I was just watching Vox Machina episodes 3-4 and I got to asking myself... are they? Clearly that's the general rule, but in Vampire TM (to the best of my knowledge) being a vampire doesn't actually CHANGE who you are personality/morally, but since you now sustain your life from siphoning blood from mainly people it's a dangerous tightrope to walk. Even if you want to be 'good' you're still drinking blood (likely non-consensually) from people and, eventually, you're almost certain to slip up and go a little to far one day. Even blood packs need to still be obtained and are usually intended to save people and you're turning them into snacks. All the while you could step out into the sun and rid the world of your presence ending a potential predator to humans. In Skyrim being a vampire doesn't make you evil either. You can sate your bloodlust from bandits and the like after all (though that's still a bit dubious, at least they're actively hostile to you). I've even heard that, in Warhammer (which I have no knowledge of other than scraps overheard at the gaming store) that vampires aren't EVIL by default, but their association, desire to rule, and everything makes them, at the least, cruel tyrants eager to dominate over the world. I.E. Better than if Chaos wins... but still a horrible outcome from humanity. I also vaguely recall some anime in which a schoolgirl wasn't evil and something about a good vampire almost killing an insect maid in some other anime.
But in D&D... I have no clue. Are they inherently evil? I mean, I'd believe all the ones depicted are... but I don't know if that's by CHOICE or something inherent to being one. Is it?
Vampires are lawful evil according to the PBH, but we do have the dhampir who can be player characters. They are basically half vampires but can control their hunger.
From the MM: "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."
Jander Sunstar is a D&D "canonical" example of a "good" character who struggles against his vampirism.
Monster manual as written says of a character who becomes vampire spawn or a vampire that their alignment becomes lawful evil and it may be appropriate for the DM to take over said character as an NPC.
I'd say most "undead" in D&D have traditionally been evil, but there's nothing stopping a DM from doing it differently, whether your Vampires are based on V:tM, the exceptions in the Buffyverse or the sparkly ones or what have you. But there's also nothing wrong with a DM saying Vampires are LE to the core without exception because of the nature of undeath in their game and there's no "but but in the Masquerade" protesting that will change it. Different game systems use monsters differently.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You (or your DM, at least) can always rule anything that fits your game as you want to play it. That being said, aside from ralatively recently Twilight fans and the like who want the sexy "bad boy" supernatural creatures to be redeemable so they don't have to feel guilty about liking them, all of the original folklore and nearly all stories, media, etc, since then depict vampires as morally ambivalent at best but generally they are monsters who only care about humans as a source of food. Vampires exist to be bad guys. They are bogeymen that lurk in the dark and are to be feared by anyone with an even slightly functional survival instinct. Some books/shows/movies depict them as more morally neutral, such as the Sookie Stackhouse novels (the basis of the show True Blood) and the Underworld movies but most or all of the vampires in even those consider humans to be beneath them and either servants or pets at best. Just because some audiences get turned on by the dark, dangerous, brooding, aloof goth guy/chick and like to watch such characters tear through their enemies like humanoid blenders at blurring speeds doesn't change the fact that their attitudes toward humans easily qualify as sociopathic. In the past few decades some shows and movies depicting "antihero" protagonists who are straight up, unapologetic criminals, particularly gangsters/mobsters, have become popular but "sociopathic" is still not a descriptor that applies to a "good guy" and your typical vampire that dotes on a single human lover is just as objectively evil as a mafia don that justifies a life of systematic thievery, extortion, and murder as a means of providing for their family.
Some media try to make a vampire character relatable and tragic or conflicted by fundamentally changing their nature to be less than purely vampiric, like Blade who is half human and as such possesses human morals and a desire to resist his fundamentally evil vampiric nature or Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer who was cursed by a ***** witch to regain his soul so he feels guilt for all the horrific evil things he had done. That way you get a protagonist that the audience can admire and root for guilt free while they use their badass supernatural vampiric abilities to fight against all the other vampires that are still straight up evil. Those characters are intentionally somehow different from "normal" vampires who are still generally irredeemably evil because they have always existed to be bad guys. Even World of Darkness vampires are explicitly monstrous by their fundamental nature; a primary focus of the entire game is roleplaying the challenges of maintaining some semblance of humanity against that evil nature while surrounded by other selfish, uncaring, supernatural monsters (or just willfully abandoning that humanity and then straight up just playing out a fantasy about being the bad guys).
Short answer: vampires are supposed to be bad guys. Their defining feature is that humans are their food. They're evil.
If you're looking for a good vampire look at Serana from Skyrim.
I looked it up. Evileye (ironically) is the good vampire from Overlord and there is an anime out there about someone's girlfriend being a vampire as well.
