The Gaming Den

I was flipping through the Runner's Companion (~p.79)when I saw there are three types of Vampires that you can use to make a PC.

I'd really like to play a Vampire character (in a game system that doesn't suck a barrel of cocks), so I was wondering if you guys to comment on the viability of these Infected Metatypes as a PC:

(1) Banshee 65 BP + 30 BP (for elf)
(2) Vampire 100 BP
(3) Nosferatu 150 BP

My gut instinct is that it won't work out in my favor at all, but I'm totally new to the system so that's not worth much. Please help by telling me why they are, or are not, good.

For context: I'm trying to make my first ever SR-4 character pretty soon using 450 build points. And I'd like to be a mage focusing on healing/buffing/illusion. Any synergy here?

In my opinion, the wendingo and goblin (ignore the flavor text) are slightly more playable.
Since you are starting with 450 BP, the concept is more viable than with 400 BP, don't know if its enough.
If you try the goblin start as gnome.

Banshee sucks the dick of the Vampire, not worth it.
Nosferatu is too expensive.
Vampire with 450'GP might be viable.

Try to use Franks End of the Matrix "other houserules".

It all depends on how much your GM is going to go out of their way to screw you over for needing to feed on human blood.

Most of the vampire abilities are basically flavor. Regeneration is a real, useful power, as is mist form, but bite and essence drain have limited value. Being able to spend essence to buff stats is interesting, but any PC with regeneration wants to be a mage or adept to take full advantage of its benefits, so burning essence may be shooting yourself in the foot. Immunity to toxins is cool, but chem resist gear is cheap. The stat boosts are good, but there are cheaper alternatives. Also, you may or may not have trouble obtaining 'ware depending on your GM's adherence to availability rules.

Meanwhile, in most SR games, the social penalties of vampirism are a real problem. You stand out in a crowd and are easier for the authorities to track. Also, you're down four dice on anything you do in sunlight and someone can bust your face in with a wooden chair, which might be an issue.

Archmage wrote:Meanwhile, in most SR games, the social penalties of vampirism are a real problem. You stand out in a crowd and are easier for the authorities to track. Also, you're down four dice on anything you do in sunlight and someone can bust your face in with a wooden chair, which might be an issue.

Not to mention playing a serial killer on the shit list of a every religion on earth, with entire organisation dedicated to hunt them down and a published list of weaknesses. Also Shadowrun is a team game. I have a hard time imagining any runner being comfortable with someone who has to regularly suck the soul out of a sentient victim. Even if you don't care about other humans at all and you do not care about the money you could get for handing him or his corpse over to any of a dozen organisations, do you want someone on your team who leaves a distinctive chain of corpses behind and will kill you if left in the same room for too long?

To be fair, many people would kill other people if left in a room too long; cannibalism and so forth.

Archmage wrote: Also, you may or may not have trouble obtaining 'ware depending on your GM's adherence to availability rules.

I see the Problem more in the price of Deltaware...
Type O migth be an idea for cheap Delta bioware.
As for regeneration, it doesnt (I think) work on Drain Damage.

Exactly, except that you can store food for non-vampires. Having to hide from authorities for a week is a staple of the genre. This is rather easy to do when you just have to deal with eating cold soy snacks for a few days - but quite hard when you regularly have to drain essence from others.

But an Vamp only needs to drain someone every few months.
(looses 1 essence per month, can store 12 maximum.)
There are some other rules in SR 4, about extra blooddrinking, but I think that Blood can be stored.

Korwin wrote:But an Vamp only needs to drain someone every few months.
(looses 1 essence per month, can store 12 maximum.)
There are some other rules in SR 4, about extra blooddrinking, but I think that Blood can be stored.

If you want to be a Vampire Mage, you need to eat well.

Sadly, spellcasting drain cannot be healed via regeneration

I've been looking over all you guys' advice and I'm seriously considering the Gnome + Goblin combo that Kowrin mentioned.

So say I go the Gnomeish-Goblin magician route, is that a substantial improvement over just being an elf magician ('cause elves look like the optimal race for almost any character)?

