Fang and Fury - Guidebook to Vampires.pdf

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rule that a “destroyed” result from a turn check instead cures vampires
of their illness. The blast of positive energy burns out the disease
entity and restores a vampire to life without harming the mortal carrier.
Alternative Racial Abilities
The infectious nature of the vampiric disease carriers makes them much
more prolific than normal ones once an outbreak occurs. Because every
Chapter Two: The Way of Blood
Races of Renown: Fang & Fury
drop of her blood carries the infection, whenever a diseased vampire
feeds she has a chance of creating a new scion. The percentage chance is
equal to 5 + the total damage dealt by blood drain.
Vampirism (Su): Supernatural disease; injury, Fortitude save (DC
20), incubation period 1d3 days. The disease deals no damage
to its host but transforms her into a bloodthirsty undead
monster at midnight on the night it takes effect.
- Vampire Campaign Options -
Here are a number of ideas for campaigns that center on vampires.
Against the Inquisition
In this option, the PCs are isolated scions in a land dominated
by a hard-line political or religious ideology that seeks their total
eradication. Inquisitors, soldiers, and firebrand preachers walk
the streets at night seeking out creatures of evil, and children are
encouraged to find sleeping vampires during the day, at a penny a
head. The party’s goals may be as simple as survival, or as farreaching
as revolution.
Depending on their goals and abilities, the party could flee to the
countryside to seek the safety of caves or ruins, or they could
choose to fortify their hiding place and stick it out in a city or
town. In the first situation the campaign takes on the frantic pace
of a chase film, or the desperation of an exodus. In the second,
it might be centered on deception, emphasizing roleplaying as the
PCs use disguise and illusion to feed and stay one step ahead of the
inquisition.
This option is particularly attractive if you intend to make scions
sympathetic figures, either through roleplaying or the natural or
cursed vampire options. It also works well in historical context, if
you wish to run a campaign that takes place in a dark and mythical
underside to real events such as the Spanish Inquisition or the
Crusades.
GM’s Option
Consider granting PCs Lifemask (see Chapter Two: Feats) as a free
bonus feat to enhance their ability to avoid detection and capture.
Conquest
A question people commonly ask about powerful monsters is:
Why don’t they rule the world? This book attempts to patch that
hole with elements, such as the Dusk Crown artifact and the reveler
prestige class, that keep vampires from working together, but
another option is to make the answer to this question a central
theme of your campaign. A cabal of powerful vampires, perhaps
working in alliance with liches and other intelligent undead, plans
to capture a city-state, a principality, or a country, or even to
establish a globe-spanning empire.
The players could take the role of soldiers on either side of
the battle, or of the generals themselves if the group wants to
fight out battles using mass-combat rules. They could also play
noncombatants caught up in the struggle who lock themselves in
at night and emerge during the day to scrounge for supplies, ever
mindful of the passage of the sun. Because the undead armies kill
all living creatures without discriminating between good and evil,
civilized and wild, the PCs could even be racial enemies who are
bound together out of necessity. A party containing a drow, a high
elf, a duergar, and a mountain dwarf would be a problem in many
groups, but it could present a great roleplaying challenge to players
who are up for it.
GM’s Option
A campaign that centers on war between the living and undead
should reflect the inevitable “arms race” that occurs during
protracted conflict. Consider reducing the prerequisites for feats such
as Empowered Natural Weapon and Energy Drain to make vampire
soldiers more dangerous, and granting all neutral and good clerics
access to the Sun domain as a free bonus domain, regardless of their
deities’ portfolios.
Decadent Cruelty
Not all roleplaying campaigns have to be about something. In this
option the PCs are scions who live at the top of society, dispensing
agony and ecstasy to mortals in their care and living an existence of
endless debauchery. They create blood puppets for sport and order
them off balconies when they cease to be amusing; they invent
whole new sports and pastimes to humiliate their mortal thralls,
treating them as riding beasts, musical instruments, or parlor game
pieces; and they never, ever get caught.
In this sort of campaign, toss the standard rewards out the window
and instead orient the game around parlor politics and the minor
contests of influence likely to occupy immortal sadists. Each
session has its prince and its goat, with plenty of minor nobles
in between, all squabbling for influence. While d20 System rules
are still used to resolve skill checks and combat, a card game like
“Presidents and Assholes” may be better suited to resolving the
outcome of complex political struggles. For example, the PCs may
be jockeying for ownership of the local orphanage and the superb
dining to be found therein. Their politicking toward this end may
be expressed by playing a single hand of cards to determine the
relative placement of each PC in the race.
GM’s Option
Half the fun of being a vampire is having minions. Consider
removing the negative level penalties for creating blood puppets and
vampiric thralls, and thus encourage PCs to gather twisted courtiers,
pets, and sycophants to their sides.