PDA

View Full Version : Pathfinder Empowering the creatures of the night (need help)



Alpha Saiyan
2017-01-31, 12:22 PM
i want vamps and were beasts to be more powerful as they go, so i want them to be able to advance in tiers. vampires would advance on 2 fronts in terms of how much blood they consume and how old they are. and were beasts will advance based on how many hearts they consume, i just wanted some help working out the finer details.

raspberrybadger
2017-01-31, 10:12 PM
I'm not sure what you are looking for, but say they get BPs, blood points, and APs, age points.

For every BP, give them +1 Natural Armor, +1 fast healing, +5 to each mode of movement.

For every AP, give them +1 channel resistance, +1 cold and lightning resist, +1 to all DCs of abilities it uses. Presumably older vampires would have more class levels too.

aimlessPolymath
2017-01-31, 11:14 PM
The first question is, what do you have already?

The second one is, what are you looking for in terms of gameplay? Do you want a detailed system of discrete levels of blood/age, or some tiers of power which you could quickly apply to monsters?

The third one is, is this going to be PC-allowed (i.e. how balanced should it be)?

I did a thing for werewolves with discrete templates-


What it did
What it is


No hearts; still innocent (or possibly just a little)
Basic lycanthrope (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/lycanthrope)(CR+1)


Long-time lycanthrope, killed many people, personally.
Advanced (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary/monsterAdvancement.html#advanced-creature)lycanthrope (CR+2)



The epitome of lycanthropy. Could also be given the fiendish template if you find it appropriate for your campaign- probably +0 CR, since the DR doesn't stack. It took a lot of hearts to get here. Probably depopulated a village personally.
Animal Lord (CR+2) (it's basically an improved advanced lycanthrope) (You don't want more than +2 CR adjustment from templates) (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/animal-lord-cr-2)



A beast, given in to the instincts. Nothing more than a raving monster now.
Abomination (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/abomination-cr-1-tohc).




One thing that you could do for vampires is try out the evolved (http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/evolvedundead.shtml) template. It was made for 3.5e, but slots into Pathfinder fine.

Alpha Saiyan
2017-01-31, 11:38 PM
sorry, i should've been more specific. though i like the idea of ap and bp, i meant something more like (and this is just an example)
0 bp- weak vampire (the template from the bestiary)
100bp- average
300bp- strong
600bp- powerful
etc

and like
0-99 years- young vamp
100-299- mature vamp
300-599- old vamp
600-999- elder vamp
1000+ - ancient vamp

now unless through roleplay or plot mcguffin or what have you, blood will be whats more important to a pc vamp, but age is more beneficial. i need help seeing what they would get for each new tier and making sure it's not too silly. plus it works much like it does for healing, the more powerful the creature, the more beneficial it is, like draining a pig is worth half of what a humanoid is, a humanoid (human, dwarf, elf, gnoll) are average, a fey is a step up, then up another step is non demonic outsiders (at least for me they would be like drinking poison) and true dragons, and the utmost pinnacle of plasma is ichor, the blood of a god.

aimlessPolymath
2017-02-01, 12:23 AM
In that case, one way of writing your system which doesn't require you to necessarily make up numbers for each vampire (how much blood has a 500 yr old vampire drank? How about 1k? 2k?) would be to develop "blood tiers". Having drank 100 times from a lower tier gives you one tier up, but that's it. I wouldn't go for BP, because 1) it's a mostly-arbitrary number for non-PC characters (which might necessitate calculations of vampire blood requirements, and I refuse to start doing economics for homebrew), 2) it invites gaming the system by drinking tons of pig blood or whatever (which would invite calculations of how much blood you can drink before exploding), and 3) it makes me think of the oil company.

Also note that elder vampires would have drunk lots of blood over their lifetime, and so you might need some sort of charts to avoid making your players antsy.

So, with that in mind, let's try blood:


Types of blood drunk
Result


Pig or other animal
Vampire template; the bare needs of survival


Human or 100 animals (or maybe not- you may wish to build a divide between those who have and haven't consumed a sapient being)
Advanced (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/advanced-creature-cr-1)vampire (CR+3)


Fey or 100 humans
Advanced fiendish vampire (CR+3, honestly)[/URL]


Nonevil outsider or true dragon or 100 fey
Dread Vampire (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/dread-vampire-cr-3)


Divine or 100 nonevil outsiders or true dragons
Advanced Dread Vampire (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/dread-vampire-cr-3)



Rearrange templates as you like; template options include Degenerate (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary/monsterAdvancement.html#degenerate-creature)(CR-1) for vampires which haven't fed, the Simple Vampire Template (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/simple-corruption-templates/simple-corruption-template-vampiric-creature-cr-1) (CR+1), unholy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/unholy-creature-cr-1)(CR+1), or Undead Lord (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/undead-lord-template) (CR+2).

