I tend to take this from a purely elemental point of view as PB vamps are frequently described in those terms. Sunlight hurts vampires and they require home soil for sleep. If the soil is sealed in a box they can't just sleep on the box to get the effect and if they can't see the sun it doesn't hurt.
The problem with using the Heliopause is that its geometry is highly variable and is, as I understand it, largely dependent on the orbit around the galaxy. It is also so far out that to the naked eye it is indistinguishable from any other star. Even the termination shock, which has a much more regular geometry, is too far out for this IMO.
I also don't think that the affect of the light from a star has anything to do with how people view it. The elemental nature of it is what matters. The holy symbol is all that is necessary in PB for the symbol to work on vamps, faith is not required as it is in some IPs. How sentient beings view dirt has no impact on vamps but they still require it to sleep and will die without it.
In my games I tend to treat the damage from the sun, or any star, as fading over distance. I think I cut the damage by 25% on Mars, by 50% the belt and disappearing almost entirely after the orbit of Saturn or Uranus. Because vamps are almost always NPCs you don't need specific rules by distance or luminosity you just need to keep it consistent.
The fun I had is with the sleep cycle. A ship or station in the shadow of a planet or large moon would be considered night and vamps could operate at full but as soon as it was in the direct line of sight to the star they needed to sleep or suffer penalties.
I had a lot of fun with my 2nd Phase World adventure with this. Long story less long they boarded a drifting ship in orbit of a moon. When the ship went into the shadow vamps came out all over and they were screwed, they had nothing to stop vamps as they treated this as a Star Wars game. well they fought for a few minutes and just when it got bad the ship came out of the shadow and the vamps were so weakened that they were able to escape. They started carrying anti-supernatural gear after that.
ITWastrel wrote:Mack wrote:Another silly thought: Suppose a person was born on and lived their entire life on a spaceship. A vampire comes aboard and turns the person into a vampire. What do you line their sleeping coffin with if they've never even seen soil?
Vampires are elemental creatures, the soil requirement is supernatural, not cultural.
I suspect that a vampire unable to bed down on soil in space is as screwed as one on earth, going mad, running about and generally being insane. I would even assert there's a high probability of the mad vampire going out an airlock in the insane search to find soil to lay on. The need for soil of the homeland gets even harder when the vampire is lightyears from said home, likely dooming them on their first sunrise.
For me I don't allow vamps to be created in this situation unless there is an actual greenhouse or soil on board. In which case they vamps "home" would be where that soil came from. If it is from multiple locations or manufactured in some way then the vamp is not created. You can slow kill all you want but if you can not do the final step of burying them in actual soil then they just die. IMHO of course.