Vampire (starting race in EvilHack)
- This article is about the playable race in EvilHack. For the race in other variants, see Vampire (starting race).
- For other instances of the term, see Vampire (disambiguation).
Vampires are one of the playable races available to a hero in EvilHack. A vampire hero is part of the vampire monster class, and will appear as V if the showrace option is set on.
Vampires always start as chaotic (or unaligned if playing as an Infidel), and can be played as Barbarians, Convicts, Infidels, Dark Knights, Monks, Rogues, or Wizards.
The playable vampire race in Hack'EM predates EvilHack's own implementation and is thus mostly unrelated to it.
Racial benefits and restrictions
Vampire heroes are human undead that have many of the same traits as monster vampires in NetHack: EvilHack renames those monsters to "vampire sovereigns" (with male and female vampires being "vampire barons" and "vampire baronesses"), and vampire heroes are represented by another vampire monster that is distinct from them.
Vampire heroes possess a similar self-transforming ability as monster vampires do, and their affinity to wolves lets them tame wolf cubs, wolves or wargs domestically by throwing food to them. Vampires are among the physically stronger races and have stellar attribute caps, with their physical attributes on par with or even surpassing those of dwarves, while their mental attributes equal or even surpass those of humans.
A vampire hero starts every game with infravision, cold resistance, sleep resistance, poison resistance, unbreathing, drain resistance, death resistance, immunity to sickness, and immunity to lycanthropy. Vampires gain flight at experience level 12, and gain hungerless regeneration at experience level 20.
Vampire heroes are vulnerable to silver, rendering them unable to wear or wield any silver items (other than applying the Bell of Opening as part of the invocation ritual), and possess an intrinsic weakness to fire compared to other playable races of hero—this weakness can be superseded by sources of fire resistance. As undead, they share many traits with draugr heroes:
- They start with a alignment record of -20.
- They gain a +1 bonus to AC for each piece of worn bone armor.
- They are vulnerable to the extra damage inflicted by the wielded Sunsword, which has a chance of instantly killing them as it does with other undead heroes and monsters. Vampire heroes will never receive Sunsword as a sacrifice gift, and similarly cannot wield Sunsword, wear The Mitre of Holiness or wield the Hammer of the Gods (the latter of which is made with Sunsword and is also silver).
- Zapping themselves directly with a wand of death or casting the finger of death spell at themselves will restore them to full HP—in the Valley of the Dead, this will also raise their maximum HP by 1⁄6 of their current maximum unless they already have more than 200 maximum HP.
Due to their nature, vampire heroes cannot eat food directly like other races, and must rely on blood to survive. They are exempt from standard penalties for cannibalism, including the aggravate monster intrinsic normally given from eating the corpse or tin of a little dog, kitten, pseudodragon, or any of their growth stages. Vampire heroes (and other heroes in vampire form) also cannot die of choking from over-nutrition due to being unbreathing, and will instead always vomit when a hero would normally choke—they additionally do not abuse dexterity from being satiated since they are undead beings, though a vampire Monk will still abuse wisdom as other races of Monk do.
Vampire heroes possess a life-draining bite attack that can drain lifeblood to raise nutrition, and occurs on 2⁄3 of their melee attacks—this bite attack is automatically skipped when attacking a monster that would cause the vampire hero to instantly die, e.g. a cockatrice or any of the Riders.
All monsters with the human and vampire monster attributes are considered the same race as a vampire hero for purposes such as cannibalism and same-race sacrifice. Vampires and other undead may generate as peaceful towards a vampire hero, while other living monsters will always generate as hostile. Vampire heroes will not turn into zombies or mummies if killed by a monster of either type, as with many other races of hero.
