Include this in 5e or I will FUCK YOUR FACE

[shadzar]

a necromancer should be an Evil Cleric as a chain-control horde-maker, or a Wizard as a loner Lich-in-the-making.

Why? The Complete Book of Necromancers is almost old enough to Vote.

oh do lets let it vote....

(DMGR7) The Complete Book of Necromancers



Dungeon Master Guide Rules Supplement....ooops this isnt a book for the players it is a DMGR, not a PHBR

[Winnah]

I actually have a copy of that book. Some of the pages have become unglued, so I don't pull it off the shelf very often.

Quite a lot of content in that book is for players. Spells, class info and kits would need to be referenced if the material was used. Like the Necromancer speciality priest, for example.

This is all covered on page 6. Under Necromancy and the PC

[shadzar]

I actually have a copy of that book. Some of the pages have become unglued, so I don't pull it off the shelf very often.

Quite a lot of content in that book is for players. Spells, class info and kits would need to be referenced if the material was used. Like the Necromancer specialty priest, for example.

This is all covered on page 6. Under Necromancy and the PC

i THINK you can get the Core Rules 2.0 Expansion update for Necromancers and it will have the RTF and HTML versions of the book you can expand from the archived cabinet and use that to look at instead of digging out the book. both my Necromancers and Gladiators handbooks are still in perfect condition, as are ALL the other blue and brown books, only the greens one have wear and tear.

the point though is that under the idea of WHO uses what.. the DM would need to approve the Necromancer PC from that, as was said Necromancy as a Specialist Wizard was opposed to the natural feelings of most int the game world and seen as evil to bring the dead back for your uses, no matter what they are. you want to let the dead rest if you are a good person. the game suggests NOT running evil PCs in that vein.

again why the book is a DMG Reference, not a PHB one.

One of the main purposes of this book is to facilitate NPC generation for the DM.

In general, the material presented in this tome is for the Dungeon Master’s eyes only.

Necromancer PCs are already powerful enough (especially at high level) given the basics from the Player’s Handbook. They have no need of the additional powers and abilities described in this book. Since a properly played necromancer PC can significantly unbalance a campaign, only experienced DMs should consider allowing them the abilities outlined in Chapter Two.

and as specialty wizards go they can already be created via the PHB.

CBoN is basically more a book to make your Lichs different from a PC necromancy specialist, not to make Lich PCs.

[Ektagliaresia]

"When I became a Werewolf, I somehow forgot how to be human during a full moon?" You don't really get more WTF than that.

It's wouldn't please everyone, since it's a template, but I would make lycanthropy cause Lunar Madness, which can eventually cause you to become an NPC until cured, unless you devote mental resources (e.g. spend a feat on Control Lycanthropy) to keep it in check.

ii) a golem in D&D is an elemental spirit trapped by a spellcaster in a magic box, and they fucking hate it in there. Free golems are are constant rage and murder. Could we just be small Earth Elementals? Could make them a dwarf sub-race. Or we could do that to Dwarves.

Typically they hate it there, because they were forced. But a player race could exist of them in the form of gleisner type elementals who voluntarily entered their material bodies to experience the Material Plane. Also, part of the attraction to robots/golems is being able to customize their construction, so they need to be able to swap out tool and weapon arms, receive system upgrades, install glyphs/software to themselves.

iii) a vampire in D&D is Evil. Period. They do not fall in love with young women and save them from the nasty wolfies, they charm, rape, and murder young women (in random order). Literal Necrofuckery.

There's no strong reason or need for them to be that way, though. The reason modern vampire fiction includes non-serial killer vampires, is because it's reasonable: certainly Dracula was the primary source material for original D&D vampires, but his story involves a great personal tragedy filling him with rage against God. However, there are many possible reactions to a continual lust for humanoid blood, not all of which are "use your powers to become an amoral serial killer".

iv) a summoner should summon and control Fiends, not goo-blobs, not happy space hamsters, not loving angels. More like Necrofuckery than core then.

I can't speak for the other creatures, but Angel evocation is attested to.

v) a necromancer should be an Evil Cleric as a chain-control horde-maker, or a Wizard as a loner Lich-in-the-making. Also Necrofuckery.

I think the core should use the Playing with Fire interpretation of necromancy, since D&D uses a broad definition for "undead" which essentially means "powered by the negative energy plane". Unless that changes, making necromancy inherently (rather than typically) evil is problematic, because there's no good reason for that to be true.

