As most of you know, several people, myself included, have complained at length about how vampires and lycanthropes were handled in Skyrim. The lack of significant drawbacks made playing either of them lackluster, little more than a slight boost in abilities, rather than the mixed blessing/curse they should have been. Dawnguard improved some things, such as making werewolves more viable at higher levels with the new perk tree, but I can’t help but feel for all that it apparently did right, there are still some massive oversights and baffling design decisions that hurt it, in regard to both vampires and lycanthropes.
That got me thinking, what would be a better way of addressing these abilities in Skyrim, as well as future games. After thinking about it for quite a while, I have drafted the following ideas that I feel would be a better system for Skyrim’s vampires and lycanthropes than what we currently have. Some of these ideas will be familiar, as I have stated them in various threads throughout my time here, but I figured it was high time to pool all of those posts together to create a concentrated thread about them, rather than juggling 30 conversations across various threads.
So let’s start with vampires. Specifically with the Cyrodiilic strain of vampires. We’ll start here because of their backwards feeding mechanic. You get stronger the less you feed, at the cost of your ability to blend in. Just a heads up that this is a long, long piece. I started writing it and didn't realize how long it was until I was done. For your convenience, I'll break it up into various Spoilered chapter things.
Cyrodiilic Vampires
Location wise, I feel that the vampires of the Order would be best suited to the western half of Skyrim, and other areas that lack considerable amounts of snow. While they could be found in various caves and other hiding spots, several high profile NPCs should be of this strain as well (such as Sybille Stentor), indicating that the Order has begun to move in on Skyrim. In the case of that quest that Sybille gives you, you should be tasked with eliminating Volkihar, becoming an unwitting pawn in the Order’s schemes of ousting their competition.
Non-Cyrodiilic Feeding Mechanic:
Vampire Fledgling: What you are when you first turn.
Blooded Vampire: Lowest form of vampirism after you level from feeding for the first time.
Vampire Mistwalker: Second Stage
Vampire Nighstalker: Third Stage
Master Vampire: Highest level of vampirism.
Rather than increasing in a level of vampirism by not feeding, you would grow a level after feeding on X amount of people, either by feeding on them in their sleep, or by the current method Vampire Lords use to level up and gain perks. Currently I was thinking that you’d level to Blooded after 10, Mistwalker after 25, Nightstalker after 75, and Master Vampire after 150 victims.
As previously stated, you would regress if in power if you didn’t feed regularly. If you were a Master Vampire, and you didn’t feed for three days, you’d regress to Nightsalker and have to regain your Master status. If you didn't feed for another three days, you'd regress to Mistwalker, and so on, all the way back down to Blooded Vampire.
With vampires under this feeding system, there wouldn’t be the current system of seesawing drawbacks and bonuses. Being a vampire in the early stages would be a hard (un)life. Your weaknesses would be maximized and your bonuses would be negligible. However, if you survived long enough to reach the highest levels of vampirism, the reverse would be true. You’d have maximized strengths and lesser weaknesses. These effects would be determined based on what type of vampire you were. A Master Volkihar would have different abilities than a Master Vampire Lord, and thus feel different in combat. We’ll start looking at this proposed new system with the Volkihar.
The Volkihar
Constant Abilities throughout stages: Water Breathing, Night Eye, +15 unarmed damage, Vampiric Drain, and the ability to access 4-5 Volkihar dens throughout Skyrim (homes located under the ice).
Blooded Vampire: 5 points of damage per second in sunlight, 100% weakness to fire, 10% resistance to frost, 5 points of frost and stamina damage with unarmed attacks. Vampiric drain does 5 points of damage per second.
Vampire Mistwalker: 3 points of damage per second in sunlight, 75% weakness to fire, 40% resistance to frost, 10 points of frost and stamina damage with unarmed attacks. Vampiric Drain does 10 points of damage per second. Also gains the ability Freeze: a once a day power similar to Ice Form.
Vampire Nightstalker: 2 points of damage per second in sunlight, 40% weakness to fire, 75% resistance to frost, 20 points of frost and stamina damage with unarmed attacks. Vampiric Drain does 15 points of damage per second. Also gains the ability Snow Veil: A once a day power similar to Frost Cloak that also increases the regen rate of H/M/S while damaging nearby opponents.
Master Vampire: 1 point of damage per second in sunlight, 10% weakness to fire, 100% resistance to frost, 30 points of frost and stamina damage with unarmed attacks. Vampiric Drain does 20 points of damage per second. Also gains the abilities Snow Storm: A once a day power similar to Blizzard that can be used without charging and Frozen Forms: A once a day power similar to Ice Form, but with an area of effect.
As a Volkihar, most of the ordinary denizens of Skyrim would want little to do with you. Thus there would be several Volkihar Dens scattered throughout Skyrim that you could use to establish homes. They’d mostly be found in airpockets that could be accessed by diving into lakes and finding the tunnels leading to them, or by finding the part of the frozen surface of the lake you could “activate” to go through the ice and enter your home. They’d provide safe storage, a bed to rest, and other benefits to the player to make up for the fact they wouldn’t be welcome in most other places, and would offer a variety of qualities of life (I’d really like one to be in a sunken ship, but logistics might pose a problem).
