So I’m like interested on what people think about a PC becoming a Dhampir mainly but I believe this discussion could cover the other lineages in Van Richten’s Guide due to the fact there are some confusion I’m seeing and from my discussions with players and DMs. As rules for Dhampir say you keep any and all tool proficiencies, skill proficiencies and as well as movement speeds from your original race if you become this creature.
Looking in the Monster Manual p295 there are rules for PC’s becoming vampires and they keep basically everything from their old race aside from some stat increases and abilities from the vampirism. This ruling makes it sound like let’s say an Eladrin PC became a vampire they would keep their feystep racial feature but with Dhampir Eladrin they would lose this and with a Drow they would not only loose their 120ft dark vision but also their Drow racial cantrip and spells.
Like personally if a PC is becoming a Dhampir due to narrative in the campaign I’d let them keep their cantrips and racial features granted and possibly play a little with rolling will saves to keep from biting allies but if PC is making a straight up Dhampir before the first session I’d stick closer to Van Richten’s rules and say that it is an unlikely occurrence as like I think most campaigns don’t have a high chance of vampirism and I personally do see how overpowered a PC can be if they become Dhampir but I also think it’s unfair to take away racial abilities from before they became a vampire.
Like what are all your opinions on the rules and suggestions on rulings with these situations?
Dhampir (and all the lineages) really don’t feel great with races with unique features. Like, a Dhampir Centaur... what, stops having Equine build and hoof attacks? A Minotaurs horns fall off? A kobold stops cowering? I see why just providing a template that slaps on top of a race without taking anything away would be overpowered, without a 3.5-type “Level Adjustment” system in 5E to balance it, but to my eye the lineages only really make sense if you think of them as full races that entirely transform you to a new vanilla bipedal vamp, and abandon all expectation that you’re “still an elf” in any meaningful way.
Maybe natural weapons/armor should have carried over as well (armor would have easily been broken, but weapons not so much), but everything else can be made to make sense.
A lot if racial traits (spells, some senses, etc) can be attributed to magic, so taking a lineage simply cuts off that magic and replaces it with something else.
But mostly you lose traits for game balance purposes, and the lineages actually got buffed compared to UA because of feedback.
That’s true. I just think that special mini-classes (that only have something like 1-5 levels of progression) would have been a much better way to approach the sorts of things that once were 3.5 Templates with LA. It would have a built in cost that prevents character A with Template being stronger than character B, would require player to make trade offs between balancing class progression vs vampire/lycanthrope/etc power development, and wouldn’t result in someone ceasing to be a recognizeable Tortle the second they get plot-infected by a Vampire.
Once upon a time, and not that long ago, player characters that got changed into Vampires were expected to try and get *rid* of the condition. They got a pretty stout bonus, but the counter-balance was the risk they would lose their characters entirely and only see them again an NPC's. Doing otherwise risked upsetting the whole rest of the party unless they got the same or similar benefits somehow. The constant cry for viable characters with vampiric abilities has lead to what we are seeing in Van Richten's. The Dhampir are their take on vampire-like characters.
The Ancestral Lineages system doesn't take things about from the various races for no reason. I'm pretty sure they got tested, the feedback considered, and then tested again before they were released. A lot of the races in Volo's are borderline, and letting a Dhampir keep everything from them isn't likely to be a good idea in my mind.
Natural Weapons have been a huge mess for a long while. That whole "Natural Weapons are weapons, but not *really* Weapons, so you can't use the special abilities that require Weapons..." stuff went on and on. I think the Dhampir's Bite is the first time they have flat out labeled a Natural Weapon as a "simple" Weapon. That's going to make a lot of Monks and Paladins very happy, like they needed any help.
I only vaguely remember the Template system, and those memories are not good ones.
What if you are a variant human and you become a Dhampir in the course of the game. Would you say they can keep their free feat from their base race?
Mostly no would be my answer.
Ancestral Legacy
If you replace a race with this lineage, you can keep the following elements of that race: any skill proficiencies you gained from it and any climbing, flying, or swimming speed you gained from it.
The argument can be made (has been quite a few times on here tbh) that if the feat you chose gives you any skill proficiencies or speeds then you can keep those. Anything else though is clearly lost.
