from 'that artist that fucked up rahadin and the dusk elves real real bad' i humbly present you with 'that cannot be your depiction of neferon, how did you fuck up RAW that badly.'
from 'that artist that fucked up rahadin and the dusk elves real real bad' i humbly present you with 'that cannot be your depiction of neferon, how did you fuck up RAW that badly.'
Hi, I absolutely love your illustrations and ideas for "Curse of Strahd." I'd love to hear the full story of your campaign. It's unclear how the player characters were able to kill Strahd. Rahadin is very attached to him, so did he just let them do it? And how could he be with the players? Doesn't everyone in Barovia know who he is? Whell, I'd love to get a quick summary of your story so I can piece it all together. Love you!
Hello!
So technically, I've run it twice -- the first run (which is what most of my posts are about) and the second run (which is currently ongoing -- I've been in a bit of a slump so I haven't posted as much about it). I'm gonna presume this is about the first run.
Putting up a SPOILERS FOR CURSE OF STRAHD here, even if I did change a lot, and a read more.
I'll go over questions first, just because the summary will be pretty long!
How did players kill Strahd?
They beat the shit out of all of his brides AND Rahadin first, THEN killed Strahd.
At the time the party killed Strahd they had Rahadin tied up in a basement with the shit kicked out of him. So he wasn't actually in the castle at the time they killed Strahd (meaning he couldn't do his RAW "I'm going to scream and charge the party and try to kill them afterwards and there's nothing they could do about it").
The way they literally killed Strahd was by killing him while he was standing in the aura of the Sunsword, which obliterated him (he got better tho, as he does).
How could he be with the players?
The party captured him and then decided to leave his fate up to Kasimir and the dusk elves. Since I made a whoopsie and misremembered Kasimir as being Lawful Good rather than Neutral, Kasimir made a decision to spare his life and have him spend the rest of his days working to pay off his misdeeds. While the party grew to treat him as an equal, technically speaking he was their prisoner performing the weirdest community service imaginable to make up for his crimes.
Another thing keeping him around was... so one of the things I noted and didn't like in CoS was that Rahadin was stated to be FIERCELY devoted to Barov and Strahd, viewing them as his family. Part of my take on his character was based around the confrontation you have with him at Amber Temple, where the book outright states he's praying to Vampyr to "[release] his master from his torment." I thought that was... kind of touching, and revealing more of his character.
So this guy loves Strahd and he loves Barov (how -- familial or otherwise -- is generally up to the DM's interpretation). And yet, the book says... literally nothing about his relationship with Sergei. You're telling me the guy who helped two genocides for this family just nothings a member of it?
So I made him just as devoted to Sergei as he was to Strahd and Barov. His devotion to Sergei lead to a devotion to Tatyana (as she was going to join their family), and that lead to a devotion to her reincarnations, too. Ontop of his community service, the party went "Yeah you're gonna protect this lady (Ireena) with your life now" and he went "ok" and did so, essentially becoming her chamberlain/bodyguard, because he is a murderous puppy I guess.
Doesn't everyone in Barovia know who he is?
Yeah, and that was something that impacted him. People fucking hated him. Most of the dusk elves actually left Barovia because they were pissed off Kasimir (and the party) spared him. He had people try to kill him over what he did.
In fairness, though -- the campaign DID open up, post Curse of Strahd, to an entire world past Barovia that did not recognize him by appearance. His actions had impact on the rest of the world (one of the major countries was the old kingdom Barov used to rule)... but because I didn't want it to turn into the Rahadin and friends show, I just wrote in that history got whitewashed or his role got unwritten, meaning everywhere the party went wasn't just hamstrung by someone going ":O HEY I KNOW THAT GUY" all the time.
GENERAL CAMPAIGN SUMMARY (WARNING: LONG)
The game started pretty RAW and then quickly turned into homebrew + MandyMod's Curse of Strahd takes. I originally began running CoS because I was taking over DMing from my husband, and literally told him "Okay I'll DM but I'm not going to do it if I have to homebrew everything, I'm going to run a module and that's it."
That wound up being a filthy lie, because I read about the Vistani and the Abbey and got pissed about both of those (this was prior to their rewrites for the Vistani). So I started changing things. It was small, at first. Then I started reading MandyMod's stuff and it snowballed.
Anyway actual summary of the OG campaign. I don't remember all the details, and I might have the order wrong -- this was literally 6 years ago.
