The Gaming Den

There are lots of different types of vampires, we know this. I'm curious as to which type would be considered either the most powerful or with the fewest weaknesses. This is in regards to entire strains rather than specific individuals, as WoD's Cain and Hellsing's Alucard personally beat the pants off most vampires.

Now, one could argue that true vampires in Hellsing are some of the most powerful without using Alucard as the specific example, because even a newbie like Seras Victoria is exceedingly potent and with few weaknesses. A little hard to make a firm declaration, because she and Alucard are the only non-artificial vampires depicted in the series.

Strong case to be made for the Tsukihime True Ancestors. They are absolutely exempt from harm during the night of the full moon, immune to most forms of attack even during daylight, can manipulate the environment to produce any physically possible effect, and are empowered by Gaia to be stronger than their opponent.

That sounds pretty hardcore, but I don't know if they can properly be considered vampires, because they aren't former humans but rather nature spirits or fairies. Still, a lot of vampire bestiaries include the baobhan sith, so maybe?

I'd nominate the Cullens, part of why that series is so fucked is that vampirehood comes with x-men powers and no downsides.

The True Ancestors are original vampires, which seems to be a common theme in Japanese media. They were never humans but they do drink blood and turn humans into vampires. They don't technically have to drink blood, but they do have an extremely strong urge to and get more powerful when they do.

The Dead Apostles are former humans somewhere down the chain from True Ancestors. Their top guys are tremendous badasses, but new converts are mostly basically high-end zombies.

We don't have much to go off of, but the Great Vampires were a threat to the Time Lords, which is certainly a point in their favor toward strength; no idea how much of it was raw personal power of the species and how much of it was access to technology (and similar trained techniques).

Well, from what I remember of that story, they were able to empower three otherwise normal humans to the point that they could control an entire planet. Not only that, but the Great Vampires were also considered such a threat to the universe that if any Time Lord came across a Great Vampire, they were bound to stop whatever they were doing and dedicate themselves to destroying it.

That, and the Great Vampires were friggin' HUGE.

Shadowrun has the Ordo Maximus.
They tempered with the normal Vampyr Strain and made Vampires compatible with cyberware, unaffacted by sunlight, able to digest normal food and drink without actually needing the blood anymore . .
While still keeping the regeneration, the longevity, the immunity to age and diseases, their magical abilities, good looks . . Arguably, the most powerfull Vampires ever . . But are they still vampires at that point?

Stahlseele wrote:Shadowrun has the Ordo Maximus.
They tempered with the normal Vampyr Strain and made Vampires compatible with cyberware, unaffacted by sunlight, able to digest normal food and drink without actually needing the blood anymore . .
While still keeping the regeneration, the longevity, the immunity to age and diseases, their magical abilities, good looks . . Arguably, the most powerfull Vampires ever . . But are they still vampires at that point?

True Ancestors from Tsukihime:

Type Moon Wiki wrote:[...] can literally change reality to create any naturally occurring effect [...]

Much easier to write such powers into single-author fiction than to make them work in a TRPG.

The Pillarmen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yvsJn9Ncsk

What... what am I looking at?

Shrapnel wrote:What... what am I looking at?

YOU ARE LOOKING AT DIO BRANDO, MONGREL!

RadiantPhoenix wrote:

Stahlseele wrote:Shadowrun has the Ordo Maximus.
They tempered with the normal Vampyr Strain and made Vampires compatible with cyberware, unaffacted by sunlight, able to digest normal food and drink without actually needing the blood anymore . .
While still keeping the regeneration, the longevity, the immunity to age and diseases, their magical abilities, good looks . . Arguably, the most powerfull Vampires ever . . But are they still vampires at that point?

True Ancestors from Tsukihime:

Type Moon Wiki wrote:[...] can literally change reality to create any naturally occurring effect [...]

Much easier to write such powers into single-author fiction than to make them work in a TRPG.

Yeah, pretty much. It's worth noting that in Tsukihime, the character who has it will, depending on the route, either spend most of the time unable to use it courtesy of recovering from being gratuitously overkilled with a power that prevents regeneration or apparently runs off to Vegas to get married to the biggest combat monster among the antagonists and is of no plot relevance whatsoever.

Honorable mention goes to the vârcolac.

Longes wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:What... what am I looking at?

YOU ARE LOOKING AT DIO BRANDO, MONGREL!

But that's not Dio Brando. That's Wamuu.

I'm pretty sure Alucard from Hellsing is beyond overpowered. He can summon all the people he has ever killed and maintains their powers. Since he's immortal this is larger than all the armies ever. That's in addition to all his regular vampire bullshit, and being double-super immortal.

