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ewancummins wrote:I don't think consenting to be made a vampire can be taken as other than a willful embrace of evil. Vampires are by their very nature unholy abominations. They are undead, evil-aligned monsters that feed on the living.


On the flipside there is one CN vampire in published TSR Ravenloft material. I think perhaps he was a nosferatu and not a level-drainer.I'm also pretty sure he did not choose to become what he is.

Thats the black and white textbook of them, for sure. But what if there was a vampire who willingly became a vampire and who only drinks the blood of the willing?

I dont see any evil. I see a norm-breaking twist to throw at non-norm-breaking players...

Also, holy and unholy are subjective terms. But now I'm playing devil's advocate (or, being a stick) Haha

I see your point. I do. And I dont disagree. I just like playing in the woods sometimes is all.

Five wrote:

ewancummins wrote:I don't think consenting to be made a vampire can be taken as other than a willful embrace of evil. Vampires are by their very nature unholy abominations. They are undead, evil-aligned monsters that feed on the living.


On the flipside there is one CN vampire in published TSR Ravenloft material. I think perhaps he was a nosferatu and not a level-drainer.I'm also pretty sure he did not choose to become what he is.

Thats the black and white textbook of them, for sure. But what if there was a vampire who willingly became a vampire and who only drinks the blood of the willing?

I dont see any evil. I see a norm-breaking twist to throw at non-norm-breaking players...

Also, holy and unholy are subjective terms. But now I'm playing devil's advocate (or, being a stick) Haha

I see your point. I do. And I dont disagree. I just like playing in the woods sometimes is all.

Holy and unholy really aren't subjective terms in D&D, not when used in conjunction with alignment. We're talking game mechanics, then.

RE mechanics

Alignment as a rule set is under yoru control as DM, obviously. Rule Zero.


RE blood

Standard vampires may drink blood in the ''flufff text'' but in game terms they drain energy levels. That means, and the rules in older editions bear out, that vampires have strong connection with the Negative Material Plane. The Negative plane isn't in itself evil, but note that nearly everything in the game strongly associated with it is evil: level draining undead and evil clerics (who use negative energy to harm people and to command/rebuke undead).

Level drainers feeding on 1st level volunteers isn't going to be very nice for those 1st level guys.


Nosferatu vamps drain CON, IIRC, though drinking blood.
Can they feed on animals? Drain a guy but not kill him?

As for non-evil vampires, I prefer to exclude such things from D&D in general and Ravenloft in particular.
It tends to go too much against the themes of Ravenloft's inspirations and sources for my liking. Vampires are wicked, accursed beings. Some may indeed show signs of the better aspects of their original humanity, even traces mercy or love, but their basic nature is deeply corrupt and unnatural. They should not be.
Whatever is good or noble in them will twist and rot.

A chaotic neutral vampire might be possible as an incredibly rare outlier. I'd never, ever allow a good-aligned vampire.

Vampyres, though...


That's arguably different. They are living creatures, not undead. Though they may originate with pregnant women fed on by undead vampires/nosferatu, according to some Ravenloft sources.
I think they should possess a strong pull toward chaos and evil (in the sense of alignment) but I can accept one who struggles against his tainted nature and strives to be a hero, quite probably a vampire hunter. A Blade or Vampire Hunter D sort of guy.


Vampyres and dhampyrs seem pretty similiar, but Ravenloft develops both as distinct monster types.

ewancummins wrote:
Holy and unholy really aren't subjective terms in D&D, not when used in conjunction with alignment. We're talking game mechanics, then.

Subjective if you're roleplaying (a true believer devilworshipper cultist would think of their patron as being holy, wouldnt they? Non-true believers/punks would idolise the unholy...?), but mechanics if your statblocking (for lack of a better word), yes.

Btw, that comment was meant more for humour than substance. But its all good.

Five wrote:

ewancummins wrote:
Holy and unholy really aren't subjective terms in D&D, not when used in conjunction with alignment. We're talking game mechanics, then.

Subjective if you're roleplaying (a true believer devilworshipper cultist would think of their patron as being holy, wouldnt they? Non-true believers/punks would idolise the unholy...?), but mechanics if your statblocking (for lack of a better word), yes.

Btw, that comment was meant more for humour than substance. But its all good.

Sure, it's subjective in the sense that a character may have deluded himself. But we know better.

I get what you mean, though.

Maybe a 'non-evil monsters' spin off thread is in order?

This would be a place to discuss use of non-evil monsters (as in, not humans or demihumans) as PCs or NPCs, including monsters that are normally evil-aligned (goblins, orcs, were rats, whatever).

ewancummins wrote:As for non-evil vampires, I prefer to exclude such things from D&D in general and Ravenloft in particular.
It tends to go too much against the themes of Ravenloft's inspirations and sources for my liking. Vampires are wicked, accursed beings. Some may indeed show signs of the better aspects of their original humanity, even traces mercy or love, but their basic nature is deeply corrupt and unnatural. They should not be.
Whatever is good or noble in them will twist and rot.

A chaotic neutral vampire might be possible as an incredibly rare outlier. I'd never, ever allow a good-aligned vampire.

Vampyres, though...


