Do you like the sillier vampire weaknesses, like crosses, garlic, inability to enter a home without being invited, and so on?
As a long-time TTRPG player, I don't have any opinions on this.
>>93249846I think having an array of stupid weaknesses lets the vampires have a crazy suite of powers and turns things into a game of "if you follow the rules you will be fine, but they are hard rules to follow and if you fuck up you're done for".
You don't have a vampire if theyre not repelled by the Cross. End of story
>>93249846No, but I like the sensible vampire weaknesses, like crosses, garlic, inability to enter a home without being invited, and so on.
Thoughts on running water?
>>93249846Man that's not even close to being the sillier vampire weaknesses. Throw a fist full of grains on the ground and then watch the fun. That counting vampire shit isn't from Sesame Street.
>>93249846I like to fuck with peoples perceptions and forgo a lot of the more well known vampire weaknesses for some less known ones. Garlic FLOWERS work, they can't cross running water unless they're on a boat, they're scared of a type of shaman called a "Cross", They have to be invited in, super OCD about everything, etc. There's some other fun ones, too. They also don't die in sunlight, they just lose some of their power. They need to sleep near dirt from their home country or else they lose their power. They turn into all sorts of animals, not just bats.But this is if I'm playing vampires straight. If I really want to fuck with people I have them think they're fighting a vampire and then just have it turn out to be a giant humanoid spider (drinks blood, flies with webs, jumps good, attaches to the walls and ceiling, can hypnotize by leading you into web traps, etc).
>>93249846Vampires suck in RPG's because they're so ubiquitous in fiction that every player is going to know a vampire's weaknesses.So the players either have to pretend they don't know the obvious until you decide they've earned the right to use information they've already known, or just metagame.And sure, you can change the weaknesses, but then it just feels like a cheap gotcha. Like you only did it to trick the players.
>>93249846Every vampire should have varying weaknesses, some might burn up in the sun while others only get their powers turned off by it. Some vampires are repelled by garlic, while it does nothing to others. Assuming things about vampires is the first mistake dead would-be hunters make.
>>93250264I don't really see an issue with this, Vampires are folklore either irl or in-setting, it's perfectly natural for everyone to know their traditional weaknessesVampires are dangerous when you haven't figured out that they are Vampires. The wolf in sheep's clothing is the fear factor
>>93249846How are any of those silly? Crosses in particular considering most vampires in media don't do away with their demonic affiliations.
>>93249846Crosses or general holy symbols are a "depends on the setting" thing.Not a fan of garlic because in the original it was just strong odors that screwed with advanced vampire senses. Invitation is top tier though. It's an excellent way of showing how clever or charming the vampire is when they inevitably obtain that invitation, especially given their powers of mesmerism. It's a speedbump, one that serves to build menace and not just invalidate the monster. The logistics can sometimes be annoying ie: who has the right to invite them, but it's well worth it.Not a big fan of running water.
>>93249846Nothing silly about the cross.
>>93250465>>93250041bro most settings don't even have crosses
>>93250088I suppose it is a baptism thing, or something to do with the great flood, water is supposed to be pure and wash away sins.
>>93250554I always thought it was an extension of the holy water thing
>>93250515Which is why most settings swap it out for a generic 'Holy Symbol'.
>>93250326>it's perfectly natural for everyone to know their traditional weaknessesIf they live near a place that had some massive issue with vampires in the past or frequently encounters new vampires, sure. Otherwise it's not a convincing argument.
>>93250658(you) don't live in a place with a massive vampire problem but you know the folklore weaknesses of vampiresIt's the kind of things grannies tell their grandchildren. "If you ever meet a vampire, throw a handful of rice on the ground!". The problem is when hack writers (and hack GMs) try to use vampires as a generic monster. If the locals know a vampire is roaming amongst them it's already over for the vamp. A vampire is a hidden threat who uses charm and manipulation to get what he wants, and turns to brute force only in an emergency. A vampire should never stand his ground, and only turn to overtly using his powers when fleeing from an angry mob.Vampire raids on towns, one man army vampires and vampire tyrants make no sense with the standard vampire lore. You can have them, but you have to abandon their traditional weaknesses (and at that point why bother making them vampires in the first place?)
>>93250591Disease can easy spread from stagnant water. Fresh, running water is usually clean.
>>93250088That one I don't like. Too ambiguous.
>>93249846I like how Vampire the Masquerade handles it. Crosses DO work, but you have to commit to the bit, and Tzimisce being autistic about sacred hospitality (they are slav, after all) won't enter your house unless invited. It all gives it a more modern spin that in the end makes sense.
