This thread is meant to offer anyone who wants to play a Vampire a number of fixes that gives them an effective character. The suggestions below are my ideas, feedback is welcome!
Problem: the Vampire can't meet striker damage benchmarks. The class doesn't do enough damage per round to take out a standard monster in 4 rounds, and doesn't have an encounter nova sequence that reduces an at-level monster to zero HP.
Suggested fixes
Implements: weapons with which you're proficient, in addition to ki focus and holy symbol. This allows you to use weapons to without locking your multiclass into Swordmage. Very useful for elemental weapons like Frost Weapon, charge support like Vanguard Weapon, or even dagger implements.
Child of the Night: your necrotic resistance scales with 10/15 at level 11/21. This lets you keep up with monster damage.
Hidden Might:
- The damage bonus equals your Strength or Charisma modifier. This opens up a lot of new races with STR as a bonus stat, like Thri-Kreen and Half-Orc (boost to both stats, great striker powers to boot), Genasi (Firewind Blade), Minotaur and Mul (additional healing surge).
- The bonus applies to all your damage rolls. This way, your racial, theme and MC powers also deal extra damage.
- Increase the damage bonus to 4 + stat mod at level 5, 8 + stat mod at level 15, and 12 + stat mod at level 25. While this seems like a lot, Vampires have a hard time getting damage bonuses from other sources, so it's necessary to increase their native damage bonus.
Enduring Soul:
- Like Hidden Might, your regeneration now equals your Strength or Charisma modifier.
- your regeneration increases by 5 + stat modifier at level 5, 10 + stat modifier at level 15, and 15 + stat modifier at level 25. This lets you keep up with increased monster damage.
Taste of Life power:
- You gain temporary hit points equal to 2+ your Strength or Charisma modifier.
- The temporary hit points increase with 7 + stat mod at level 11, and 12 + stat mod at level 21. This lets you keep up with increased monster damage.
- This power can be used as a melee basic attack. This is important for the new version of Feral Assault.
Feral Assault: change the Special entry to:
You can lose a healing surge when you use this power to either target a second target or make a melee basic attack as a free action.
Level 13: you can lose two healing surges when you use this power to either target all creatures adjacent to you or make two melee basic attacks as a single free action.
Level 17: you gain one more use of Feral Assault during an encounter, but you can use it only once per turn. Increase the damage to 3d12.
Level 23: you can lose three healing surges when you use this power to either increase Feral Assault's range by 1 and target all creatures within range, or make three melee basic attacks as a single free action.
Level 27: you gain one more use of Feral Assault during an encounter, but you can use it only once per turn. Increase the damage to 4d12.
This improves the Vampire in several significant ways:
- You now have a native multi-attacking power (or nova, the best source of damage) that is dependant on your primary class mechanic, healing surge management.
- By making it usable multiple times per encounter at higher levels, you can handle longer encounters.
- Levels 13, 23 and 27 are no longer dead levels in terms of gaining new powers.
- This is why you need Taste of Life to be an MBA, since pushing your target away with Vampire Slam after the first hit is counter-productive to your nova sequence. The temps also compensate for your fragility due to losing so many healing surges.
Unleashed Fury: you don't gain this power, since Feral Assault is now pretty bad-ass.
Night Crawler:
- At level 18, you no longer fall if you end your turn on a ceiling or similar surface.
- At level 28, you gain a fly speed equal to your speed.
This lets you do cool things, and thematically fits more powerful vampires.
Vampire Noble paragon path: the level 16 feature loses the bonus to ability checks. Instead, both bloodlines gain the following ability:
Whenever you make an attack roll, check, or saving throw, you can spend a healing surge but regain no hit points. Instead, you reroll the attack roll, check, or saving throw. You can only use this ability once per turn.
The original level 16 feature is incredibly lame, and I always felt that using blood to turn a miss into a hit was a good ability for a vampire.
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