» Sun May 06, 2012 11:33 pm
I always liked the core concept for vampirism in Oblivion, where you get stronger when you're hungry and weaker immediately after feeding. It's unique for one thing, every vampire movie/comic/anime/mod in existence has vampirism work the other way around. It also makes for an interesting gameplay conflict - do you want to be really strong but hated by everyone and vulnerable to sunlight, or only slightly stronger but able to pass for normal in the daylight? In every other vampire mod drinking blood is a no-brainer and should always be done whenever possible, but in oblivion there are pros and cons to it.
However vanilla Oblivion vampirism falls flat in almost every other regard. You get very few unique powers and they're rather weak, you can create spells that outstrip them without too much effort midway through the game. There is almost no new content available to vampire players, you can get cured and that's about it. There are no clans, other vampires still attack you on sight, and guards will not bother you even if you walk around town 100% vampire, in other words a starving vampire clearly hunting for his next fix. There are no repercussions to having people know you are a vampire either.
I would love to have a mod that keeps this core concept of vampirism that I feel Oblivion got right, but that fixes all the flaws in execution. Basically:
1) New powers greatly expanded, especially powers that are applicable outside of direct combat.
2) No flashy animesque powers, would prefer ones more rooted in actual vampire lore. For example, Nekhanimal's Awesome Vampire Mod lets vampires do stuff like teleport, banish people to other dimensions, and warp behind people for an easy back-attack. Why do vampires get space-warping abilities like these? I much prefer the more grounded powers NAVM gives you, like commanding a hoard of plague rats, hypnotizing people, turning into mist, enslaving npcs into ghouls, combat feeding, blood frenzy, flying with blood-formed wings. Those are all awesome and have some basis in either vampire myths or "Blood magic" style spells, which are easy to justify attaching to creatures that drink blood to survive.
3) Well fed vampires and hungry ones should have different powers to suit different playstyles. Let the hungry vampires go into a frenzy and rip people's throats out, and let the well fed ones hypnotize people and hide in shadows and such. That lets the player decide what kind of vampire they want to be.
4) Some kind of aging or leveling system to unlock new abilities. I think NAVM does this very well.
5) Clans and quests. Again, NAVM does this fantastically well.
6) Some kind of threat, a downside to being a vampire. Massive disposition hits to anyone that realizes what you are, and guards attacking you if you are hungry enough for your true nature to show. Though I think this should have some caveats. Guards should give you *some* leeway if you happen to be the hero of Kvatch or have a lot of fame, and I'd imagine you'd be completely forgiven for your curse once you've saved the world from Oblivion. You might consider also adding a vampire hunting guild that isn't useless that will try to hunt you down if you become too powerful or gain to much infamy.