>>93250688I live in a world where vampires aren't real, their stories sell well enough, and if you're using the knowledge of locals to point out how common knowledge is ... you have to ask yourself the equivalent of 'are accountants everywhere, or are we at an accountancy convention?'
>>93250688Warhammer Fantasy kinda dealt with this by not having vampire weaknesses be totally fixed, just trending in bloodlines from the original set of bloodsuckers. Exceptions being the need to drink blood (and even that has been overriden at least once) and a weakness to silver that manifests when you wound one.But even in Warhammer Fantasy, there's an entire group that do exactly as you say, and have no desire to stand and fight even when outed. Another kinda splits the bill between infiltrators and openly ruling aristocrats. And even another couple avoid mortal humans as a general rule.
>>93250785Thing that's weird is that invitation isn't even the Tzimisce curse. They have to sleep with dirt. But for some reason only Tzimisce RAW can take the Privacy Obsession supernatural flaw, whereas other classics like holy symbols are universal, any vamp can take them. Always annoyed me desu, eastern europe isn't the only place that's autistic about hospitality. That's basically every pre-industrial society.
>>93250102>be a vampire>see pic related>want to count the rice grains>but then, you see the shape of the cross, and you are revulsed by it>but you MUST count the rice grains>but see the shape of the cross, and you back away>but you MUST count the...that's an abstract kind of hell
>>93251262Simple cross shapes having any effect on vampires is absolute bullshit. Has to be an actual religious symbol (doesn't matter which religion; it's the carriee's faith that does).
>>93249846I like them as weaknesses if there's a good underlying reason for them. Crosses are an easy justification as the divine hating the undead, but say, entering a home uninvited is harder. One good justification I saw is in the Dresden Files, where every mortal home has a threshold, a magical barrier that makes it difficult to enter without permission, and it's not just vampires who are impeded by said thresholds. What reasons do 'your' vampires have for their weaknesses?
>>93251432They're polite gentlemen
>>93250084/threadWanting your immortal blood drinkers to be realistic is an absolute midwit take.
>>93251296>(doesn't matter which religion; it's the carriee's faith that does)That's almost as bullshit as the shapes thing.>be Eastern European monster>incredibly tied to Orthodox Christianity, even the western churches were skeptical>oh noes is that a Yin Yang symbol? I'm going insaaaane!Even a plain cross is stretching it, it should be a crucifix.
>>93250554Its because before Bram Stoker made it a devil worship thing in Dracula's backstory, vampires were associated with PLAGUE. Once you know that context, all of the 'weird' vampire weaknesses make sense.Needing permission to enter the home? Its about being afraid of contact with strangers during a time when death spread from contact with others. Letting someone you don't know into your house could kill your family if they had the plague. Garlic and its strong smell was thought to drive away miasma ('bad airs' which were blamed as a source of disease), so garlic repels vampires. Silver has long been seen as a source of purity because it is a non-corrosive mental, and actually does have antibacterial and antiviral properties. Still water breeds stagnation and disease, but running water is clean. The weakness to daylight wasn't actually a 'destroys vampires' thing, but rather that they returned to being a normal corpse during the day. This is why you dispose of a vampire by staking them through the heart or cutting their head off, so that when night falls and they reanimate they have wounds that prevent them from getting up and hunting people. This was something people could actually DO, dig up the corpse of the recently dead person that they blamed for their sudden misfortune and 'destroy the vampire'. Really, the aversion to the crosses and holy ground is the part that doesn't line up with the rest of the logic behind them as plaguebearing corpses. Because, surprise surprise, its catholic bullshit that they stapled onto an existing pagan belief to try and co-opt it, like the catholics did with everything else they encountered.
>>93251867Bruh. Did you come up with this on the spot? Vampires have had an association with the unholy way before Bram Stoker, as you seem to realize later in your post. One of their common origins was an excommunicated corpse.They only got blamed for plagues *if the locals didn't know it was a plague*. If somebody dies of a wasting disease, and their family starts wasting away, before germ theory that means it's a vampire. But if it was recognized as a plague with pox and "bring out yer dead" and all that shit then vampires were never brought up.>abloobloo catholic bullshitIt's not even catholic it's eastern orthodox.
>>93252034> It's not even catholic it's eastern orthodox.Its easy to forget this if you have only a surface level knowledge of world religions, but there is literally no such thing as 'eastern orthodox church'. Its called the Orthodox Catholic Church, that is what they call themselves. Calling them 'eastern orthodox' and dropping the catholic part of their name is an exonym perpetuated by this side of Europe became its uncomfortable to admit that there is more than one branch of catholicism and the other one doesn't care about the pope.