I. Death House.
The party wakes up in a weird fuckin' house (Death House). They're all taken from different places spread out over different planes and have no idea who each other are. Their names are: Ellerian, Kelogul, Arialoth, and Luther (technically there was another, Miharu, but we don't talk about her). They frolick around Death House (this was pretty much run RAW), deciding at the end to sacrifice one of the ghasts and get barfed out into Barovia.
II. Barovia
They roll into the village of Barovia and meet Ismark boozin' in the bar, who introduces them to his sister, Ireena, and asks them to escort her to Vallaki. They help them bury their dad and see Strahd the first time. They mosey on out and go to the camp outside Vallaki, where they meet Madam Eva and she reads their fortune. At the time, I was running the module more RAW and did not read everyone's suggestions of DO NOT LEAVE THE TAROKKA READINGS UP TO RANDOM CHANCE, so I got the following:
The tome was in Argynvostholt, the sword was in the Winery, and the medallion was in Old Bonegrinder
Strahd himself is hanging out in the Hall of Bones
Their fated ally is.......... Clovin, that shithead in the Abbey nobody likes. The fortune is "Look for a man of music, a man with two heads. He lives in a place of great hunger and sorrow." Remember this.
Party goes "okay that's weird" and moves on.
They then get the absolute shit kicked out of them by wolves. Like absolutely ruined. Luther loses a leg. They limp to Vallaki.
III. Vallaki
Upon arriving in Vallaki, they find they hate it there. This was also when I decided to vary things up. I introduced Vasili, intending him to be that "Strahd in disguise" role he's meant to be.... and then one of my players completely spoiled that by googling him. So I came up with a different concept instead: that he was instead a simulacrum Strahd made in one of his goofy plans to woo Tatyana and then forgot about, and the guy had just been living as a tax collector with no real knowledge of it ever since. This was one of the first larger deviations I made.
Anyway, they make their way to the church to deliver Ireena and find 'dem bones are missing. They decide this is the highest priority, so they go track down the bones... and almost immediately kickstart the Feast, skipping anything about the festival entirely. The Feast also kicks the shit out of them. They meet Strahd for the first time, and he leaves Ireena a bunch of presents and is just otherwise a weird little freak.
Rictavio takes this opportunity to flee, and so I could throw the party off, I decided to make him suspicious of Vasili. So he kidnaps Vasili along the way then tells the party to meet him at his tower. So the party goes out there and finds him torturing Vasili into confessing (by leaving him under running water). He reveals himself as van Richten at this point. They run a Phoenix Wright mini-game into proving Vasili isn't Strahd. They take Vasili with them but van Richten refuses.
At this point I was given a hail mary, because my players started theorizing that van Richten was their fated ally (they interpreted the 'man of music, a man with two heads' as van Richten pretending to be a bard). Van Richten is a much more interesting fated ally than fuckin' Clovin, so I went "... SURE, YEAH, IT'S ALL A METAPHOR, YOU GOT IT GUYS."
They also meet Jeny Greenteeth at this point -- another addition I decided to add based on MandyMod's (the Ladies Three). She starts hinting at the party going into Berez and starting the Fane questline.
Also they meet Kasimir. Kasimir tells them he wants to go to Amber Temple, but notes the party will get the shit stomped out of them if they go there. They leave.
IV. The Winery/Yester Hill
So from there they head on out to the Winery. Remember: this was where I randomly set the Sunsword's location. They go there, kick a bunch of ass, and find the Sunsword in a barrel. They are, at this point, level 5. I realize very quickly that I cannot have a bunch of level 5s running around with the Sunsword, so as they arrive at Yester Hill I go "yeah I gotta take that shit from them."
So I figure -- Strahd time! He shows up at Yester Hill and goes "hey gimme that thing, that's my brother's." Kelogul goes "NO" and attempts to kill him, and so Strahd kablooeys him and Ellerian. The remnants of the party drag their corpses to Krezk because they got told there's a dude in the Abbey who can maybe fix them. Ellerian and Kelogul get introduced to the dark powers (Khirad and Taar Haak), who offer to revive them.
V. Krezk/The Abbey
This was another big overhaul I did. The Belviews were no longer weird little incestuous mentally ill people, but rather completely separate people who came to the Abbot to make bargains to cure themselves or their loved ones. The Abbot would fix their problems... for a price. Some of their flesh, an arm -- something like that. He's an angel who doesn't comprehend the whole 'pain receptors' thing, so when he'd perform 'surgery' on people and they'd end up traumatized he didn't know what to do. So he just kind of... locked them away, 'caring for them,' which just made their mental issues worse, resulting in an entire asylum full of miserable mutated people.
