Disclaimer Both magic, and magical creatures are mythological and there is no concrete evidence to pinpoint their existence, powers, weaknesses, etc.

1. Vampires are not due to the talent system. It is my understanding from word of mouth (which is all we have to go on for these mythical creatures) that you will get vampirism from a creature that can cause permadeath if it kills you. This means you are likely to die attempting to get it, but if you do succeed will be one of the few. I would guess the only one as you probably survived because you killed the creature that grants vampirism.

2. Yes I think you will be killable. If you survive for an extended time, and the game mechanics made it so that you would be stronger for it then it might be harder but that just means it requires a greater force to kill you, not that you are unkillable. It is my understanding there will not be any unkillable enemies or players introduced into the game.

3. I would also assume, although this part is pure speculation, that the longer you are alive as this vampire or lich, the stronger your powers but also the stronger your weaknesses. If as a vampire, you don't like sun light, I would expect a brand new vampire to be irritated by it, and a 200 year old vampire to burn up in direct sunlight.

Interesting thoughts though :D

The only way to kill a lich is to find it's soul in a phylactery. If you face it head on sure you can "kill" it but it will respawn. But if you want to rid elyria of the evil you have to find where it hid it's soul.

Why is there an assumption that lichdom or vampire-dom must be the effect of talents?

I think SBS will be far more clever and subtle in the effects that they assign to talents.

If anything (and this is just a guess), I'd say vampirism is most likely going to be a contagion/disease, much like porphyria and lychdom (or what ever) is probably some obscure scientific research.

if that were the case, there would also be room for "werewolves" due to the hereditary condition known as hypertrichosis (they look more like teddy bears), but I believe SBS has said werewolves won't be in game... pity because a some kind of rabid hypertrichotic individual could be a resemble a werewolf.

But I am pretty sure none of these will be talents.

Is it possible to kill a player with some special set of traits?

Of course.

The lich who thinks they're invincible won't last very long.

You can kill a Lich as much you want. If you dont destroy the object he bound his soul on, it doesnt matter realy for an Lich.

Possible? Definitely.
Easy? No. Fatal? Probably.

Caspian04/15/2018 You assume the first vampire is Mannkind. It is not.

Caspian05/25/2018 Put simply, if you become a vampire, your soul stops progressing during the current lifetime, as it is no longer a part of you. You don't forget anything, and you still advance, but the progression is not tracked on your soul. Instead, you simply live "forever" and can continue to gain skills and attributes in the current lifetime.

Caspian05/25/2018 So a Vampire is trading becoming very powerful in the current lifetime, in exchange for not being able to carry that over to the next one. But it's important to note, Vampirism is not something you'll want to seek out. Because until you get your Soul back, it remains with the Vampire who took it. If you die, your Soul will not be in the Akashic Records for you to make a new character with. You'll find you have to move on to advancing a different soul.

The above are all taken from the common room of the CoE discord. There is a whole lot more there in regards to this topic, including werewolves.

From just the above though, this doesnt feel like a disease or anything that small. It feels bigger than that and I sure as hell hope Elder Vampires are killable or else none of their victims will ever retrieve their soul. Losing your Soul permanently means you lose your entire skill ramp. Since you arent going to be the first vampire, as Caspian states it is NOT a Mann, then your soul's skill ramp will belong to some other being. So once you die, you only get one death, its all gone. You have to start over.

So as said above, killing them will be very difficult. Their power does indeed feel like it is a Talent. It's with them for that lifetime but it doesnt carry on. Someone that is good at playing a Vampire, they likely have to take every safeguard possible to keep from being revealed. In fact their game play might be very limited. Remember, Elyria has Two Suns. Its daytime is going to last longer than the night, I do believe. So you have all that daytime to work on tracking down that Vampire without too much worry unless you are going into their "lair".

There is no way these get put in the game in an way that makes them unable to be killed. They are going to be so powerful though that you may find yourself hoping someone else does it. The cost of failure will be steep if you set out to kill one and fail. You could lose your Soul.

If you want to be vampire then you better go for it in the early game as it is otherwise not worth it...

In the early game it most likely wont be avaliable since its just a myth.

From what Caspian said in the referenced Discord discussion, vampires and liches seem like nonhumann lineages of intelligent beings. Since humanns can become vampires, vampires may be the result of a kind of disease that enables its "victim" to manipulate the souls of others.

I'm trying to analyze it in terms that are compatible with RL Western science.

A question that arises is how the soulless state of a vampire differs from the presumed soulless state of NPCs. Whatever vampires are said to be able to do, it cannot be just because they are soulless, because that would potentially make every NPC a vampire.

Pure fantasy.... I cannot be defeated...

They are killable sure but how many would it take to kill them? We may not know until a year after launch if a COE Lich can raise the dead or what measure of power they have over dark things/magic...its unknown and I hope it stays that way until someone becomes one. If I were to come across info regarding either i would call the banners and set out after them. The one who kills either beast would surely be remembered!...only to find that after all the fights and traps and TIME that you just spent getting to the Boss room you have to go to work or something...lol

DO NOT forget about the RL time "travel" takes in COE, it will take hours to get there, hours to adventure and hours to get home...more so if you're injured on the way back.

Legendary will be the ones who return victorious

I think it is possible that I don't think about such aspects at all in this stage of game development.