D&D morality is not an absolute--despite what a sizable number of players would argue to the contrary. Since the beginning of the game, we have seen characters who go beyond their racially-defined paradigms of good and evil, and you can generally ignore anyone who says that things "should" be a certain way. Wizards of the Coast certainly ignores those "should" voices and is increasingly excising defined alignments in favor of "suggested" alignments, specifically to make it clear that the DM can make whatever they want out of their own world. After all, D&D is a game about imagination and storytelling--you are free to write whatever story or characters you want.
All you have to do to make a good vampire is think of their primary underlying trait--their bloodlust--and work around that. You want to come up with a character who either can mitigate their bloodlust through other ways or who utilizes their bloodlust for a good end. A number of examples were listed both in your opening post and the subsequent responses, any number of which would be perfectly acceptable justifications for a "good" vampire.
At the risk of sounding redundant, I am going to provide yet another example--listed to give another example from Wizards of the Coast itself. Arvad is a character in Magic: the Gathering who was a knight who swore an oath of service and loyalty prior to becoming a vampire. His knightly morality and oath provide him the motivation he needs to fend off his bloodlust and keep him firmly on the "good" side of the good-evil spectrum.
Their monster manual entry makes it clear that becoming a vampire does change you, to the point of implying some vampires don’t even remember being alive. Essentially, all their previous emotions become cravings of some kind, all tying back to an intense but impossible longing to experience true life once more. I wouldn’t say that necessarily means they’ll be evil, but they’re being pushed towards it so hard that few minds could resist forever.
In one of my worlds, there's a city that, for a very long time, had the sun blotted out above it. Everyone thought it was a death trap, nothing alive dwelled there, etc. As it turns out, people can and will survive literally anywhere. In this case, there was a small vampire clan who had taken well to the eternal darkness, and when some people began to show up they struck a mutually beneficial deal: volunteers could donate blood, and they'd protect them from the horrors of the point abandoned city.
Eventually the PCs came along and ended the curse, but the vampires and their people wanted to remain. Eventually, some 300 years later, a more modern world developed and it was basically the world's worst kept secret that the city was run by vampires and survived off willing thralls.
I don’t know if this is prevalent in any of the Dungeon and Dragons multiverse (we have to remember how little we know of the multiverse), but in Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter books, vampires aren’t really evil but more neutral. There are some chaotic evil vampires but also lawful neutral ones as well, such as the character Simon.
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I enjoy writing, roleplaying, watching TVs and movies, and playing video games!
Currently playing the resident time lord in Las Aminour.
It's up to your DM and you. Alignment isn't something that should restrain you, especially since no one can agree on what it means to be CN (or any alignment for that matter.) I think for the most part it's up the the character. Are they strong willed and try to fight the curse or do they give into it embracing the evil origins? They could have DID (Dissociative identity disorder) with their good side trying to fight their inner vampire, this could have some fun RP value. The human side could be a lawful alignment while the vampire side is any evil alignment.
Also with this quote, the vampire character could suffer from a bit of depression. It could be fun to RP.
D&D morality is not an absolute--despite what a sizable number of players would argue to the contrary. Since the beginning of the game, we have seen characters who go beyond their racially-defined paradigms of good and evil, and you can generally ignore anyone who says that things "should" be a certain way. Wizards of the Coast certainly ignores those "should" voices and is increasingly excising defined alignments in favor of "suggested" alignments, specifically to make it clear that the DM can make whatever they want out of their own world. After all, D&D is a game about imagination and storytelling--you are free to write whatever story or characters you want.
I agree with this but I think it should be noted that the PHB says creatures such as demons and devils are pretty much always evil and if they somehow became good they would cease to be a demon/devil.
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Come check out some of my Homebrew (please give input!)
Had a nice, friendly character who became grumpy and greedy after becoming a werewolf even though the character was unaware of the lycanthropy.
It can be fun to alter the alignment of a character as long as we keep in mind that we're still playing with other players and not against them (even as a DM).
Also keep in mind that there are many ways to play Evil-to-Good alignment edits without ending up with an angsty, tortured, melancholy, antisocial, reclusive, edgy Drizzt 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.
I mean, obviously, the DM can do what they want. But the classical thought is that becoming a vampire doesn't grant a person powers. Becoming a vampire transforms the person into something completely different. They're not the same person. They are an undead monster than used that person as a foundation/fuel for their new existence.
Different settings and sources have different sets of lore about the nature of vampirism, but in D&D it has historically been the idea that becoming an undead perverts your essence to evil.
A lot of D&D is about the exceptional. So, feel free to break the standard, but be careful. When everything's exceptional, nothing is.
If the standard lore is that Undead—even intelligent Undead—are controlled by their desires rather than their personalities, don't just change the alignment willy-nilly without good and interesting reasons, including how and why.
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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.
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!
