Game: Complete Guide to Vampires
Publisher: Goodman Games
Series: d20
Reviewer: notthepally
Review Dated: 18th, August 2006
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10 [ Good ]
Total Score: 7
Average Score: 7.00
Complete Guide to Vampires
Goodman Games
Mark Charke, writer
Most vampire products portray vampires as unnatural abominations or cursed beings, innately evil and therefore to be slain on sight. Many of the vampire products I’ve seen that provide rules for allowing PC vampires either follow the gothic punk “woe is me I have so much angst” White Wolf approach or are little more than a mess of contrived rules to allow for uber-PCs with supernatural powers. Thankfully, The Complete Guide to Vampires takes a different approach, giving a DM a nice story idea in which to allow vampires and a scaled system that makes vampire PCs almost practical.
In this book, vampires are actually a vital part of the natural order. By absorbing the negative energies of an area and using them as fuel for their own undead natures, vampires help control the balance between positive and negative energies.
The author uses the standard SRD vampire as the base for the vampire. Each “level” you take as a vampire gives you access to more of the standard vampire powers, up to 8th level. With this system, you can easily design vampires of varying power levels. Maybe a 2nd level vampire, 6th fighter, or a 4th level vampire, 3rd level wizard. There are also different sub-races of vampires that allow for even more unique vampire encounters.
When I said early that the book makes vampire PCs ALMOST practical, I meant you still can’t realistically allow a single vampire PC into your normal game. Even scaled, a 1st level vampire is still going to be much more powerful than a first level human or elf. But if you are looking for a d20 alternative to vampiric gaming and intend have all the PCs play vampires, then it would be an easy system to use.
