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

[MichaelSomething]

May I suggest some research material??

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

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.

Yes, that is what we're doing. He is a skeleton. However, I will not broach the role-playing difficulties again with this individual. We have decided that society will not discriminate against skeleton people—end of story. (Look, I just want to play Dungeons and Dragons.)

But, he approaches healing as if it will hurt him because he is undead. I've pointed out that we chose the reborn lineage in order to avoid that problem because the reborn are humanoid rather than undead. He thinks of his character as undead and he fears healing, so I'm thinking of granting him the full transformation to creature type undead. I think this will make him happy and I want him to be happy. However, there are game mechanics that need to be considered: hit points, turning, disruption, etc. (Actually, I think he would be glad to be attacked by a mace of disruption. It would reaffirm his undeadness.)

So, I'm looking for ideas. Negative channeling cleric? Potions of inflict wounds? Besides hit points, what other issues could arise and how can we handle them? Animate dead rather than raise dead?

I can and will make all this stuff up, but what am walking into here? I ask the boards for wisdom.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

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

These are good suggestions. Thank you.

However, he seems to envision his character as dry bones. One exchange we had when he was faced with blindness was, "How can I be blinded if I don't have eyes?" To which I replied, "How can you see if you don't have eyes?" (Touche, Dungeonmaster, touche.)

Also, I didn't really get the video clip. Did I miss something?

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

May I suggest some research material??

Yeah, I should really see that movie someday. It seems, okay.

I actually knew a guy in high school who reminds me of Blade. He literally slept in a casket. Great guy, glad to call him a friend, but he was too cool for me.

 

[tetrasodium]

These are good suggestions. Thank you.

However, he seems to envision his character as dry bones. One exchange we had when he was faced with blindness was, "How can I be blinded if I don't have eyes?" To which I replied, "How can you see if you don't have eyes?" (Touche, Dungeonmaster, touche.)

Also, I didn't really get the video clip. Did I miss something?

the clip was just showing a body structure for a skeleton that might be a little more fitting of a pc than a traditional human skeleton

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Yes, that is what we're doing. He is a skeleton. However, I will not broach the role-playing difficulties again with this individual. We have decided that society will not discriminate against skeleton people—end of story. (Look, I just want to play Dungeons and Dragons.)

Ok, that's fair and overall I think that's a good approach. I know a lot of DMs that would have difficulty with that, so good on you!

But, he approaches healing as if it will hurt him because he is undead. I've pointed out that we chose the reborn lineage in order to avoid that problem because the reborn are humanoid rather than undead. He thinks of his character as undead and he fears healing, so I'm thinking of granting him the full transformation to creature type undead. I think this will make him happy and I want him to be happy. However, there are game mechanics that need to be considered: hit points, turning, disruption, etc. (Actually, I think he would be glad to be attacked by a mace of disruption. It would reaffirm his undeadness.)

So I think there's a couple possibilities here. First of all, we have heritage examples that are non-human type, such as satyrs. So mechanically, WotC has already opened that door.

However, after re-reading your post, I now remember that cure spells typically have a specifier that they don't work on undead. So you could either ignore this part of the spell and allow it to function on your player as if he were humanoid, or you can add an ability to his heritage such as the one below:

Atypical Nature
Despite being an undead creature, your physiology interacts with magic differently than most other kinds of undead. You can benefit from spells that restore hit points, even if such a spell normally wouldn't work on undead.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So, I'm looking for ideas. Negative channeling cleric? Potions of inflict wounds? Besides hit points, what other issues could arise and how can we handle them? Animate dead rather than raise dead?

In 3E the Cure spells would heal living creatures and damage undead, whereas the Inflict spells would damage living creatures and cure the undead. The 5E versions of these spells do not have the undead versions as part of their descriptions, but I don't think there is any reason in this specific case where you couldn't just port them over. So the Cure Wounds spell cast on your skeleton player would cause damage, and the Inflict Wounds spell would heal it.

Now yes, the Inflict Wounds spell does 3d10 in one casting (+1d10 for each slot level over 1st), whereas Cure Wounds is just 1d8 plus modifier (+1d8 for each slot level over 1st)... so you might have to re-jigger the numbers a little bit so that the skeleton doesn't get more recovery than other characters. So for instance, you could treat Inflict Wounds cast on an undead as having the same 1d8+modifier hit points recovered as Cure Wounds does (while still being 3d10 damage when cast on a living character.) Or another option, if you wanted to keep things looking different for flavor reasons and to real drive home the difference between a skeleton and a living character-- keep Inflict Wounds as 3d10 healing on the skeleton, but it only gets to have it cast upon him once per long rest (and any other recovery must come from spending hit dice.) And as far as resurrection... I think Animate Dead (being a 3rd level spell) is a good symmetrical spell for this use as Revivify is for living creatures.

At the end of the day, since you are allowing something homebrewed in your game in this instance... any choice or option you make to continue this work is going to be fine. You don't need to stick to any "official" rulings, since they'd all be ruling on something unofficial anyways.

 

[Weiley31]

Another thing you can do is get the 3PP book Grim Hollow. One of its "main" gimmicks is that it has a series of transformations that PCs can gain and level up. You have your Seraph, Lycanthrope, Lich and among others present, Vampire. Each transformation has "four levels" which gives character new abilities as well as disadvantages that accompany said Transformations. (Oh, you thought being an Angel wouldn't be a disadvantage? You EVER SEE the original versions of Angels? Man, ain't the cliche movie look that's for sure.*)