ToME WikiRavenRed: I'm not a major fan of Vampires (not Tolkieninan enough, but ANYWAY...) but I've always thought the limiattion on activity during daytime is somwhat harsh. Instead, Vampires have a regen of 0 during the hours of daylight. This leaves the players free to adventure... if they reckon they can survive needing to rely on the blood of the living to survive (yes... as per usual)... Just a quick thought.
JohnGilmore: The problem with that is that non-hungry vampires cannot heal this way. So how about vampires always have a regen of 0, but have an inate healing ability (accessable at level 2 or 3) that uses food (Uhm, blood) to heal? You could make the spell accessable only at night for new vampires, and increasingly later in the day for higher level ones.
And nerf the scrolls of satisfy hunger, as well as artifacts of the same - "Your hunger is not so easily satisfied" You'd have to carry scrolls of summon non-moving pet, or a totem of something, or a companion, or hunt in the wilderness, or.... Vampires are creatures which spend a LOT of time feeding and thinking about feeding. Commonly available magical remedies should not be able to change this. Though there might be one or two.
And while we're at it, how about make a vampires "night" be lit like "day" and make the day like night, and damaging to boot? All dungeons would be reversed - lit rooms are dark, everything else is lit, and nighttime topside would be lit like day, while day would be dark as night (though it would be nice to replace the normal dark unknown square tile with a white one in this case) and cause minor damage (.1 hp per player turn)? We'd have to reverse the effects of the 'lite' and 'dark' GF_ effects as well I suppose...
I just completely hijacked your thread. Sorry. I think I turned your original idea completely on it's head too.