I've seen this topic debated a lot, and I've also seen some pretty good depictions of vampires in both source material and homebrew. For example, the vampires from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica aren't bloodthirsty monsters so much as they are people with an ability to drink blood (or psionic energy, in the case of the mind drinker). They aren't (entirely) bound by ravenous hunger, and they tend to have a bit more leeway in how they work. The whole "all vampires are evil" schtick seemed to start with Strahd, at least in 5e as far as I can tell. You're always able to change alignments, and there are several instances in the recent 5e books that tell about typically evil creatures doing not-evil things. And that's only in the official material!
It’s worth noting that Ravnica’s vampires are based off the vampires of Magic: The Gathering, not those of D&D (Note the lack of weakness to sunlight in the Blood Drinker Vampire’s statblock), due to prior to 5e there being no cross-pollination between Wizards’ two main IPs. In 5e, vampires being effectively entirely evil began with the Monster Manual, not Curse of Strahd. That said, I particularly in terms of how one treats vampires in fiction agree with the take Tracy Hickman, one of the authors of the original I6: Ravenloft module alongside his wife Laura, gave in the Foreward to CoS:
But the vampire genre has taken a turn from its roots in recent years. The vampire we so often see today exemplifies the polar opposite of the original archetype: the lie that it’s okay to enter into a romance with an abusive monster because if you love it enough, it will change.
When Laura and I got a call from Christopher Perkins about revisiting Ravenloft, we hoped we could bring the message of the vampire folktale back to its original cautionary roots. The talented team at Wizards of the Coast not only graciously took our suggestions but engaged us in a dialogue that delivered new insights on the nightmare beyond the gates of Barovia.
In D&D prior to 5e, while exceptions like Jandar Sunstar certainly exist, vampires are predominantly evil-by-nature, from what I can tell. Even Sunstar is described as fighting against his inherent evil.
A good take, albeit from a fan work rather than canon D&D example, is the 3.5e-based webcomic The Order of the Stick’s take on vampires, where
A negative energy spirit takes over the body of a vampire’s victim, effectively creating a wholly new, wholly evil, person in the process, who absorbs its host’s memories until the soul of the original being withers away.
In general, non-evil vampires are a phenomenon that began in the latter half of the 20th century, and often are more remarkable when they are the exception rather than the rule, but that in turn leaves the vampire susceptible to Drizzt Syndrome, where the character spawns copycats among fans and eventually becomes a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.
As a DM, I would exercise extreme caution before introducing a morally neutral vampire, let alone a Good one, for these and other reasons.
P.S.: Also, for reasons best not gotten into, WotC’s recent shift to a more nuanced take on alignment seems to be not entirely of their own volition. I have strong opinions on the matter, but I’ll refrain from bringing them up in detail as to not derail the thread. Suffice to say, from what little I’ve mentioned, examples of flexible alignment from 2020 onward might not pass the sniff test of some traditionalists.
I'm trying to imagine characters being tortured by their Evil "nature" while being Good, and I can't think of any character that wouldn't be an edgelord unless someone leaned heavily into satire or subverting stereotypes.
(The character is uncontrollably lapping up pools of blood and someone else admonishes, "Will you stop that?!" and whacks the character with a rolled up parchment. "Bad vampy! Bad vampy! No!")
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I just answered a similar question about chromatic dragons. To that, I said this:
Quote from panda-wat
The short answer is: yes.
At the start of the monster manual, it specifically says that alignment entries, except when noted otherwise like with most fiends and undead, are only suggestions related to the creature's tendencies or culture. In this case, it is absolutely possible for a dragon to change alignment because of the environment it is exposed to. You could have an evil bronze dragon who hatched into slavery under a kraken and became as thoroughly evil as its destructive keeper, or a red dragon that became aware of its wrongdoings and sought divine guidance for redemption. Occasionally breaking the bounds of alignment is a fun and flavorful way to create surprising NPCs, and you shouldn't hold back.
