D&D 5E How do Vampires Exist?

[jgsugden]

Whenever and wherever the rules for class, spell, item, race or monster design do not work for your campaign design, whether because of mechanic or theme: change. D&D, as a role playing game, is about telling a good story. If your story does not work because of a rules nuance, make it v work and don't look back. Your ca,pain might call for vampire making to be as easy as zombie making on the Walking Dead while another may want it to be something that can only be achieved if a vampire works hard to make it happen.

The story should always come before the rules.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

You're only looking at the combat stats of the vampire?
Its not that hard to imagine that the bite damage is when in full "rip and tear" mode. Its likely that vampires are capable of biting to deal less physical damage when they want to.

 

[Sunseeker]

I put all sorts of tweaks on the vampires in my setting to give them a much more classic feel. Talking about the bite in specific though, the bite now has no bonus damage, and does direct con damage for 1d4. Still does 3d6 necrotic for the health regen, but 0 con is the magic number for making new vampires, not 0 HP.

 

[Azurewraith]

I put all sorts of tweaks on the vampires in my setting to give them a much more classic feel. Talking about the bite in specific though, the bite now has no bonus damage, and does direct con damage for 1d4. Still does 3d6 necrotic for the health regen, but 0 con is the magic number for making new vampires, not 0 HP.

This I like. I do miss con damage, then again I am using the vitality rule from the UA and a strong believer 5e holds hands a Tad to tight

 

[Iry]

I put all sorts of tweaks on the vampires in my setting to give them a much more classic feel. Talking about the bite in specific though, the bite now has no bonus damage, and does direct con damage for 1d4. Still does 3d6 necrotic for the health regen, but 0 con is the magic number for making new vampires, not 0 HP.

That works pretty well. It does mean that Vampires will have a very hard time turning commoners, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Sunseeker]

That works pretty well. It does mean that Vampires will have a very hard time turning commoners, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Right, and here's a few more details:
Vampires in my games don't want more vampires. Making another true vampire, even an underling is a threat to both them and other vampires. Like classic Dracula or Strahd, it only happens when a vampire has a particular obsession with a person and wants an eternal companion. Vampires have no problem raising the dead and can raise any creature they killed (at any point in time) as an undead ghoul/skeleton/other lesser undead depending on body decomposition as an Action. Vampires want cattle, thralls, slaves and other forms of underlings. Not equals.

NPCs rise, or don't rise as a new vampire based on, above all else, DM discretion, secondly on a "will to live" save. If their will to live is stronger than the vampire's will to not make new vampires(DC 12 for rogue vampires who don't care, 15 for vampires who are indifferent and 18 for vampires who actively oppose), they have a 1/4 chance (4 on a 1d4) to rise as a vampire after 3 days. It may take longer, it may not, but it is a minimum wait of 3. The latter rules apply to players as well. Get killed by a vampire? Make a CHA save. Succeed? Roll 1d4. On a 4, congrats you're a vampire! On anything else, you're dead. This process cam be prevented of course by various, rather barbaric methods of mutilating the body, like removing the heart or head.

And since vampire turning remains largely in the hands of the DM, it keeps players from getting silly with it.

This I like. I do miss con damage, then again I am using the vitality rule from the UA and a strong believer 5e holds hands a Tad to tight

My players are pretty strong optimizers, so I've had to get creative to get around their defenses. I've found that direct damage to their stats has a much bigger impact on how they play and how they react than HP damage. Which makes sense, stats cap at 20, they're a limited commodity. HP doesn't. I'm basically using all these little experiments in my current game to figure out how to put the appropriate horror into a Ravenloft game.

 

[empireofchaos]

Are they going to stop the presses on Ravenloft so they can disentangle this thorny issue? Seems like something that would come up pretty frequently if you're chilling with Strahd...

 

[transtemporal]

The problem is that the vampire's bite has two damage components: piercing and necrotic. Only the necrotic aspect reduces the targets maximum hit points, which means that the piercing damage will cause the victim to be dead long before it is possible to convert them into a vampire.

Ikr, one moment you're trying to make their last moments on earth a really nice experience, the next they're spurting blood all over your sofa.

 

[Lanliss]

That clarification was a little confusing. Maybe I can explain a bit better with your terms.
If you have 100 hp max, between the piercing and necrotic damage (3 piercing and 9 necrotic), the variable amount will be reduced to 88 and due to the necrotic damage's extra effect, the max will be reduced to 91.
After a repeat attack the variable amount will be reduced to 76 and the max reduced to 82.
Each time you repeat the process, the difference between those numbers will increase by 3. The issue is that the higher number needs to reach 0 before the lower number does.

You can use an analogy to change those numbers to volumes of liquid and containers if you like, it doesn't really change anything.

I read it as the HP being the air in the cylinder. You pour water in, thus removing X amount of "HP" from the cylinder, by forcing it out the top.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If you rule that a vampire's visitation constitutes an encounter and therefore prevents the victim from completing a long rest, then turning over the course of several nights is possible. The victim could spend Hit Dice to recover from the bite damage, as per a short rest, but the max hp drain would remain. Additionally, they'd gain exhaustion which matches the stories. Once the character is at low hp, the vampire's bite might take them to 0 hp, but then the drain will most likely immediately reduce their maximum to 0 causing them to turn.

I'd also rule that a vampire doesn't have to utilize it's full strength against a willing/charmed victim, so the bite could deal 1d6-5 outside combat. After all, if a PC willingly slices their hand open (for a blood sacrifice or something) I don't make them add their Strength mod.