I'm trying to assess the value of the special qualities I'd be buying:

Regen does sound really, really good. It requires a Willpower + Body test, which thanks to my metatype + (goblin) infection will be pretty dang high.

I don't know how useful immunity to fire is. Does that help against lasers?

Draining essence sounds pretty helpful. I can store 12 and convert 6 of that to 3 extra magic for 12 hours. That doesn't sound like anything to sneeze at. You only suffer essence drain at a rate of 1 per month, so I don't have to worry about my magic attribute tanking due to essence loss.

Arcane Arrester might be worth the Neoteny drawback since AA protects me from magic damage- which is one of the few thing I can't regen. That's probably why Korwin recommended the gnome?

I'd rather be a Nosferatu, but I don't think I can afford the cost. 150 BP for race ~220 for attributes, that's leaving me with 80 BP for buying up my magic attribute, purchasing skills, wealth, and uh... whatever else character creation requires. I'm not even sure a Nosferatu would work at a even a 500 BP constraint, yet alone 450.

Why would elves be the optimal race for anything?

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Why would elves be the optimal race for anything?

They are the only race that boosts Agility, and the number of bonuses you get to attributes at the very least offsets the BP cost of the metatype, an no penalties that will haunt you in the long run. For a spellcaster you are also getting a fat +2 to a stat that helps you resist drain. So I consider not being an elf as part of the opportunity cost for any other metatype I select. All in all that seems like a very tough package to beat.

If you have a better suggestion, specifically for a magician, I'd welcome the advice.

Hell, I wrote those rules and even I think they're shit. Infection in gameplay is a bitch of a karma hump to get over, if you ever do, and the Infected at chargen tend to be overpowered as hell.

There are some additional Infected types in Running Wild.

Ancient History wrote:Hell, I wrote those rules and even I think they're shit. Infection in gameplay is a bitch of a karma hump to get over, if you ever do, and the Infected at chargen tend to be overpowered as hell.

There are some additional Infected types in Running Wild.

If you can tolerate answering a couple very ignorant questions:

Why are infected a karma hump? Is this a reference is to the sort skills / qualities I'd have to burn BP/Karma to pick up in order to survive in world that needs me cleansed as manner of public health and safety?

And what exactly is it that contributes to their overpoweredness? Are the stat bonuses too high? Or are the special qualities too good compared to what I else I could pick up with equivalent amounts of BP?

I think there was a modification to the casting rules that made cast spells with a power over your magic rating more attractive for high Body characters. Can't be bothered to look it up though.

It makes Dwarves (and Trolls and Orks + associated metavariants) more attractive. Especially while shapechanged into an elephant or bear or something. Ghoul on top of that and drain is not really an issue. Not sure how practical that is, even with 450 BP.

Captain_Karzak wrote: Why are infected a karma hump? Is this a reference is to the sort skills / qualities I'd have to burn BP/Karma to pick up in order to survive in world that needs me cleansed as manner of public health and safety?

It's the powers. Long and the short of it. There was never a question as to whether or not the Infected should pay for their powers, but the question was how. It was either a lump sum up front, or pay for the powers piecemeal. At the time, the lump sum seemed...reasonable. After all, all the weaknesses were up-front, and the standard Infected in the SR4 rulebook had all their powers and weaknesses...

...in hindsight, I would have made buying the powers one at a time.

And what exactly is it that contributes to their overpoweredness? Are the stat bonuses too high? Or are the special qualities too good compared to what I else I could pick up with equivalent amounts of BP?

You're raising caps, adding senses, etc., but the formula I was using the critter powers were expensive. Average of 10 BP per, and these guys could have lots of 'em. Regeneration, Energy Drain (Essence), Mist Form, etc. ...these can be game breakers, especially early on in the game.

Winnah wrote:I think there was a modification to the casting rules that made cast spells with a power over your magic rating more attractive for high Body characters. Can't be bothered to look it up though.

It makes Dwarves (and Trolls and Orks + associated metavariants) more attractive. Especially while shapechanged into an elephant or bear or something. Ghoul on top of that and drain is not really an issue. Not sure how practical that is, even with 450 BP.