There is, however, a difference between dragons and vampires. I noted in the above post that fiends and undead are generally an exception. Vampires are, however, sentient undead which possibly could have been cursed with undeath while still alive and recall their former lives. Because of this lore, I feel like vampires may play out somewhat like a lycanthrope, with the goodness of the creature battling against the evil of its curse. I think that helping such a vampire lift their curse could be an interesting quest, and I also tend to believe that it's better to allow something experimentally than ban it.
Overall idea: It's your choice. You are ultimately in charge of what lore is true in your campaign, regardless of what is quote-a-quote "true" according to official D&D lore. If you want to, put in a neutral good vampire NPC (or PC) who drinks the party's blood while still begging for their help ending its affliction and ROCK IT! Or do whatever else you want with vampires. As I said with my last post, you shouldn't hold back.
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Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
Obviously there is such a thing as a good vampire. But consider it for a moment. Vampires have to drain blood from a still-living body every few days to subsist themselves. Yes, they’re functionally immortal, but even a little longer without blood will drive them into an absolutely agonising hunger that will almost certainly consume their sanity. And speaking of sanity, to become a vampire, you must have the blood drained from your FRIGGIN BODY and functionally die, before being risen once more as a lord of the undead. Oh, and you now have a constant psychological connect to the plane of negative energy, just like all undead do. This would also corrupt your body and soul and drive you to ever more hedonistic heights of violence. And hey, y’know what, maybe that would affect your sanity too? And just as the icing on the cake, you’ll be considered a vile monster by almost EVERY OTHER LIVING THING so being good to people will just get you killed by the militia or a head cleric or an adventuring party. So yeah, there is definitely the possibility of a “good vampire” but when you consider the circumstances required for their creation and survival then it’s highly unlikely. But hey, you can change all this lore if you want to. Just thought this would be helpful to think about.
Obviously there is such a thing as a good vampire. But consider it for a moment. Vampires have to drain blood from a still-living body every few days to subsist themselves. Yes, they’re functionally immortal, but even a little longer without blood will drive them into an absolutely agonising hunger that will almost certainly consume their sanity. And speaking of sanity, to become a vampire, you must have the blood drained from your FRIGGIN BODY and functionally die, before being risen once more as a lord of the undead. Oh, and you now have a constant psychological connect to the plane of negative energy, just like all undead do. This would also corrupt your body and soul and drive you to ever more hedonistic heights of violence. And hey, y’know what, maybe that would affect your sanity too? And just as the icing on the cake, you’ll be considered a vile monster by almost EVERY OTHER LIVING THING so being good to people will just get you killed by the militia or a head cleric or an adventuring party. So yeah, there is definitely the possibility of a “good vampire” but when you consider the circumstances required for their creation and survival then it’s highly unlikely. But hey, you can change all this lore if you want to. Just thought this would be helpful to think about.
Even moreso, before becoming a full vampire they’re a spawn under direct control of their sire. That can’t be healthy.
If fact I might lore it like this: a vampire spawn might turn turn out alright if they’re liberated from their vampire before the later messes them up too much, but a sire is unlikely to raise one of their spawn to full vimpire-hood until they’ve thoroughly broken them down and built them back up as a monster just as bad as they are.
There's the whole "It takes a monster to fight a monster" trope.
An order of Paladin vampires who are carefully selected and given the opportunity to willingly become vampires to hunt vampires? Sure. Why not? They see it as a sacred sacrifice for the good of the realm.
How do they sustain themselves? Get creative.
Will they be large in number? Heck no! It is very likely they are excessively secretive, and being discovered causes all kinds of quandaries for them. It's possible there's only seven of them active at any one time with one highly trusted "familiar" accompanying each.
I'm half asleep and that's what I typed out. If it don't make sense, I'll blame being half asleep.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Obviously there is such a thing as a good vampire. But consider it for a moment. Vampires have to drain blood from a still-living body every few days to subsist themselves. Yes, they’re functionally immortal, but even a little longer without blood will drive them into an absolutely agonising hunger that will almost certainly consume their sanity. And speaking of sanity, to become a vampire, you must have the blood drained from your FRIGGIN BODY and functionally die, before being risen once more as a lord of the undead. Oh, and you now have a constant psychological connect to the plane of negative energy, just like all undead do. This would also corrupt your body and soul and drive you to ever more hedonistic heights of violence. And hey, y’know what, maybe that would affect your sanity too? And just as the icing on the cake, you’ll be considered a vile monster by almost EVERY OTHER LIVING THING so being good to people will just get you killed by the militia or a head cleric or an adventuring party. So yeah, there is definitely the possibility of a “good vampire” but when you consider the circumstances required for their creation and survival then it’s highly unlikely. But hey, you can change all this lore if you want to. Just thought this would be helpful to think about.