Anyway, they get introduced to the Abbot, and he's a creeper who asks for Ireena's skin. Ellerian and Kelogul, watching as spooky ghosts, go "aw shit we can't let them give up their skin or whatever" and make a pact with the dark powers to come back to life. They do, the Abbot goes "aw man" and they go into Krezk.
There, they meet Krezkov and Anna, and their little boy. I followed MandyMod's recommendations here, so he winds up turning into a monstrosity that the party has to kill. Little guy kills two other people along the way. They drag the dead women to the Abbot and persuade him into reviving them, reminding them this is kind of his fault in the first place by bringing back a kid wrong.
VI. Vallaki, pt. II
So once this all wraps up they start to return to Vallaki. I was a lot more strict of a DM, at this point, so I had specific deadlines for certain events. One of those events was the festival (you know -- the one that goes tits up if the Feast happens). The party headed out the day of the festival, eager to get there before the festival started at noon...
... and then literally got distracted by skinning a bunch of wolves. I'm not kidding. They got into a random encounter and decided to spend hours skinning and preparing wolf meat.
So the festival kicks off without them, and the party walks into Vallaki like that Community gif of the guy bringing pizzas into a room on fire. By this point, Vargas is already dead as hell. Yeah, the party literally never met him.
The party once again goes "wow this place sucks" and leaves. The name changes to Wachterview from this point on, and is taken over by her cultists.
While the party was dealing with Vallaki, Ireena gets 'saved' by Strahd from a group of peasants he definitely didn't set up or anything. He gives her an invitation to a dinner party, which definitely won't go wrong or anything.
Also, the party meets Kasimir again. He reminds them he wants to go to Amber Temple again. They leave, because they've got a hot date.
VII. The Dinner Party (That Goes Wrong)
So they all show up to a dinner party. Strahd apologizes for obliterating the party at Yester Hill. They pretend to accept it.
Ellerian decides at this point that Rahadin is his Enemy Number 1 (because he killed a bunch of elves) and starts pushing his food off the table. These men become good friends later in life.
The conversation starts going south pretty quickly, and then blows up when the party catches Strahd attempting to Charm Ireena. Combat starts. Ellerian turns Rahadin into a cat (once again, these men become good friends later in life). The party escapes (not without one of them almost falling off of a bridge) and at that point decides "fuck this guy, we killing him"
These next areas may be out of order, because their order wasn't AS relevant to the plot (and I do not remember it).
VIII. Argynvostholt
I believe from there they go to Argynvostholt, following the Tarokka reading. They meet Ezmerelda and watch Arrigal piss on a statue. They find the Tome in the barrel with the dusk elf, and then go upstairs and meet Godfrey and Vladimir, resulting in one of my favorite experiences in the entire campaign:
Y'see, Ellerian was the straight man of the group, the moral fiber and pretty much the leader. So the party confronts Vladimir, who basically tells them to fuck off and not fight Strahd because he wants to see that little fuck be tormented for the rest of his life. The rest of the party goes "ok cool see ya" and starts to leave.
Ellerian turns into a full-on redditor and goes "WELL ACTUALLY" and starts fucking arguing with the guy. This upsets Vladimir, who decides the best course of action is to start blastin'. He not only calls his spooky spirits, but also the other revenants. Long story short the party almost TPKs and only survives because the party managed to take down Vladimir and one of them nat 20s a persuasion check to convince the other revenants not to murder the shit out of them. Ellerian still insisted he was 100% right about all of this.
Anyway they learn about Argynvost and the skull which they will not be able to do in the entire campaign because the final boss fight was deemed to happen in the exact room they need to retrieve the skull from. This was something else I addressed in the redux.
IX. Berez
The party decides this is the point they're gonna dip into Berez, because Jeny once again asks them to go rescue her sister. So they do, and everyone nearly dies against Baba Lysaga (this repeats in the redux). They rescue Laura, and upon reuniting the two sisters Jeny hints that they should take the heart to the fane in the swamp just to kinda see what happens. Something happens, alright, and the party revives the fane there. Jeny strongly hints the party should go check out the other two fanes -- one at Yester Hill, one at Old Bonegrinder (the party never went there) -- and try to fix them, too.
Ireena gets kidnapped along the way because one of the party members attempts to teleport across the river, fails, and she gets kidnapped by snakes. The party immediately decides a rescue mission is of utmost importance.