[vi) some kind of fucking cat that can open door handles using telekinesis is the Elven Cat, give or take. Elf Cats and Cooshees should be in the MM. Especially Elf Cooshees. Which is what they call their dogs, rather than their kitties. Intelligent Halfling fairy-Ponies could deal with the newer fad.

I'd take that deal.

[virgil]

iv) a summoner should summon and control Fiends, not goo-blobs, not happy space hamsters, not loving angels. More like Necrofuckery than core then.

I can't speak for the other creatures, Angel evocation attested to.

Or, even better, cooler alternative.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Summoners really should be able to work with genies. I would be very disappointed if you couldn't try to play Sulaiman and make a bunch of elemental spirits into Pokemon.

[ishy]

Wouldn't you need to make massive changes to peoples perception of for example vampires to make them playable?
I can't see the other players liking never being in sunlight for example.

[CatharzGodfoot]

What is the difference between a genie, an angel, and a demon?

[ModelCitizen]

PC vampires aren't for every game because they require you to accept that the party can't travel by day, but that's not even as restrictive as the Paladin's Code. At least the vampire isn't obliged to get murderously offended when the Sun Mage suggests it would be nice to be diurnal for awhile.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Wouldn't you need to make massive changes to peoples perception of for example vampires to make them playable?
I can't see the other players liking never being in sunlight for example.

This is exactly why I don't like the idea of vampires being a generic PC at any availability greater than 'storm giant' or 'mind flayer'. I mean, you pretty much have two options:

A.) Structure the game and adventure around the vampire's need to drink blood and sunlight weakness. Getting around the thirst for blood is more of a problem for a more detailed story (it's easier to handwave for TTRPG roleplaying in the same way that you can handwave the logistics of bardic music) but the sunlight one is a killer.

B.) Turn the vampire class into a Mary Suepire that can get around the generic vampire weaknesses. Which is fucking lame as hell. I admit, my hatred of the recent trend of vampires getting around sunlight weaknesses is a subjective opinion, but it's one I feel very strongly about. I already hate how the vampire monster is slowly having their cool eroded Drizz't-style through overuse; the whole 'vampire that can operate in sunlight without a blood thirst problem!' reeks to me of stumbling, unimaginative dumbfucks trying to steal some of Dracula and Lestat's legendary cool in order to make some barely of-age goth genitals tingle.

Double Edit: I'll say straight up. I love vampires. Vampires are sweet and by sweet I mean fucking awesome. I love the anachronistic Eurotrash vampires, I love the batshit insane mass-murdering vampires like Hellsing's Alucard, I love the ugly-as-fuck serial killer Orlok vampires, I love the sneering aristocrat metaphor vampires, I love the creepy futuristic blast-from-the-past vampires like in Stargate. Vampires are the rockstars of the Monster Kingdom; when there's a Monster Mash teamup they're always the leaders of the crew even when they have competition from other monsters like devils, mad scientists, and aliens and for good reason.

Thus, I get mortally offended by people trying to pollute the vampire cool by overusing the vampire (which is understandable, because vampires ARE sweet) or worse by changing around the mythos so that the vampire label can be hamfistedly slapped into any story they want like Krusty the Klown's product placement yet missing out on why vampires are sweet in the first place.

[DSMatticus]

Dracula's legendary cool involved beating the shit out of things with his superhuman vampire arms in sunlight. Sunlight limited his ability to go intangible/misty and therefore be nigh invulnerable, but it didn't burn him. He could drink blood without murdering people, though it did tend to have turrible psychological effects on the victims.

Modern vampire fiction sucks because it's a bunch of Sue/Stupires who disavow all of the downsides and own up to all of the angst. They wake up one day, discover they are for all intents and purposes Superman, and that makes them sad. WTF?

Bram Stoker's Dracula didn't go emo. There's the implication that "his soul is in eternal unrest, and that's bad or something," but for the most part he does what you would expect: he makes a harem of hot vampire wives, goes after women that catch his eye, does the whole count powertrip thing, gets tired of that, and decides to go to London because that's where all the fun shit is happening. He's not fighting depression, he's fighting boredom. That makes complete sense.

Stephenie Meyer's Edward Cullen, on the otherhand... he can chill in sunlight. He can drink blood without killing people (I think, fuck if I know how twilight vampire bites work). He is immortal and has superpowers. He responds to that by going emo, which is kind of impressive because emo wasn't a thing until he was like, 100. He's trendy for an old guy. And for some reason, he wanders around the country going to highschool being depressed about how he can't be around people while being a part of society and not murder-biting anyone at all. He just makes no fucking sense on any level.