Not gonna dispute that for the long-term; but I do want to point out that a campaign might not last long enough for the mental toll to take effect and there's probably good ways to hide among humans.
But I do also want to point out that, in addition to what you just listed, a sufficiently-long-lived vampire would also simply cease to care about mortals simply because of how long life has gone for them. While it might be 'normal' until they hit 50 or 60 or so, after that the mortals they know, and time in general, will likely just become some indistinct blur and they'll stop developing attachments simply because they were alive before the human warrior's grandmother was born and it's all just a mush to them now. So they might stop caring heavily about people because it's become like eating bread to them... and they're on an all-bread diet. Even if they're morally compelled to 'spare the crust' (I.E. not kill the people they're drinking blood from), it won't be long before they just don't remember or care too much.
I am of the opinion a 'good vampire' can exist for certain, but I certainly get that there's just so many problems with it happening that, most of the time, it's bad writing.
In traditional D&D lore, vampires are uniformly evil and if you become a vampire you literally have to hand your character sheet over to the DM and roll a new character because you're not the same person anymore (See Curse of Strahd).
That's not to say you can't have good vampires in your traditional D&D game, you just have to know that they're an insane anomoly who probably has to work REALLY hard to not be murderous and vicious, and that should probably be a huge part of their character. It's the same as Bladesingers. TECHNICALY, you can only be an elf as a bladesinger, but once you know the lore, you can use it to create exeptions that still respect the original content (A halfling who stole an acient elvish tome of the hidden elvish secrets of bladesinging and learned of it).
Just know the rules, and then you can use that knowledge to break them in ways that make sense, so if you have players at your table who really like and respect D&D lore (me), you can balance agency with consistencty.
The alignment specified in a monster’s stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster’s alignment to suit the needs of your campaign. If you want a good-aligned green dragon or an evil storm giant, there’s nothing stopping you.
So basically, vampires, trolls, goblins, whatever - all their stats are intended to as NPC stats. They're also intended to be the average of the species. But as anyone knows, averages have lots of variation on the outer edges. Also, if you're looking at them as player characters, then it's even more open to interpretation, as they're going to be a character concept for your player to experiment with, instead of simply a story element for them to work around.
I think there's plenty of depictions of vampires being the good guys in media (Twilight, Blade, Castlevania), so really it's up to you how you run them. In D&D I don't think there's anything explicitly stating they have to be evil, I'd imagine they'd retain a lot of their personality and alignment from before they were a vampire.
I think there's plenty of depictions of vampires being the good guys in media (Twilight, Blade, Castlevania), so really it's up to you how you run them. In D&D I don't think there's anything explicitly stating they have to be evil, I'd imagine they'd retain a lot of their personality and alignment from before they were a vampire.
In fact, in D&D's history, not all Vampires are evil. Jander Sunstar is a notable exception to the general rule that Vampires are evil. He's basically the Drizzt of Vampires.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I think there's plenty of depictions of vampires being the good guys in media (Twilight, Blade, Castlevania), so really it's up to you how you run them. In D&D I don't think there's anything explicitly stating they have to be evil, I'd imagine they'd retain a lot of their personality and alignment from before they were a vampire.
In fact, in D&D's history, not all Vampires are evil. Jander Sunstar is a notable exception to the general rule that Vampires are evil. He's basically the Drizzt of Vampires.
That was like the 4th post of this thread, you even liked it, smh.
