Am I the only one who doesn't like the D&D Vampire? (Pointless rant, I suppose)

[Oni]

Well on a certain level I can understand the permanent con drain. It makes them more vile and prone to being evil. It gives the vampires bite a lasting effect, he has permanently harmed whoever he feeds off of. He can't just flit from victim to victim not really harming anyone or killing anyone. It makes being a vampire less desirable. Permanent con drain really shouldn't mean much to PC of the level that would usually be facing a vampire.

 

[Kyramus]

For the lack of anything to do, I went to a Blade site and took down the names of the tribes and their quick summary.

Use those summary to alter the spawn they produce or the vampires themselves.

Went with the changes for spawn and template and added CR or decreased CR in some cases.

I now have 11 extra kinds of vampires that have unusual abilities.

One even got a strength boost and that brought the cr up.
one of the tribes was known to be extremely alergic to light etc, so i brought down the DR and the elemental resistance to reflect this and droped the cr by 1.

Hehehe nice changes though.

 

[mmadsen]

In addition, I think this kind of "vampire" does exist, only under different names like Ghast, Ghoul, and Wight.

The more I think about it, the more the Ghoul -- its stat block, not the image in the Monster Manual -- reflects the classic vampire -- except that it's lacking the Blood Drain.

 

[mmadsen]

The more I think about it, the more the Ghoul -- its stat block, not the image in the Monster Manual -- reflects the classic vampire -- except that it's lacking the Blood Drain.

Or perhaps the Wight -- with a few small changes:

Blood Drain -- as Energy Drain, but only with Grapple & Pin
Paralysis -- as Ghoul's Paralysis, but only for a few rounds
Fascinate -- as Nth-level Bard (or Hypnotism, as Sorcerer)