Shapechanging
Starting at experience level 3, a vampire hero is capable of polymorph into different forms via the #shapechange extended command: they can shapechange into a warg, fog cloud or vampire bat. This parallels the ability used by monster vampires in NetHack and its variants—in EvilHack, wolf forms can be used by all vampires other than vampire royals and vampire mages, who can shift into wargs instead. The functions of the #shapechange command mirror those of the Druid role and their #wildshape command:
- Once this polymorph is initiated, a timer begins that determines when a vampire can use the ability again. Alignment abuse has a direct bearing on how long this timer will last, but nominally it is 3600-4000 turns between uses. Never having abused alignment, the time between uses is significantly reduced; gravely abusing alignment significantly increases the time between uses.
- Unlike regular polymorph, a vampire's HP will become the greater between their current HP and the HP of the form they shapechange into, and their carrying capacity is increased to 1000.
- Vampire heroes can manually revert back to their original form by using the #shapechange command while shapechanged. Doing so reverts them back to their base form at half of its HP, with a minimum of one, and also sets the shapechange timer down to 200 turns if not already at that value.
- Being killed while in wildshape will revert the hero back to base form and add 1000 rounds to the shapechange use timer.
- Shapechanged vampire heroes will remain in their chosen form for 2500-3000 turns, versus the 500-999 turns of normal polymorph. Prayer will not revert the hero back to base form.
- Worn armor will 'merge' into the chosen form, save for worn shields other than bracers. Merged armor cannot be removed or stolen while the hero is shapechanged, and other armor cannot be put on. Any wielded weapons and worn non-bracer shields will become unwielded or removed, but will remain in open inventory.
- Vampire heroes are able to perform actions that other heroes cannot while shapechanged into a warg or vampire bat, such as opening or closing doors and containers, using tools that do not require wielding, spellcasting (since wargs and vampire bats can vocalize), and so on.
- Vampires enjoy a damage bonus along with a to-hit bonus equal to XL3 + 5 while shapechanged.
- Unintelligent and mindless monsters outside of melee range will ignore a shapechanged vampire, thinking they're just another monster. Sometimes (1⁄6 chance) even intelligent monsters are fooled into believing the same thing.
Dietary restrictions
As with vampire heroes in other variants, a vampire hero in EvilHack cannot consume corpses or other comestibles directly, and must instead drink blood to obtain a majority of their nutrition—this means that tins are completely inedible for them in their base form, and similar dietary restrictions also apply to vampiric monsters as well, including polymorphed heroes of other races. Vampires can safely quaff potions of blood and vampire blood, and any vampires in roles that start with food rations or potions of sickness will have them replaced with potions of blood.
A vampire hero can use the 'eat' command, e, on a meaty corpse to begin draining the blood from it. A corpse with blood must be no more than about 5 turns old in order for its blood to be fresh, as it will coagulate unless it is drained quickly enough: coagulation will not occur while the corpse is being drained, though it can occur during turns where the occupation is interrupted. Blood is assumed to constitute 1⁄2 of a meaty corpse's nutrition and takes 1⁄5 of the usual duration for a blood-drinking hero to consume fully, with the blood of poisonous, acidic and/or hallucination-inducing corpses sharing those same properties. A corpse being partially or fully drained of blood has no impact on its eligibility for sacrifice.
When draining a corpse that grants an intrinsic, vampire heroes have only a 1⁄5 chance of gaining that intrinsic compared to a hero of another race consuming that corpse: this is applied before any additional chance calculation restrictions on gaining the intrinsic apply, e.g. the 1⁄3 chance of a newt corpse increasing a hero's maximum energy when they are full is 1⁄15 for a vampire hero draining the corpse of blood, and giant corpses that have a 1⁄2 chance of increasing strength when eaten have a 1⁄10 chance instead when drained.
A vampire drinking a potion of blood gains 200 nutrition for a blessed potion or 60 for an uncursed potion, while a cursed potion's contents will have congealed and give 0 nutrition, and a diluted potion gives half of the appropriate nutrition value. Vampire blood grants 800 nutrition and restores 200 HP for a blessed potion, or gains 200 nutrition and restore 4d4 HP for an uncursed potion, while a cursed potion's contents will have congealed and give 0 nutrition or HP—diluted potions of vampire blood grant half the nutrition listed and restore 100 HP if blessed, or 1d4 HP if uncursed. Vampire heroes subjected to the vapors of a broken potion of blood or vampire blood will abuse wisdom.
