Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Night (PFRPG)

As others have stated, this book is very low on material for actual players. Let me run down the pages:

2 pages overview on vampires plus 2 pages for the four vampire subtypes, for a total of 10 pages. I admit that the four vampire subtypes *are* interesting, and I like them a lot, but they're completely and utterly useless for players, other than as some world fluff.

2 pages on how to include vampire characters in a campaign, which essentially boils down to, either play an all-vampire campaign, or use dhampirs instead. ("With the exception of using dhampirs, there is no easy way to include vampire characters in a campaign with normal humanoid PCs and maintain a balanced level of power between the characters." "If a player wants to play a vampire-like character, choosing a dhampir is the best way to do so and still maintain a reasonable level of power balance compared to the other PCs.") So, unless your entire group is keen on playing vampires, tough noogies.

2 pages spent on three vampire feats (transform into wolf, swarm or mist).

1 page spent on dhampir fluff, 1 page spent on two dhampir roles and two dhampir traits.

2 pages spent on four dhampir subraces, these are very much in the vein of aasimar/tiefling subraces in their respective Companions. In my personal opinion, this two-page spread is the only worthwhile material in the entire Companion for players. This is some genuinely useful crunch for dhampirs. Sadly, this is pretty much the *only* genuinely useful crunch for dhampirs.

2 pages on undead (essentially vampire) hunger, and withdrawal effects.

2 pages on Golarion-specific fluff for the four vampire races (note, again, for the *vampire* races, and not a word about dhampirs. If you want to know Golarion-specific info on any of the four dhampir subraces, it's about one sentence each on the dhamp subraces two-page spread.

2 pages on vampire hunter builds.

2 pages on feats -- five for vampire slayers and four for vampires. If you wanted any dhampir-specific feats, one of the slayer feats is for dhamps only (you can be healed by positive channel energy).

1 page on 6 spells, 1 page on 6 magic items.

The rest is overhead and general table of contents, next month stuff.

For players, at *best*, I think there's about six pages of genuinely useful stuff. The dhampir subtypes, the feats, the spells and the magic items. The builds spread contains no real new information.

If you want this book because you want to play a dhampir, just get the stats for the four dhampir subraces from somewhere and you're done. I really can't recommend buying this whole thing if all you're interested in is new dhampir options.

Get this book if you want a whole bunch of vampire fluff that you probably will never use as a player. Why is this in the Player Companion line? If this is the book they wanted to write, it should've just been Vampires Revisited in the Campaign Setting line.

I would've given the book a one-star rating, for being a Player Companion that's pretty much useless for players, but two things are enough to bump it (just barely) up to two stars. First is the two-page spread on dhampir subraces. The only useful part of the entire book, and it *is* admittedly great, great enough to IMO carry the whole book. And the second thing is, I really like the artwork. The art is great.

That's about it.

This book had so much potential but instead all we received was material most of us (as players) don't ever bother using. We had hoped for A LOT of feats for Dhampir and Vampire Slayers, sample stat blocks for both Dhampir and Vampire Slayer NPC's in general, or even a new vampire monster stat block (aka a new strain). Instead, we get a butt load of wasted space, a ton of artwork that serves no other purpose other than to make you go "oh" and "awe" for a few seconds, and a amount of useful material so utterly and COMPLETELY LIMITED that it's sad (if not down right sickening). We didn't even receive an updated Vampire Hunter archetype or a Vampire Hunter prestige class. This book is a waste of space, a waste of money, and the developer should be ASHAMED with himself. When the ARTISTS put more EFFORT into a Tabletop RPG Manual than the actual material makers then you KNOW something's wrong with the company you once admired and adored. Either way, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS BOOK. It's not even worth the shipping fee let alone the full price.

So much blank space inside this book.

I will try not to rehash anything already said too much. As much of the good and bad has already been mentioned. Simply, this is the first time a Pathfinder product made me want my money back. I just don't have much use for the materials provided.
For GM purposes I fid it disappointing that I will still need to hunt down the templates for Nosferatu and Vetalas if I choose to use them.
Also for my PCs, archetypes would have been much more useful than suggested character builds.
The non-mechanics information was as always very good. However I feel like not much was added beyond Classic Horrors Revisited.
Both Blood of Heavens and Blood of Fiends were much better.

There are a lot of reviews here that can tell you about the product in more detail, but seeing as how there are quite a few negative ones for a product I enjoyed, I thought I'd contribute.

Blood of the Night is what I would consider an essential guide to Vampires in Golarion. It's simple and clean, and doesn't add any more information than you need, making it a perfect companion to Pathfinder's many other products that have something to say about Vampires. My players love Vampires, and it will be really nice to finally have a product that will greatly improve my ability to run a fantastic game about Vampires, and it also give me the tools to allow my players to play as Vampires!

I was also happy to see even more information about Dhampires, because I am a big fan. I was sure that there was already plenty of information out there about the half-damned; with Blood of the Night's details about all four Vampires variants, it was nice to see Dhampire heritages tie into these newly presented details, instead of ignoring the potential for them.

The information about Vampire Hunters was quite lacking, to the point of being nonexistent, but I honestly purchased the product not knowing that it had anything to do with Vamp hunters, so I'm not saddened by this.

Blood of the Night is an excellent book about Golarion's Vampires, and if you are looking to purchase a book with even more info on them (as I was) you will be quite pleased.

If you are looking for a book exclusively about Dhampires, you will be disappointed, as it is not exclusively about Dhampires, and doesn't pretend to be. However, the extreme, dire-hard Dhampire lover would be remiss to not purchase this product, as it's Dhampire Heritages are excellent, and the rest of the book will really help flesh out your character's background.

For the player looking for a book on Vampire hunting, you should avoid this book at all costs, unless you want only a few feats, spells and items that assist in Vampire slaying, or are also looking for some background info and character building advice.

In conclusion, as a DM who only wanted a book about Vampires, I have to give Blood of the Night a full five stars for going above and beyond my expectations. BTW, have I mentioned how much I like the new layout? It is awesome. Keep it up Paizo!