Quasiclass: True Vampire

[Deleted]

I bring this up again as a total reworking of the original concept:

The idea is essentially an undead, charisma tank. It would progress in a way almost identical to that of a dragon disciple, gaining bonuses as it progressed through levels.

Base Requirements:
4th Level Blackguard
Evil alignment
Rapier Wit
Divine Might
Divine Shield
Lore 5
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Divine Might and Divine Shield function through Vampire levels in the same way with Vampire levels counted as BG levels for the purposes of Damage and AC calculation, but the damage from DM can be toggled between Physical and Negative. Vampire levels count as BG levels for the purposes of BG spell casting.

In addition to their normal properties, Divine Might and Divine Shield progress in effect through level progression as listed below.

Great Smiting feats taken have no effect and do not allow the character to smite, serving only as required tokens of the characters commitment to the Vampiric Path.

Progressive bonuses/requirements:

2 +2 cha/base
4 +2 cha/base
7 +2 str/base
9 +2 wis/base
10 +2 con/base
13 Absolute negative immunity reaches 100%
15 +2 Cha/base
20 +2 Cha, +2 Constitution, +2 Wis, True Sight, Immunity to Sneak Attacks, Immunity to Paralysis, ability to shapeshift; ability to cast harm as a swift action once per day, ability to Posses DC Persuade Skill/Great Smiting 5
25 +2 Cha/Great Smiting 7
30 +2 Cha, +2 Constitution, +2 Str; Divine Shield becomes Vampiric Aura, providing immunity to critical hits, SR equal to Lore Skill and concealment equal to 1/2 Hide skill, in addition to the normal benefits of divine shield, ability to cast harm 5 times per day/ Great Smiting 10.
35 +2 Cha/"Secret"
40 +2 Cha, +2 Constitution, +2 Wis /"Secret"
45 +2 Cha /"Secret"
50 +2 Cha, +2 Constitution, +2 Str, ability to cast harm unlimited times daily, ability to cast mass harm as per greater smite. /"Secret"

Shape-shifting: At level 20, the Vampire gains the ability to Shape-Shift into a mist. While in this form, the character is in GS, is levitating, and can gate as per the 9th level arcane spell, but cannot perform any actions other than movement, and will die instantly if underwater.

End ability +'s
Cha + 20
Con +8
Str +6
Wis +6

LIMITATIONS:

25% vulnerability to positive and divine damage
Suffers 10d6 positive damage per round when in sunlight (any open natural area, aka any area that druid spell 'one with the land' functions).

The 25% pos/div vulnerability is reduced by 5% per visit to the "secret" attainable at the specified levels, to a maximum of 15% vulnerability reduction- the end result being a 10% vulnerability to pos/div. The same secret reduces the sunlight damage by 3d6 per visit to a maximum of 9d6, resulting in an end sunlight pos damage infliction of 1d6 per round.
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This is a rough draft. Perhaps overpowered considering the relatively weak restrictions, but really not out of line with the power of an XDD, especially considering that XDD gets AC bonuses and less (no?) vulnerabilities. Hopefully there is some response to this to give me incentive to refine this idea for a quasi-class.

[fallenwizard]

I made a test build for this. Assuming few things: You dont get +1str per great smiting feat when taking 41st level. You still gain BG bonuses at LL. There'd be restriction for not be able to splash paladin for true fear imm on an "undead". And that divine shield giving crit immunity would be too OP since it'd last over 10mins a cast 36 casts a day. So I fit in normal BG crit immunity.

10fighter/30BG

Half-Elf Pharlan
- STR +4, WIS +4, CHA +4, free feats: Great Strength I, Great Strength II, Divine Might, able to walk on quicksand, base SR 15 +1/lvl

creation / subby / 60 / 2xD, +14, arty

14str / 20 / 36 / 54 (40base at 2xD for crit imm)
15dex / 15 / 15 / 33
12con / 12 / 20 / 40 (arty)
8wis / 12 / 18 / 36
14int / 14 / 14 / 32
14cha / 18 / 58 / 76

stats on level ups first 14cha, then 6 str. CC BG gets +4str/cha at LLs

Pre epic feats
blooded
weapon focus rapier
rapier wit
divine shield
greater wep foc
toughness
imp crit

fighter bonus feats:
power attack
cleave
geat cleave
ambidex
2wep fighting
imp 2 wep fighting

Epic feats:
great cha 1-2
great smiting 1-5

BG epic bonus feats
epic wep foc
great smiting 6-10

Leg feats
LSA tumble
LSA listen
epic prowes
leg wep foc
overwhelming crit
devastating crit
armor skin

skills:
disc
listen
tumble
taunt or persuade
last skill splash on 5 hide, 5 lore, 20 conc, rest on CA or CW

AB
20 BAB
10 EBAB
15 LBAB
8 feats
33 cha
20 buffs
1 CW (possibly 2)
-4 dualweild
=102 dualweild

AC
10base
4+18 armor
10dex
20dodge
20 def (arty)
20 nat (SH)
12tumble
2armor skin
+div shield for minimum 10, if it caps at that, if not then up to 16
+1 (2) craft armor
= 127-137 + gird dualweild
with bur shield 134 (138 girded)

* Huge saves
* Crit imm
* Weapon base damage d6 +55 physical 12-20/3x crits
* Around 1200-1300 HP
* Immune to all but Goristro str check

Sounds quite unbalanced to me. That was just first build that came to my mind.

