I saw the hit movie Sinners last night and it was awesome! Like From Dusk Till Dawn but, frankly, better. The first musical sequence was one of the most successful “mix real world and dreamtime/spirit world” sequences ever made.
But this isn’t a movie review, it’s taking a hot new vampire power for your Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons game!
So the Irish vampire lord slash… demon? Remmick (expertly played by Jack O’Connell) had the ability to know everything his new vampire thralls knew in life. I’m not talking about that, though that’d be fine – but there seems to be a somewhat similar but way more limited effect on the newly made vampire spawn. They don’t appear to know everything the master does or have a hivemind, but they all appear to specifically inherit his Irish singing and dancing abilities. (Unless he just happened upon two crackers who were pro musicians to kill by pure chance.) In fact, you could perhaps frame it as the master is able to pass one of his skills down to his spawn.
I realized that this is the key to a lot of vampire group creation in D&D type games and is a brilliant idea. Because in general adventure creators always want to put together a bunch of similar vampires. A vampire band! A vampire ninja clan! A vampire monastery! A vampire Wall Street firm!
And currently adventure writers get that by:
- In the lore, the vampire spends a super long time assessing candidates and only vamps ones with the desired skills. Very rare.
- In the lore, the vampire came across an existing group of semi identical folks and vamped them. Fairly common.
- Cheat and just say “whatever, all these vampires have Stealth +12 even though they were just random villagers because I need it for the plot, man.” Most common.
But, a small, thematic, and frankly just practical addition to the vampire’s Create Spawn power could just be “the master can bestow [one of his skills/his highest level skill] upon a spawn.”
In the world of super complicated PF2e type rulesets I’m sure that’s abusable, so you could add some level cap or something, “they become proficient in the skill and gain max ranks available at their character level.” Maybe the vampire has to just pick one skill forever, or maybe it’s locked to whatever their highest ranked skill was when they became a vampire. “Well, I guess we need Profession: stringed instrument based attack plans boys, that’s what I was good at in life!”
Create Spawn (Su)
A vampire can create spawn out of those it slays with blood drain or energy drain, provided that the slain creature is of the same creature type as the vampire’s base creature type. The victim rises from death as a vampire in 1d4 days. This vampire is under the command of the vampire that created it, and remains enslaved until its master’s destruction. A vampire may have enslaved spawn totaling no more than twice its own Hit Dice; any spawn it creates that would exceed this limit become free-willed undead. A vampire may free an enslaved spawn in order to enslave a new spawn, but once freed, a vampire or vampire spawn cannot be enslaved again.
A vampire created in this way inherits the master’s highest ranked skill, becoming proficient in it as a class skill and gaining ranks in the skill equal to its character level.
What do you think?
Heck you could add it as an option. Since his vampire spawn were getting up in minutes not days, clearly he had “Improved Create Spawn” where if you make spawn they are up in 1d4 minutes not 1d4 days and get one of your key skills.
You could make any of this work on vampires and not vampire spawn or vice versa (in Pathfinder these are different, vampire spawn aren’t a template they’re just like “ghouls” in other-vampire-fiction parlance, and a vampire can choose to make new full vampires or just vampire spawn).
Geek Related 