Vampire Tomes just for fun

[jolly tapir]

Immediate Disclaimer: I think Tomes is the best place for vampires, not a Ruler, not a culture. Here I present 2 Tier 3 shadow Tomes which could be used as a part of a shadow playthrough (which currently lacks an alternative T3 undead option), but are not too heavy on Undead Synergy and thus could be included into other builds.

Disclaimer 2: Numbers, if present, are very approximate, I don't pretend I tried to balance stuff. In most places the numbers are missing, use your imagination.

**New Tag: **Vampire
is Undead
has Mind Control Immunity
All attacks have Life Steal.
Deal additional +20% damage to bleeding targets.
Temporary HP can go higher than max HP up to 30% of max HP.

The Tome ideas are below in comments

Tier 3. Tome of the Blood Magic Shadow/Order
Shadow Vibe: Undead
Order Vibe: Stability, Vampire Thralls, Faithful.
Additional Synergy: Bleeding

Immediately gives access to High Vampire units in all the cities.
Racial Unit: High Vampire T4 fighter
Tags: Vampire
Fast movement.
Repeating Attack Phys/Blight inflict bleeding
Additional attack Blood Storm: CD 2 AoE2 centered at the vampire. Deal some damage (~10), inflict 2x bleeding, heal exactly the amount of damage dealt.
Passive: Resurgence.
Passive: All non-hero non-vampire units in the same stack up to Tier 3 get Faithful.

Research:

Global Enchantment: Soul Bleeding
Whenever a bleeding would be applied to the enemy in combat, apply "soul bleeding" instead.
Soul Bleeding: Phys/Cold DoT, counted as bleeding, can be applied to enemies normally immune to bleeding.
**Combat Spell: **AoE-2 cold/blight damage and inflict 2 stack of bleeding.
Siege Project: Every enemy is dealt cold/blight dmg and is inflicted with guaranteed 2x bleeding at the start of the Siege.
**Unit Enchantment: **Get a Blood Magic active ability
Blood Magic: Free ability CD2. Inflict "soul bleeding" x2 on yourself to gain True Strike and Strengthened x2.
Target: Battlemages

**City Structure: Vampire Clan Hall. **+20 Stability.
Choose a set of abilities when you build:

• Universal Camouflage, Flanker, Phasing.
• Blood Drain - Once per combat Active ranged AoE1, 12 + 3*Tier phys damage, heal the amount dealt. Starts on CD1.
• +3 Phys Damage on all attacks, doubled for single shot.
• Very Fast Movement, evasion vs ranged, slippery
• 20% + 5%*Tier chance to inflict Insanity on hit.
• all attacks become True Damage, but are 35% weaker.
• Get +1 Def, +2 Res
  Each set can only be chosen once. Vampire units (i.e having a vampire tag) produced in this city get the chosen set of abilities. Abilities are also got retroactively.
  Researched SPI: Blood Circle: Research Post +mana + draft per nearby Farm and Forester
  You can transform a racial non-vampire unit standing on an SPI into a Vampire Thrall:
  Gets Vampire
  Gets Faithful
  Gets benefits of a City's Vampire Clan Hall if present. If Hall is built later, abilities are applied retroactively.
  Cost is 50 mana per tier.

[late pendant]

I have a suggestion to remove undead from vampire so vampire spiders can also have it.

[jolly tapir]

Tier 3. Tome of the Blood Lust Shadow/Chaos
Shadow Vibe: Undead
Chaos Vibe: Hordes
Additional synergies: Bleeding

SPI: Bloodsucker Den. Forester. +draft per adjacent farm. Gives access to bloodsucking units (below).
Vampire Initiate T1 Racial Fighter
Tags: Vampire, Fast Movement, Low maintenance
Repeating Attack Phys/Blight inflict 60% bleeding
Evolves into Feral Vampire
Vampire Bat T2 Fighter (non-racial)
Tags: Flying, Animal, Very Fast Movement. (not a vampire!)
Repeating Attack Phys inflict 60% bleeding, Life Stealing.
Deals +1 dmg and has +1 Def/Res per friendly vampire in combat. Caps at 5.
**Feral Vampire T3 Racial Fighter **
Tags: Vampire
Fast Movement
Repeating Attack Phys/Blight inflict 60% bleeding
Has -60% HP, -50% dmg compared to the baseline. At the start of the combat creates two copies of itself. If at least one copy is alive at the end of the combat - the unit lives. Getting experience improves all the copies.