Huge AB, huge damage, high AC even with dualweild, crit imm, huge saves, high HP, Str check resistant. Would also work very well as zero AC'er I think which'd free up 3 feats and 60 skillpoints.

So what I think needs to be done? Now you get double charisma for the investments and totaly free str/wis/con. I get +20cha/+6str/+8con/+6wis with 10 feats, that is free 5ab/damage/saves. +6str makes getting crit immunity at 2xD cost almost nothing for a bur race. +8con means roughly 240 extra hit points for free. +6wisdom is free spell casting for even an open subby. I feel these bonuses should be dropped at least 1/3rd, to something like +14cha, +4 str, +4 con, +4 wis and even then AB dualweilding would be very high and still obtaining crit immunity would be relatively easy and HP would still be over average. With 14/4/4/4 you'd still get 14 free stat points.

127SR with lore skill not going to happen I can tell you that, you'd be 100% immune to every spell that doesnt ignore SR (EQ is only one that enemies cast I think) with 0 investment buildwise. If make if base lore, 63 on the other hand is quite weak, weaker than most subraces, like the test with pharlan, which I find as best race for any divine tank (half-elf for LSA listen, str/cha and usefull feats, SR, levitation).

Unlimited Harm as spell, it'd suffer a bit from low SP (50+6 possible tome) but even so I think it'd be quite strong on a char with high touch attack AB, propably would limit this to 10 max per day.

Reducing penalties to 10% and d6 damage would really be very insignificant to even notice them. 25% is something you'd notice but still tolerable, 10d6 damage being average 33 a hit, having 20/- resist to pos and you'd barely notice it, thou you'd want that +10 regen and 2x pos imm rings if you want to go afk on such area. However I dont like this concept because natural outdoor areas shifts between day and night. Meaning sun goes down and that is when vampire should rather get bonuses instead of penalties.

I'm all in for getting a quasi for divine tank using rapier wit. Thou this one would need some major tweakin.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the in-depth analysis! You've put as much thought into your reply as I did into making it. Your suggestions are spot-on. When I get a minute, tonight, I'll re-work the class idea with your limitations in mind and post it.

I was trying to think of more limitations and piercing vuln came to mind right away. Another thing that makes this overpowered is the conceal. High ac plus relatively high conceal is just too much defensive might, unless there are corresponding weakness.

I am not sure about scripting things to correspond with day/night and not wanting to make the class even more complicated, I left that alone. But your right. It would make sense for night bonus and day weakness and most post-LL areas seem to have neither day nor night.

[magecat]

I would suggest being more explicit about things like the Negative Immunity. I only caught that because of the mention, at L13, of it reaching 100%.

I would also do more delineation of the Great Smiting correlation to abilities granted.

[fallenwizard]

While being slightly bored I gave a bit more conciderations towards a vampyr.

I'd make it combination of shadow dancer and blackguard. Something in lines of 5 SD, 8 BG by lvl 22, this'd leave 9 levels free for base classes to fill either prestigeclass pre reqs. With bur sub it could be done at lvl 1 to fill SD pre reqs.

Upon becoming a vampyr you'd get custom appearance, maybe some sort of Queen Z -type of look. Also have your str/dex/con set at certain value like with shifters/pariah. Now what these values would be? I was thinking of something like 20str/18dex/18con. At 2xD it means 38str/36dex, not super high but not terrible either. This'd mean you focus on charisma and go for rapier wit (or at some extreme case wisdom but I dont see it likely).

Abilities you get would intead of great smiting scale with SD/BG levels much like gnomish inventor.

SD has couple skills to toy with here and BG has div might/shield and spellbook.

Naturaly different CC gets different bonuses, SD more defence and BG more offence.

Anyways, not going to hijack the thread more than this. Just something that came to my mind from True Vampire

[tyranlthixis]

Well I think a glaring problem is one that Fallen has brought up. That is a quazi class cannot be comprised of classes that go well together before the quazi powers are enabled. You can already make a rapier wit blackguard. The shadowdancer component would make it a bit more plausible. I'm not sure blackguard is the way to go on this though. My thought is more on the line of cleric or sorcerer/shadowdancer. That way you can play it more like a caster or a tank depending on how you'd build it.

[uncanny]

Sorcerer/SD sounds like more the ticket here; though imo then it would need some sort of adjuster on spell powers like with BFM. But that sounds like an interesting combination

[Deleted]

I haven't given up on this idea, just haven't had any revelations that I wanna flesh out. Anyone that is interested, please do grab that ball and run with it. Sorcerer/SD sounds good.

[uncanny]

Ok, here's a rough sketch of some of the requirements using SD
Requirements
Following must be acquired by lvl25:
10 Levels Sorcerer
12 Levels SD
Skill Focus: Taunt(remember the requirements for SD are pretty steep for a sorcerer already)
Rapier Wit

I'm thinking to give this quasi a caster vs melee option like currently exists for BFMs; perhaps there should be some sort of manipulation of spell strength like RDD level boosts on BFM for specific spells; eg Tensors, Shadow Shield, Vampire Touch, etc.

Will think a bit more on that..