Converting monsters from Imagine Magazine

[Shade]

It is suggested that a normal vampire ascends to "greater" status after 999 years of unlife, with promotion to the next level after a similar period and so on. Except where noted otherwise a greater vampire should be treated as per MM1.

I get the impression that this is more like the evolved undead template, so it would only be applied a creature that already has the vampire template (and thus not need to repeat the vampire's abilities).

Although we currently have it lumped together as a single "greater vampire" template, I think it would be best to now break it up into the five unique templates.

Probably something like...

"Vampire lord" is an acquired template that can be added to any vampire that has existed for 999 years of unlife (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A vampire lord uses all the base creature's statistics and abilities except as noted here. This template does not alter the creature's type.

"Vampire arch-lord" is an acquired template that can be added to any vampire lord that has existed in that state for 999 years of unlife (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A vampire lord uses all the base creature's statistics and abilities except as noted here. This template does not alter the creature's type.

...and so on...

Too complicated?

 

[freyar]

That's all reasonable enough. Let's see how it would look like that.

 

[Shade]

Updated.

Before we break them into individual templates, let's fill in a few blanks in the special abilities.

Caster level equal to Hit Dice for SLAs?

Check DC is Charisma-based for Unnatural Aura?

 

[freyar]

Yes and yes.

Just thought of something: since the base creature is now a vampire (or lower type of greater vampire), the ability score boosts need to be retabulated (after all, the arch-lord is only supposed to be Str +2 compared to the lord, not +10).

 

[Shade]

Whew! I tried to break them into 5 templates in the original thread, but it was too many characters!

Here are the five templates:

Lord
Arch-Lord
Princeling
Prince
Arch-Prince

 

[freyar]

These look pretty good, but I think we need to delete some of the special abilities and qualities. For example, the SLAs are all the same, so only the Lord needs them. Same with Lifesense, Alternate Form, Unnatural Aura, I think.

 

[Shade]

Good point!

I updated them.

 

[freyar]

Looking pretty good. I just realized that we need to figure out the CR increases for these (compared to the usual vamp). Also, don't remember if we talked about it before, but do we want to give a minor Cha bump at each stage (maybe +2 each time) to improve the DCs?

Suggested CR bumps:
Lord +2
Arch-Lord +1 (relative to Lord, of course)
Princeling +1
Prince +1
Arch-Prince +1

 

[Shade]

Looks good. Anything else before we start the sample vampires?

 

[freyar]

Not that I can think of, unless we want to include some HD advancement at each step or something. Maybe we should just state that a vampire usually gains character levels as it ages, or something.

For the samples, do you want to start with one of the MM sample vamps (are we allowed to do that?) and just keep advancing it through the templates? It'd be kind of neat to see how a vampire "grows" through these (well, adding some character levels along the way, too, I guess).