X. Ravenloft, Pt. I
The party breaks into Ravenloft. They manage to fight their way in, making their way up to the top floor. They find the elevator trap door at the top. Ellerian repeatedly informs them it's a trap. The party decides to take it anyway.
It is, of course, trapped.
Ellerian gets separated from the party at this point, and he manages to find Ireena on the top floor. The rest of the party bumbles around Ravenloft, deciding to open doors, as they do. They open a door straight into the Hall of Bones and run into Strahd.
Strahd essentially Legends of the Hidden Temple's them and tells them he will not obliterate every last one of them if they give him a party member. Luther sacrifices himself and becomes one of Strahd's new brides.
The party reunites and busts out of there.
XI. Ol' Bonegrinder
The party decides to finally cash in on that deed they found in Death House and arrives at the old windmill. They're not fooled by the hags, and decide to kill all of them. They flee into the ethereal plane, but not before cursing the party and causing them to have horrible nightmares. They pick up the final treasure of the Amulet of Ravenkind.
They go to the nearby fane and cleanse it. Two fanes, one to go.
XII. Fidatov/Van Richten's Tower
They go back to van Richten to inform him of what's gone down. Rahadin shows up at this point, demanding they hand Ireena over to him. The party quite obviously tells him to eat shit. Rahadin begins having spawn fail against the puzzle of the tower (which, if you remember, causes the entire thing to collapse if you fail too many times). Tower blows up, but the party fends off Rahadin.
Van Richten decides to join the party at this point. He helps them kill the hags that are haunting them and joins them on their merry adventure.
Note: around this time I decided to adjust Van Richten's story a bit, to where he actually fought Strahd and died against him. I figured having another guy tied to the dark powers might be neat... so he, much like the other two party members, got brought back by a dark power -- in his case, Vaund. I misunderstood "the evasive" as "dude who lies a lot" and not literally as "evasive." Whoops.
XIII. Yester Hill, Pt. 2
The party goes to Yester Hill, fighting the Gulthias Tree and entering the fane there. Having to make a sacrifice to cleanse it, Ellerian gives up his journal full of letters he wrote to his sister. With all three fanes cleansed, the Ladies Three (from MandyMod's revisions) reveal themselves and grant the party three wishes. They wished for the following:
Equipment (each party member got a special magic item)
Strength (each party member got a +2 to their main stat, even going past the natural maximum of 20)
Freedom (Ellerian and Kelogul were no longer forced to remain in Barovia for making dark pacts)
They tell the party that if they kill Strahd, they'll have something special waiting for them afterwards, then depart.
They decide at this point to finally go to Amber Temple, so they swing by Vallaki and pick up their ol' pal Kasimir to do so. Vasili disappears in the night.
XIV. Amber Temple
The party makes their way up to Amber Temple, nearly getting murdered by a roc along the way. The meet Rahadin at Amber Temple, interrupting him before he can do horrible things to a frog (I made it a bat this time, because I thought a bat was more vampyr-themed). He leaves without a fight.
The party then gets lasers fired at them from the statue.
They force out Neferon, who was another figure I changed. I thought it would be kind of cooler if he wasn't just your standard daemon, so I made him one that was more good-aligned and fiercely protective of Amber Temple, living on in memory of the people that gave him a chance (who were all driven mad by the dark powers). He tells the party to leave. Kelogul and Ellerian insist that they have to release their dark powers.
So they beat the shit out of him and throw him outside (they do not kill him).
The party witnesses the twist that van Richten has a dark power, as he releases Vaund. Ellerian and Kelogul then release Khirad and Taar Haak respectively, which definitely has no ramifications whatsoever.
They find Vasili in the library, where he realizes that he's a simulacrum and not an actual person.
They take Kasimir to the basement, where he makes his shady dealing to bring back his dead-ass sister.
With all their goals and loose ends tied up, as well as obtaining all the treasures and their fated ally, they decide to go on operation Fuck Strahd. Somewhere along the way I think the Abbey gets attacked and the party saves the Abbot? I cannot remember where or how, but it gets the Abbot on their side, at least.
XV. The Party Breaks into Ravenloft a Whooooooole Bunch
The next leg of the campaign is pretty much the party dungeon-delving into Ravenloft and killing everyone and everything in it. Each of the brides were their own boss fight, plus Rahadin as a boss fight. So what would usually happen is this:
The party figures out a way into Ravenloft. Strahd would remember how they broke in, so the next day they'd have to figure out another way to break in.