I think this thread has eclipsed itself, to draw a sort of goth theme to say it's gone full circle.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I did come up with an interesting solution. Namely having some wanting to dominate/be lords/treat humans like swine/etc. While others just want to be left in peace to live their vampiric un-lives. As such they come off as 'good' because, well, they're not going around feasting willy-nilly on everyone and basically just want to be left (relatively) alone. So no armies of spawn/zombies/etc. Or killing people (raises flags). Or any of that other stuff. May even be willing to help 'the cause of good/the party/etc' out, pretty much so they can go 'Okay. The crisis is resolved and the world isn't ending. You guys are nice and all, but I want to get back to living in the shadows. I saw a bandit camp on the way here and I'm feeling a bit peckish, so see you guys... maybe sometime in the future."
The real question is whether non-evil vampires can be non-annoying.
I'm so tired of the whole "woe is me I'm a vampire" character.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L8JrLtObw8AvcFw4JcW Sorry I couldn’t get the link to work, but this is pretty much the definitive answer to the questions you’re asking, to quote The Simpsons “The short answer is no with a and, the long answer is yes with a but.”, for a vampire, even if you have Good or Neutral tendencies, you’ll still be torn between not killing people and drinking blood ( Although maybe you could do animal blood ~\ •_•/~ ), skeletons and zombies on the other hand just scare the living daylights out of commoners.
I'm sure there's a way to have a non-Evil vampire who is making the best of what fate or chance ordained without trying to make everyone else feel terrible about it. It can be amazing what people will rationalize to turn Armageddon into a wonderful chance to try new things.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I have always looked at it as two or even three types of vamps.
Those rare ones born vampires. Lawful Evil and working to prove it.
Those infected/turned for so long you can not tell them from a natural one or not. They have forgotten their past not vamp life but maybe not a very few specific memories.
Those who have recently been infected/turned. They vary from they do not even know about it yet( have not drank blood yet), to starting to forget their past life(drink at least weekly).
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It’s worth noting that Ravnica’s vampires are based off the vampires of Magic: The Gathering, not those of D&D (Note the lack of weakness to sunlight in the Blood Drinker Vampire’s statblock), due to prior to 5e there being no cross-pollination between Wizards’ two main IPs. In 5e, vampires being effectively entirely evil began with the Monster Manual, not Curse of Strahd. That said, I particularly in terms of how one treats vampires in fiction agree with the take Tracy Hickman, one of the authors of the original I6: Ravenloft module alongside his wife Laura, gave in the Foreward to CoS:
In D&D prior to 5e, while exceptions like Jandar Sunstar certainly exist, vampires are predominantly evil-by-nature, from what I can tell. Even Sunstar is described as fighting against his inherent evil.
A good take, albeit from a fan work rather than canon D&D example, is the 3.5e-based webcomic The Order of the Stick’s take on vampires, where
A negative energy spirit takes over the body of a vampire’s victim, effectively creating a wholly new, wholly evil, person in the process, who absorbs its host’s memories until the soul of the original being withers away.
In general, non-evil vampires are a phenomenon that began in the latter half of the 20th century, and often are more remarkable when they are the exception rather than the rule, but that in turn leaves the vampire susceptible to Drizzt Syndrome, where the character spawns copycats among fans and eventually becomes a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.
As a DM, I would exercise extreme caution before introducing a morally neutral vampire, let alone a Good one, for these and other reasons.
P.S.: Also, for reasons best not gotten into, WotC’s recent shift to a more nuanced take on alignment seems to be not entirely of their own volition. I have strong opinions on the matter, but I’ll refrain from bringing them up in detail as to not derail the thread. Suffice to say, from what little I’ve mentioned, examples of flexible alignment from 2020 onward might not pass the sniff test of some traditionalists.
“Even Sunstar is described as fighting against his inherent evil.”
Adding to this, I highly doubt anyone could do that forever, at least not on their own power. Willpower eventually runs out.
(Also, no I’m not quoting a post a third time for one sentence only to find out that I can’t type on it normally anymore.)
I'm trying to imagine characters being tortured by their Evil "nature" while being Good, and I can't think of any character that wouldn't be an edgelord unless someone leaned heavily into satire or subverting stereotypes.
(The character is uncontrollably lapping up pools of blood and someone else admonishes, "Will you stop that?!" and whacks the character with a rolled up parchment. "Bad vampy! Bad vampy! No!")
