Hello all, Ananam here!

I wanted to let you all know about the progress of our Vampire class and what has changed since you've seen the class last time. And A LOT has changed! I really wish current revision of the Vampire was already done, but unfortunatelly this is not the case. Part of it is how MASSIVE the revision is and part of it is some personal stuff that appeared out of nowhere for me this month (and I hope I will be able to talk about this next month!). But don't worry, we WILL release new stuff soon and you can expect rules for the Vampire from level 1 to 10 and at least 2 subclasses complete and ready for testing. Let me dig into the details of how the Vampire has evolved!

Our plan for mixing and matching different subclasses (called Blood Legacies) was ambitious, exciting and fun... but it also had tremendous problems that led to us scrapping this idea. This was the hardest decision to make, but we firmly believe this was also the correct one. We think the idea of mixing and matching would work... if Blood Legacies were more narrow in scope, more one note. And we didn't want the subclasses to be narrow! If anything, we wanted to expand them!

Testing all of the combinations of Blood Legacies and their features and abilities would require a lot of resources, but actually what made us second guess this idea was that playtesters still tended to mostly pick options from a single subclass. Even when we received feedback that basically said "this idea is super cool and needs to stay!", it was coming after a game where the Vampire character was built with (mostly) single Blood Legacy features and abilities.

Naturally, picking options from just one subclass was more synergistic. And even when we introduced synergies between different Blood Legacies, it was not enough. Some subclasses went better with others and in the end a lot of combinations were still suboptimal, so the big variety of combinations ended up being illusory. Moreover, when you can pick whatever feature and ability you want, there is no guarantee you actually have a certain subclass feature, so you cannot build higher-level features upon lower-level ones! This was very limiting and made the class not have as much mechanical cohesion as we wanted.

This is why the Vampires now simply pick a Bloodline to act as their subclass. Here is where good news start! Because we still wanted the Vampires to have a lot of build options, we added a new Bloodline - Spore Bearer! This is the subclass' description: You are a host to innumerable parasites that prey upon both the dead and the living. Infectious spores swirl around you, poisoning and wearing down your victims as well as nourishing and bolstering your allies. You gain the Nature skill.

The Spore Bearer is pretty much done from level 1 to 10 (as is Noxious Stalker), so you will be able to have a look and play as this different take on the vampire fantasy very soon! This was one of the concepts that we really wanted to do, but it is so focused on its mechanical theme of infecting enemies, that it was nearly impossible to do it with the "mix and match your features" model.

We've massively expanded all Bloodlines and all of them now have clear themes, mechanics and even feature and ability "paths" that culminate with picking your "lord" feature. One of the "paths" for Charming Tormentor is about fear and its mechanic reads like this:

Dread
Some of your abilities have a dread effect entry. Whenever you use a dread ability on a frightened target, the ability gains extra effects specified in the dread entry.

Crimson Conductor currently has this mechanic, which we plan to test extensively in coming weeks:

Blood Toll
Some of your abilities have a blood toll effect entry. For example, the Splitting Vein ability has an effect noted as "Blood Toll 1+". Whenever you use a blood toll ability, you can take damage to boost its effects with the ability's blood toll effect. The ability's blood toll value represents how much damage you take when enabling the blood toll effect. The value means how many times you take damage equal to 1d6 + your level when using the ability with blood toll effect enabled. For example, if you are level 3 and want to enable a "Blood Toll 2" effect, you take damage equal to two times 1d6 + 3, so 2d6 + 6.

I've mentioned "lord" features. It is something you get at level 10. Shrouded Lurker (previously known as Gloom Weaver) currently has these options:

Lord of Shadows
You gain the following benefits:

- Once per round, when a creature within 10 gains concealment, becomes hidden or becomes invisible, you gain 1 surge.
- You always have concealment. If an effect would grant you concealment, you can instead teleport a number of squares equal to your Presence score.
- Once on each of your turns, you can use the Hide maneuver as a free maneuver costing 1 indulgence.

