D&D 5E Player wanting to become vampire/half-vampire??

[tetrasodium]

Levelup has a 3 feat chain for becoming a vampire (newblood>vampire spawn>vampire lord) that ods pretty awesome

 

[Weiley31]

As mentioned before, you have the Dhampir Lineage from Ravensloft. There is also another option and that is via the MtG Planescape online articles. There was a Vampire race in two of the articles.

Vampire - DND 5th Edition

dnd5e.wikidot.com

Of the two, the Ixalan one is probably the one to go with as it comes with one extra ability that the Zendikar one doesn't. Outside of that, they are both the same pretty much.

 

[moriantumr]

An option to share what being a vampire in world is to run a session in a dream or vision in which he gets to be a vampire. You can let him be cool, he gets to play around with it, and you get to bring in all the negatives without him committing to it yet.
My first attempt to get into role playing ended when I could not be a vampire. It took me another 10 years or so before I tried again. If the player wants to do it because they think it is cool, I would figure out a way to do it. Dhampir is an option, but if they aren’t feeling that giving them a bite attack, a couple of once per day spells, or shapeshifting into a bat or wolf will let them feel cool but not disrupt balance much.

 

[Parmandur]

Thank you! That should work great!!

Yeah, came in to say the same: the book has explicit guidelines to use the Race option for precisely this acenario.

 

[Yaarel]

For the drinking blood, I prefer the character gains a level of Exhaustion for each day without blood.

If someone volunteers to give blood, one or more levels of Exhaustion transfer to the volunteer instead. Same goes for an unwilling blood source.

There is a reason why vampirism is a curse, but at least one can manage it nonlethally.

The vampire "powers" come from being Undead. The blood only prevents exhaustion.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Can't wait until he tries eating pizza while sunbathing... that should be a shock.

 

[Bluebell]

Regarding Japanese lore you could use, there is a legend of a vampiric snake woman called nure onna: Nure onna | Yokai.com

Perhaps a ritual involving sea water or snakes. Or maybe something having to do with the fact that they catch their victims by giving them a "baby" to hold that turns impossibly heavy -- give the PC a ceremonial bundle that they must continue to hold onto through multiple ability checks.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Hey, I got 13 year old player who wants to be an undead skeleton. I gave him the reborn heritage from Van Richtens Guide and explained that being a full undead is problematic. He seems to be willing to give up on being healed by the party cleric.

Any advice?

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Hey, I got 13 year old player who wants to be an undead skeleton. I gave him the reborn heritage from Van Richtens Guide and explained that being a full undead is problematic. He seems to be willing to give up on being healed by the party cleric.

Any advice?

Why not just let him mechanically play as a reborn, but aesthetically appear as a skeleton? The RP difficulties of walking around the living will be enough, no need to take away his access to healing.

 

[tetrasodium]

Hey, I got 13 year old player who wants to be an undead skeleton. I gave him the reborn heritage from Van Richtens Guide and explained that being a full undead is problematic. He seems to be willing to give up on being healed by the party cleric.

Any advice?

Blood from the far away Paladinb mIght be a better model physically than a science class skeleton, he was part ogre or something iirc.

One of the other undead characters would be subjected to painful burns when working her own fully functional cleric magic analog but in the end it was revealed that it happened because she believed it should & it interacted with the necromancy keeping her soul bound to her body as a result , you could handle healing magic like that esave the surprise in your head till it's an interesting new leaf in character growth.
Here he is