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I was just watching Vox Machina episodes 3-4 and I got to asking myself... are they? Clearly that's the general rule, but in Vampire TM (to the best of my knowledge) being a vampire doesn't actually CHANGE who you are personality/morally, but since you now sustain your life from siphoning blood from mainly people it's a dangerous tightrope to walk. Even if you want to be 'good' you're still drinking blood (likely non-consensually) from people and, eventually, you're almost certain to slip up and go a little to far one day. Even blood packs need to still be obtained and are usually intended to save people and you're turning them into snacks. All the while you could step out into the sun and rid the world of your presence ending a potential predator to humans. In Skyrim being a vampire doesn't make you evil either. You can sate your bloodlust from bandits and the like after all (though that's still a bit dubious, at least they're actively hostile to you). I've even heard that, in Warhammer (which I have no knowledge of other than scraps overheard at the gaming store) that vampires aren't EVIL by default, but their association, desire to rule, and everything makes them, at the least, cruel tyrants eager to dominate over the world. I.E. Better than if Chaos wins... but still a horrible outcome from humanity. I also vaguely recall some anime in which a schoolgirl wasn't evil and something about a good vampire almost killing an insect maid in some other anime.
But in D&D... I have no clue. Are they inherently evil? I mean, I'd believe all the ones depicted are... but I don't know if that's by CHOICE or something inherent to being one. Is it?
Vampires are lawful evil according to the PBH, but we do have the dhampir who can be player characters. They are basically half vampires but can control their hunger.
...its a bit more nuanced:
From the MM: "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."
..and there's the new changes: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/sage-advice/creature-evolutions
So I'd say your generic vampire is typically evil.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Jander Sunstar is a D&D "canonical" example of a "good" character who struggles against his vampirism.
Monster manual as written says of a character who becomes vampire spawn or a vampire that their alignment becomes lawful evil and it may be appropriate for the DM to take over said character as an NPC.
I'd say most "undead" in D&D have traditionally been evil, but there's nothing stopping a DM from doing it differently, whether your Vampires are based on V:tM, the exceptions in the Buffyverse or the sparkly ones or what have you. But there's also nothing wrong with a DM saying Vampires are LE to the core without exception because of the nature of undeath in their game and there's no "but but in the Masquerade" protesting that will change it. Different game systems use monsters differently.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You (or your DM, at least) can always rule anything that fits your game as you want to play it. That being said, aside from ralatively recently Twilight fans and the like who want the sexy "bad boy" supernatural creatures to be redeemable so they don't have to feel guilty about liking them, all of the original folklore and nearly all stories, media, etc, since then depict vampires as morally ambivalent at best but generally they are monsters who only care about humans as a source of food. Vampires exist to be bad guys. They are bogeymen that lurk in the dark and are to be feared by anyone with an even slightly functional survival instinct. Some books/shows/movies depict them as more morally neutral, such as the Sookie Stackhouse novels (the basis of the show True Blood) and the Underworld movies but most or all of the vampires in even those consider humans to be beneath them and either servants or pets at best. Just because some audiences get turned on by the dark, dangerous, brooding, aloof goth guy/chick and like to watch such characters tear through their enemies like humanoid blenders at blurring speeds doesn't change the fact that their attitudes toward humans easily qualify as sociopathic. In the past few decades some shows and movies depicting "antihero" protagonists who are straight up, unapologetic criminals, particularly gangsters/mobsters, have become popular but "sociopathic" is still not a descriptor that applies to a "good guy" and your typical vampire that dotes on a single human lover is just as objectively evil as a mafia don that justifies a life of systematic thievery, extortion, and murder as a means of providing for their family.
Some media try to make a vampire character relatable and tragic or conflicted by fundamentally changing their nature to be less than purely vampiric, like Blade who is half human and as such possesses human morals and a desire to resist his fundamentally evil vampiric nature or Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer who was cursed by a ***** witch to regain his soul so he feels guilt for all the horrific evil things he had done. That way you get a protagonist that the audience can admire and root for guilt free while they use their badass supernatural vampiric abilities to fight against all the other vampires that are still straight up evil. Those characters are intentionally somehow different from "normal" vampires who are still generally irredeemably evil because they have always existed to be bad guys. Even World of Darkness vampires are explicitly monstrous by their fundamental nature; a primary focus of the entire game is roleplaying the challenges of maintaining some semblance of humanity against that evil nature while surrounded by other selfish, uncaring, supernatural monsters (or just willfully abandoning that humanity and then straight up just playing out a fantasy about being the bad guys).
Short answer: vampires are supposed to be bad guys. Their defining feature is that humans are their food. They're evil.
If you're looking for a good vampire look at Serana from Skyrim.
Wizards should bring back old settings and try to stop neglecting the other continents of the Forgotten Realms.
Yes I like realmslore, why do you ask?
I like dragon quest and deltarune. Yes I realize this invalidates both me and my opinion.
I hate how Fantasy words like Mezoberainian get the little red spellcheck line.
