Vampire Player Characters

[77IM]

I have just uploaded Vampire Player Characters to the downloads area.

TOTALLY UN-PLAYTESTED! 100% pure theory unsullied by practice.

Player character got bit to death by a vampire?
Running an all-monster party?
Goth youngster wants more angst?
Have I got the class for you!

This is a 20-level class for turning any character of any race and background into a vampire, right from level 1. It's not particularly original and steals a lot from DreamingGod, The Elder Scrolls, and the Monster Manual.

A vampire character is necessarily more complicated than most other characters, with all of their weird abilities and vulnerabilities. I tried to make sure the drawbacks were significant without being crippling, and I tried to make the vampire's powers more "interesting" than "powerful." I guess the core classes vampire resembles the most are monk and rogue, which also rely on exotic abilities for their mojo. Consequently, I've got no earthly idea whether this thing is overpowered or not.

You can find the file here in the downloads section. Please use this thread for comments.

 

[77IM]

ENWORLD EXCLUSIVE!
Not Available at DM's Guild!

I just overhauled this class and posted version 2.0. The changes were rather extensive, but in general I like this version much, much better.

• A 0-level vampire "template" now holds most of the basic features so that when an existing PC gets turned you can just give them the template without having to give them 1 level in the class.
• Necrotic damage applies to all unarmed strikes, not just bites. This is MUCH easier to scale with level and balance against other classes' damage-scaling.
• Regeneration! I really had trouble fitting regeneration into this class, until I decided to make it the cornerstone of the class. The mechanical theme of the vampire class is now "hit-point yo-yo," as many abilities cost hit points to activate (instead of short rest/long rest) and many other abilities, such as bite, restore hit points.
• Dark Gifts are no longer overpowered ability increases. Instead, I pulled a lot of the supernatural powers out of the core class and out of the night stalker subclass and made them dark gifts. These are analogous to warlock invocations, but tend to be more complicated. The goal is to let players select the vampire abilities that interest them most.
• The Unholy Master subclass has been renamed to the Blood Magus and more closely resembles a warlock half-caster. However, instead of spell slots, its spells cost hit points. I'm still concerned that it is overpowered, especially at high levels when you can spam out low-level spells and just regenerate the cost instantly (which is very different than the warlock's operating cycle).
• Some abilities have been rewritten to be terser and clearer. Unfortunately, the new dark gifts are not among them; the next pass at this class will likely be hammering those down a little better.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this class right now. I would love for someone to playtest it! If I can convince my gaming group to play Curse of Strahd next, I might spring this on them at some point...

 

[77IM]

I changed the dark gifts to be spell-like abilities, which shrunk the text so much that I was able to shave a whole page off of the document plus add a bunch of interesting new dark gift options! I am getting pretty excited to try this thing out...

 

[77IM]

Version 2.4 -- rebalanced a few things, like limiting regeneration to 3/day (making its impact easier to measure) and moving the damage resistance up to 20th level (because not many monsters wield magic weapons).

 

[77IM]

v2.5 -- I had the brilliant idea of letting the regeneration regain expended use when you use blood drain. This should naturally limit it to "about once per encounter." Also polished up a few unclearly-worded abilities.

 

[Apollonas Filippou]

You have done a fantastic job with this one.

One of my players wants to play a vampire with a reach weapon. How would that affect the range of "slaughter"?

My understanding is that he has to be next to the target to smell the blood, so it would still be 5ft. Is that correct?

 

[77IM]

Thanks!

The way Slaughter is written, he needs to be within 5 feet of the enemy to trigger this reaction. Of course, you could change it to "within reach" and see what happens! After all, the subclass is called the "The Impaler," so I guess reach weapons are thematically appropriate. This stuff is all homebrew so go hog wild if you want.

My recommendation is to keep the 5-foot limitation. I worry that allowing reach would make the ability too easy to trigger since it would cover a 10' radius. Also, the Impaler's abilities are meant to work together in concert. Bloodlust lets you bite an enemy more easily, which lets you get hit points back faster, which is important if you're on the front lines engaged in a stand-up fight. When it's not your turn, Slaughter can trigger, allowing you to bite with Bloodlust, which, if it kills the enemy, can trigger Feeding Frenzy -- that is one hell of a reaction! Staying at reach would prevent you from biting, so it's not as cool.

Thanks for your interest in this class! Please let me know how it goes!

 

[77IM]

Revised to version 3.0!

• More amenable to multi-classing!
• Better phrasing for confusing abilities!
• No more subclasses! (because I'm not sure that the "sub-archetypes" of Vampire are solid enough to warrant subclasses)
• More Dark Gifts!
• Advice for the DM!
• More concrete "weakness" system!
• Rebalanced attacks!
• Prettier!
• STILL 100% UN-PLAYTESTED! (that is my 100% guarantee!)