your implants was impossible before AUG