There’d also be a few Volkihar dens (mostly in the east) that had others of your kind where you could go to exchange gear and buy supplies and other such needs, and I’d suggest there being an item called Veil of the Volkihar, which would allow you to disguise yourself in towns when worn that could be acquired after a fairly long Volkihar questline.
Vampire Lord
Constant Abilities: Night Eye, +10 unarmed damage, Vampiric Drain.
Blooded Vampire: -40 to H/M/S and regen rate is cut in half in sunlight, Vampiric Drain does 5 points of damage per second, NPCs hostile. 100% weakness to sunlight weapons/magic.
Vampire Mistwalker: -30 to H/M/S and regen rate is cut in half in sunlight, Vampiric Drain does 10 points of damage per second, NPCs hostile. 75% weakness to sunlight weapons/magic. Also gains Vampire Seduction.
Vampire Nighstalker: -20 to H/M/S and regen rate is cut in half in sunlight, Vampiric Drain does 15 points of damage per second, NPCs not hostile when not transformed. 40% weakness to sunlight weapons/magic. Vampire Seduction becomes stronger.
Master Vampire: -10 to H/M/S and regen rate is normal in sunlight. Vampiric Drain does 20 points of damage per second, NPCs not hostile when not transformed. 10% weakness to sunlight weapons/magic. Gains the Power Bat Form, which allows them to turn into a flock of bats even when not transformed (continuously drains magicka). NPCs will become hostile if they see you transform to or from this state.
However, I feel that they should have increased sun damage in their transformed states. This would encourage those who wish to utilize the Vampire Lord form to blot out the sun when they feel like transforming. To that end, the stat reduction is strengthened by 1.5 when transformed in sunlight and the weakness to sunlight weapons/magic is doubled.
Vampire Summations
Shared bonuses across all vampires regardless of stage would be:
Night Eye
+10 unarmed damage boost (+15 for Volkihar)
Vampiric Drain
+5% H/M/S regen rate at night
Disease Immunity
Poison Immunity
Shared weaknesses across all vampires regardless of stage would be:
20 point extra damage when hit with Silver
20 point extra damage when hit with sunlight weapons/magic
No H/M/S regen when wearing silver equipment
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to lycanthropes. (Don’t worry, this will be considerably shorter.)
Lycanthropes
For starters, let’s look at what all lycanthropes should have in common:
Forced lunar transformations twice a month (Companion’s werewolves would be exempt, as would those wearing the Ring of Hircine). Transformations would last from 8 PM to 530 AM, and you would be notified about it several hours before the transformation sets in, giving you plenty of time to get out of town before you change.
Night Eye ability in both human and beastform
+10 Unarmed Damage when in human form (+20 for Werebears)
Ability to toggle between various howls/roars and Night Eye
+5% H/M/S regen rate in human form
20 points extra damage in both human and beast form when struck by silver weapons.
H/M/S don’t regenerate when silver items equipped
No rested bonuses while having the beastblood
Disease Immunity
To make werebears feel different than their werewolf counterparts, I propose the following:
Base their damage on Two-Handed Skill.
Base their armor on Heavy Armor (AR rating of 350 at 100 skill level)
Give them 300 extra Health and Stamina upon transforming.
Their sprinting speed should be a little faster than a horse, but gobble stamina. Conversely, their power attacks would use little stamina.
Their normal walking speed should be a tad slower than human form.
Werewolves on the other hand:
Base their damage on One-Handed Skill
Base their armor on Light Armor (AR rating of 175 at 100 skill level)
Gain only 100 extra Health and Stamina upon transforming
Very fast sprint speed and slow rate of stamina depletion while sprinting
Power attacks use more stamina than werebears.
Faster walking speed than human form.
Give them the ability to Sneak.
Werebears would have Roars, similar to werewolves’ Howls. These are the ideas for Roars I currently have:
Fear Roar (Stronger than werewolves’ similar Howl)
Disarm Roar (Disarms nearby opponents)
Adrenaline Roar (Roar that causes werebears H/S regen rate to skyrocket for 60 seconds similar to Histskin and Adrenaline Rush. Longer cooldown than other Roars)
So there you have it. My ideas for how vampires and lycanthropes should have been done for Dawnguard. Maybe some of this will be implemented in later DLCs, but I’m not exactly holding my breath about it.
Any thoughts, suggestions, comments?
EDIT: Forgot to add that both Vampires and Lycanthropes would continue to have disease immunity, while the vampires also held onto their poison immunity.
EDIT EDIT: I feel I need to emphasize this point. The above thoughts are what I feel should have been implemented rather than what we got in Dawnguard. Pointing out what Dawnguard has largely established is pointless in arguing against these points because this is about what I feel should have been done instead. You're free to point out what things you think work in Dawnguard but remember that these ideas were largely a retrospect, looking at the baffling design and story mistakes Bethesda made with its new DLC, and what I feel they should have done instead.