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Thread: Vampire leaders and controllers
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2021-01-05, 11:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
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- Australia
Vampire leaders and controllers
Spun off from my "missed tricks" post. Thinking about how to make them work. And if I were to get my way on this, they'd be "as well as", not "instead of" the striker type. But if you were determined to pick one - I say controller.
I can also see a case for offering a free multiclass and the odd free power substitute, as a nod to the fact that a lot of these exceptional vamps were adventurers while they lived.
So maybe at level 6, "Choose a daily or encounter, attack or utility, of 5th level or less"
Leader - Should be a strong melee leader. Feel free to include some purely striking powers as well
Healing is mostly handled by "blood bonding" during short rests. Heals damage and gives large chunks of THP - "prehealing" if you like. (At least, that's how I'd do it to make the Vamps consistent with fiction and mechanically interesting) and they can trigger a character's second wind.
This might be enough, but otherwise, look to warlords for how people can be told to get better by authority figures
Buffing - For flavour, I think you have the Vamp acting a bit like a warlord. From the ally's perspective, maybe they're a bit more barbarian like. So the Vamp is inspiring a frenzy in their "minion". Some of this could also be done during short rests
Granting attacks - You glare at an enemy within 5 squares. They lower their defences for a second allowing one of your allies to make a free basic attack with +2 to hit". Leader function with controller/striker fluff. Have as many of these as you want. Sprinkle warlord "Don't just stand there, Slay something" type powers in there as well to mix things up
Controller
I'm going to outline some approaches to the type of effects more than real mechanics, since for controllers, the mechanic tends to be built into the power
The Vamp controller should probably have more striking and leadership than most controllers but the jobs of controllers are:
AOE effects - Swarms. Mental* effects on enemies in the AOE. Bursts of negative energy. Compelling enemies to take actions affecting AOE (The affected enemy will make a MBA into each adjacent square)
Status effects More bursts of necrotic energy. More mental effects
Influence the conditions of the fight - I've varied this from "terrain effects" because I feel it's easier to fluff without changing the mechanical side so much
Longer lasting summons/swarms. Even more bursts of negative energy (or having the same small number of powers with these bursts covering more than one part of the controller role.) As it stands, this would be the most limited area.
I wouldn't hate actually having one class, class features more-or less as presented in the book and allowing a Vamp to pick powers from the 3 sorts at each level (striker, controller and leader). Maybe add a class feature "Blood bonding, at each short rest, spend a surge to give up to 10 allies one of the following, THP (leader), the ability to flank with you as long as you are both adjacent to the same enemy (striker) or immunity to your psychic and necrotic powers (controller)"
Well, I'd hate the job of ensuring it all balances out. -
* Mental effects could include fear, charm and or compulsion
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2021-01-06, 11:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
I think three class roles and free multiclassing is totally out of sync with 4E. Kind of a round peg square hole situation.
Brainstorming here, I would aim for striker/X. You could easily have the base mechanic be similar to Psionics except it generates power points during combat in the form of blood. "Whenever this hits a marked enemy with a melee combat attack gain a Blood Counter. You have +1 to hit for each Blood Counter." Then the powers cost Blood Counters to enhance.
At-Will: Move 2 squares, attack.
Effect: Spend 1 Blood, an ally slides two squares towards the hit enemy.
Effect: Spend 2 Blood, an ally slides two squares and makes a basic melee attack at the enemy.
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2021-01-11, 08:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
I never liked the idea of a vampire class.
I used to play Vampire the Masquerade and it had various disciplines, each of which could fill a role within 4e's structure.
Dominate should be obvious: Controller.
Potence: Striker.
Celerity: Striker. (This is basically self-Haste.)
Obfuscate: Utility powers.
Presence: Controller.
Protean: Utility powers.
Animalism: Utility powers.
Fortitude: Utility powers.
Auspex: Utility powers.
These weren't all of the disciplines, just the ones that almost any vampire could take. The various disciplines (and clan weaknesses) existed so that different folklores could be represented. You could be a skull-faced Mexican vampire or a "pretty" vampire or a really strong vampire or a vampire who tells you to "look into my eyes" or a vampire who needs to sleep in Transylvanian soil :)
For obvious reasons we can't just steal their powers. Way back in the days of Alternity (a TSR and later WotC RPG) vampire material was released for Dragon Magazine, where vampires could buy specialized skills (bought with skill points, in competition with the usual other skills like fighting, using computers, etc) that bore some similarity to Vampire the Masquerade powers.
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2021-01-12, 08:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2012
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- Canadia
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Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
Re: "I think three class roles and free multiclassing is totally out of sync with 4E."
4e started out with a very clear image of what class was and what multiclassing could be (You are every class on your character sheet, but one has priority and defines you, and you merely dabble in others), but that shifted as more and more content started to be printed.
The four roles started out as a guidepost for encouraging players new to the game to make choices that lead to success and not step on each other's toes, and keep characters from having a muddy gameplay purpose, but to my knowledge roles have no mechanical weight beyond indicating the design principles of a class; for example, they don't show up in prerequisites.
There was a clear drift with the expanded multiclassing feats in X Power books and the hybrid classes in PHB 3 to push toward "actually, you can have that thing from that class"; indeed, the fact that it's in the main product line is a likely indicator that they ended up feeling such things are "safe ground" for acceptable levels of class dilution.Last edited by Powerdork; 2021-01-12 at 08:11 PM.
The future is bright.
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2021-01-12, 09:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- Boston, MA
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Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
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2021-01-13, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
This development coincided with moving away from the identical class design of the early days of 4E, where everyone went Daily/Encounter/At-Wills. Roles were a way of differentiating classes when the mechanics were very tight, and preventing the "Wizard does everything better" issue of 3.5. If the Vampire is going to be omni-role it needs a very strong mechanical identity.
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2021-01-14, 01:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2011
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Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
I could also see Vampire working as a trade-in multiclass-only concept like the Spellscarred or something.
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2021-01-14, 04:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
I'm reminded of the original Vampire Handbook on the CharOp boards. It was nothing more than a series of humorous memetic vampire pictures (mostly modeled off of the "most interesting man in the world" IIRC) and a comment that any optimized Vampire was a hybrid Vampire. That aside, hybrid Vampire is very similar to what you're recommending and thematically I think it's one of the best ways to model a vampire within 4E's class/race structure.
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2021-01-14, 08:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2016
Re: Vampire leaders and controllers
Through a series of unfortunate events, my handle on the WotC boards was darkwarlock.