If anyone with half a brain reinvented the original Dracula, that'd still work. But the "I'm sad because I'm perfect" wish fulfillment shit doesn't, unless you're a teenage girl.

[Avoraciopoctules]

What is the difference between a genie, an angel, and a demon?

Demons want to eat your delicious soul, angels want you to stab undesirables in face, and genies want to prank you to death. Basically.

[sake]

Let's be honest, at this point Vampires' have had weaknesses to almost everything but kryptonite, lead and the motherfucking color yellow. And as a result, whenever you write a new vampire story you pretty much have to do a mental checklist in your head checking off which weaknesses your vamps get and which is "just a silly superstition" that the vamp will laugh about in the cliche scene in which the heroes use it on him.

And you know why you'll do this? Because a Vampire with every damn tradition weakness there ever was would hardly be able to function as a threat or character, and you'd have to make the heroes act like complete retards just for the vamp to be one. So, instead you pick and choose what's best for the story you'remaking.

Your story takes place in an area that also happens to have lots of rivers? you're probably going to axe the 'can't cross running water' shit.

Your vamps are lame Venture/Toreador wannabes? Maybe you should ditch the no reflection/photograph thing, cause that's going to be a big old plot hole otherwise.

The Vampires are actually virus based and meant as your weak ass metaphor for drug addiction? Remove anything involving crosses or holy ground. Although you should keep that 'infect people just by feeding' bit 'cause then you get to make it STD metaphor too!

And if your vampire are doing lots of traveling, interacting with people, working with others, or have to be active at any time of day? (IE: be some sort of adventurer) Yep, go ahead and ditch that sunlight thing. Hell it's probably offensive to albinos or something anyway. Plus, if we're talking about movies and television, it is worth noting that filming at night is holy christ on a cracker expensive. I half suspect the only reason the "Being Human" vampires don't have a sun weakness is that the show simply couldn't afford it.

[Username17]

You know how you kill a vampire?

Um... stake through the heart... holy water... garlic...

No. Any way you fucking want. Because vampires aren't real, and you can make up whatever rules you feel like for your story.

It's a vampire because it has fangs and drinks blood sometimes. Whether it can cross water, is compelled to undo knots, has to count dropped seeds, is able to enter sacred ground, or whatever the fuck else is immaterial. Fangs. Blood. Fucking vampire.

Yes, I know. Some vampires don't actually have fangs and need to cut with knives to get the blood. Also some vampires need to get lifeforce in some other non-blood drinking way. But while there are indeed a lot of "psychic vampires", I don't think we need to consider them over much.

Vampires do not need to explode in sunlight in order to be vampires. They can have the same light blindness that Drow and Orcs have and everyone would be happy.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Or, you know, you could call your ridiculous not-sunlight exploding Mary Suepires something that's not a fucking vampire and prevent further tainting of the label.

Even for vampires (at least vampires that people actually think are cool) that don't specifically have a sunlight weakness like Blade, it's still part of the mythos. I mean, seriously, you have to go back over a century to find a famous vampire who doesn't have 'if not exploding at least is seriously crippled by sunlight' -- and frankly, most people think of the Castlevania or Bela Lugosi Dracula more than the Bram Stoker one.

You know why the sunlight weakness keeps popping up over and over again? Because it's fucking cool. It immediately sets the tone of the story and causes us to see the night in a way beyond 'zombie/alien invasion/serial killer/etc. movies take place at night because night is scarier'. I can understand people not wanting to use things like silver or holy water garlic because these things are frankly incidental to the story, but 'explodes in sunlight' is such a big plot point generator and evocative background element of most of the best vampire stories that it's unconscionable to have a generic vampire race that doesn't have it.

Seriously, if you don't want your blood-sucking race not to explode in sunlight why call them vampires? Surely there's a better way to build Cool Race Cred for your silly potboiler fantasy race than just aping what better writters did before you. It's just a cheap and phony gimmick to do otherwise, like slapping 'Calvin Klein' labels on your free college T-shirt.

[Prak]

Lago, god damnit, sun light weakness comes from Nosferatu. That's right, it's not even 100 years old. It came from a bunch of people who couldn't get the rights to making an actual Dracula movie deciding they needed a quick, original, and cheap way of ending the movie, hence, the purifying rays of dawn.

I suppose you would say that literally any vampire prior to 1922 was not a vampire because the bullshit sunlight weakness hadn't been invented yet?

[Username17]

Even for vampires (at least vampires that people actually think are cool) that don't specifically have a sunlight weakness like Blade, it's still part of the mythos. I mean, seriously, you have to go back over a century to find a famous vampire who doesn't have 'if not exploding at least is seriously crippled by sunlight' -- and frankly, most people think of the Castlevania or Bela Lugosi Dracula more than the Bram Stoker one.

