Shapechanger. If the vampire isn’t in sunlight or running water, it can use its action to polymorph into a Tiny bat or a Medium cloud of mist, or back into its true form.
While in bat form, the vampire can’t speak, its walking speed is 5 feet, and it has a flying speed of 30 feet. Its statistics, other than its size and speed, are unchanged. Anything it is wearing transforms with it, but nothing it is carrying does. It reverts to its true form if it dies.
While in mist form, the vampire can’t take any actions, speak, or manipulate objects. It is weightless, has a flying speed of 20 feet, can hover, and can enter a hostile creature’s space and stop there. In addition, if air can pass through a space, the mist can do so without squeezing, and it can’t pass through water. It has advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws, and it is immune to all nonmagical damage, except the damage it takes from sunlight.
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the vampire fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
Misty Escape. When it drops to 0 hit points outside its resting place, the vampire transforms into a cloud of mist (as in the Shapechanger trait) instead of falling unconscious, provided that it isn’t in sunlight or running water. If it can’t transform, it is destroyed.
While it has 0 hit points in mist form, it can’t revert to its vampire form, and it must reach its resting place within 2 hours or be destroyed. Once in its resting place, it reverts to its vampire form. It is then paralyzed until it regains at least 1 hit point. After spending 1 hour in its resting place with 0 hit points, it regains 1 hit point.
Regeneration. The vampire regains 20 hit points at the start of its turn if it has at least 1 hit point and isn’t in sunlight or running water. If the vampire takes radiant damage or damage from holy water, this trait doesn’t function at the start of the vampire’s next turn.
Spider Climb. The vampire can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.
Vampire Weaknesses. The vampire has the following flaws:
Forbiddance. The vampire can’t enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.
Harmed by Running Water. The vampire takes 20 acid damage if it ends its turn in running water.
Stake to the Heart. If a piercing weapon made of wood is driven into the vampire’s heart while the vampire is incapacitated in its resting place, the vampire is paralyzed until the stake is removed.
Sunlight Hypersensitivity. The vampire takes 20 radiant damage when it starts its turn in sunlight. While in sunlight, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.
Multiattack. (Vampire Form Only). The vampire makes two attacks, only one of which can be a bite attack.
Unarmed Strike (Vampire Form Only). Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 8 (1d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage. Instead of dealing damage, the vampire can grapple the target (escape DC 18).
Bite. (Bat or Vampire Form Only). Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft., one willing creature, or a creature that is grappled by the vampire, incapacitated, or restrained. Hit: 7 (1d6 + 4) piercing damage plus 10 (3d6) necrotic damage. The target’s hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken, and the vampire regains hit points equal to that amount. The reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0. A humanoid slain in this way and then buried in the ground rises the following night as a vampire spawn under the vampire’s control.
Charm. The vampire targets one humanoid it can see within 30 feet of it. If the target can see the vampire, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or be charmed by the vampire. The charmed target regards the vampire as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn’t under the vampire’s control, it takes the vampire’s requests or actions in the most favorable way it can, and it is a willing target for the vampire’s bite attack.
Each time the vampire or the vampire’s companions do anything harmful to the target, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success. Otherwise, the effect lasts 24 hours or until the vampire is destroyed, is on a different plane of existence than the target, or takes a bonus action to end the effect.
Children of the Night (1/Day). The vampire magically calls 2d4 swarms of bats or rats, provided that the sun isn’t up. While outdoors, the vampire can call 3d6 wolves instead. The called creatures arrive in 1d4 rounds, acting as allies of the vampire and obeying its spoken commands. The beasts remain for 1 hour, until the vampire dies, or until the vampire dismisses them as a bonus action.
The vampire can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The vampire regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Move. The vampire moves up to its speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
Unarmed Strike. The vampire makes one unarmed strike.
Bite (Costs 2 Actions). The vampire makes one bite attack.
A Vampire’s Lair
A vampire chooses a grand yet defensible location for its lair, such as a castle, fortified manor, or walled abbey. It hides its coffin in an underground crypt or vault guarded by vampire spawn or other loyal creatures of the night.
Regional Effects
The region surrounding a vampire’s lair is warped by the creature’s unnatural presence, creating any of the following effects:
- There’s a noticeable increase in the populations of bats, rats, and wolves in the region.
- Plants within 500 feet of the lair wither, and their stems and branches become twisted and thorny.
- Shadows cast within 500 feet of the lair seem abnormally gaunt and sometimes move as though alive.
- A creeping fog clings to the ground within 500 feet of the vampire’s lair. The fog occasionally takes eerie forms, such as grasping claws and writhing serpents.
If the vampire is destroyed, these effects end after 2d6 days.
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Posted Aug 24, 2020I was wondering, would it make sense for a PC that became a true Vampire to still have their spells and abilities from life?
For example, my drow druid became a vampire, would I be able to use him as a boss in a future game, a druid Vampire?