>>93252060The official name might contain "Catholic", but we always call it the Ortodox church and if you say Catholic it unambiguously means the wester, papist Catholic curch>t. Orthodoxfag
>>93249846The threshold is really interesting, and I wish more scenarios made use of it.
>>93252034>Vampires have had an association with the unholy way before Bram StokeNTA, but Stoker explicitly made Dracula a sorcerer who studied under Satan at the Scholomance.
>>93251589That’s fine for the “must be invited” weakness, but what about their other weaknesses, like garlic or OCD?
>>93249846>inability to enter a home without being invited
>>93252282Correct. You know how time works, right? If they were also unholy before Stoker, that means Stoker isn't the one who started it, and he's certainly not the one who steered vampires away from anon's imaginary Nurgle vampires.
>>93249846Yes, that's the charm of fantasy. Trying too hard to 'realistic'-ize it you might as well play Hard Sci-fi.
>>93252545Yep. This.It's why alignments are fun. In no meaningful way to they make sense. Want me to explain how they work? Here's how they work: they are fun. Roll with it.
>>93249846>May I come in?>No
>>93251432All of that garlic and running water stuff was originally suppose to work on Anything evil. Including regular humans. Anything that crosses the "True Evil" line. It's just part of ye old superstitions. It got attributed to vampires because the popularity of Mr. Bram Stoker book which predominantly used such writing devices.Except .... They were all used a Red Herring cures, because the TWIST was that Dracula (Actually can't recall if it was suppose to be all vampires or just Dracula himself?) was perfectly immune to all traditional foils.There is a specific scene which details Dracula literally enjoying a nice meal with garlic, just to highlight this point.
>>93252719>Called bait.Fucking sigh. Read a book you plebeian, read only one book in this case.
>>93252744Dracula was still "harmed' by Garlic, just not in the way like, a Blade vampire would melt or something. It ruined his ability to enjoy blood, that's why Mina or whomever only perished when the dumb bitch maid removed the garlic Van Helsing had put around the room. It's more like putting a ton of cilantro on something because you know some guy fucking hates cilantro.
>>93249846Needing to be invited is essential to me imo
>>93249846I prefer going to by Dracula, Carmilla and Varney rules. Repelled by cross, holy water, holy wafers and garlic, weakened (but not killed) by sun, can’t cross running water unless in boat, need invitation. I like vampires having a lot of weaknesses because it’s a nice contrast to werewolves only having one, and a much more difficult one to utilize.
>>93252880Vampires and Werewolves occupy discrete shades of horror. Vampires are cunning, invisible, and trying to get you, but they have a bunch of esoteric weaknesses which you can set up to repulse them without you even knowing they are there.Werewolves by contrast are invisible until they actually turn into werewolves and kill you, they aren't clever, but they are scary wolf monsters, and you are not going to kill one unless you blast it with silver personally.It's like the difference between a treacherous disease and... Being mauled to death by a wolf.
>>93252835I think you and I take away two different things from that event. Ruining a monsters sense of taste isn't the same as the monster melting into goo. But yes, that was how that event happened.Superstitious Traditionally Garlic was a Powerful ward against any kind of evil, and was thought to be in the book as well. Against Dracula he just lost his appetite, to me that says he's (most) over come the classic foil. But sure I suppose you can read it as, he didn't completely overcome it.
>>93251659The religious symbol needs to be held by a person of that religion and actually be a tool for repelling spirits anon. A yin-yang symbol won't do shit, but a bhuddhist priest holding beads as he prays will work the same as a cross.
>>93252907>unless you blast it with silver personallyThat's a hollywood lie anon. Killing a werewolf in actual mythology require divine intervention or true love. The silver thing comes from the beast of gevaudan being killed by bullets made from a bless crucifix(crucifixes were silver) and german werwolves being killed by weapons made of the memento mori of dead loved ones(typically inheretance money like silver coins).All other myths have people's actual gods needing to intervene to save their ass.
>>93253008Nope, Vampire's are blasphemous excommunicated corpses barred from heaven by big G Christian God. A jew or a Muslim might be able to pull something off given they worship the same deity that cursed the vampire, but the Buddhist can't do shit. Syncreticism is gay. You wouldn't call a Christian monk to deal with a Japanese Youkai. Don't try to apply the reverse with Vampires.
