The true value of Blood Drinker feat?

[SangoProduction]

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/racial-feats/blood-drinker-dhampir
Let's just assume that obtaining an easy bite attack is trivial, and you can optimistically bite every single round. We'll also take human since humans are basically the default non-monster enemy.

So, you drain 2 Con from someone. Assuming you don't kill them through pure Con damage, that's only +1 damage per level. Even less if you tend to face mooks rather than even level combatants. That's....nothing spectacular. (OK, I actually just checked Power Attack, which adds around 3 damage per 4 levels, and applies an attack penalty. But you can attack multiple times with it. I am maybe not valuing that damage because I am used to playing spell casters who get full dice every level.)

You also inflict a -1 to Fort saves....which...OK, is probably actually pretty good, if you or your party are actually able to target fort saves. That's like the equivalent of a Spell Focus feat each attack...against only one person. But you can mess up a person real bad. But if you've gotten a couple rounds of biting someone, it would probably be wasteful to target them with a fort save, as they are already almost dead.


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I was thinking about making a bite focused character. Just because. And I am somewhat unconvinced by this feat.

[StSword]

Plus you get temporary hit points which replenish every time you drink blood.

[King of Nowhere]

well, if you use it against mooks that die in one hit anyway, then of course it's not useful. But +1 damage per hit dice of the opponent can stack pretty hard, especially against boss monsters or other though stuff.
And the temporary hit points you gain are as good as damage reduction.

[Psyren]

Some feats/abilities are more for NPCs than players, I view this as one of them. Some uppity Dhampir who is preying on a populace of X race might take this, and the PCs would be convinced they're dealing with a vampire and prepare accordingly, only to realize that their sunlight, garlic and holy water aren't doing a thing to him when you do the big reveal.

For PCs meanwhile it's not very useful at all. You more or less have to take yourself out of the fight entirely in order to slowly kill one monster and get nothing more than a bit of temp HP for your trouble, and it only works on one creature (sub)type... in other words, pretty lame.

[upho]

Some feats/abilities are more for NPCs than players, I view this as one of them. Some uppity Dhampir who is preying on a populace of X race might take this, and the PCs would be convinced they're dealing with a vampire and prepare accordingly, only to realize that their sunlight, garlic and holy water aren't doing a thing to him when you do the big reveal.

For PCs meanwhile it's not very useful at all. You more or less have to take yourself out of the fight entirely in order to slowly kill one monster and get nothing more than a bit of temp HP for your trouble, and it only works on one creature (sub)type... in other words, pretty lame.This.

The "helpless, grappled, paralyzed, pinned, unconscious, or similarly disabled" requirement, not to mention the limitation to one single specific humanoid subtype, makes this a very poor choice of feat for a PC. It would've remained so even if the blood drinking had granted truly fantastic benefits instead of minor ones.

To make this useful in combat, you'd need something like a grab attack, an ability allowing you to bite a grabbed opponent as a free action or AoO, and to play in some weird game where you can expect at least a large majority of the more important/dangerous opponents to be humanoids of the appropriate subtype. Otherwise, the only thing I can think of which might make this feat somewhat okay is if one of your fellow party members is able to easily negate the damage the hp and Con damage you cause without having to spend limited resources, and of course that this individual is fine with you going all Bela Lugosi on them once per hour.

The feat definitely has its uses for NPCs though.

[SangoProduction]

Bite attack allows you to drink automatically without those conditions.

[upho]

Bite attack allows you to drink automatically without those conditions.No, it says (with blank rows between the sentences for extra clarity):

"Normally, you can only drink blood from an opponent who is helpless, grappled, paralyzed, pinned, unconscious, or similarly disabled.

If you have a bite attack, you can drink blood automatically as part of your bite attack; otherwise, you must first cut your target by...

...Once you cut the target, you can drink from its wound as a standard action."

Note that nothing in the second sentence aside from "drink blood" refers back to, much less invalidates, anything said in the first. The same is true for the "first cut, then drink as standard"-alternative to biting mentioned in the same sentence and further explained in the last one in the above quote. In other words, it says the bite attack bypasses the need to spend a separate standard action on drinking after attacking.

So by saving you an entire standard action, the bite is definitely very superior. Just not as crazily so as it would've been if it had also saved you/your party from first imposing a condition, which typically requires both one or more additional actions and an increased risk of failure caused by the associated rolls.

EDIT: The condition requirement is btw also in line with the vampire's similar ability this feat is based on. /EDIT

[Psyren]

I can sort of see the ambiiguity there, but I agree with upho's reading - and even if your GM does go with the "free drink with every bite while supplies last, no grapple downpayment" interpretation, this ability is still crap because of the one humanoid subtype restriction. That more than anything else is the nail in the coffin (no pun intended) for this ability.