I am normally the DM for our group, but we are playing a mini-episode of CoS each time we hit a chapter break in the Age of Worms AP. One of our players will be DM for CoS. I asked him if I could play a "half-vampire/pseudo-vampire."
Now I am big on keeping things in check. When this same player asked to play a half-gnoll, son of a character from our previous adventure, I worked with him to make something that was mostly like a half-orc but with rampage as his ability instead of the normal half-orc stuff. In my opinion, PCs of exotic races should be slightly less powerful than a regular PHB PC.
So my proposal was that this bard grew up in Barovia, and at some point her family was attacked and murdered by a vampire. She was bitten but not killed and not fully turned. She (rightly or wrongly) blames Strahd for this and wants revenge. Her tries to hide her half-vampire nature but it manifests itself in a few ways. She does not receive any of the things in the "PCs as Vampires" sidebar on MM 295. Compared to a regular vampire, the changes are largely negative:
* Damage Resistances: None
* Legendary resistace: None
* Misty escape: No
* Regeneration No
* Spider climb: No
* Forbiddance: Yes
* Harmed by running water: Changed to slowed by running water
* Stake to the heart: Does not have misty escape and does not regenerate in a coffin, so N/A
* Sunlight hypersensitivity: changed to the Drow's sunlight sensitivity
* Multiattack: follow bard's number of attacks instead
* unarmed strike: No
* Bite: She is trying to deny this part of her nature, so the attack is without proficiency, is an improvised weapon, and restores 1 maximum hit point that was lost before through other means (see below).
* Charm: proficiency in persuasion
* Children of the night: no
* Legendary actions: No
Compared to a normal undead, she is still mostly human, but has a few difficulties:
* Can be turned but has advantage on the saving throw.
* Curative spells such as healing word are only half effective unless she casts it on herself.
* a need for blood every once in a while (which she satisfies with freshly killed corpses)
* goes unconscious as a normal PC; spells to bring her back to life work, but do not cure her condition.
The one really good thing she gets is:
* the ability to cast revivify, raise dead, etc. when they become available without the normal material components by biting the victim and permanently draining a number of maximum hit points from herself equal to the spell level to bring the victim back to life as a form of reverse-vampire bite.
So no shapechanger, misty escape, legendary resistance, spider climb, stat boost, etcs. In this case, this half-vampire is more of a template added on to the normal race. I would never ask for a straight boost through something such as having my PC be a vampire. The vampire boosts are too powerful for a PC and often replace a magical item or spell as a permanent effect.