>>93249846considering vampire myths are antisemitic in nature and concidering isreali schools dont use the + sign because it resembles a cross... yeah seems realistic>inability to enter a home without being invited"having a tv in your living room is like...
>>93253035Anon, vampire myths aren't local to europe, nor did they start in europe. If we operated by your logic, then most vampire would ignore crosses entirely because they're from a different religion.
>>93253032So hollywood missed the point and popularized a bastardized understanding of something to the general public? I'm shocked I tell you! Could you imagine if they did that to other things? I must clutch my saint peters cross and star of mary just thinking about it.
>>93249846Arbitrary weakness are stupid. A stick intersecting another stick does not make immortal undead creatures cower in fear or pain, it's a fucking stick intersecting another stick. The entering a home thing is dumb and anyone that brings it up is equally dumb.
>>93249846Hard Mode: Crosses only work if the person using them walks with Christ.
>>93251867From what I have read, garlic is a stronger smell that masks the stench of a rotting corpse. So in folklore garlic is stronger than a corpse, undead or not. So it has a repelling quality.Staking a heart was meant to pin them down into the ground so they could not get back up. It was not instant undead death like portrayed in movies but was literally staking them into the ground below so they could not get up again. Like a tent stake. It did not destroy the vampire, as much as it just permanently pinned them into their grave.
>>93253230Even dumb cheesy 80s movie Fright Night covered that one. The cross is not an instant anti vampire charm. It's a physical representation of faith, someone has to believe in the cross repelling evil for it to work.
>>93253263And it opens up the old joke that if someone from a different faith got vampire'd, you have to be like Benny from the Mummy and find that fuck's weakness like you're going through your keys.
>>93249846So what happens if you're allergic to garlic and then get turned? Is the weakness double strength?
>93249846It depends on the type of vampire. For a more traditional type, the folklore and silly rules are part of the game. The Vampire needs to be s big part of the story, if it's just 1d10 random vampires, I ignore that stuff and just focus on the main things (level drain and beheading) unless something becomes reoccuring (Then I generate more details from there).
>>93253263>>93253362I for one don't like it when every vampire has Dracula's weaknesses. Dracula should have his weaknesses because he's Dracula and is supposed to otherwise be really strong. Every other vampire just being a mini-Dracula is both boring and reductive to Dracula himself.
American Vampire may have turned into a shit comic book pretty quickly, but did like the initial idea that your weakness as a vampire is partially mystically symbolic to your national ideology. For example wood stakes working on European vampires because wood is a common everyday thing and thus the symbolic opposite of old aristocratic wealth.
>>93249846>the damned fearing the power of almighty god is sillyi don't think vampshitting is for you
>>93249846Mechanically, in a TTRPG sense, vampires need appropriate weaknesses according to their level of difficulty, so silver being something to use on bitch-made vampires would be fine. But in the same TTRPG sense, silver for vampires also steps on the toes of werewolves and their own weaknesses, which may have diminishing returns in terms of player engagement if using both.
>>93251432>secretly habours racist viewsWhat?>perfectly immune to all traditional foils.No, the cross and garlic leaves reppeled him but a maid stole the silver cross and Lucy's mom throw away the leaves and let the window open because it smelled
>>93253632Also meant for >>93252667
>>93251623It's not even mid. It's just fucking stupid.The entire origin and premise of the concept of a vampire requires those features.Anything else would be like designing small, delicate, androgynous, ethereal little dainty waifs and calling them orcs and goblins. It's just fundamentally and profoundly not what the words mean.Vampires are undead corpses that drink blood and are repelled by garlic, destroyed by sunlight and cannot enter homes uninvited. That's just what a vampire is. It's not some kind of arbitrary setting-specific malleable decision. It's what a vampire is. If it doesn't have such features, it isn't a vampire. Period.
>>93251659You're being obtuse. Nobody wears the yin yang symbol as a symbol of protection. A holy symbol in most RPGs, however, is an object with a defined mechanical purpose, obviously analogous to an exorcist's cross. It's the focus of the powers of a god that absolutely, without a doubt, exists.
>>93253742Your forgot the whole symbolic thing about vampires needing dirt from their homeland anon in their coffins. Because so long as vampires have to adhere to the rabies superstitions of the mid 1700's, they should also adhere to vampire rules that predate that right? Also, as long as we're being authentic, only wooden stakes made from true rosewood can actually kill a vampire through the heart since that very specific wood is what all authentically consecrated true rosary's are made from.
>>93253032I don’t care, frankly. Making them weak to silver is cool. It’s all made up anyways. Sometimes reinterpretations are the better option.
