So lets face it. Vampires in this game are incredibly underpowered when compared to not only previous games but Werewolves in Skyrim.

The Advantages with night vision and the raise dead power don't balance against the fact you can't really do anything till between the hours of 7pm and 5am, it's not even light at 5am for god's sake.
As for the drain life spell, it's so useless, your better off just using healing spells or potions.

Not only that but the only change of appearance I saw in my Nord Sorceress was now that she has what appears to have burn scares that I can't get rid off.

What Gives?

Does anyone else think they should powered up as it were?

After approximately 24 hours without feeding, a vampire will progress a stage. Feeding always brings the vampire back to stage one.
Effects across all stages

• Weakness to Sunlight - Health, Magicka, and Stamina do not recover while in sunlight and the skin will appear to slowly burn as the player spends time in the sunlight.
  
• Resist Disease - Your vampiric blood gives you 100% resistance to disease.
  
• Resist Poison - Your vampiric blood gives you 100% resistance to poison. (This is always listed under Active Effects, but rarely actually works, as most players are poisoned at the same rate as before.)
  
• Night Stalker's Footsteps - Vampires are 25% harder to detect while sneaking.
  
• Champion of the Night - Illusion spells cast by your vampire are 25% more powerful. (They can affect 25% higher level entities; this contributer is unsure if they cost less magicka.)

Stage One Vampire.


Stage One

• Resist Frost - Your vampiric blood gives you 25% resistance to frost.
  
• Weakness to Fire - Your vampiric blood causes you to be 25% weaker to fire.
  
• Weakness to Sunlight - Health, Magicka, and Stamina do not recover while in sunlight and are reduced by 15 points.

Powers:

• Vampire's Servant - Reanimate a weak dead body to fight for you for 60 seconds (can only be used once a day).
  
• Vampire Sight - Improve night vision for 60 seconds (can be used multiple times a day and be toggled on/off).
  
• Vampiric Drain - Absorb 2 points of health per second from target (novice destruction spell, cost of 5 magicka per second).

Stage Two

• Resist Frost - Your vampiric blood gives you 50% resistance to frost.
  
• Weakness to Fire - Your vampiric blood makes you 50% weaker to fire.
  
• Weakness to Sunlight - Health, Magicka, and Stamina do not recover while in sunlight and are reduced by 30 points.

Powers:

• Vampire Seduction - Creatures and people up to level 10 are calmed (cease to fight) for 30 seconds.
  
• Vampire's Servant - Reanimate a more powerful dead body to fight for you for 60 seconds (can only be used once a day).
  
• Vampiric Drain - Absorb 3 points of health per second from target (novice destruction spell, costs 10 magicka per second).

Stage Three

• Resist Frost - Your vampiric blood gives you 75% resistance to frost.
  
• Weakness to Fire - Your vampiric blood makes you 75% weaker to fire
  
• Weakness to Sunlight - Health, Magicka, and Stamina do not recover while in sunlight and are reduced by 45 points.

Powers:

• Vampire's Servant - Reanimate a powerful dead body to fight for you for 60 seconds (can only be use once a day).
  
• Vampiric Drain - Absorb 4 points of health per second from target. (Novice Destruction spell; costs 12 Magicka per second.)

Stage Four

At stage four the citizens of Skyrim will be hostile towards you and may attack you on sight.

• Resist Frost - Your vampiric blood gives you 100% resistance to frost.
  
• Weakness to Fire - Your vampiric blood makes you 100% weaker to fire.
  
• Weakness to Sunlight - Health, Magicka, and Stamina do not recover while in sunlight and are reduced by 60 points.

Powers:

• Vampire's Servant - Reanimate a very powerful dead body to fight for you for 60 seconds (can only be used once per day).
  
• Vampiric Drain - Absorb 5 points of Health per second from target. (Novice Destruction spell; costs 15 Magicka per second.)
  
• Embrace of Shadows - The vampire becomes invisible, with improved night-vision for 180 seconds (can only be used once per day, opening doors to new instances will remove invisibility).
  
• Information from wikia...

It's a curse not a superpower

I know all this.

Still under powered.

Yep,it's intersting that a Volkharing Vampire Master can kick your a$$ at the day light.But unfortunely for the player,comparing the power to a Volkharing it's like 1/15 of it's power.

Vampiric drain should cost no magic, it should be a free power. But yeah, everybody and their uncle knows that vampires are terrible in this game.

It being a curse has nothing to do with the effects on your character. Being a vampire or a werewolf, as a curse, has to do with the need/desire to feed on humanoids (human, elven, and beast races). This would then make the curse really be in the eye of the beholder. Becoming a vampire or werewolf was always suppose to be a buff overall. They simply fell short in Skyrim. At the level my character is at, transforming into a werewolf would make me weaker and I see that they did very much the same thing with vampires as they did with Oblivion. Making the character advance to stronger stages as he/she starves? Completely backwards in my opinion.

They should have made the vampire change appearence depending on the stage. Like a bat-like monster or a gollum-like pale crude

Yep, at level 4 your character should look demonic. At least in Oblivion your face changed and you had a 50% resistance to steel and iron weapons. In Skyrim you are as vulnerable to any weapon as any person and you have a huge weakness to fire and sunlight. A few bonuses to skills like sneak and illusion spells and thats it. Far more weaknesses than strengths. I knew I wasn't going to be a vampire the moment I cleared out a vampire nest and marveled how easy it was killing them all, vampire master included.

u know im in the same boat but i thinks it more along the lines that each stage i lose total health/sta/magic. If they removed that maybe itd be more "balanced"..........

