Pathfinder Player Companion: "Blood of the Night" [RPG]

 

Let’s dig into Blood of the Night, a 32-page softcover Player Companion that’s all about vampires (both killing them and being one!).

 

We’ll start with the front cover, depicting a dhampir vampire hunting taking on a gang of Pharasmin priests—very cool!  I really like the glowing holy symbols on the Pharasmins, the gothic background, and the dashing swordsplay of the dhampir.  The inside front cover is “Vampires of the Inner Sea”, and contains an image and brief summary of the four types of vampires (and their specific dhampir off-spring) discussed in the book: Moroi (traditional Dracula-type vampires), Nosferatu (ancient, hairless vampires), Vetala (Indian-themed mind-draining vampires), and Jiang-Shi (Chinese-themed breath-stealing vampires).  There’s also a reminder of dhampir racial traits—I ran an entire 17-level campaign for a dhampir PC, so I have a certain fondness for them!  The inside back cover is a map of the Inner Sea captioned “Regions in Need of Vampire Hunters”, and it calls out Nex, Osirion, The Darklands, Nidal, Ustalav, and Beyond the Inner Sea, providing a sentence or two about why each could use a hand.

 

Getting into the book itself, there’s a page for the table of contents, a page explaining what types of characters will get the most out of the book (clerics, inquisitors, vampires, dhampirs), and a page for the rules index.  Two pages are dedicated to an Overview, which contains the origins and creation of the four types of vampires and the things that motivate vampires.  Just for flavour, there’s a “handwritten” letter from Ramoska Arkminos—the Nosferatu who plays a small part in Chapter Two of Curse of the Crimson Throne! As a whole, the interior layout is excellent and the interior artwork is pretty good (not Paizo’s best—it’s a little cartoony in style—but still good). 

 

Each of the four types of vampires gets a two-page spread.  Jiang-Shi, the “hopping” vampires of Chinese myth, are driven by an unfulfilled obsession and perceive deep connections to it in signs and symbols unrecognizable by others.  I’ve never had a game with them in it, but they’re pretty interesting and the art is really cool!  Moroi, traditional Western vampires, are characterised by a self-imposed culture of refinement and restraint.  Nosferatu have eternal life without eternal youth and long for a cure for their condition.  Finally, vetalas are body- and memory- stealers.  Very interesting and very different than “typical” vampires, I’d like to see how they fit into an adventure.  For each type of vampire, a pair of race traits are introduced, which I guess are potentially useful if a PC was going to play a vampire.

 

Speaking of PCs, the next two pages talk about the motivations of vampire adventurers, whether/how they can fit into a mixed party, and how a GM should run a campaign for vampires.  There are some useful tips, but it still sounds pretty challenging to make it workable.  The book’s big central spread (mostly art, a little text) are three new feats that (respectively) improve a vampire’s ability to take on bestial shapes, turn into swarms, and turn into mist.  For dhampir PCs (more likely to fit into a campaign), the book has four pages.  It starts with a good description of what it means to be a dhampir, introduces a couple of mediocre traits and roles, and then provides a half-page each (along with two more—much better—traits!) for being a dhampir of one of the four specific types of vampires.

 

The remainder of the book contains several short sections that are seemingly in no particular order.  There’s a two-page system of rules for tracking vampire hunger; I don’t think it’s great, though I get why having some sort of fixed system could be good to avoid arguments if a player is running a vampire PC.  Another two pages are “Vampires on Golarion”, but it’s pretty vague and doesn’t really add much.  Two pages on “Hunting Vampires” is likely to disappoint players familiar with the game, as it just contains roles (suggested classes, archetypes, spells, equipment and role-playing tips) for different types of vampire hunter PCs, but with no new mechanical content. Still, it could be quite handy for new players, and I’d much rather see them follow something like this than the often OP and flavour-blind Class Guides that are popular online.  A two-page section on Feats contains five designed for vampire hunters and four designed for vampires themselves.  I liked the “Hymn Singer” feat for bards, which allows them to sing sacred music as a bardic performance to hold a vampire at bay (in the same way presenting a holy symbol would) and the “Life-Dominant Soul” feat for dhampirs (allowing them to heal half hit-points from channeled positive energy).  Last up in the book are a page of new spells (project weakness is clever—it curses a living creature with the *weaknesses* of vampires!) and a page of new magic items (pretty good!).

 

And that’s Blood of the Night.  Obviously, it’s a book of niche interest.  Many campaigns won’t feature vampires or vampire hunters.  But if your campaign will, or you want to run a dhampir in a “normal” campaign, you might find it useful.