I am looking for help with a character build for one of my PCs. The player and I would like for their character to replicate the powers of a vampire to the greatest extent possible. That is to say, supernatural strength, speed, and toughness, shapeshifting, charm powers, and of course feeding on other creatures' life force.
Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated and I'm open to using homebrew so long as it's reasonably balanced. Thanks!
Hmm. Really depends what parts are most important to you; Barbarians are the only ones with a solid handle on something approaching supernatural strength and toughness, but you want a spellcaster for charm powers- Enchantment Wizard, Archfey Warlock, Glamour Bard- and about the only vampire-like feeding on life force option is a Dhampir. Not sure if you can really put them together in a way that reads like a traditional vampire.
Hungry Jaws ability works with Bite give them temp Hit points
Natural Armor makes the vampire harder to hit or hurt even when they're not wearing armor
Hold Breath is a decent way of representing a vampire who requires no oxygen
Nature's Intuition will work nicely to give you proficiency in Perception for the vampire keen senses and Stealth for their skulking nature
Barbarian:
Big hit dice and Vampires are hard to kill anyway
Strength and Constitution for the tough vampire to ignore hits and show off strength
Skills of Intimidation and Athletics work well for the Vampire's nature and strength
Rage really works well for a bloodthirsty vampire going in for the kill and becoming even stronger to grapple and use the Lizardfolk bite
Unarmored Defence overshadows the Lizardfolk Natural Armor if you invest enough in Constitution
Reckless Attack for a Vamprie to just tough it out and take the hits.
Danger Sense works well again for vampires to avoid attacks from their speed
Instinctive Pounce (Optional) Extra move for a fast vampire on their initial frenzy to attack. Sounds about right
The higher feats just add to the above but the level 20 capstone of Primal Champion lets them go above and beyond
Path of the Zealot:
Divine Fury to do extra necrotic damage with weapons? Sounds like a vampire
Warrior of the Gods to be easily resurrected from death? Sounds like a vampire
Fanatical Focus to win saving throws more. works well enough
Zealous Presence only really works if you think of the other party members as vampire spawn
Rage beyond Death is right on the ball for a Vampire to keep going beyond death
Lycanthropy:
werewolf not the most common one but Vampires are known for transforming into a wolf
werebat not a monster in the main source books but gives you your bat transformation
protection from unsilvered weapons is right in with Vampire
FEATS:
Fey Touched will let you Misty Step which is on par with Vampires and if you take the "Charm Person" spell you have your charming vampire.
Shadow Touched gives Invisibility which can match with a Vampire's ability to become mist, smog or just vanish from sight You could take Inflict Wounds for that vampiric touch
Lucky shows off just more resistance with saving throws to re-roll, etc.
Mobile to move farther and not get bogged down as a fast vampire who can turn to mist is want to do.
Skulker to work even better from those shadows and more easily see people in dim light
Alert to avoid being surprise yourself and get better in the initiative
Magic Items:
Slippers of Spider Climbing to straight away cover the vampire crawling easily all over the walls and ceiling
Cloak of the Bat need I say more?
After all that, its up to you and the DM to work out anything around sunlight sensitivity.
Dhampir Warlock would give a really strong base to build a vampire like build. Many invocations can repliate the powers of a vampire like Mask of Many Faces (and later Master of Myriad Forms) to simulate shapeshifting.
Hungry Jaws ability works with Bite give them temp Hit points
Natural Armor makes the vampire harder to hit or hurt even when they're not wearing armor
Hold Breath is a decent way of representing a vampire who requires no oxygen
Nature's Intuition will work nicely to give you proficiency in Perception for the vampire keen senses and Stealth for their skulking nature
Barbarian:
Big hit dice and Vampires are hard to kill anyway
Strength and Constitution for the tough vampire to ignore hits and show off strength
Skills of Intimidation and Athletics work well for the Vampire's nature and strength
Rage really works well for a bloodthirsty vampire going in for the kill and becoming even stronger to grapple and use the Lizardfolk bite
Unarmored Defence overshadows the Lizardfolk Natural Armor if you invest enough in Constitution
Reckless Attack for a Vamprie to just tough it out and take the hits.
Danger Sense works well again for vampires to avoid attacks from their speed
Instinctive Pounce (Optional) Extra move for a fast vampire on their initial frenzy to attack. Sounds about right
The higher feats just add to the above but the level 20 capstone of Primal Champion lets them go above and beyond
Path of the Zealot:
Divine Fury to do extra necrotic damage with weapons? Sounds like a vampire
Warrior of the Gods to be easily resurrected from death? Sounds like a vampire
Fanatical Focus to win saving throws more. works well enough
Zealous Presence only really works if you think of the other party members as vampire spawn
Rage beyond Death is right on the ball for a Vampire to keep going beyond death
Lycanthropy:
werewolf not the most common one but Vampires are known for werewolf
werebat not in the main source books but pretty typical of a Vampire
protection from unsilvered weapons is right in with Vampire
FEATS:
Fey Touched will let you Misty Step which is on par with Vampires and if you take the "Charm Person" spell you have your charming vampire.