They wander around picking up every piece of treasure they can.
They run into one of the brides and murder them.
They go into the crypt and throw Barov's coffin out the window
They leave and rest.
Repeat.
I am not kidding about the Barov's coffin bit, they did that three times.
The second-to-last time they break in they fought Rahadin. Realizing nobody else knew what happened at the wedding, they decided they'd spare Rahadin and torture the information out of him. So they beat the shit out of him and captured him (then threw Barov's coffin out the window for good measure).
They find Sergei's corpse and realize he looks exactly like Vasili. Because Strahd is weird and made his simulacrum look like his dead-ass brother. Vasili has, by this point, been obliterated by Strahd. They collect the Sunsword again, though!
They interrogated Rahadin, who informed them of the wedding and what happened. I made him more sympathetic, in this case -- he was super stoked about the wedding, happy for his brother, but concerned about Strahd's... obsession with Tatyana. He thought the guy was over it, though. As the chaos happened around him he could really only stand by and watch as the people he's devoted his entire life to kill each other, commit suicide, and turn into vampires. Which wasn't great.
The party at this point asks Kasimir what he wants to do with him. Kasimir makes the very unpopular (among dusk elves) decision to let him live. Kelogul has collected skulls from all the brides at this point, and Rahadin calls him weird for doing so.
They break into Ravenloft one last time and fight Strahd in the Hall of Bones.
The fight is pretty rough. Strahd adds a simulacrum for spice, so the party gets to fight two of them. Kelogul loses an arm. They impale Strahd on the Sunsword and he dies instantly in sunlight, and hooray! Barovia is saved! Rahadin cries in a basement somewhere.
XVI. Aftermath
The party meets Vasili, and it turns out the simulacrum was (maybe) possessed by the spirit of Strahd's dead-ass brother. He says a tearful goodbye to the party, but not before asking Ireena (i.e. Tatyana) if she wants to join him before departing. Ireena decides she wants to live a full-ass life as herself rather than her soul, but promises she'll pass on once her life is done and Sergei will be reunited with his love. Sergei departs.
The party raids Ravenloft. They throw Barov's coffin out the window one last time.
They then go on what they literally called "the Barovian Pub Crawl." What follows is a bunch of levity with all their favorite NPCs. Kelogul does, however, get wasted, dive into Lake Zarovich, and gets his leg ripped off by a giant fish. They also deliver Argynvost's skull, finally, to the Mausoleum, freeing the revenants. They make Rahadin swear to protect Ireena at this point and then literally drag him along in chains while he gets to suffer with the whole dead family thing.
Once they've had their fun, they head to the borders of Barovia. Some of the NPCs remain behind (Ismark, the wereravens, and Ezmerelda all do). Most of them follow them into the mists...
... where -- you remember the Ladies? Yeah I wanted to give the party something nice and let the campaign become more open-ended. Plus they all came from different planes of existence, so I didn't want to just return them to their homes (because which home would I pick?)
So with the Ladies freed, they restore ACTUAL Barovia -- not the weird shadow plane copy of it. The party gets barfed out into an empty Barovian valley in the real world. All of the cities and people got sucked in when Strahd did his thing, so it's just... undeveloped land, with which the party uses in the next campaign to develop into their own country.
That leads to the next campaign -- From the Mists. I'm not gonna summarize that here, but I might do it later because these are fun and I like yapping.
There's technically canonical AUs in our game (because everything keeps going in a cycle) so because me and my husband love Amelie we decided to make an AU version of her and Kjosev.
There's technically canonical AUs in our game (because everything keeps going in a cycle) so because me and my husband love Amelie we decided to make an AU version of her and Kjosev.
A little outside what I usually do (also apologies for the hiatus!) but I own goldfish now.
I didn't think I would, but I love them so much.
Anyway their names are Sumi and Taiyo. I wanted to make some stickers for myself to put on my laptop but couldn't find any I liked, so I decided to make my own.
A little outside what I usually do (also apologies for the hiatus!) but I own goldfish now.
I didn't think I would, but I love them so much.
Anyway their names are Sumi and Taiyo. I wanted to make some stickers for myself to put on my laptop but couldn't find any I liked, so I decided to make my own.
I’m no longer covided! Kinda! I still cough a lot!
Anyway, art trade! This is @thrumbolt‘s Patataj and Rahadin. They were so much fun to draw, I love tragic romances, and horses are hard to draw but fun.
