Vampire (SLASH'EM)

V vampire
Difficulty	15
Attacks	Claw 1d6 physical, bite 1d6 drain life

V vampire
Difficulty	15
Attacks	Claw 1d6 physical, bite 1d6 drain life
Base level	10
Base experience	?
Speed	12
Base AC	1
Base MR	25
Alignment	-8 (chaotic)
Frequency (by normal means)	1 (Very rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	1450
Nutritional value	400
Size	Medium
Resistances	sleep resistance, poison resistance, drain resistance
Resistances conveyed	None
A vampire: can fly. does not need to breathe. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. regenerates HP quickly. is poisonous to eat. does not eat. (*) is undead. is normally generated hostile. can follow you to other levels. is nasty. is strong. can be seen through infravision. can leave an old human corpse.
Reference	monst.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3207

In SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, the vampire, V, is notably different from its appearance in NetHack, and corresponds to the vampire race of hero playable in both variants.

Differences

As in NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions, the vampire is a form of intelligent human undead and the most basic type of vampire: they are breathless, capable of flight, have enhanced regeneration, and can follow a hero to other levels if they are adjacent. A vampire hero has these properties along with drain resistance as a result of their base monster form, and so will lose those properties temporarily if they polymorph into another monster.

Unlike in NetHack, vampires are carnivorous but cannot eat solid food, and primarily derive nutrition from draining corpses and living beings of blood—the former action violates dietary conducts while the latter does not. Vampires can also quaff potions of blood or vampire blood, and a non-player vampire monster will drink vampire blood, raising their current and maximum HP by 2-10 points unless the potion is cursed.

Vampires are shapeshifters that can polymorph at will into vampire bats or fog clouds: hostile vampires disguise themselves as the former when outside of the player's sight, while often shifting into the latter to flow under locked or inaccessible doors, and a vampire that is "killed" in either form (including stoning but not disintegration) will revert to their base form. Tame vampires will not shapeshift, and may turn traitor. A hero standing on any altar scares vampires, similar to standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster.

A non-vampire hero that quaffs a potion of vampire blood will polymorph into a vampire unless they have unchanging, which is special-cased to ignore the monster being an invalid polymorph form: this transformation incurs a −3 alignment penalty if the hero is neutral, while lawful heroes and Monks take a −15 alignment penalty and anger their god. The polymorph is "semi-permanent" in that it has no timeout and lasts until the hero's HP is reduced to 0, returning them to normal form if possible.

A vampire hits as a +2 weapon, and has a claw attack along with a life-draining bite attack that can also drain blood to raise nutrition if the target has blood and the vampire is not cancelled—a hero that is of the vampire race or polymorphed into a vampire will automatically avoid using the draining bite against the Riders and green slimes. Vampires possess sleep resistance, poison resistance, drain resistance, and death resistance like other undead, additionally require a +2 weapon or better to be hit, and are vulnerable to silver—these traits are carried across all forms. Wooden stakes used to attack vampires deal +1d6 damage, and they have a ⁹⁄₁₀ chance of dealing a further +2 damage and a ¹⁄₁₀ chance of instantly killing the vampire otherwise without them leaving a corpse if the stake's wielder is an Undead Slayer, has Expert skill in dagger or is using The Stake of Van Helsing.

A hero polymorphed into a vampire is warned of humans and elves (@). Polymorphing while in vampire form or using the #monster extended command will cause the hero to become a vampire bat—they can decline to do so if they have polymorph control. Heroes that become vampire bats this way cannot revert back to vampire form using the command.

A vampire is poisonous to consume, which primarily comes up if they are digested by another monster in their base form—a shapeshifted vampire that is digested will escape and return to base form as normal.

Generation

Randomly generated vampires are always created hostile. They are not a valid polymorph form, with the exception of a hero transformed by a potion of vampire blood as described above. A non-player vampire can grow up into a vampire lord.

Vampires can be generated in graveyards at level creation if the level difficulty is appropriately high.

The vampire is the second quest monster for Undead Slayers, and makes up ²⁴⁄₁₇₅ of the monsters that are randomly generated on the Undead Slayer quest. Vampires also generated on multiple levels of the quest branch at level creation: four are generated on the upper filler level and goal level, three are generated on each of the lower filler levels, and they may appear among the V placed both randomly and within the graveyards at level creation on the locate and filler levels.

Vampires can appear among the random V generated on the Chaotic Quest at level creation.

The summon undead spell has a chance of generating a vampire.

At least five vampires are generated in Orcus-town on level creation: two are placed near Orcus himself, and the other three are randomly placed across the town. Vampires can also appear among the 3 V randomly generated in Asmodeus' Lair and Baalzebub's Lair at level creation.

Vampires can appear among the servants of Vlad the Impaler resting atop the chests at the top of his tower.

The Wizard of Yendor may create a clone of himself in the guise of a vampire via the Double Trouble monster spell.

Vampires can appear among the 3 V randomly generated on the Astral Plane at level creation.

Vampires are always generated with a cloak that has the randomized appearance of an opera cloak, and have an additional ¹⁄₂ chance of generating with a blood-red potion that can be either regular blood or vampire blood depending on the vampire's level.

A vampire is considered corpseless, instead leaving behind a tainted human corpse if it drops a corpse upon death. Human heroes killed by a vampire or any other undead vampiric monster will arise as a vampire instead of a ghost if a bones file is created.

Strategy

Vampires in SLASH'EM have a monster difficulty of 15, and are notably more difficult to deal with depending on the circumstances: their guaranteed opera cloak can often make them harder to hit or more resistant to certain attacks depending on the item that has its appearance, though this also makes it possible to farm them for the cloaks. The magic missile spell is a fairly consistent way to damage and defeat vampires for this purpose, and elemental attack wands or similar spells (e.g. cone of cold, lightning and acid stream) can be good substitutes for cases where the opera cloak is the randomized appearance of the cloak of magic resistance.

Drain resistance, e.g. from an artifact weapon like Excalibur, is made incredibly vital and more accessible in SLASH'EM, so a non-vampire hero that first encounters a vampire will likely have sought out a source of the property by this point; MC3 is the next best option in the event they lack this resistance. Undead Slayers are well-positioned to handle vampires despite their lower base speed and tough early game, as they start with drain resistance and can make use of wooden stakes to kill them faster.

While vampire pets will not shapeshift as they do in later versions of NetHack, they are traitorous and have a chance of turning hostile, making them potentially perilous choices for pets while the hero is at lower experience levels.

Messages

Chatting to vampires in their humanoid form will produce various responses from them depending on the time of day, the monster's peacefulness and the hero's current form.