Lord of Durance
You gain the following benefits:

- Once per round, when a creature within 10 becomes grabbed, slowed or restrained, you gain 1 surge.
- Once on each of your turns, you can use use the Grab maneuver as a free maneuver costing 1 indulgence.
- When you use the Grab maneuver, it gains a second distance option: ranged 10, and Magic keyword. You don't have a limit of grabbed creatures. As a maneuver you can teleport one creature grabbed by you into an unoccupied space within 10 of you. It stays grabbed after the teleportation.

At level 8 you get this feature:

Bloodline Embodiment
You are able to transform into an embodiment of your bloodline, a vile creature exemplifying your vampiric abilities. Choose one of two forms available to your bloodline. As a maneuver, you can shapeshift into the form. The transformation lasts until the end of the encounter, until you are dying, until 10 minutes pass, or until you use a maneuver to shapeshift back into your original form. Once you transform into the form, you cannot do so again until you finish a respite. While transformed, you gain the following effects:

- Your size is 3.
- You can speak as you usually do.
- Your gain a +3 bonus to stability.
- You gain an aura whose effects depend on the form and whose distance is 3.
- Your movement types are decided by your form.

And one of the forms for the Shrouded Lurker is...

Gloom Weaver
While in this form, you gain the following benefits:

- You can automatically climb at full speed.
- The area of your aura is difficult terrain for your enemies. 
- Enemies who enter your aura for the first time in a combat round or start their turn there are P < strong restrained (EoT).

We've changed the name for the shadow subclass because we felt like "Shrouded Lurker" is better at describing what the Bloodline was about, but we also wanted to use the "Gloom Weaver" name for the transformation!

We gained a lot of insight on balancing abilities and we are happy to report that while there were like 2 or 3 overtuned entries, we actually buffed a lot of stuff! There are a lot of new things in the class and some features have naturally changed. While we believed strongly in our design for Drink Moste Exquisite, our playtesters also felt strongly about the null result for tier 1 outcome of the maneuver, so we decided to listen to them and simply make it work always. We've also added 2 new vampire kits (Corruptor and Sanguine Knight, which, I've found out, is a name for one of the Illrigger's subclasses, so it might be renamed). We had a lot of ideas for different combat and non-combat features for the Vampire and it was extremely hard to have to pick which to use and which to scrap, so what I decided was the solution was to actually let players choose! This is how Vampire Perks and Vampiric Evolutions came to be. Currently we have 10 Vampire perks which you can pick instead of standard perks, but you also gain extra ones at certain levels. For combat features, at levels 4, 6, 7 and 9 you pick one of 3 features (and can also pick a feature from previous levels instead). Here are choices you can make at level 4 (take note that previously you simply gained Night Flight at level 4 and now you can choose something else instead):

Night Flight
You can supernaturally take to the air. You can fly and hover. Whily flying, your stability is reduced to 0 and can't be increased, unless an effect explicitly states that it increases your stability while flying. If you can already fly, you have a +2 bonus to speed while flying instead.

Stand Proud
Your sense of superiority prevents you from being pushed around. Your stability increases by your Presence score, even while flying. A creature who attempts to force move you takes psychic damage equal to your Presence score.

Vigilant Hunter
Your senses are exceptional at detecting threats. You gain an edge on tests made to notice threats and you can't be surprised. Additionally, at the start of an encounter, you can use a free triggered action to shift up to half your speed.

I think this is enough spoilers for now! You will see more soon enough! I hope you like what you see and you will be eager to test this stuff out! Now we want to wait for the PDF release of Draw Steel to check our manuscript and update wording on some stuff with the final official version. I really hope we will be able to push next version of the Vampire for you in the first half of August, with Spore Bearer and Noxious Stalker complete, and maybe even with Charming Tormentor too! Remember that things are constantly changing and nothing is final (yet)! 

Next month we will also DEFINITELY see some art done for the Vampire and we will eagely share it with you!

You can join our Discord server! You can find invitation link to the server below this paragraph. From time to time we are dropping some spoilers on upcoming Vampire features, so if you are curious about material that's yet to come, join the server and see for yourself!
Discord link: https://discord.gg/tV6QSrU3n5

If you have feedback regarding the class, send us an email here: [email protected]
If you have trouble with Pledge Manager, send us an email here: [email protected]

As always, thank you so much for your support! Cheers!