So in my Curse of Strahd campaign, my players all got infected by lycanthropy. One of my players, who is a wizard, didn't want to go the werewolf route... but still wanted an option to be a creature of the night. So I thought -- okay, maybe if they do something for Strahd, he'll turn them into a vampire instead! It'll override the lycanthropy and the players can live out the Underworld fanfic of their dreams!
I went looking on the internet and... could find almost nothing. There's not really any rules for a player playing a vampire unless you go with a dhampir. I couldn't even find any homebrew that satisfied me. There's not really any rules regarding feeding, either, or even what happens if they don't feed!
So I made my own.
I can't say the rules have been extensively tested yet (two of my players are vampires and have been using their abilities for a few weeks), but I'm putting them up in case other people want to use it or give feedback. I've included some of my design notes/thoughts as well, so you can see why I made certain calls.
The template does not take up any character levels nor is it its own ancestry. It does, however, take up an attunement slot -- meaning that a vampire can only equip two magic items. If the template winds up being too powerful I may up it to two attunement slots.
I'll be pasting the template below the readme, but I will also include a google docs link in case you'd prefer reading that way.
Things I would like to add that I haven't gotten around to yet:
Incorporating scaling sunlight damage (so parties aren't limited by only traveling at night), or introducing items a player can use to prevent basic sun damage.
'Strains' of Vampirism, similar to Vampire the Masquerade. While they wouldn't be families like VtM has, they'd be more based around ability scores (so a strength-based one can turn into a strigoi, or a charisma-based one goes all in on sluttiness and charm).
Anyway, rules below!
If a living humanoid is slain by a vampire and buried, it rises as a vampire the next dawn.
If the humanoid was slain by a standard vampire, it rises as a spawn, gaining innate traits.
A spawn cannot progress to Tier 2 until it has drunk the blood of its sire.
Taking this template requires you to sacrifice one of your attunement slots. While a vampire, you can only attune to two magic items.
Innate Traits
When you first become a vampire, you gain the following traits:
Creature Type. Your creature type becomes Undead.
Vampiric Strength. Increase your Strength, Dexterity, or Charisma score by 1 (your choice). As with ability score increases, this cannot raise the chosen ability score above 20.
Deathless Nature. You no longer need to breathe, eat, or drink. However, you must consume blood to sustain yourself. See Hunger for Blood below.
Chained to the Grave. You are bound to the place you were buried. To gain the benefits of a long rest, you must rest in your coffin, crypt, or burial site.
Alternatively, you can carry a grave dirt reliquary: a sealed ironbound box filled with grave soil from your resting place. The reliquary weighs 10 pounds, can be carried in a pack, and must remain on the same plane of existence as you in order for you to gain the benefits of a rest. The reliquary has 15 AC, 30 HP, and a Damage Threshold of 5.
Vampire Weaknesses. You suffer the following flaws:
Forbiddance. You can’t enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.
Running Water. You take 20 acid damage when you end your turn in running water.
Stake to the Heart. If a wooden piercing weapon is driven into your heart while you are incapacitated in your resting place, you are destroyed.
Sunlight Hypersensitivity. You take 20 radiant damage when you end your turn in sunlight. While in sunlight, you also have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.
Darkvision. 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.
Natural Weapons. You have claws and fangs, which you are proficient with. You can use Strength or Dexterity for the attack and damage rolls of these natural weapons.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: 1d6 + ability modifier slashing damage. On a hit, you can immediately attempt to grapple the target as a free action.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack (against a willing, grappled, or incapacitated creature): 1d6 + ability modifier piercing damage plus 1d6 necrotic damage. You regain hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt. You can instead choose to deal only 1 piercing and 1 necrotic damage with this attack. Using this attack counts as feeding.
Hunger for Blood
You must consume blood to survive. If you go without feeding for 3 days, you advance one stage along the Hunger Clock. Feeding on at least 1 hit point’s worth of humanoid blood or drinking the blood of two freshly-killed beasts or monstrosities resets the clock to Stage 0.
Note: These rules assume standard 5e resting rules. If using gritty realism, increase the feeding interval from 3 days to 1 week.
Note: The rules for drinking the blood of two freshly-killed beasts to equal the drain on a humanoid largely considers feeding off of medium-sized creatures such as cattle. Unfortunately, the cost of simplicity means you have goofy rules like two rats equaling two rocs in terms of sustenance. DM discretion is advised.
