Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tormyr" data-source="post: 6865143" data-attributes="member: 6776887">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: NoCompared 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.</blockquote>

Verification