That's arguably different. They are living creatures, not undead. Though they may originate with pregnant women fed on by undead vampires/nosferatu, according to some Ravenloft sources.
I think they should possess a strong pull toward chaos and evil (in the sense of alignment) but I can accept one who struggles against his tainted nature and strives to be a hero, quite probably a vampire hunter. A Blade or Vampire Hunter D sort of guy.


Vampyres and dhampyrs seem pretty similiar, but Ravenloft develops both as distinct monster types.

I don't disagree.

I personally would only ever create a norm-breaking vampire like mentioned above if I felt the need to morally challenge (raise questions or doubt more like it) my PCs. A show that everything has an anomaly sort of thing (dont get too comfortable with what you "know")...

ewancummins wrote:Maybe a 'non-evil monsters' spin off thread is in order?

This would be a place to discuss use of non-evil monsters (as in, not humans or demihumans) as PCs or NPCs, including monsters that are normally evil-aligned (goblins, orcs, were rats, whatever).

I believe you're right. Great idea.

My apologies for unravelling this thread. It's just I saw this string just hanging there and thought I could just...pull it off..

Haha


Seriously. My apologies.

Five wrote:

ewancummins wrote:Maybe a 'non-evil monsters' spin off thread is in order?

This would be a place to discuss use of non-evil monsters (as in, not humans or demihumans) as PCs or NPCs, including monsters that are normally evil-aligned (goblins, orcs, were rats, whatever).

I believe you're right. Great idea.

My apologies for unravelling this thread. It's just I saw this string just hanging there and thought I could just...pull it off..

Haha


Seriously. My apologies.

No apologies needed, bro. I posted a tub of replies! Much of this tangent is of my making.

I'm just saying maybe we should create a monsters thread. I'm interested in that.

I'd say that the Domain of Lazendrak does express my hopinion about good aligned
vampires pretty well, now doesn't it?

I've always been happy "passing the buck" when it comes to the morality of Powers Check. What I mean is that the Powers Checks come from the Dark Powers, unknowable entities with their own strict view of morality. It might not be my view as the DM, but to play them "in character", in as much as that means anything for unknowable enitities, I have to stick to their moral compass. I can come up with any number of reasons why a certain spell might be moral or immoral, but it's not my call. The Dark Powers are very big on the natural order of things. Raising the dead goes against that, so it gets a check. If I had to put my own spin on it, I'd say that the dead may have earned their rest and you might be pulling them out of Heaven, back into Ravenloft, so that seems like a pretty big wrong.

The 2e arcanist made a bit of sense because the assumption was that they were constantly delving into forbidden lore, even in their "off-screen" downtime, and that part of leveling up for them is learning some of ye olde "Things Man is Not Meant to Know". It was a pain, but unlikely to have more than a minor RP effect.

For the fighter, it was kind of like double-jeopardy. It was supposed to represent that the Fighter lived a violent life, but the fighter's violence usually happens in-game, and whether it triggers powers checks or not depends on who he's doing violence to and why. The DM should be dealing with that as it comes, not just assuming that the fighter would cross the line a certain amount per level.

On the vampire part, Jander Sunstar is the only non-evil (or at least initially so, I don't remember his 3rd edition stat block) vampire I am aware of, and no, it was not a willing transformation. While in Forgotten Realms he fed only on animals as much as possible, but when he entered Ravenloft he found that he was no longer able to sustain himself on them and required humanoid blood. The Dark Powers don't like their toys finding loopholes.

His third edition stats are in Champions of Darkness, where he is listed as chaotic evil.

He seems to have an antihero against the darkness thing going on, and he is mentioned as constantly keeping his "bitterness and rage" restrained. It seems as though he is trying to be good, but has dark impulses and is motivated by hatred and anger. It makes him sound like someone teetering on the brink of becoming a Sith Lord.

If one preferred, his alignment might possibly be interpreted as a dark chaotic neutral.

Wolfglide wrote:His third edition stats are in Champions of Darkness, where he is listed as chaotic evil.

He seems to have an antihero against the darkness thing going on, and he is mentioned as constantly keeping his "bitterness and rage" restrained. It seems as though he is trying to be good, but has dark impulses and is motivated by hatred and anger. It makes him sound like someone teetering on the brink of becoming a Sith Lord.

If one preferred, his alignment might possibly be interpreted as a dark chaotic neutral.

I think the evil part was more added after he came to Ravenloft and post his attempted suicide in Vampire in the Mists.

Jander was CN in 2e's CotN:Vampires, post-attempted suicide, and well after entering Ravenloft. I think the CE in CoD was meant to show his further slide toward darkness in the years that followed. I always thought it was a bit harsh, being a Jander fanboy and all. But I've recently been re-"read"ing VotM via the audiobook, and Jander comes off a lot worse than I remember. He is a tortured, repentant vampire, for sure, but he goes a lot darker than I recalled from past readings. Much as I still love him, I can certainly see him as CE, with a lot of deluded justification to himself that he isn't Evil. Sasha even points out that before he entered RL, he tried to turn "Anna" into a vampire out of purely selfish reasons, however he tried to justify it after the fact as a mercy. My only reservation is that he does have some small remnant of good thoughts, and in comparison to Strahd, he comes out smelling like rose. So it's hard to lump them both into the same alignment, but when you only have 9 "boxes," that's how it goes. (And saying you're a better person than Strahd isn't saying much! )