If you need ideas, consider the following: you need to drink the blood of six freshly-killed tiny-sized beasts/monstrosities, four small-sized beasts/monstrosities, two medium-sized beasts/monstrosities, and one large-sized and larger beast/monstrosity.
Variant Rule: I kept these rules very basic for simplicity's sake, but I recognize that with these rules as-is your vampire PC could just... feed on his mates endlessly, completely subverting the mechanic with little penalty. If you want to make it a little more punishing for your players, consider the following rules:
The first time you feed on a willing humanoid, you may choose to deal 1 hp of piercing and 1 hp of necrotic damage. The second time you feed on a willing humanoid, you must deal your full bite attack of damage. The third time and every time thereafter, you must deal your full bite attack of damage, and the attack is counted as a critical hit.
Stage 1 (3 days):
Disadvantage on Charisma (Persuasion) checks.
Must succeed on a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw to resist urges if exposed to fresh blood. On a failure, you must move towards the blood on your turn. If you reach the blood, you must spend an action to consume it. This counts as your feeding, resetting the Hunger Clock.
Stage 2 (6 days):
Gain 1 level of exhaustion.
If adjacent to a Bloodied humanoid in combat, you must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or attempt a bite attack
Stage 3 (9 days):
Gain 2 levels of exhaustion.
Your maximum hit points are reduced by 1d6 each dawn until you feed.
Stage 4 (12 days):
Gain 3 levels of exhaustion.
At the start of combat, you must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or immediately attack the nearest humanoid until you have bitten a creature.
Stage 5 (15 days):
Gain 4 levels of exhaustion.
You cannot regain hit points through rest, potions, or magic -- only feeding restores hit points.
Stage 6 (18 days):
You retain your exhaustion levels.
You lose all voluntary control of your character; the DM controls your actions until you feed.
While feral, you attack any living creature you see, and do not stop until destroyed, restrained, or fed.
After feeding, you return to Stage 0 but retain 2 levels of exhaustion.
Tiered Traits
Your vampiric powers grow as you advance in level.
Tier 1 Traits (Level 5)
Regeneration. As a bonus action, you can spend a Hit Die to regain hit points. If you take radiant damage or damage from holy water, you cannot use this trait until the start of your next turn. When you finish a short or long rest, you regain expended Hit Dice equal to your proficiency bonus.
Spider Climb. You gain a climb speed equal to your walking speed and can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down, without making an ability check.
Tier 2 Traits (Level 10, After Drinking Your Sire’s Blood)
Charm. You can cast charm person once per short or long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell.
Improved Natural Weapons. The damage dice of your natural weapons increase to 1d8.
Tier 3 Traits (Level 15, After Drinking Your Sire’s Blood)
Shapechanger. If you aren’t in sunlight or running water, you can use your action to polymorph into a Tiny bat or a Medium cloud of mist, or back into your true form.
Bat Form. In bat form, you can’t speak, your walking speed is 5 feet, and you have a flying speed of 30 feet. Your statistics are otherwise unchanged. Anything you wear transforms with you, but objects you carry do not. You revert to your true form if you drop to 0 hit points.
Mist Form. In mist form, you can’t take actions, speak, or manipulate objects. You are weightless, have a flying speed of 10 feet, and can hover. You can enter a hostile creature’s space and stop there. If air can pass through an opening, you can pass through it without squeezing. You can’t pass through liquids.
While in mist form, you have advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws, and resistance to all nonmagical damage except that from sunlight.
You remain in mist form for up to 1 hour, after which you revert to your true form. If forced into a space that cannot contain you, you are shunted to the nearest safe space and take 1d6 force damage per 5 feet traveled.
Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Tier 4 Traits (Level 20, After Drinking Your Sire’s Blood)
Misty Escape. When you drop to 0 hit points outside of your resting place, you transform into a cloud of mist as in your Shapechanger trait, instead of falling unconscious, provided you aren’t in sunlight or running water.
While at 0 hit points in mist form, you automatically succeed on death saving throws. However, radiant damage or holy water causes you to count as though you failed a death save. If you accrue three failed saves in this way, you are destroyed.
You must reach your resting place within 1 hour or be destroyed. Once in your resting place, you revert to your vampire form, paralyzed until you regain at least 1 hit point. You can take short or long rests in this state and spend Hit Dice to heal.
Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Vampiric Strength. You gain an additional +1 to Strength, Dexterity, or Charisma (your choice). This cannot increase your ability score above 20.