Shadow Touched gives Invisibility which can match with a Vampire's ability to become mist, smog or just vanish from sight You could take Inflict Wounds for that vampiric touch
Lucky shows off just more resistance with saving throws to re-roll, etc.
Magic Items:
Slippers of Spider Climbing to straight away cover the vampire crawling easily all over the walls and ceiling
Mobile to move farther and not get bogged down as a fast vampire who can turn to mist is want to do.
Skulker to work even better from those shadows and more easily see people in dim light
Alert to avoid being surprise yourself and get better in the initiative
After all that, its up to you and the DM to work out anything around sunlight sensitivity.
This, and maybe take a small 2 or 3 warlock level dip, just for features, so I wouldn’t try to justify it. A lot of the features warlocks get are on point with vampires, with the pact slots and Eldritch Invocations, it should be easy enough to make it vampiresque.
Dhampir gives you the bite attack and free spider climb.
Wizards fit the theme really well, with Vampiric Touch giving you the claw attacks, and you get the charm spells, polymorph mist form, etc, all based on your Intelligence, which is much easier than trying to get your Strength, Constitution and Charismas all high. I'm partial to the 3rd party Bloodmage subclass released by Critical Role for this theme.
If your DM allows you to reflavor or otherwise use the Wildspacer background, or if your group uses the free feat at L1 house-rule, that lets you have the Tough feat at L1. If your 2nd highest stat is Constitution, and you have the Tough Feat, you should be alright, even with the Wizard's lower hit dice. If you took the Witherbloom background, you could have healing spells so you can escape when things get bad, regenerate, and return to the fight.
Barbarians give you the strength and durability, but preclude the use of the Vampires' other classic abilities in combat.
Usually true. But they released an article a month or so ago talking about PC vampires. I can't find it anymore on beyond. But they mention how to make PC vampires. It was essentially just taking the vampire monster stat block and a few other minor abilities and just giving them to a player.
It can be done, just like there was that module they released ahead of Fizban's that had the players using Young White Dragon stat blocks, but it's not a feature intended for typical play. The article even specifically lists Dhampirs as the more balanced option.
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Greetings all!
I am looking for help with a character build for one of my PCs. The player and I would like for their character to replicate the powers of a vampire to the greatest extent possible. That is to say, supernatural strength, speed, and toughness, shapeshifting, charm powers, and of course feeding on other creatures' life force.
Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated and I'm open to using homebrew so long as it's reasonably balanced. Thanks!
I love Greenland when it's Africa size!
Hmm. Really depends what parts are most important to you; Barbarians are the only ones with a solid handle on something approaching supernatural strength and toughness, but you want a spellcaster for charm powers- Enchantment Wizard, Archfey Warlock, Glamour Bard- and about the only vampire-like feeding on life force option is a Dhampir. Not sure if you can really put them together in a way that reads like a traditional vampire.
Lizardfolk:
Barbarian:
Path of the Zealot:
Lycanthropy:
FEATS:
Magic Items:
After all that, its up to you and the DM to work out anything around sunlight sensitivity.
Dhampir Warlock would give a really strong base to build a vampire like build. Many invocations can repliate the powers of a vampire like Mask of Many Faces (and later Master of Myriad Forms) to simulate shapeshifting.
This, and maybe take a small 2 or 3 warlock level dip, just for features, so I wouldn’t try to justify it. A lot of the features warlocks get are on point with vampires, with the pact slots and Eldritch Invocations, it should be easy enough to make it vampiresque.
Dhampir gives you the bite attack and free spider climb.
Wizards fit the theme really well, with Vampiric Touch giving you the claw attacks, and you get the charm spells, polymorph mist form, etc, all based on your Intelligence, which is much easier than trying to get your Strength, Constitution and Charismas all high. I'm partial to the 3rd party Bloodmage subclass released by Critical Role for this theme.
If your DM allows you to reflavor or otherwise use the Wildspacer background, or if your group uses the free feat at L1 house-rule, that lets you have the Tough feat at L1. If your 2nd highest stat is Constitution, and you have the Tough Feat, you should be alright, even with the Wizard's lower hit dice. If you took the Witherbloom background, you could have healing spells so you can escape when things get bad, regenerate, and return to the fight.
Barbarians give you the strength and durability, but preclude the use of the Vampires' other classic abilities in combat.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/17043-vampire
Take everything found here and apply it to the PC.
Usually true. But they released an article a month or so ago talking about PC vampires. I can't find it anymore on beyond. But they mention how to make PC vampires. It was essentially just taking the vampire monster stat block and a few other minor abilities and just giving them to a player.
FOUND IT!!
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1467-playing-as-a-vampire-in-d-d
It can be done, just like there was that module they released ahead of Fizban's that had the players using Young White Dragon stat blocks, but it's not a feature intended for typical play. The article even specifically lists Dhampirs as the more balanced option.