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I just answered a similar question about chromatic dragons. To that, I said this:
There is, however, a difference between dragons and vampires. I noted in the above post that fiends and undead are generally an exception. Vampires are, however, sentient undead which possibly could have been cursed with undeath while still alive and recall their former lives. Because of this lore, I feel like vampires may play out somewhat like a lycanthrope, with the goodness of the creature battling against the evil of its curse. I think that helping such a vampire lift their curse could be an interesting quest, and I also tend to believe that it's better to allow something experimentally than ban it.
Overall idea: It's your choice. You are ultimately in charge of what lore is true in your campaign, regardless of what is quote-a-quote "true" according to official D&D lore. If you want to, put in a neutral good vampire NPC (or PC) who drinks the party's blood while still begging for their help ending its affliction and ROCK IT! Or do whatever else you want with vampires. As I said with my last post, you shouldn't hold back.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
I wouldn't say their's anything as a creature "always" being evil. The base and rgeular vampire is, but their are always anomalies.
You can also homebrew different rules about a vampires given alignment since your the DM.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.For consideration: Thibbledorf Pwent.
Dwarf berserker with horrendous hygiene, who frequently leaps into battle with nothing but spiked armor.
Pwent is also LOYAL to his dwarf king, Bruenor Battlehammer, to a point of self-sacrifice.
Which sort of indirectly led to Pwent becoming a vampire. Long story.
Anyway, he fought against the vampiric hunger, and retained his loyalty and memories, and eventually broke the curse.
Hmm…I suppose the answer would be: good vampires either fight against their curse; or they aren’t vampires for very long.
Obviously there is such a thing as a good vampire. But consider it for a moment. Vampires have to drain blood from a still-living body every few days to subsist themselves. Yes, they’re functionally immortal, but even a little longer without blood will drive them into an absolutely agonising hunger that will almost certainly consume their sanity.
And speaking of sanity, to become a vampire, you must have the blood drained from your FRIGGIN BODY and functionally die, before being risen once more as a lord of the undead.
Oh, and you now have a constant psychological connect to the plane of negative energy, just like all undead do. This would also corrupt your body and soul and drive you to ever more hedonistic heights of violence. And hey, y’know what, maybe that would affect your sanity too?
And just as the icing on the cake, you’ll be considered a vile monster by almost EVERY OTHER LIVING THING so being good to people will just get you killed by the militia or a head cleric or an adventuring party.
So yeah, there is definitely the possibility of a “good vampire” but when you consider the circumstances required for their creation and survival then it’s highly unlikely. But hey, you can change all this lore if you want to. Just thought this would be helpful to think about.
Be Excellent to one another. Rock on dude.
Even moreso, before becoming a full vampire they’re a spawn under direct control of their sire. That can’t be healthy.
If fact I might lore it like this: a vampire spawn might turn turn out alright if they’re liberated from their vampire before the later messes them up too much, but a sire is unlikely to raise one of their spawn to full vimpire-hood until they’ve thoroughly broken them down and built them back up as a monster just as bad as they are.
There's the whole "It takes a monster to fight a monster" trope.
An order of Paladin vampires who are carefully selected and given the opportunity to willingly become vampires to hunt vampires? Sure. Why not? They see it as a sacred sacrifice for the good of the realm.
How do they sustain themselves? Get creative.
Will they be large in number? Heck no! It is very likely they are excessively secretive, and being discovered causes all kinds of quandaries for them. It's possible there's only seven of them active at any one time with one highly trusted "familiar" accompanying each.
I'm half asleep and that's what I typed out. If it don't make sense, I'll blame being half asleep.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Not gonna dispute that for the long-term; but I do want to point out that a campaign might not last long enough for the mental toll to take effect and there's probably good ways to hide among humans.
But I do also want to point out that, in addition to what you just listed, a sufficiently-long-lived vampire would also simply cease to care about mortals simply because of how long life has gone for them. While it might be 'normal' until they hit 50 or 60 or so, after that the mortals they know, and time in general, will likely just become some indistinct blur and they'll stop developing attachments simply because they were alive before the human warrior's grandmother was born and it's all just a mush to them now. So they might stop caring heavily about people because it's become like eating bread to them... and they're on an all-bread diet. Even if they're morally compelled to 'spare the crust' (I.E. not kill the people they're drinking blood from), it won't be long before they just don't remember or care too much.