I believe in TORTLE SUPREMECY
"Hey all Scott here and this is bad, real bad"- Scott Wozniak (also every session I seem to run)
I think I made this a bit too long.
I looked it up. Evileye (ironically) is the good vampire from Overlord and there is an anime out there about someone's girlfriend being a vampire as well.
D&D morality is not an absolute--despite what a sizable number of players would argue to the contrary. Since the beginning of the game, we have seen characters who go beyond their racially-defined paradigms of good and evil, and you can generally ignore anyone who says that things "should" be a certain way. Wizards of the Coast certainly ignores those "should" voices and is increasingly excising defined alignments in favor of "suggested" alignments, specifically to make it clear that the DM can make whatever they want out of their own world. After all, D&D is a game about imagination and storytelling--you are free to write whatever story or characters you want.
All you have to do to make a good vampire is think of their primary underlying trait--their bloodlust--and work around that. You want to come up with a character who either can mitigate their bloodlust through other ways or who utilizes their bloodlust for a good end. A number of examples were listed both in your opening post and the subsequent responses, any number of which would be perfectly acceptable justifications for a "good" vampire.
At the risk of sounding redundant, I am going to provide yet another example--listed to give another example from Wizards of the Coast itself. Arvad is a character in Magic: the Gathering who was a knight who swore an oath of service and loyalty prior to becoming a vampire. His knightly morality and oath provide him the motivation he needs to fend off his bloodlust and keep him firmly on the "good" side of the good-evil spectrum.
Their monster manual entry makes it clear that becoming a vampire does change you, to the point of implying some vampires don’t even remember being alive. Essentially, all their previous emotions become cravings of some kind, all tying back to an intense but impossible longing to experience true life once more. I wouldn’t say that necessarily means they’ll be evil, but they’re being pushed towards it so hard that few minds could resist forever.
Entirely up to the DM.
In one of my worlds, there's a city that, for a very long time, had the sun blotted out above it. Everyone thought it was a death trap, nothing alive dwelled there, etc. As it turns out, people can and will survive literally anywhere. In this case, there was a small vampire clan who had taken well to the eternal darkness, and when some people began to show up they struck a mutually beneficial deal: volunteers could donate blood, and they'd protect them from the horrors of the point abandoned city.
Eventually the PCs came along and ended the curse, but the vampires and their people wanted to remain. Eventually, some 300 years later, a more modern world developed and it was basically the world's worst kept secret that the city was run by vampires and survived off willing thralls.
I don’t know if this is prevalent in any of the Dungeon and Dragons multiverse (we have to remember how little we know of the multiverse), but in Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter books, vampires aren’t really evil but more neutral. There are some chaotic evil vampires but also lawful neutral ones as well, such as the character Simon.
I enjoy writing, roleplaying, watching TVs and movies, and playing video games!
Currently playing the resident time lord in Las Aminour.
Want to check out my stuff? Here’s my campaign:
My Campaign
It's up to your DM and you. Alignment isn't something that should restrain you, especially since no one can agree on what it means to be CN (or any alignment for that matter.) I think for the most part it's up the the character. Are they strong willed and try to fight the curse or do they give into it embracing the evil origins? They could have DID (Dissociative identity disorder) with their good side trying to fight their inner vampire, this could have some fun RP value. The human side could be a lawful alignment while the vampire side is any evil alignment.
Also with this quote, the vampire character could suffer from a bit of depression. It could be fun to RP.
Vampires are evil by default, but don't always have to be as the DM can always change monster's alignment.
I agree with this but I think it should be noted that the PHB says creatures such as demons and devils are pretty much always evil and if they somehow became good they would cease to be a demon/devil.
Come check out some of my Homebrew (please give input!)
Make some trinket tables on this thread!
Had a nice, friendly character who became grumpy and greedy after becoming a werewolf even though the character was unaware of the lycanthropy.
It can be fun to alter the alignment of a character as long as we keep in mind that we're still playing with other players and not against them (even as a DM).
Also keep in mind that there are many ways to play Evil-to-Good alignment edits without ending up with an angsty, tortured, melancholy, antisocial, reclusive, edgy
Drizztcharacter.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.
yes
I mean, obviously, the DM can do what they want. But the classical thought is that becoming a vampire doesn't grant a person powers. Becoming a vampire transforms the person into something completely different. They're not the same person. They are an undead monster than used that person as a foundation/fuel for their new existence.
Different settings and sources have different sets of lore about the nature of vampirism, but in D&D it has historically been the idea that becoming an undead perverts your essence to evil.
A lot of D&D is about the exceptional. So, feel free to break the standard, but be careful. When everything's exceptional, nothing is.
If the standard lore is that Undead—even intelligent Undead—are controlled by their desires rather than their personalities, don't just change the alignment willy-nilly without good and interesting reasons, including how and why.
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'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!