Tame vampires can drain meaty corpses with blood in a similar manner to a vampire hero, gaining 1⁄2 of the usual nutrition and becoming immobile for 1⁄4 the normal duration of a pet eating a corpse (which is also applied to "devouring" corpses as well). Non-player vampires can also quaff vampire blood, but will do so to heal themselves rather than gain nutrition: potions of vampire blood fully restore HP if blessed or 4d4 HP if uncursed, while diluted potions of vampire blood restore HP equal to 1⁄4 of the monster's maximum HP if blessed or 1d4 HP if uncursed.
Blood and lifeblood
Vampire heroes can drain the "lifeblood" from living monsters by landing their bite attack on an applicable target during melee combat, which has a chance of draining a level and raises the hero's nutrition by a value that is equal to the lower between 2d6 or the monster's current HP and then multiplied by 6. Non-player vampires can do the same with their bites if they are not cancelled.
This "lifeblood" is distinct from the blood drained out of corpses: lifeblood cannot be poisonous, acidic or hallucinogenic, and can be drained from any monster that has blood even if they do not normally leave corpses. The hero also cannot become overstuffed from gaining nutrition by draining lifeblood in this manner, and feeding does not occur if they are currently at 1250 nutrition or higher.
Starvation
Hunger affects a vampire hero far differently compared to other heroes, which is related to their dietary restrictions. Vampires cannot faint from hunger or die from starvation: once they run out of nutrition, a vampire hero will become 'frail' instead, then enter a 'starving' state if they are still not able to gain nutrition in that time.
A vampire hero that becomes weak from hunger temporarily loses one point from all of their attributes, rather than just strength like other heroes, and will lose 5 points the same way from each attribute upon becoming frail—a vampire hero that is starving has all attributes reduced to 3. These conditions persist until the hero's nutrition status changes, though external sources of attribute-changing and attribute-setting effects (not counting the ring of sustain ability) will function as normal.
Attributes
| Attribute | Strength | Dexterity | Constitution | Intelligence | Wisdom | Charisma |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Maximum | 19 | 20 | 20 | 18 | 18 | 20 |
| Level bonuses | Starting | Pre-cutoff | Post-cutoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| HP gain | 2 | d2 | 1 |
| Energy gain | 2 | 2 | 3 |
Price adjustments
The following price adjustments are used for vampire interactions with racial shopkeepers:
| Shopkeeper's race | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human/Other | Elf | Dwarf | Orc | Gnome | Illithid | Centaur | Nymph | Giant | Drow | |
| Vampire | ×5 | ×5 | ×5 | ×5 | ×3⁄2 if INT is ≤14 ×4⁄3 if INT is 15-17 |
×5 | ×5 | ×4⁄3 if CHA is ≥15 ×5⁄3 if CHA is <15 |
×5 | ×5 |
Starting equipment
All vampire heroes start the game with knowledge of the potion of blood and the potion of vampire blood—the potions will also only generate randomly as normal (i.e. on the ground, in shops or as death drops) for vampire heroes. As mentioned previously, any vampires in roles that start with food rations or potions of sickness will have them replaced with potions of blood.
Vampires have no other specific replacements made to the starting equipment of their role, but have several items that they will not start a game with:
- apples (for Monks only)
- oranges (for Monks only)
- fortune cookies (for Monks only)
- ring of levitation (as they can gain flight)
- ring of poison resistance (as they have poison resistance intrinsically)
- any ring with the randomized appearance of a "silver ring"
- any wand with the randomized appearance of a "silver wand"
Any silver items that a vampire hero would start the game with have their object material changed to iron, though there are currently no cases where this applies.
Vampires in roles whose default pets are little dogs or kittens will start with tame wolf cubs.
Strategy
- To be written.
History
The vampire race of hero is introduced in EvilHack 0.9.1 via commit c3816e9.
