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Out For Blood

A Guide to Vampires and those that hunt them

For some reason, I've always like vampires. Books and movies, mostly, I'm not much of an angsty person, I usually wear green, not black, and I have a tan. But vampires have always fascinated me, from trashy pseudo-romance novels to Le Fanu and Varney the Vampire of the 1800s to campy stuff like Blackula to the Hammer films of the 60s with Peter Cushing to the Blade movies. In fact, I just bought a copy of the now banned* DVD version of Countess Dracula/The Vampire Lovers. So when I first heard about Out For Blood from Bastion Press, I was very happy.

While Out For Blood is a d20 sourcebook about vampires, (it's the 3rd d20 sourcebook about vampires this year), it's hard to describe just what sort it is. It's not for playing PC vampires, like Lords of the Night (from Bottled Imp) or Fang & Fury (from Green Ronin), it's not quite a monster manual of vampires, it's not quite a guide to killing them.

There are 3 main sections. One on prestige classes (30 pages), one on vampire related monsters (about 50 pages), and 1 on organizations (15 pages). There's also a tiny appendix (with a few spells), and an index.

I am generally not a big fan of prestige classes. So I was somewhat unenthused about this part of the book, but I was very pleasantly surprised after reading it. I'm actually going to use some of them! In particular the "Vampire Slayer" is probably the most useful,

Other highlights include the "Knight of the Dragon", which is apparently meant to emulate the real-world (sort of) Dracula, Vlad Tepes, or at least is based on him. For instance, one of the abilities gained is "Villain's Feast", which is like the spell "Heroes' Feast", except it has to happen in the presence of someone who dies. Mr. Tepes would often dine while watching people impaled on stakes.

An amusing one is the "Gothic Pretender". While it is funny, it's also a fairly attractive class for PCs to take, as some of the class powers emulate the better traits of being a vampire. (Agelessness, most notably). There's a similar class, the "Vamp" which emulates the more charming aspects of a vampire.

There's a really good mix of classes - some that seem suitable for just about any of the core classes. Even one for the psionic classes.

For the most part, they are all sound mechanically. There are no weird save or attack progressions ( a pet peeve of mine), and most aren't over or under powered. The only real exception to the latter is the Arcane Pathologist. It's basically for arcane spellcaster. In exchange for only improving spell caster every other level, they get 2 more skill points, a d6 instead of a d4, and basically the ability to spontaneously cast "Gentle Repose". Some might find the stoppage of aging in a couple of the vampire wannabe classes to be a bit too much, but that's something that is actually only useful long term (how many people run campaigns that span decades, much less centuries? Not many).

The meat of the book is really the monsters. While there are "only" 18 monsters in 50 or so pages, this is because most are in fact templates, and have both information on how to create a monster using the template, and a sample critter.

Most of the monsters are variations of vampires. Astral Vampire, Barbed Tongue Vampire, Deathgaze Vampire, Irontooth Vampire, Vampyr, Lesser Vampyr, Plague Vampire, Nosferatu, and my favorite, a Vampire Werewolf. And a few more vampires that don't have vampire in their name, like the Death Ringer.

Curiously, the Nosferatu is not the bald, rat-teeth like feral vampire seen originally in the movie Nosferatu (and it's semi-sequels, like the Herzog remake and the Malkovich comedy), but a portly, Roman-esque (at least toga-wearing), hedonist. Which is odd, since I was under the impression that the 1920's movie was what more or less defined what a Nosferatu was, at least when it comes to vampires. But something different isn't necessarily wrong.

The Vampyr is more or less a vampire, but just a variation of the regular D&D vampire. The lesser vampyr is somewhat weaker than that, as the name implies.

The Plague Vampire is interesting, because apparently that is the basis for the word "Nosferatu", it was originally something like nosophoros, which mean plague carrier or some such.

There's a version of the Dhampir that is exactly like real world folklore - pretty much a normal human, but able to see invisible vampires, as opposed to the more Blade-ish half-vampire type that have to also drink blood. On the downside, it would be nice if more info on using them as PCs were given. While some bare bones info is provide, it's not clear on somethings, like ability adjustments, and do they get a bonus feat and skill point like humans?

There's also a version of the Chupacabra, or "Goat-Sucker". Kind of weaker than I would imagine, but I guess you don't have too be too tough to kill goats. (Unless they're bah-barians)

The only thing that sticks out as being out of place is the Iron Maiden. It's an iron golem (more or less) in the vague shape of a woman, with spikes on her.