I am of the opinion a 'good vampire' can exist for certain, but I certainly get that there's just so many problems with it happening that, most of the time, it's bad writing.
In traditional D&D lore, vampires are uniformly evil and if you become a vampire you literally have to hand your character sheet over to the DM and roll a new character because you're not the same person anymore (See Curse of Strahd).
That's not to say you can't have good vampires in your traditional D&D game, you just have to know that they're an insane anomoly who probably has to work REALLY hard to not be murderous and vicious, and that should probably be a huge part of their character. It's the same as Bladesingers. TECHNICALY, you can only be an elf as a bladesinger, but once you know the lore, you can use it to create exeptions that still respect the original content (A halfling who stole an acient elvish tome of the hidden elvish secrets of bladesinging and learned of it).
Just know the rules, and then you can use that knowledge to break them in ways that make sense, so if you have players at your table who really like and respect D&D lore (me), you can balance agency with consistencty.
13 year DM. Mapmaker, lore encyclopedia and high priest of Maglubiyet.
Book me at goldgoblin.games
From the Monster manual:
So basically, vampires, trolls, goblins, whatever - all their stats are intended to as NPC stats. They're also intended to be the average of the species. But as anyone knows, averages have lots of variation on the outer edges. Also, if you're looking at them as player characters, then it's even more open to interpretation, as they're going to be a character concept for your player to experiment with, instead of simply a story element for them to work around.
I think there's plenty of depictions of vampires being the good guys in media (Twilight, Blade, Castlevania), so really it's up to you how you run them. In D&D I don't think there's anything explicitly stating they have to be evil, I'd imagine they'd retain a lot of their personality and alignment from before they were a vampire.
In fact, in D&D's history, not all Vampires are evil. Jander Sunstar is a notable exception to the general rule that Vampires are evil. He's basically the Drizzt of Vampires.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
That was like the 4th post of this thread, you even liked it, smh.
I think this thread has eclipsed itself, to draw a sort of goth theme to say it's gone full circle.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I did come up with an interesting solution. Namely having some wanting to dominate/be lords/treat humans like swine/etc. While others just want to be left in peace to live their vampiric un-lives. As such they come off as 'good' because, well, they're not going around feasting willy-nilly on everyone and basically just want to be left (relatively) alone. So no armies of spawn/zombies/etc. Or killing people (raises flags). Or any of that other stuff. May even be willing to help 'the cause of good/the party/etc' out, pretty much so they can go 'Okay. The crisis is resolved and the world isn't ending. You guys are nice and all, but I want to get back to living in the shadows. I saw a bandit camp on the way here and I'm feeling a bit peckish, so see you guys... maybe sometime in the future."
The real question is whether non-evil vampires can be non-annoying.
I'm so tired of the whole "woe is me I'm a vampire" character.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L8JrLtObw8AvcFw4JcW
Sorry I couldn’t get the link to work, but this is pretty much the definitive answer to the questions you’re asking, to quote The Simpsons “The short answer is no with a and, the long answer is yes with a but.”, for a vampire, even if you have Good or Neutral tendencies, you’ll still be torn between not killing people and drinking blood ( Although maybe you could do animal blood ~\ •_•/~ ), skeletons and zombies on the other hand just scare the living daylights out of commoners.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
Bah.
I'm sure there's a way to have a non-Evil vampire who is making the best of what fate or chance ordained without trying to make everyone else feel terrible about it. It can be amazing what people will rationalize to turn Armageddon into a wonderful chance to try new things.
It's all about the mindset.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I have always looked at it as two or even three types of vamps.
Those rare ones born vampires. Lawful Evil and working to prove it.
Those infected/turned for so long you can not tell them from a natural one or not. They have forgotten their past not vamp life but maybe not a very few specific memories.
Those who have recently been infected/turned. They vary from they do not even know about it yet( have not drank blood yet), to starting to forget their past life(drink at least weekly).