We're doing this by vampire strain, not individual; your typical Hellsing-verse vampire can be killed by special forces guys with blessed weapons.

Tsukihime actually has Chaos, one of the Dead Apostles, who has a similar deal, except that he's got 666 increasingly badass animals instead, and if they're killed he resurrects them on contact, so unlike Alucard you can't kill him by running him out of familiars. He is also responsible for one ending where the main character is eaten by a shark on the top floor of a hotel.

name_here wrote:We're doing this by vampire strain, not individual; your typical Hellsing-verse vampire can be killed by special forces guys with blessed weapons.

They never really elaborate, but it seems that Hellsing vampires' strength depends on the ammount of people they ate and also on their progenitor. Ceras ate one person, but her sire is Alucard who ate thousands, so Ceras is a badass and fights the nazi illusionist-vampire and nazi werewolf on equal grounds. Alucard himself got a direct curse from God, but got taken down by four muggles, one of which proceeded to do experiments on Alucard buffing him up. The nazi-vampires are artificially made from Mina's remains. Mina herself ate zero people, and the nazis are nowhere near as well fed as Alucard is.

Alternatively, Alucard's strain is completely different from the nazi strain - both Alucard and Ceras can use the souls of the people they ate, while the nazi vampires are either unaware of this ability, or don't have it.

OgreBattle wrote:The Pillarmen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yvsJn9Ncsk

For some reason that reminds me of Friendship is Manly O.o

Stahlseele wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:The Pillarmen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yvsJn9Ncsk

For some reason that reminds me of Friendship is Manly O.o

That's no coincidence. Friendship is Manly is inspired heavily by JoJo's... distinctive masculine flair.

Longes wrote:

name_here wrote:We're doing this by vampire strain, not individual; your typical Hellsing-verse vampire can be killed by special forces guys with blessed weapons.

They never really elaborate, but it seems that Hellsing vampires' strength depends on the ammount of people they ate and also on their progenitor. Ceras ate one person, but her sire is Alucard who ate thousands, so Ceras is a badass and fights the nazi illusionist-vampire and nazi werewolf on equal grounds. Alucard himself got a direct curse from God, but got taken down by four muggles, one of which proceeded to do experiments on Alucard buffing him up. The nazi-vampires are artificially made from Mina's remains. Mina herself ate zero people, and the nazis are nowhere near as well fed as Alucard is.

Alternatively, Alucard's strain is completely different from the nazi strain - both Alucard and Ceras can use the souls of the people they ate, while the nazi vampires are either unaware of this ability, or don't have it.

The impression I got was that the nazi artificial vampires were at least roughly in line with what was typical for fresh vampires in the setting. I don't remember anyone saying they seemed conspicuously weak.

Well, Alucard's bloodline at least seems fairly strong. After Ceres had her first meal she apparently immediately took on a fair number of Alucard's godlike powers. So presumably given enough time she could become his equal. Plus, most of the time Alucard just seems to be fucking about, toying with his opponents like a cat playing with its food. So... maybe it's just his blood line, or maybe all the Helsing universe's vampires could reach that point given enough time but they simply die before they get the chance.

Millinum's vampires were weaker because of how they were created. The standard method of making a new vampire is for an existing vampire to bite a virgin of the opposite sex. Non-virgins and people of the same sex die without transforming (sorry gay people, it's a heterosexual rape metaphor).

Millennium didn't do it that way. They instead used SCIENCE! By performing hideously unethical medical experiments on Mina Harker they were able to make artificial vampires. But artificial vampires aren't nearly as good as the real thing. Mina never completed her transformation, for one thing, and thus wasn't a real vampire herself. And the process that they used wasn't perfect, either.

The Major, interestingly enough, was contacted by the devil, or whatever, the way Alucard was. But he turned the offer down.

I think straight up Eastern European folkloric vampires are often plenty stupidly powerful. While I admit that a lot of them are basically "kinda strong dudes" that can be defeated by just being "pretty good with a sword" or some shit, there are a lot of those guys who can only be killed by situations so contrived that they require author fiat to ever get in a situation where death is possible.

The hyperbolic displays of power at the high end of Serbian folkore are fucking insane. Like punching mountains out of the ground insane.

-Username17

DSMatticus wrote:

Longes wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:What... what am I looking at?

YOU ARE LOOKING AT DIO BRANDO, MONGREL!

But that's not Dio Brando. That's Wamuu.

Here's Wammu's boss, Cars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxlJJdh_0Kc

What. THE. HELL.