Research:

**Unit Enchantment: Blood Lust: **+2 physical damage on melee attacks and inflict guaranteed bleeding. Get strengthened whenever an adjacent bleeding enemy dies.
Targets: Fighter, Shock, Animal, Vampire.
**Combat Summon: Spectral Bat T1 **(non-racial)
Tags: Vampire, Ethereal, Flying, Animal, Very Fast Movement.
Attack: Melee Repeating, Blight Damage, Inflict bleeding
Summon 3 of them on random spaces in AoE1 when you cast the spell.

*Combat Enchantment: Blood Rage **
Target a friendly non-mythic unit. It should have at least one enemy adjacent. It gets Bolstered Defense, Bolstered Resistance and 10 temp HP for each adjacent enemy, Strengthened, Fortune and +10 morale for each adjacent ally, Berserk and Steadfast until the next turn and attacks immediately. Cannot be cast twice on the same unit.
Combat Enchantment: Overwhelming Horde
If you have more units in combat than the opponent, all your units get Hastened for 1 turn. In addition for this turn all your units get a physical charge attack dmg 15 + 3 Tier.

Final Notes
Why I think it's good? 🙂

• Both Tomes have synergy between themselves: Bleeding, buffs to vampires in the first Tome via Clan Hall and expanded selection of vampires in the second one.
• Each of them also expands on what a necromancer could do.
• Each plays well to their respective secondary affinity both thematically and mechanically: the order one can RP well into a structured aristocratic society and expands on the ways to get Faithful, the other one will technically play out well with Chaos based playthroughs due to expendable but hard to fully kill units (in the form of Feral Vampires), horde strategies and the ability for alpha strikes.
• From the thematic perspective, I think it covers two of the most popular vampire tropes - refined aristocratic manipulators vs the less sophisticated blood-hungry horde.

Thanks for reading!

[jolly tapir]

Heh, I see where you are coming from, but then those spiders would have stupid synergy with Vampire Clan Hall, so no 🙂

Or I have to rethink the design

and I spent quite some time on it!

[late pendant]

On a more serious note, is there a reason you didn't go with any researched units?

[jolly tapir]

For the first Tome there IS a reason.

If you don't get access to some vampires immediately, Vampire Clan Hall has no sense - and having a research which fully depends on another research is not good.

For the second tome...well, I just mimicked what I did in the first one 🙂

I guess that makes at least a bit of sense?

[late pendant]

But you can make thralls with before right, because you have the SPI?

[jolly tapir]

SPI is researched

maybe I didn't make that clear enough

edited the original

Why so you would ask?

Because I think this functionality doesn't sound as Core - having an immediately available vampire unit is more Core

sorry if I sound too defensive 🙂

[late pendant]

More that SPIs are the standard you don't research it benefits outside of dungeon depth which has 4 of the things.

So I just kind of assumed it wasn't

[jolly tapir]

I totally agree here that I went a strange route - there is no example of a Tome which gives an immediate access to units, but I think there no problem in making it just a bit special

[late pendant]

The only other major note is kind of a balancing thing I guess, but heavy charge strike is just kind of annoying when it's extremely common.

[jolly tapir]

I think if in this case it would be slighly weaker than the baseline - we are all good.

The buff is conditional to make it worse

it's more a win-more thing IMO

but very flashy 🙂

I can consider alternatives to preserve that vibe of overwhelming horde, but couldn't come up with anything else suitable

and I'm OK with making it regular change if you think it's safer

[late pendant]

It's more that I do remember launch AoW4 where like every half decent shock unit had heavy charge and I am still kind of annoyed at it, so take it with a grain of salt I guess.

[jolly tapir]

I believe that was basically the case for all shock cavalry, which made polearms basically useless 🙂

[late pendant]

I think it was like every tier 3 or above? I know warbreeds had it.

[jolly tapir]

maybe.

All shock cavalry is T3+ so our memories do coincide

yeah, deleted heavy from the charge, you are right, it's too much

[late pendant]

High vampires not giving vampires faithful is a bit odd I guess.

[jolly tapir]

I thought it would be strange, cause I see this application of Faithful as mind control, and vampires have mind control immunity - but maybe I'm digging too deep

[late pendant]

I kind of assumed it was because the other tomes vampire were too rowdy for it.

[jolly tapir]

exactly.

Like the vampires from the other tome just WANT TO SUCK (blood), no faith to be found there 🙂

[grizzled wagon]

It is strange. Faithfull isnt locked to any characteristic. We can make hordes of animals, demons and skeletons with faithfull.