Are you talking about Overcasting? If you cast a spell with Force > Your magic attribute, then all drain becomes physical damage instead of just stun.
From what little I've read on overcasting, getting good at it requires high drain stats, combined with some small amounts of bio/cyberware (< 1 essence) that will eat 1 to 3 points of drain per casting.

I looked at my books and it is obvious I'm confusing casting from different editions. Overcasting used to be resisted with body...of course even that might just be wishful thinking.

If, and I stress, if you were going to play a cybered mage in 4e, then investing in logic boosters would improve your drain attribute beyond racial bonuses. Getting a cybered vamp past your GM is going to be challenging though.

It would never occur to me to attempt to use the Infected Rules in either Runner's Companion or Running Wild. Those are seriously terrible rules.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:It would never occur to me to attempt to use the Infected Rules in either Runner's Companion or Running Wild. Those are seriously terrible rules.

-Username17

I'm too new to this system to see where this is going to lead. Exactly how might the game start to fall apart if I roll up an infected magician?

Is that a better or worse scenario than running some kind of pixie sorcerer? (the Core rulebook was already loaned out, so the Runner's companion was my intro to this system- hence all the Critter fixation).

Well first off, talk to your GM and ask him how he's going to handle Essence Drain and Power Boost.

As it stands, it's stupidly broken:
Vampire Starts at 6 Essence, drains 6 essence, to make it to 12.
Vampire Raises His X Stat, spending 6 essence points. Now his stat is raised for the next 12 hours. At the end of those 12 hours, the Vampire gets 1/2 of those Essence back. So He's now at 9.
Next time he drinks, he drains 3 essence to a max of 12, according to the rules, he can only spend those 3 to raise his stats, he does so.. he's now at 9, and 12 hours later he's at 10.5 essence.

Within 3 feedings, he has to wait a month to raise his stats again, and upwards fo 6 months to do it significantly. Unless he's a Nosferatur, then he has to wait about 5 years.

The Vampire rules are effectively unplayable.

That is just one of the many stupid readings of the vampire rules. There's another one where he can drain 3 points a day and be +6 Magic Attribute all the time. That's stupid too, just in a different direction. There's another one where your magic almost instantly marches to zero because technically you're supposed to lose one Magic Attribute and never get it back every time your Essence drops, which is a one-way ticket to burnout in less than half a year. Usually GMs just make something up instead. Interaction with cyberware is similarly confused in a "they could not possibly mean that" sort of way.

The points costs for becoming a Vampire are too high. As in: you don't actually have enough points left over after paying to start as a vampire to get attributes and skills. You pretty much have to be a vampire child - like Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. And if you become a Vampire in play you get all the powers for "free" but then you are required to spend your next couple hundred Karma on paying off the loan. Which is exactly like never advancing again, since even if the campaign was slated to last long enough to get anywhere near that much Karma, you'd get bored as hell with a character who couldn't advance under any circumstances long before you hit that milestone.

-Username17

Winnah wrote:I looked at my books and it is obvious I'm confusing casting from different editions. Overcasting used to be resisted with body...of course even that might just be wishful thinking.

This depends entirely on wether or not regeneration can not heal STUN Damage from Drain or if it can't heal ANY Damage from drain.
If it can't heal the STUN Damage from Drain, then it can heal the PHYSICAL Damage from Drain just fine.
If it CAN'T heal physical Drain Damage, then you need to get a healing Spell that can heal physical Damage. This should, technically i think(though, i am NOT SURE ABOUT THIS), circumvent this restriction. Overcast Healing spell to be able to heal the physical Drain Damage from the healing as well, if the rules work the way i think they are working . . If not, consider me dumb and forget it.

Where does it say, in any of the SR books, that Regeneration does not fix damage due to Drain? Our group plays it that way as well for sanity, but I can't find anything anywhere suggesting that's RAW.

Under SR3, it worked, that much i know.
Under SR4, it does not work, due to a passus under the drain damage stating that no magical effect can heal drain damage i think. Not sure though. I've never been good in looking through books to find specific stuff <.<