Homebrew Dhampyr Species Details

Take the dhampyr, for example. There is nothing more disconcerting than a half-vampire staring you down in broad daylight, her red-tinged eyes glinting in the sun defiantly. Falira was her name, and I will never forget the week that we spent in her company, as part of a caravan making its way across the Outlands. She was as all of their race have been described to me, graceful, thin, and tragically pretty. It seemed as if the light of her soul had dimmed slightly in exchange for radiance without. She was also pale, especially when the sun shone on her, and her small fangs flashed menacingly when she laughed. Perhaps it was just my youth and inexperience with women, that she left such an impression on me, but I swear to this day I have not met a woman, mortal or otherwise, who surpasses her in either beauty or heaviness of heart. Of course, before I go on I should say that the dhampyr are not a race, not in the proper sense at any rate. No, they are best described as the cursed spawn of both vampire and mortal parents, still a mixed race by definition but one without its own shared culture or kingdom. You see, should a dhampyr have children, the vampiric blood becomes too diluted to pass on any powers to the next generation. This means that each and every dhampyr is truly unique, and also alone to face the world without a tribe or family to understand and support them. Back to my tale though, which I am happy to recount. A few of our fellow travelers were brave enough to ask Falira to join us for dinner. I suspect they did it out of common courtesy, or fear that she would be offended if they did not, but she was clearly glad for the company. I learned much sitting around the campfire those nights, clutching my cloak tightly against the chill and listening intently to her stories. She said that her kind lived about a century longer than their mortal kin, but were in no way immortal. That she had been born to a human mother who abandoned her at birth and to this day did not know which vampire fathered her. She grew up in the streets, cold, underfed, and utterly alone. There was no where for her to turn. Her kind were scorned by the rest of society, feared and persecuted ruthlessly. The usual places a street orphan could find a kind hand with three day old bread to share were the city temples, and entering one of those was a death sentence for someone like her. So instead she stole to survive, and hid her skin under rags and dirt and never smiled lest her fangs gave her away. She was asked why, as part vampire, she didn’t fight back. But it seems her powers laid dormant as a child, and it was not until her teen years that they began to emerge, and then it was a struggle to understand and control them without guidance. The campfire circle lay silent for a long while after that, punctuated only by the crackling flame and rustling wind. It was my master who asked a question next, about the common theory that dhampyr could also be created when a pregnant woman was bitten by a vampire, but of this Falira had no knowledge. He then continued on to discuss his opinions on whether most women who birthed dhampyr were willing consorts of the vampires, or if they were charmed into the act. He also recounted how most accounts of dhampyr births involved the death of the mother, and that Falira’s own mother must count herself lucky in that regard. It will come as no surprise, but subtlety was never one of my master’s strengths, nor was awareness of the emotions of others. Falira flushed in anger and stormed off to her wagon before it dawned on him that he might have been unkind. When we departed in the morning, she was nowhere to be found. I’ve poured over countless tomes since that night as the years have passed me by, looking for what dhampyr lore I could find. Whether I was enthralled by her latent vampiric charms, or simple youthful infatuations, her face has never fully left my mind. I worried I had become obsessed, having spent many an evening deep in thought, imagining both how that night might have gone differently had my master simply not spoken and what it must have been like for her to grow from a child with the weight of this curse upon her. Time heals all wounds though, as those prone to quoting proverbs might say, and indeed infatuation proved to be the same. The dhampyr are of course still a favorite topic of mine, how could they not be after all the time I spent researching them, but Falira never, or at least rarely, appears in my dreams anymore. My intensive research was also not wasted effort, for I am confident that there are patterns among the dhampyr births, ones I have noticed that have not been documented or discussed similarly in any other sources. In fact, it is my personal theory that there are four distinct types of dhampyr, though I do not know if they categorize themselves in this manner.

Dhampyr Malformation: While all dhampyr have all or most of the malformations described in the Dhampyr Malformation table to a lesser degree, some dhampyr have a particular malformation that has manifested itself much stronger, making its unholy heritage obvious to most.

Dhampyr Malformation

d6 Malformation

1 You have red-tinged or bloodshot eyes.

2 Your skin is exceptionally pale.

3 Your fangs are of similar size to those of a regular vampire.

4 Your movements are gracious and beautiful.

5 Your shadow is never as dark as the shadows of others.

6 You look deathly ill in direct sunlight

Dhampyr Traits

Your dhampyr character has the following racial traits.

Ability Score Increase

Your Constitution score increases by 1.

Age

Dhampyr reach adulthood in their late teens and live around two centuries.

Alignment

Dhampyr are lawful in nature, most commonly leaning towards evil.

Size

Dhampyr vary greatly in height, being of a similar build to humans. Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision

Your unholy heritage grants you superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Bite

Your fangs are a natural weapon, which you can use to attack a grappled or unconscious humanoid. You attack using either Strength or Dexterity. If you hit with it, you deal 1d6 piercing damage plus necrotic damage equal to your Constitution modifier. When you bite a living creature, you can regain a number of hit points equal to the necrotic damage done and gain enough nourishment (food and drink) to sustain you for one day. Once you regain hit points in this manner, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Hunter of the Night

You gain proficiency with the Perception and Stealth skills.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common.

Epic Racial: Spider Climb

Epic Racial: Spider Climb. When you reach 25th character level, you can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.

Subrace

Three subraces of dhampyr exist: the atoned dayborn, the manipulative darkborn, and the unholy trueborn.