That is horse shit. The vampires in Being Human just have to wear sunglasses, because sunlight hurts their eyes. The vampires in Mahou Sensei Negima! get kind of drowsy in the presence of sunlight. The vampires in Nightworld just have some powers that only work when out of direct sunlight. The vampires in Jack Staff don't seem to lose anything from being in sunlight. And of course, Edward Cullen is exposed as bi-curious in sunlight and nothing more.

If the sunlight weakness was "gets a modest vision penalty" just like the Drow, everyone would be happy. You could have some sort of "elder vampire douchebag" class that gave you more vampire powers and made your sunlight penalties worse and make even more people happy.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

The two posters before me said it better and in more words, but shut the fuck up about vampires, Lago. It's been demonstrated on numerous occasions that it is easy to make, and there are multiple examples of, "Mary Suepires" that have acceptable cultural cachet. For fuck's sake the ur-European vampire your pet vampire concept was a dime-store knockoff of is one of them.

The things you like are terrible, and you are terrible about the things you vehemently dislike.

[sake]

As much as I loathed 4E's attempt at Vampires, they somehow did manage to write a version of the sun weakness that was about as close to dangerous as you could get and still allow the vampire PC to function as a PC at a basic level* Granted, I also can't read the text block for it without instantly picturing a loli vampire in a silly hat and holding a frilly umbrella prancing around a garden in broad daylight, but 4E has been linked together with Touhou in my brain for years now anyway.


*unless your DM is the kind of fucknut that during the days of 3E would get a spontaneous erection upon hearing somebody say they wanted to play a paladin... then you're just screwed, and can expect to die by the fourth game.

[DSMatticus]

Lago, you are a 'tard when it comes to vampires. I highly recommend you read/reread Bram Stoker's Dracula and/or hit yourself over the fucking head with it. You cannot simultaneously call Dracula a "legendary cool vampire" (which you did) and bitch about vampires who don't explode in fire (which you did). That's retarded. The original Dracula is one of those awesome, archetypical vampires by the very definitions and examples you gave in your first post and he does not explode in sunlight.

We get it. You hate Twilight. That's totally appropriate, Twilight is a terrible story with terrible characters and Edward Cullen's very concept is retarded on every level. That has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn't catch fire in sunlight. Rethink the reasons you want to bitch about these Sue/Stupires (there are totally valid reasons), because right now the ones you're tossing out are all kinds of retarded.

[virgil]

Another recent awesome vampire that doesn't burn in sunlight, that Lago already admitted as being cool, Hellsing's Alucard.

[Krusk]

Im at the point where I'm fine with calling out twilights vampires as a legit vampire. I mean, the stories are terrible, but they are super popular which is a good thing for DND to leech off. Plus every vampire in the setting aside from edward was actually interesting, she just followed the boring emo one.

Vatican evil secret cult vampires. - Classic.
Hunting packs of vampire murderers. - Classic.
Sadistic pleasure seekers with no regard for human life. - Classic
Vampires who struggle with the addiction. - New classic. (blade - 1973)

Just because someone wrote a crappy book and some crappy TV shows, we can't have vampire PCs? Screw that.

(I read a book, saw two movies, and associate with a few people who have explained more to me. Twilight experience)

[Eikre]

The open disdain for twilight is more pervasive than twilight itself.

No, that's not a good thing to leech off.

[Ektagliaresia]

Stephenie Meyer's Edward Cullen, on the otherhand... he can chill in sunlight. He can drink blood without killing people (I think, fuck if I know how twilight vampire bites work). He is immortal and has superpowers. He responds to that by going emo, which is kind of impressive because emo wasn't a thing until he was like, 100.

Twilight vampire's leave "venom" in their victims which turns them if they are not killed. In addition, it takes extreme discipline for them to not go into a blood frenzy and completely drain them.

Edward's backstory goes: dying of influenza, turned by doctor, lives with the doctor's vampire family drinking only animal blood for some years, goes off an becomes an Iron Age superhero seeking out and killing murderers, which allows him to drink human blood without moral compunction, then returns to the family and drinks only animal blood again, then the books begin.

[angelfromanotherpin]

He is immortal and has superpowers. He responds to that by going emo, which is kind of impressive because emo wasn't a thing until he was like, 100.

It may not have been called 'Emo,' but young men wearing a lot of black and wallowing in sadness goes back to at least Elizabethan times.