Vampire (starting race in dNetHack)

For other uses, see Vampire.

dNetHack offers a new playable race, Vampire.

Properties

• Vampires may be Archeologists, Anachrononauts, Barbarians, Binders, Convicts, Madpeople, Nobles, Rogues or Wizards.
• Vampires are unbreathing and start the game with poison resistance, drain resistance, sleep resistance, flying and regeneration. They gain cold resistance at experience level 11 and polymorph control at level 21.
  • Note that as a vampire, uncontrolled polymorph will always shift you between your normal form and the form of a vampire bat. Vampire bats aren't really a good form, but this does make early game polymorph sometimes less threatening.
• Vampires need to feed on blood, preventing them from eating food normally. Note that a vampire also burns nutrition quite fast considering they start with intrinsic regeneration.
  • Corpses of blood-having monsters may be drained within a 3 turn window for some nutrition, albeit less than eating the corpse would have given.
  • Intrinsics and special effects may be obtained from draining a corpse. Draining a newt corpse may e.g result in feeling a mild buzz, while draining a bat corpse will stun you.
  • Vampires also have a special feeding attack that may trigger in melee, giving minor nutrition and draining a level from the enemy. This bite attack does not require that the target has blood. Feeding on a monster in combat does not confer any intrinsics or special effects. The bite attack does not trigger when fighting opponents such as cockatrices.
  • Tinning kits will make blood potions for vampires, with cursed blood potions providing the best nutrition of all options (3/5ths of corpse value). Blessed blood potions are congealed and inedible. Vampires will benefit from a ring of slow digestion.
  • A vampire's natural hunger rate gets halved at level 10, reduced to a third at level 20, and reduced to a quarter at level 30. This does not stack with slow digestion, and is in fact completely superseded by it.
• Vampires are silver-hating and holy-hating. This means they will take the standard increased damage from silver or holy items. They will also suffer penalties to their natural regeneration rate for silver or blessed items that touch their skin, with the message that you feel "itchy" or "itchier" when equipping the item, or "relief" or "relieved" when unequipping.
  • This penalty is larger for silver than it is for blessed items, and it is cumulative. More applicable items will increase the penalty additively.
  • This only applies for items directly touching your skin, so for example a silver saber will not irritate you if you're wearing gloves.
• Vampires are weldproof, meaning they can wield or wear cursed items and remove them at will. This also removes the chance for cursed ammunition to slip, but does not affect the behavior of consumables or loadstones.
  • Note that this can have downsides, such as if you usually curse your weapon late-game to prevent it from being stolen.
• Neutral gods are ambivalent about undead player vampires, and have a 10% chance of resenting prayers directed at them. This makes prayer unreliable for neutral vampires.
• Vampires have two special abilities - the ability to turn undead similar to a Priest, and the ability to raise undead vampiric minions.
  • Vampires can turn undead by focusing their "vampiric aura". This functions almost identically to the ability when used by a chaotic Priest, but with some minor differences. They can do so without having to worry about location or god anger status, since their abilities aren't divine, but cannot make turning instant by paying 30 power like a Priest can. In addition, undead pacified by your vampiric aura will become tame if possible.
  • Vampires with access to an appropriate drained corpse can also create vampiric minions. The corpse must be fully drained, and cannot be of an untamable or unique monster. If successful, you will lose one experience level and the corpse will arise as a vampiric version of its former self.
    • Vampiric monsters, regardless of previous status: become breathless; count as followers; lose the ability to hide under items or on the ceiling; cannot be seen by infravision; gain sleep and poison resistance as well as cold resistance if they are at least level 10; and lose any weakness to unholy items while gaining a weakness to holy items.

Stats

Character race	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Vampire	19	20	20	18	18	20