Bloodsuckers thread

Their pinpointer only tells you if there’s one nearby, and isnt the whole point of vassals to protect you in your most vulnerable state?

I feel like my main problem with bloodsuckers has less to do with straight numbers and more to do with the overall concept.

See, it feels like Bloodsuckers are a grand enough threat to the station to the point where all crew members should be allowed to prepare for them, like a cult or nukie. However, simultaneously, Bloodsuckers are extremely weak to validhunting because they have an established base that can be sniffed out easily by any mook with mesons.

Bloodsuckers are quite powerful aswell. They are the only antag that have strong abilities and can convert without giving any particular downsides to their convertees. (Cult makes convertees visible at certain thresholds, and they are weak to holy water. Plus, they can be defended against by most crew members since culties are a delta threat. Meanwhile headrevs/revs have no special powers) Not to mention how bloodsuckers are currently a threat to all crew members, not just targets.

It creates this uncomfortable dissonance as a player where large portions of the station become uninhabitable, and any crew member can become a victim at any moment, but there’s nothing they can do about that because Bloodsuckers are not considered valid for all crew members, even as a threat that has and will continue to wipe out the entirety security force.

Now here come my suggestions:

Option A:

  • Make bloodsuckers universally valid, but remove the penalty to resting in any coffin but their lair, allowing them to remain more mobile to evade security. This will allow the crew to properly respond to the danger, while sufficiently buffing vampires to make them lest susceptible to hunting. Persuasion racks will remain immobile.

Option B:

  • Make it so bloodsuckers can only get blood from their thralls, and turn them into a full conversion antag. This will remove fewer people from the game as a result of the bloodsuckers’ thirst. This may have to come with nerfs to thralls, such as an obvious indicator of thrall status once a certain number of sol cycles have passed, or once there are enough thralls, to avoid full takeovers. They can be given alternative downsides instead, such as a bloodsucker’s weakness to fire (But not sol)

Option C:

  • Incentivize a nonlethal play style for Bloodsuckers. Canonically, this would make it so bloodsuckers feed out of necessity, not out of malice. Bloodsuckers remain valid to security and monster hunters, but neutral to crew members, who can be drained of a nonlethal level of blood (Followed by short term memory loss), or who can willfully give their blood to a particularly persuasive bloodsucker. Bloodsuckers may or may not keep elimination objectives in this scenario.

“But bloodsuckers are not allowed to permanently eliminate anyone but their targets, as per the rules!”

Yes, but most bloodsucker rounds tend to be bloodbaths nonetheless. This is because a large number of roles are very present in maintenance, and are targeted by bloodsuckers as a result. These bloodsuckers often enthrall or kill these roles, making it so players do not want to wander into maints once the threat is identified. This turns people into validhunters (Because they literally cannot do their job), which then turns into more killable targets for the vampire, and so on and so forth.

TL;DR: The level of threat presented by bloodsuckers is far too great, and applies to every crew member. Thus, their ‘protected’ status as an antagonist is not befitting their power. (Plus, ‘validhunting’ bloodsuckers can be as simple as going into maints) However, bloodsuckers remain extremely weak to validhunting. See suggestions for possible solutions.

I have played 4 rounds as hos against bloodsuckers and i knew about it well back when we had it before wounds.

I do not see them being over powered at all. If you gang up on them they have no chance, they can only kill through brawn in these fights which is handled with a riot armor. Last TM was my worst and we still managed to kill 3 vamps, 1 we messed up and paid for and 2 vamps who weren’t as active.

The biggest issue i had were the crew who kept coming and made sure to tell us what to do making my job harder to manage sec especially when captain does that and trash talks us when we are busy preparing. We also have people who validhunt and either make our job harder by blocking the path/eating lasers or just ruining an antags round.

I like how big of a threat it is because its a different norm than a 2 click stun baton win situation even against lings. It is a major threat that needs a different playstyle than other antagonists and its very easy to deal with if you know what you are doing.

I actually think bloodsuckers are at a disadvantage because of the rules we have.

You guys are complaining like calling hulks very overpowered because you cant stun them. I am sure you will get used to it by learning blodsucker’s weaknesses after playing couple of rounds against them.

—As for monster hunters, i dont think they are an issue for vampires because i kept seeing them get killed and but i havent played as a bloodsucker so i cant really tell. Also, its good that i haven’t seen any of them team up with us sec i just dont know how to deal with them per game rules because they are a semi antagonist.

predatory lunge litreally kills monster hunters since flow doesn’t block it.
Also the best 1v1 ability.

Any possibility to have objective related to the rank of the bloodsucker ?
I feel most bloodsucker don’t take risk until they can face front most things with high rank
it make their weakness design early pretty useless in the round.

Would be cool if they had harder objective or custom ones depending on rank, nothing too crazy but an initiative to don’t camp their lair the first few nights.

you could also make it so the ranks are gained from completing objectives so it incentives blood suckers to be less passive early and try to achieve their goals

Any possibility to have objective related to the rank of the bloodsucker ?

So you want them to stick to a certain low-level rank for greentext??? Or if its too high, what if shuttle is called before then?

custom ones depending on rank

Why would you do objectives if you know theyll be replaced later when you get a higher rank

you could also make it so the ranks are gained from completing objectives

How will we keep track of when its done to give them a rank, and survive objective? Steal 2-3 hearts to get brawn? I don’t feel it fits.

So one flavorful ability i thought of just today that would play into their Heart theft objective, not be a balance wise combatwise AND add a ton of flavor:

The ability for the Bloodsuckers to tear hearts right out of chests. Obviously with a channeled timer that would prevent it from being a combat ability (in the same amount of time you could drink a guy dry, so it would be a alternative there at most) while having someone in a grip not unlike Changeling absorb. It just feels right that a vampire could tear it out directly that way and i don´t think it would change things outside of being very, very flavorful.

Also, i think we can all agree we want to see some MD Bloodsucker tear a guys heart out to save him from a heart attack and to replace it with a new, it would be hysterical.

So you want them to stick to a certain low-level rank for greentext??? Or if its too high, what if shuttle is called before then?

No I meant kinda like IAA their objectives update so they take risk and don’t camp their lair. You could do like a X “victory points” = greentext thingy, so the objectives updates but they don’t have to do everything to get the greentext (so they don’t get bad reward for being a good bloodsucker) I just want BS to have a more active presence in the round like heretics.

Remove the steal hearts objective as a general objective and replace it with an objective to steal hearts of specified targets. Vamps with this objective right now can attack anyone they want if they haven’t met the objective. Being attacked by an antag with no escalation that you can’t even hope to fight without a specific damage type honestly stinks as a gameplay experience. At the very least such an experience should be justified by a person specific objective, like pretty much every other antagonist.

Currently Bloodsuckers can already attack anyone they want for vassalization as well.

Bloodsuckers are also a valid antag for crew, so for a heart objective it seems fair enough.

Tremere sucks rn

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Bloodsuckers: Tremere Pack by JohnFulpWillard · Pull Request #446 · fulpstation/fulpstation (github.com)