Pros of this system:
-Doesn't scale infinitely with pig blood
-Provides a quick estimation of what power level a creature is via CR addition
-Reasonable level of chunkiness; that is, there are distinct tiers of power; a creature who has fed on the blood of fey is distinctly different from one which has fed on pigs blood.
-Higher tiers of blood are distinctly different from lower ones via templates with distinct abilities
-Easy to apply to creatures- particularly simple templates (simple vampire, advanced, degenerate).

One thing to note is that with lots of templates, it becomes very difficult to estimate CR, since often the resulting creature has much fewer hit points/Caster level for its estimated CR. I wouldn't advise more than +3 or +4 CR in most cases- you'd lose more than you get.

You may also wish to reduce the power of the base vampire a few steps (see Simple Vampire Template or Degenerate for options) to give you more room at the upper levels of power.

I haven't thought as much about age at this point. It seems like you could just represent that with higher level maybe? I'm not sure.

Edit: Fun fact: The human stomach can hold up to about 4 liters, and the small intestine can hold about 3 liters. The human body can lose around 2 liters before probable death (barring clerics). However, it takes around 6-8 hours for food to finish going through your stomach+small intestine. Even at peak capacity, a vampire (assuming normal digestion) can only kill (3-4)*3.5 ~= 10 people a day from blood loss. I looked this up because I was wondering how long a vampire might take to rank up.

Alpha Saiyan
2017-02-01, 12:32 AM
thanks for the input, i'll build on this, though im still open to any future suggestions

Morphic tide
2017-02-01, 08:46 AM
There are a few ways to go about this. One is to use existing class levels, another is to make homebrew "racial PRCs," not quite Paragon classes, the third is template stacking.

For Werewolves, existing class levels is probably the way to go. Either Barbarian or Bloodrager, maybe Skald, but focus on small numbers of big hits, as that makes it a lot less problematic to actually play.

For Vampires, you are far, far better off using a homebrew class. There are existing things to base it on, but the best core mechanic is Constitution damage giving class resources, representing blood drain.

The_Jette
2017-03-17, 03:25 PM
With Vampires, you should consider the blood points to be a consumable resource with an increasing cap as age tiers go up. For instance, a new vampire can hold up to 20 bp, which are gained by using their feeding ability. Each time they feed they get one. They can either keep their bp up, gaining the passive abilities of their age, or use them to fuel the active abilities. Rough idea below:

Age levels:
Newly turned - 50: Int/Str +2; Max bp 20; Nat AC +5 at full, -1 per 4 bp spent (0 below 4); Claws 1d4 at 5bp+; Dark Vision 60 per 5 bp; Haste 2bp/rd; Charm Person 10bp
50-100: Int/Str +4; Max bp 30; Nat AC +8 at full; -2 per 10bp spent (6 at 20, 4 at 10, 2 at 0); Claws 1d8 at 5bp+; Dark Vision 60 per 5 bp; Haste 2bp/rd; Charm Person 5bp; Telekenesis 10bp
101-200: Int/Str: +6; Max bp 40; Nat AC 12 at full; -2 per 10 bp spent (10 at 30, 8 at 20, 6 at 10, 4 at 0); Claws 2d6 at 5bp+; Dark Vision 60 per 5bp; Blind Sense 10 per 10bp; Charm Person 5bp; Summon Swarm 5bp; Shapeshift (Wolf, batswarm or rat swarm only) 5 bp; Telekenisis 10bp; Mist Form 0bp (only useable upon being reduced to 0hp normally)

That kind of thing. This is just off the top of my head. Plus, throw in the bp are slowly disappearing as they take blood to fuel their unlife. I'd start wracking up penalties to intelligence the longer they go at 0bp, to show how they become more feral and prone to attacking and engorging on blood when they've gone too long. I only went up to 200, but you can see how the older vampires would be much stronger than younger vampires, unless they end up using all their blood. Once they've had their bp drained, they still have a slight advantage, but not enough to make much of a difference.

Gelscressor
2017-03-18, 12:55 PM
Although unrelated to any sort of system of blood points, Dicefreak's vampire template might still prove inspirational. See: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dnross/Dicefreaks/Dicefreaks_d20_Community_%E2%80%A2_View_forum_-_References_and_Certi/viewtopic_032.html