But if you need a variety of different vampires, then this pretty much has you covered.

The last chapter on Organizations is pretty short. Three of them are groups that were first mentioned in the prestige class chapter (they all have prestige classes) - two Knightly orders, and one, The Watch of Ages, which is fairly common in supernatural horror, it's a secret group of people who watch for supernatural critters and studies them. There was one in Highlander (the guy with the walking stick belonged to it), was sort of the basis for the TV show "Poltergeist: The Legacy", was in the Anne Rice vampire novels (I think) and a few more. (Sadly, there isn't one in real life. Sad because it's one of the few things I'm qualified to do).

One of the Knightly Orders, the Order of the Dragon, is the organization of the prestige class like Vlad the Impaler. It's a curious order - in theory, they are a "good" order, as they serve the church of a good god. But in practice they are quite brutal. (Actually, that's apparently where the name Dracula came from - his father was a member of the real world Order of the Dragon, and so Vlad liked to call himself the little Dragon, or son of the Dragon, or Dracula. Most members of the real world one weren't so bad.)

There's a nicer knightly order, the Order of the Phoenix. They are rivals of sorts with the Order of Dragon. There's a real nice picture of the two leaders of the two orders glaring at each other.

There's also an organization of Vampires (though it's just glossed over) and a "Resurrection Guild", which is for grave robbers.

The art is somewhat mixed quality. On the one hand, some of the art is excellent and almost photorealistic (in particular the art done by Phillip James). On the other, some of the art resemble caricatures, with over-exaggerated features. Not badly done, but the contrast in styles is somewhat striking (and clashes). Some is also line art, that is, not having any textures or shading (ie, shades of grey), just black & white. Also, a lot of the art has come out darker than it should, and there is often little contrast in the picture, making it hard to make details out. It also makes the contrast between the greyscale stuff and line art much more noticeable.

The layout is clean and crisp. I like the font they used for chapter and subject headings - it looks like the letters are dripping blood. Sets the mood, but it's still easy to read

So this is a very good book. A must buy if you like vampires and run a d20 game. While some of the prestige classes are attractive to players, this is ultimately mostly a monster manual sort of book, and will mostly be useful to a DM. While it's regular d20, not d20 modern, if you ever want to run a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer campaign (or something similar), this book would be immensely useful (all you'd need to add is a book on lesbian witches)

What I really liked is how it uses real world vampiric folklore as the basis or inspiration for a lot of things, but comes up with brand new takes. Part of what is fascinating about Vampires is that most of the folklore about them is actually fairly modern, it's evolved over the last century in various forms of fiction.. For instance, sunlight generally never bothered vampires, but in Dracula, Stoker had Dracula weaker during the day. But this eventually evolved into sunlight destroying them (which apparently first showed up in the 1920's Nosferatu). This book had me looking up things in vampire reference books, comparing the historical take to the take in this book. Very enjoyable. At least for me. But I'm the sort that has half a dozen reference books on vampires lying around.

There is some room for improvement, though. For instance, there's a page or so on new skills, or new uses for existing skills. That's fine, but they probably needed to add something like Knowledge (Vampires). That's needed because many of the vampires in the book have differing abilities and weaknesses. While generally speaking, decapitation works as a method for defeating most vampires, that's not always true. A skill for identifying vampire types and their weaknesses would be helpful, and appropriate for vampire hunting characters (and classes)

A-.

While it's an excellent book, if you don't want a book on vampires in general, you probably won't have much use for it. It's also not good if you want customized vampires or vampires as player characters. For that, Bottled Imp's Lords of the Night: Vampires is the best bet, and that is actually a book everyone should have, period. In fact, if you have that book, then this book is a good buy, because the prestige classes, particularly the vampire slayer, will be useful (as their book on vampire slayer types has been delayed for a while). This also complements Green Ronin's Fang & Fury fairly well. Not too much redundant material - really, the only thing the three books have in common is their own take on the Dhampir. And the Dhampir in here is the most true to life, if the most mundane












* Much like the original version of the D&D module B3, it's not really "banned", so much as recalled. In this case because one of the movies was a bit more R-rated than the box claimed. It's also not so banned/recalled - I spotted a copy today in my local Best Buy (though they didn't have a couple of a weeks ago. Gah - would have saved me $10)

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