Although vampires can be incredibly strong, their curse still comes with several notable drawbacks. Regardless of if you are a vampire spawn or a true vampire, you are affected by the following weakness unless specified otherwise:

Forbiddance: You can't enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.
Running Water: Your flesh is torn apart in the presence of water, you take 20 acid damage when you end your turn in running water. This damage may not be reduced in any way.
Stake to the Heart: If a piercing weapon made of wood is driven into your heart while incapacitated in your coffinic structure, you become paralyzed until the stake is removed if you are a true vampire. However, if you are a vampire spawn, you are instead destroyed.
Sunlight Hypersensitivity: You sear and burn in the light of the sun, your flesh immolating. If you end your turn in direct sunlight, you take 20 radiant damage. You also have disadvantage on any attack rolls and ability checks when in direct sunlight.

All vampires are bound to a coffinic structure, normally some form of large container that usually takes the form of a sarcophagus, casket, or coffin. It is here that a vampires rests and reforms when they're defeated. They are usually hidden away in areas that are difficult to access by non-vampires and are heavily protected by minions, traps, and thralls. A coffinic structure is made from the wood of your original coffin, or the stone of your original tombstone in some cases. The structure is large enough to encase your body in and must have an opening to allow mist to enter and exit. If a vampires didn't receive a formal burial, it must lie beneath a foot of earth at the place of its transition to undeath. A vampires can move its place of burial by transporting its coffinic structure or a significant amount of grave dirt to another location. Some vampires set up multiple resting places this way.

With your Dungeon Master's discretion, the area in which your coffinic structure rests for 2d6 days can be considered your lair, manifesting the following regional effects as it is warped by your unnatural presence:

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 you are destroyed, or you move your coffinic structure to elsewhere these effects end after 2d6 days.

Undead are not born, and vampires are no exception to this. When a creature dies and rises as a vampire or vampire spawn their race becomes this one, losing their previous traits, ability score increases, etc. Only retaining parts of their physical appearance as their personality is warped into a mockery of their former self. Vampires are usually the result of a dark pact and while the mortal may not make the deal with the goal of becoming a vampire in mind the dark powers they've negotiated with cares little and only seeks to sow as much evil and strife within the world as a result of such a deal. Powerful beings of evil such as malevolent gods are also capable of afflicting a mortal with vampirism.

It is a common misconception that being bitten by a vampire can turn you into one. When in practice it only, kills you, warping your body and mind into a creature of evil, a vampire spawn and as such a slave to the true vampire that killed you. It is only by drinking the blood of the vampire that turned you can a vampire spawn then become a vampires. Though, few vampires are willing to relinquish their control in this manner.

Dark Desire Table
This section provides a table for players and Dungeon Masters who want to choose or randomly generate dark desires and where they originated from for vampires. It is recommended that if you are picking a desire for an already made character, that you pick traits that oppose or are the warped version of one of your character virtues.

d8 Desire Description Example

1 Greed - Greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth. The hoarding of materials or objects, theft, and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by Greed. Greed can be considered to be the warped form of charity. A generous cleric who becomes a vampire may acquire a taste for the blood of those whose mouths they once fed out of their own pocket. Luring them in with their known charity only to drain them of their lives and possesses.

2 Lust - Lust is characterized as an intense longing. It is usually thought of as intense or unbridled sexual desire, which leads to fornication, adultery, ****, bestiality, and other fraudulent sexual acts. However, lust can also mean simply desire in general; thus, hunger for money, power, and other things are also considered lust. Lust strips away the meaning of things and as such, it is produced from chastity or purity. A vampire that once loved someone or something without all their heart may find their love has been warped into a hungry self-destructive obsession.

3 Gluttony - Gluttony is overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. Gluttony stems from temperance or self-restraint, a champion fighter might work every day of their life to mold their body into a perfect fighting machine, refraining from eating anything outside of their precisely thought out diet. As a vampire, that same fighter may wipe a village off the face of the planet when they receive even a pang of hunger, drinking, bathing and wastefully spilling the blood of others despite only needing a few sips to sate themselves.

4 Sloth - Sloth is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation. Sloth may rise from diligence, zeal, integrity or labor. For example, a Monk who along with his brother who has spent years searching for an item of significance to their monastery that has become a vampire may kill their brother, sell all their research to a rival monastery and then sit in their coffin for as long as they can until their hunger forces them on the hunt.

