Half-Damned: Dhampyr [Paperback]

Hal Mangold (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing (June 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565042476
• ISBN-13: 978-1565042476
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,758,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Nice Book, March 2, 2002

By 

Jim Boydston (Tulsa, OK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Half-Damned: Dhampyr (Paperback)

The Kindred of the East companion roughly outlined Dhampyr for us and this book gives you all the details. They are the living children of Kuei jin(The asian vampires detailed in Kindred of the East, a sub-setting of Vampire: The Masquerade). They differ considerably from the same pronunciation different spelling Dhampir of the main Vampire: The Masquerade line, and probably should have been named something different, they don't get called Dhampyr in my game because I think using an old world European word for an old world Asian phenomenon is silly but others opinions may vary. Being the pretty rare children of animated blood sucking corpses and humans(usually the mother), they have a lot of advantages(outrageous luck, access to very low levels of the powers possessed by their inhuman parents, and a lifetime about four times that of a normal human), these of course come with some downsides(They have a wide mean/violent streak and are more prone to antisocial behavior, their luck sometimes helps them at the expense of others, they may become addicted to canabilism as a means of "cheaply" fueling their supernatural abilities, and they watch everyone else grow old and die well before they do.) The greatest problem, and the one that makes so viable for roleplaying, is that their undead parents view them as resources to be exploited at best, tools to be used and discarded at worst. They have almost no chance of living out a "normal" life because even if their bizzare luck didn't get them involved in dire situations, they would still find themselves mired in the politics of the undead. Not a book that is extremely important, it is still an entertaining and well written source of information on Half-Damned and made me want to play one or include them in my game. Four stars, 5 for being that good, minus one for just not being all that important.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half-damned, but still in the running., August 19, 2000

By 

Adrienne Traxler (Sharpsville, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Half-Damned: Dhampyr (Paperback)

The Kindred of the East line, unlike most of White Wolf's recent work, is still putting out a good percentage of interesting and useful supplements. Dhampyr is the next of those, detailing the mortal sons and daughters of the Kuei-jin. The book is a pretty nice combination of cultural information, spiffy powers, and the requisite Secret History.

I was happy that the authors avoided making this just a sort of Ghouls of the East. Instead of having only bits of Disciplines scrounged from their betters, the dhampyr have a powerful little tool of their own--joss, the incredible luck that surrounds them. Not that they're going to be winning one-on-one fights with the Cathayans, but it gives them a different flavor than the wholly pathetic Western blood-slaves.

The cultural stuff is nothing too surprising, but I didn't notice any big holes in it, either. Half-Damned also gives some history that the ancestors don't want leaked out, and of course character creation rules. The book is nothing to shake my view of the game, but it's a good supplement for an important subset of Kuei-jin society.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dhampyrs, Half-Damned?, December 18, 2000

By 

"b_landman" (Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Half-Damned: Dhampyr (Paperback)

Okay, as I saw in another review, this is NOT for Vampire: the Masquerade. It's for Kindred of the East, a supplement for Vampire, but don't misunderstand, the Kuei-jin (what the Oriental "vampires" call themselves) aren't Cainites, they are a whole 'nother type of Immortals. And as a consqeuence their children (this isn't a new thing for them, like it is for the Cainites) are in a realm all their own. While they could be used to power-play, it also open a whole new realm of options for players. Half-Damned? More like Half Blessed.