Marion Poliquin said:
Which is exactly why the town is in dire need of heroes to help them.
Damn! You just described a great adventure introduction and you're calling it stupid?
Yes, because the only way you can help this town is if you can cast the Restoration spell 50 or so times, or have 50+ scrolls with Restoration on them. A town being tormented by a vampire is a good idea, but you don't need to make the CON drain permanent for it to be a good plot idea. And the permanent CON loss makes it pretty much impossible for you to have a situation in which this vampire has been preying on this village for decades or even centuries, and by this time the people are nothing more than sheep. You can't do a story like that because according to the rules as they are, they'd all be dead long before.
and how their power levels grow over time, how bleeding a lot or making fledglings saps or dilutes the strength of their blood, for the purposes of passing on those powers... Still it would be neat.
Actually the Ravenloft book has rules for vampires who become more powerful over time.
And don't vampires need to feed daily? Flipped through the monster manual and didn't see feeding requirements mentioned. But when it comes to the argument of "Those sickly people having kids and feeding on them", that wouldn't work either. First of all, is a woman with Con 3 healthy enough to successfully give birth to a baby? Second, is this vampire gonna wait til the kids 17+ so the kid can have its own kids and the vampire can then feed on him?
Using humans as cattle won't work, as humans age so slowly. Nine months to give birth, 14 or so years before you're able to have your own children, and you expect the vampire to wait that long? That's assuming the women actually survive the child birth, thanks to their poor Con.
A blood drain is a blood drain. I don't see why it should be any different then when you give blood, except of course it's more violent and you lose a lot more. Eventually your body produces more blood and your back up to snuff, again. Yeah, the D&D vampire is a composite of various vampire legends, but I have yet to see any mention anywhere of a vampire bite staying with you forever.
Going back to the village example, whenever you see stories of sickly villagers, it's because the vampire feeds off the same victims over and over again. He feeds off Villager A, draining him to CON 3 and making him sick. He then feeds off Villager B who's in full health, draining her to CON 2. As soon as Villager A recovers, he feeds on him, again. And so on and so on.
BTW: I know I can change it to suit my tastes (Namely no stupid slam attack, no permanent CON drain, and more involved vampire creation process). Just felt like ranting about the vampire as it is in the Monster Manual.