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Posted Aug 26, 2020It's shadowfell heebie jeebieie stuff if I'm not mistaken
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Posted Aug 27, 2020How does an unarmed strike do 1d8??
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Posted Sep 5, 2020Absolutely. In fact, the Monster Manual actually includes an example of a vampire with a wizard’s Spellcasting trait, and another with a fighter’s armor and weapons.
That being said, many gods and some druid circles don’t like undead, so a divine caster may be forced to change his subclass (especially if he embraces his vampiric nature).
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Posted Oct 30, 2020Is the +6 creature thing from a past edition? I’m pretty new to DMing and have only ever tried 5e.
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Posted Nov 3, 2020I'm pretty sure it just comes from them being undead, my guy. A supernatural state comes with supernatural attributes.
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Posted Nov 3, 2020I love how they don't skimp on the classical rules of vampirism like running water or entering homes uninvited. God, I wish this was a playable race!
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Posted Nov 5, 2020It’s from older editions. CR and level worked differently, so the “value” of templates (like vampirism) were a little easier to quantify.
Although, it doesn’t mesh perfectly with 5e, it’s a pretty good rule to barrow for playing as (powerful) monsters.
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Posted Nov 5, 2020I have to agree completely. The weaknesses exploited by weird, folktale defenses add a lot of texture to the creature.
It’s really cool to look at the material people come up with on how the curse vampirism twists a PC’s thoughts and actions. Everyone seems to have a slightly different perspective.
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Posted Nov 28, 2020What is a "significant amount of dirt" that would need to be moved to create a new resting place? Also, if you create a new resting place, does the dirt of that location now the official dirt that can be moved to create more? So if a vampire left town, with a crate of dirt only would they only be able to create one resting place or many later on?
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Posted Nov 30, 2020Normally, it has to be from the original gravesite, where the vampire first rose.
The minimum turns out to be a foot-deep covering (assuming no coffins are involved). That’s quite a bit, and dirt is kind of heavy. Nevertheless, a well-prepared vampire could easily smuggle enough, as luggage, to create half a dozen resting places (like Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel).
On the other hand, if your spawn is fleeing town with just a few pillowcases full of dirt, it will be lucky if it has enough for one resting place before it needs to risk going back for more.
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Posted Dec 5, 2020vampire spawn become free willed when their creator dies, but would they become free willed if the vampire ceases to be an vampire, such as if one is cured of vampirisim or if you only turned into a vampire thanks to true polymorph? becuase if so true polymorph would alongside conjure greater demon be another fantastic and thematic tool in the necromancer's toolkit
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Posted Dec 9, 2020For homebrew monsters, how does one recreate the subbox in the description, like how this has for the variants?
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Posted Dec 28, 2020Guys...if you are playing RAW and aren't homebrewing vampire rules (let's face it, most of the people trying to play a vampire wanna play their version of it)...don't play it.
I mean you are an adventurer. You enter places. These places are often residences. You can't enter unless invited.
Like you can't enter a dragon's lair unless you coax the dragon into giving some evil speech or something. All "steal this or get that" missions are forever out of your reach because you literally have to charm the occupants into letting you in.
Also you can never take a shower ever again.
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Posted Jan 9, 2021I think that in the kind of game that would have a vampire villain, it would be a kinda awesome way to do a tpk.
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Posted Jan 21, 2021These are all powers that the original Dracula had - including the weaknesses.
Although as far as I know, sunlight didn't directly harm Dracula, only disabled his abilities (including shapeshifting, making him stuck in whatever form he currently had until nighttime) and tired him out as such he would, of course, prefer to avoid it.
He also had a few other tricks - some of which are actually implemented into Strahd's lair actions.
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Posted Jan 21, 2021The invitation need not be from the owner only someone currently inside, so as long as you have one non-vampire in your party they just enter and invite you after themselves.
As for the shower, you're dead, so you wouldn't sweat. Or, just take Magic Initiate and learn Prestidigitation.
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Posted Jan 28, 2021So, I have a question regarding damage resistance. It states resistance to p/s/b from non-magical attacks. What constitutes an attack as being magical? For instance, the Blood Hunter class can add elemental damage on to their attacks from the crimson rite ability. It states that it adds X elemental damage to the attack and that this damage is magical. Would that make the weapon count as magical and thus would bypass Vampire damage resistance?
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Posted Feb 1, 2021An interesting question. One of the early errata for the Monster Manual was this:
This was done to avoid Unarmed Strike being able to bypass the resistance or immunity, since it's not considered a weapon. But the intent is clearly that nonmagical weapons are subject to such resistances. Only the additional damage from Crimson Rite is stated to be magical, it doesn't say that the weapon becomes magical. So I would say that if you're using a mundane weapon with Crimson Rite active on it, the weapon's normal p/s/b damage would still be resisted. Booming Blade is similar (though admittedly also a bit different), it deals magical damage as part of the spell, but the attack made to trigger it uses the weapon's normal characteristics.
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Posted Feb 1, 2021yes, an Unearthed Arcana was recently released. Now you can play as a Dhampir.