I dont think making your tome unit antisynergistic with its the other vampiretome is a good choice.

[jolly tapir]

Well, it is still synergetic, but not in the Faithful department.

What I think is:

• If you gonna go full vampires - go full vampires, but that wouldn't give you an additional benefit of Faithful. You have other tools to play with
• If you wanna include that together with some Order shenanigans - be my guest, but you won't use the full vampire toolkit then.

[jolly tapir]

and again, thematic reasons

[grizzled wagon]

For bloodlust. Maybe global strenght stacks when bleeding enemies die might be a bit too much. How about they get it if enemy next to them receives a stack of bleeding?

[jolly tapir]

hm, I thought it's OK cause it's kinda conditional. We have similar effects in T4 Tomes, but unconditional.

Your option might be even more broken cause with these tomes inflicting a stack of bleeding is easier than outright killing an enemy.

However, I see your point. Let's change it to "whenever an adjacent bleeding enemy dies".

it would definitely be not too strong, but could be a bit weak instead 🙂

what do you think?

[grizzled wagon]

Not sure.

Would need to see it in Action.

Other implementation could be when they attack bleeding enemies. Its essentially weaker frenzy

[jolly tapir]

ah, that is actually more interesting from the thematic perspective

thank you, good suggestions

[grizzled wagon]

My mainconcern would have been vampire at the other end of the battle get it, when they, from an rp perspective might not even notice the kill.

[jolly tapir]

@dense flume , could you explain yourself? Why do you think the design deserves this emoji?

I'm up to discussion

[grizzled wagon]

Feral Vampire T3 Racial Fighter
Tags: Vampire
Fast Movement
Repeating Attack Phys/Blight inflict 60% bleeding
Has -60% HP, -50% dmg compared to the baseline. At the start of the combat creates two copies of itself. If at least one copy is alive at the end of the combat - the unit lives. Getting experience improves all the copies.

Might you explain that part to me? Not sure how that unit is supposed to work. So if i build a feral vampire its for example a feral vampire toad of my empire. And on battlestart its 2 units with - X to hp and dmg based on what? What a fighter of t3 usually would have?

[jolly tapir]

Ah, that one.

It has inherently lower stats, which are displayed as inherently lower compared to baseline Tier 3 units. However, when in combat it immediately spawns 2 additional copies of itself connected similar to "reflections" in a sense that if the "main" unit dies - another one becomes the "main" unit. You should kill all 3 in the combat to get rid of the unit completely, otherwise it would be present in the next combat and will summon two copies of itself again - kinda have "initiated" new feral vampires inbetween the combats.

[grizzled wagon]

oh, its 3 units? didnt understand it as that at first

[jolly tapir]

yeah, the unit summons 2 copies of itself thus it is the original +2

[grizzled wagon]

but makes sense with that wording

[jolly tapir]

the idea is that total damage is huge (150%), but you can try to kill the copies more easily cause they would only have 40% of usual T3 maxHP

[grizzled wagon]

so only special ability is 3 base weaker t3s that do bleeding but nothing else, but you have to kill all 3 to get the unit killed.

Hm if i have a stack of them it might be hard to keep track what feral vampire could die and which one is the last of its trio

suggestion: also make them very numerous in unit count, i think it adds to the flair even if loss from casualties could be problematic

[jolly tapir]

yeah, that's a weak point. I mean, if I consider the same visual representation of this as reflections, I would have the lines all over the battlefield if I have lots of those.

But the flexibility of being a unit separated into 3 units is appealing to me

[grizzled wagon]

Hm, maybe 1 main version with 2 non-vital summons could be better?

[jolly tapir]

than the survivability goes down. It's very easy to focus down something that has only 40% of normal HP

but

we could go another route

[grizzled wagon]

Oh, another idea.

A vampire unit that never starts with max hp, at battlestart it gets extra max hp that arent refilled, so it has "space" to lifesteal to power up.

[jolly tapir]

make it a regular T3 which summons 2 non-vital T1 vampire initiates

[grizzled wagon]

yeah something like that

main body is stronger than summons would be better

fits well to tome of horde aswell

[jolly tapir]

but I loved the fact that it is hardly killable so much...

[grizzled wagon]

yeah, is a nice gimmick, just not sure how to make it visually easy to spot. would suck as player to send in your swarm of vampires and suddenly realize you lost 3 units despite only losing 11 copies.

[jolly tapir]

I'll have to think about it. Not gonna change right now, maybe I'll come up with something