Design Notes
Designing this template was inspired by the lycanthrope templates offered in Van Richten's Treatise on Lycanthropy and the vampire template in Monstrous Races. For as popular as vampires are, I couldn't really find an appropriate template I was happy with. I didn't like Monstrous Races's approach to essentially making vampirism a prestige class, as 5e is very balanced around keeping the same class all the way to level 20 and players would be missing out on some of their cool capstone abilities.
Van Richten's solves this by essentially applying a template to players, with scaling powers as the player levels up. And while this is a rather graceful way of handling the problem... Considering the sheer amount of powers vampires acquire, I felt I would either have to simplify vampires too much (and basically make them dhampirs) or deal with an extremely overpowered PC. This is why I opted to make the template consume an attunement slot -- a number of the abilities don't feel much stronger than what you'd get with a powerful magic item, and that stacked with the penalties evened out to me.
Further notes and choices are explained below:
Vampiric Strength. I wanted to add something that reflected different bloodlines of vampires, similar to Vampire: the Masquerade. Vampires are generally viewed as having super-human strength, incredible speed, and are... well, hot as fuck. Unfortunately it's not really within the scope of this document to make cool trait-specific bloodlines, so I went with a very basic "you pick which ability score" power.
Deathless Nature. Baseline vampires, for some reason, still need to breathe. Dhampir's don't. I chose the Dhampir route here.
Chained to the Grave. One of the problems my players brought up was the inconvenience of having to rest during the day, and having to drag a whole-ass coffin around lest they be destroyed. While currently my players are in Barovia so I'll handle the whole "snooze during the day" when I get there, dragging a coffin around is... a pain. And I generally operate off of the rule of "if you think it would look stupid find a way to circumvent it or cut it out entirely." This is why I made the reliquary as a graceful option for PCs. Overpowered? Maybe. But keep in mind that it can't be stored in a bag of holding (that's another plane), and it can be targeted and destroyed by some extremely asshole monsters.
Vampire Weaknesses. The only change I made here was to the damage a vampire PC takes while in running water or sunlight, and it was changed to deal damage at the end of a player's turn, not at the start like an NPC vampire. My reasoning is that a full-born vampire usually has legendary actions with which they can use to get out of sunlight, while a PC has no such option. A vampire NPC usually has a lot more HP as well. I switched it around to give players a chance.
Hunger for Blood. Hoo boy, this was complicated. I thought about having a PC enter torpor ala Vampire: the Masquerade, but I realized this kind of goes against established lore dictated in Curse of Strahd -- Doru is kept in the basement of the church, and it's implied he hasn't been fed in a looooong time. By these rules, he probably would have entered torpor by now. I liked the concept of a vampire going essentially feral instead.
I also changed the rules for gritty realism. This is done less for balance reasons, and more for tracking reasons. I felt personally for my game (that uses gritty realism) that the slower pace benefitted a longer feeding cycle, whereas default rest rules operate much faster.
I am considering, in the future, tying sunlight damage to what Hunger Clock stage the player is at similar to The Elder Scrolls series to help players adapt to the whole 'adventuring parties usually travel around during the day' without completely negating the problem.
Regeneration. This one I credit strongly to Monster Races, and outside of how much HD you recover is very similar. I felt it was a good balance between keeping a vampire's iconic regeneration abilities while also making it cost resources.
I adjusted how much HD you get per short/long rest largely based on the fact that... the wording behind the rules in that book can be read as either you recover half of your missing HD OR you recover half of your total HD. I personally read it as the latter, while my husband reads it as the former. Since I read it as the latter, I felt that was EXTREMELY overpowered -- with default rest rules, it means every 10 minutes a player can recover half of their HD, and fill it to max in 20 minutes! That felt far too strong, so I changed it to proficiency instead.
Resources and References
Van Richten’s Treatise on Lycanthropy - Great book that inspired me to create this template. I referenced a lot of the book early on in the design.
Monster Races - Another interesting book, allowing you to play every single monster from the Monster Manual (2014). Unfortunately, it makes some powerful monsters essentially a class that you need to put levels into, which feels kind of like a holdover from 3E (ECL, or effective character level).
Here’s a small compilation post of all the Undertale boss paintings I’ve done!
Also, as promised – here is the HIGH-RES album. All of the images are 1920 x 1080 pngs, available for free use as icons, wallpapers, your own personal prints, youtube thumbnails – whatever you want. I would appreciate credit if you repost it/use it anywhere else online!
discoholicmusic
titsay
izzy806
ellievsbear
janainaart
jbbartram-illu
pixelskylines