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Topic : Vampire with bone claws similar to wolverine's I am adding vampires to my high fantasy world. These are not twilight vampires, they are more like the vampires from underworld or vampire the - selfpublishingguru.com

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I am adding vampires to my high fantasy world. These are not twilight vampires, they are more like the vampires from underworld or vampire the masquerade. I need to make them better fighters against soldiers in full plate, and traditional vampire features are not good for this.

But my vampires are not exactly traditional, so I could add a feature. The vampires in my world also have healing factors and enhanced sense but their healing uses up blood they've consumed and eventually they will need to drink more blood to heal. They are not harmed by sunlight, or garlic, or any religious power. Stakes to the heart will kill them as well as decapitation and going too long without healing from mortal wounds.

To make them better in combat, I wanted to give them bone claws like wolverine. I know many characters share superpower abilities, such as flight, invulnerability, super speed and so on. But it seems possible I could get into copyright trouble if I had a character exactly like Wolverine, or Spiderman or something, and only changed the name.

So my question is, is there a line to not cross? Can I get into copyright trouble by copying the idea of Wolverine's bone claws? If I need to worry about copyright, I'd welcome alternative ideas to improve combat readiness and stay in the general realm of vampires.

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I strongly advise against it not because it may infringe on another established world, but because it is lazy.

I notice in the critique groups that I attend, that most of us fall into the trap of doing things the exact same way. For example, emerging psychic ability (in every fantasy manuscript by a new author in the groups), is heralded by headaches. Every single time. Headaches. Including in my manuscript. :-)

This is the lazy, easy indicator of emerging psychic ability in fantasy. It is intended to show that something bizarre is happening in a person's mind, and they are acquiring a psychic ability. When I realized that everyone uses headaches for this, I also realized that copying something like that - Well, I don't want to read that over and over again and the audience won't either. And there is no reason for psychic ability to be heralded by headaches, except that it is what someone thought once and it stuck.

So, I worked for a few days on my manuscript and came up with something original to herald psychic ability, and I am much happier. It was work to get there, but the end result is better and the audience will not have seen this solution before.

You should do the same thing. Wolverine claws are not original.

Why does the vampire need claws? Is it only for fighting ('soldiers in full plate')? Killing? Something else? Who (others besides soldiers)? I recommend finding something that would accomplish the same goal, but be your own creation. It might take you a few days to come up with whatever it is, but you'll be happier in the end. The first thought that comes to my mind is for your vampires to have retractable barbs on their forearms, instead of claws on their hands. This still feels lazy to me, but is at least a step removed from Wolverine. Play with what your needs are, find something unique, and write that. I bet you can find a thousand wolverine copy cats. Don't make yourself one as well.

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