Probably because the character is not even 1/15 the age of the Volkihar Master...


It actually makes sense. When you consume the fresh blood of the living, you're suppressing your Vampirism, therefore becoming more mortal and less undead. You gain the ability to infiltrate mortal society, yet you lack most of the powers inherent to undeath. When you forgo feeding, you're embracing your undead nature. As the blood in your body begins to stagnate, your body begins to transform into a fully undead monstrosity, granting you greater strength, resilience and powers, while making it plain for all to see what you are. "Dracula" would be a fully fed Vampire, while "Nosferatu" would be a fully undead Vampire.

They did make some mistakes with Vampirism in Skyrim, however. For instance, when you feed, you should be able to choose how much you want to feed, which determines which Lvl of Vampirism that you revert to. Going all the way back to Lvl 1 is annoying, considering it doesn't have many powers at all at that level. Plus, in order to play a Vampire character effectively in Skyrim, and not have it be a COMPLETE pain in the ass, you have to be a stealth build. Trying to sneak up and feed on people on a heavily armored Warrior with no sneak isn't going to work.

False, they are a curse. Yes there are benefits but they are balanced by very inconvineint shortcomings. Vampires have to find somebody to feed on periodically in order to maintian a civil appearance and as a result have to damper on the darker powers. If they give in to their darker powers they get further romved from society. Werewolves have to feed on humanoids in order to sustain themselves, which is not good in the middle in of the fight.

They are not meant as a buff just a different challenge for your character.

The buffs are not balanced by the weaknesses. So while it does offer a different way to play, it does not, and should not weaken your character. It is not a curse because it makes your character weaker because it shouldn't make your character weaker. These "curses" are gifts from the Daedra. In Morrowind and Oblivion, being a vampire had it's drawbacks but made your character stronger. In Morrowind, being a werewolf had its drawbacks but made your character very strong. In Skyrim, becoming one of the two early on makes your character stronger. For werewolves, at higher levels, your character is actually weakened by transforming. This is straight up flawed design.

Simply talking with the npc's and reading the books and the lore of the game will tell you that the idea of these inflictions being a curse has to do with morality over anything else.

Daerda are not in it for charity, it is a curse, they make a character have a weakness. You said it yourself the cons overshadow the pros, which is a curse.

They screwed up, vampires were much more fun and interesting in Morrowind. It svcks, but there's enough fans who are fine with it that Bethesda likely won't change their minds. Besides, Twilight has made it cool to bash all things vampire. Vamps > Mutts

I agree, the both vampires and werewolves are supposed to be stronger. Everytime you see a vampire or werewolves in other stories they are always stronger, even in human form for the dogs. The cursed part these afflictions comes from being shunned by everyone who isn't, the physical weakness' should be replacements for human weakness' ie. humans need sleep and can contract various diseases, the undead don't.

I became Were early on in the game, around level 15 or so, and it was fun, it made for added story when fighting vampires or the silver hand for around 10 levels. Now as a large undead wolf I find it hard to fight a group of mercenaries like I can in human form.

The cons DON'T overshadow the pros. The pros simply don't scale properly as you level and so you will become more powerful in humanoid form. For the werewolf affliction anyway.

It seems that the pros for vampirism doesn't scale properly as well, and using the abilities becomes pointless at higher levels.

This is simply bad programming. Vampirism in Skyrim is not too different than that found in Oblivion, except in Oblivion it scaled far better and the pros out weighed the cons. The curse is simply one of lore and morality. Example being a werewolf. To a Nord, you don't go to your native resting grounds when you die but instead serve Hircine for all eternity. They would then see such a thing as a curse. They see the two forms as monstrous beings, hence cursed. You feed on others, hence curse.

The weaknesses is to both add depth and not make it a super power that a character should seek out without consequence. But at the same time, the consequence isn't suppose to be a weaker character but rather something else entirely to offset your now stronger character.

It has been like such in previous games, it is dictated as such by the lore, it was simply a fail attempt in Skyrim. I can understand the misconception if this is the first TES game for you.

its great for assassin type characters. +25% sneak and illusion is great for them.

i will say what i always say, these vampires break TES lore entirly for no good reason. they dont even match The Order (cyrodillic vampries, badly represented in oblivion, worse in skyrim) right, the strain (name of the vampire disease) is a different one and there is no lore evidence that The order has moved into skyrim. i hope to god that the whet-fang (black marsh vampires) are not going to be liek this, they are supposed to put people into magical comas and drink their blood while keeping them alive, and are actually regarded as a threat (or at least civil, more than the other vampires) to The Order.

It is really not even that.

+25% sneak is HALF an enchant slot to a master Enchanter who can place +47% sneak enchantments.

+25% illusion is not powerful enough to bring the master illusion spells to the 50 level range for the strongest opponents (dragon priest, death overlords) while dual-casted frenzy/rout/pacify don't need the bonus. Making this nice on paper, pointless in practise.

They got some minor balancing issues for werewolves but they did do a decent job with quests and engine modifications to make werewolves work.

However, vampires were completely left to an intern, not a particular bright one nor hardworking one, and is a devoted COD fan sneaking into COD forums during office hours.