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So I’m like interested on what people think about a PC becoming a Dhampir mainly but I believe this discussion could cover the other lineages in Van Richten’s Guide due to the fact there are some confusion I’m seeing and from my discussions with players and DMs. As rules for Dhampir say you keep any and all tool proficiencies, skill proficiencies and as well as movement speeds from your original race if you become this creature.
Looking in the Monster Manual p295 there are rules for PC’s becoming vampires and they keep basically everything from their old race aside from some stat increases and abilities from the vampirism. This ruling makes it sound like let’s say an Eladrin PC became a vampire they would keep their feystep racial feature but with Dhampir Eladrin they would lose this and with a Drow they would not only loose their 120ft dark vision but also their Drow racial cantrip and spells.
Like personally if a PC is becoming a Dhampir due to narrative in the campaign I’d let them keep their cantrips and racial features granted and possibly play a little with rolling will saves to keep from biting allies but if PC is making a straight up Dhampir before the first session I’d stick closer to Van Richten’s rules and say that it is an unlikely occurrence as like I think most campaigns don’t have a high chance of vampirism and I personally do see how overpowered a PC can be if they become Dhampir but I also think it’s unfair to take away racial abilities from before they became a vampire.
Like what are all your opinions on the rules and suggestions on rulings with these situations?
Dhampir (and all the lineages) really don’t feel great with races with unique features. Like, a Dhampir Centaur... what, stops having Equine build and hoof attacks? A Minotaurs horns fall off? A kobold stops cowering? I see why just providing a template that slaps on top of a race without taking anything away would be overpowered, without a 3.5-type “Level Adjustment” system in 5E to balance it, but to my eye the lineages only really make sense if you think of them as full races that entirely transform you to a new vanilla bipedal vamp, and abandon all expectation that you’re “still an elf” in any meaningful way.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Maybe natural weapons/armor should have carried over as well (armor would have easily been broken, but weapons not so much), but everything else can be made to make sense.
A lot if racial traits (spells, some senses, etc) can be attributed to magic, so taking a lineage simply cuts off that magic and replaces it with something else.
But mostly you lose traits for game balance purposes, and the lineages actually got buffed compared to UA because of feedback.
That’s true. I just think that special mini-classes (that only have something like 1-5 levels of progression) would have been a much better way to approach the sorts of things that once were 3.5 Templates with LA. It would have a built in cost that prevents character A with Template being stronger than character B, would require player to make trade offs between balancing class progression vs vampire/lycanthrope/etc power development, and wouldn’t result in someone ceasing to be a recognizeable Tortle the second they get plot-infected by a Vampire.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Once upon a time, and not that long ago, player characters that got changed into Vampires were expected to try and get *rid* of the condition. They got a pretty stout bonus, but the counter-balance was the risk they would lose their characters entirely and only see them again an NPC's. Doing otherwise risked upsetting the whole rest of the party unless they got the same or similar benefits somehow. The constant cry for viable characters with vampiric abilities has lead to what we are seeing in Van Richten's. The Dhampir are their take on vampire-like characters.
The Ancestral Lineages system doesn't take things about from the various races for no reason. I'm pretty sure they got tested, the feedback considered, and then tested again before they were released. A lot of the races in Volo's are borderline, and letting a Dhampir keep everything from them isn't likely to be a good idea in my mind.
Natural Weapons have been a huge mess for a long while. That whole "Natural Weapons are weapons, but not *really* Weapons, so you can't use the special abilities that require Weapons..." stuff went on and on. I think the Dhampir's Bite is the first time they have flat out labeled a Natural Weapon as a "simple" Weapon. That's going to make a lot of Monks and Paladins very happy, like they needed any help.
I only vaguely remember the Template system, and those memories are not good ones.
<Insert clever signature here>
What if you are a variant human and you become a Dhampir in the course of the game. Would you say they can keep their free feat from their base race?
Mostly no would be my answer.
The argument can be made (has been quite a few times on here tbh) that if the feat you chose gives you any skill proficiencies or speeds then you can keep those. Anything else though is clearly lost.