5 Wrath - It is important to understand that anger isn't evil nor good, it is a neutral act on the scale of good and evil, however, anger becomes wrath when it is directed against an innocent, when it is unduly, unbending or long-lasting, or when it desires excessive punishment. Anger becomes wrath when it reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound. It is the desiring that someone else may suffer misfortune or evil. Wrath stems not just from anger, but peace, composure, and forgiveness. It comes from a feeling of being wronged usually. A character that becomes a vampire may seek vengeance against any and all that have wronged them in the most brutal and cruelest fashion they are capable of regardless of the severity of the offense. Another may seek to use their position they held in life to incite war, strife and pain all so they have an excuse to take to the battlefield and rend skin from flesh from bone.

6 Envy - Envy is the need to have better or be better than others. Is it the need to have the goods, possession or even the connection of others. Wanting what others have for yourself. Envy stems from kindness and admiration. A once diligent pupil may become envious of their teachers, achievements, skills, abilities and such and thus seem to destroy or take for themselves any of those, potentially wearing the guise of the even diligent student. A wizard's apprentice may steal the spellbook or research of his master, a warrior may challenge his mentor to a dual and using his vampiric might to surpass him to take his formal position as a leader, and one best friend may kill his own just to secure his position as a woman's suitor.

7 Pride - Pride is considered by some to be the root of all evil and naturally is the most common characteristics for a true vampire to have. The almost stereotypical haughty and self-important vampire lord radiates an aura of superiority as they look down at the foolish adventurers who would dare challenge them. Unlike the other sins presented here, pride is natural for every true vampire to possess, and if not, it spawns from humility and humbleness. A character once content with dividing up the loot equally may simply demand more, for them with all their pride believe themselves to have done the most to earn such rewards. Or a character who once saw him companions as friends may now view them as expendable servants, as simply means to whatever twisted end, they have concocted.

8 Roll Twice. Rerolling results of 8

Feat: Superior Body
You can use your vampiric reflexes to dodge attacks and move with an unearthly grace and ease, gaining the following benefits:

You can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.
While you are wearing no armor, your Armor Class equals 12 + your Dexterity modifier.
Your base movement speed increases by 5 feet.
Feat: Shapechanger
Vampires are known for their ability to shift from form to form. You gain the shapechanger tag and if you are not in sunlight or running water, you can use your action to polymorph into a Tiny bat[4] or a Medium cloud of mist for 1 minute, or back into your true form.

Bat Form: While in bat form you can't speak, your walking speed is 5 feet, and you have a flying speed of 30 feet. Your statistics, other than your size and speed, are unchanged. Anything you are wearing transforms with you, but nothing you are carrying does. You revert to your true form if you die.
Mist Form: While in mist form, you can't take any actions, speak, or manipulate objects. You are weightless and have 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. You have advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws, gain a number of temporary hit points equal to twice your level, and are immune to all nonmagical damage, except the damage you take from sunlight.
Once you transform this way you cannot do so again until you complete a short or long rest.

Feat: Animating Bite
You can suffuse your unholy lifeforce into creatures you drain. When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points you can choose to animate it, causing it to rise at the next midnight as a zombie under your control. This zombie can take simple commands from you and you may have a number of zombies equal to your proficiency bonus under your control through this method at a time. If you already have your maximum number of zombies under your control other corpses which rise due to your bite are not under your control are hostile towards you and others.

At 18th level, your bite may raise vampire spawns instead of zombies. You may have up to one vampire spawn under your control through this method at any time.

Feat: Children of the Night
As an action, you may magically call 1d4 swarms of bats[5] or rats[6], provided the sun isn't up. While outdoors, you can call 1d6 wolves[7] instead. The called creatures arrive in 1d4 rounds, acting as your allies and obeying your spoken commands. The beasts remain for 1 hour, and can be dismissed as a bonus action. You may not call on more than one swarm at any time.

Feat: Unnatural Charm
As an action, you can target one humanoid you can see within 30 feet. If the target can see you, it must succeed a Wisdom saving throw, or be charmed. The DC for the save is equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier. The charmed target regards you as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn't under your direct control, it takes your requests or actions in the most favorable way it can, and it is a willing target for your Vampire Bite.

Each time you or one of your 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 for 24 hours, until you are destroyed, until you on a different plane of existence than the target, or if you take a bonus action to end the effect. You can only have one creature charmed this way at once and you can use this trait a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier before you must complete a long rest before using it again.