I'm looking for some suggestions here. My players know the books pretty well. I want to keep the idea of a vampire and keep the template at about the same CR, but I don't want it to be straight out of the book. I don't mind SOME overlap of abiltiies, enough to keep the flavor. But running monsters out of the book, once the players know the way around the monster's special defenses, the monster might as well not have that special defense.
I want to keep the idea of an intelligent undead creature that drinks blood to survive. I want to keep the notion of creating spawn. I want to keep the sunlight vulnerability.
I want to dump the "drain on a slam attack" That never made sense to me, anyway. I'd prefer to deliver the level drain with the bite, since seems to me that drinking someone's blood is a way to absorb his life force.
The vampire in question is an orc warlord who has used his unholy influence to gather the scattered tribes into a single army. Some mechanic to reflect this would be good.
So, core powers:
Level drain on bite/drink
Creates spawn
Extra strength
Some kind of DR
Some kind of influence effect
Vulnerable to sunlight
Beyond that, I'm open to suggestion.
I am NOT saying you use a torrent program to download these, but if you can somehow get your hands on old 2nd edition Ravenloft books you'll find plenty of vampire varients in the Van Richtens guide as well as the ravenloft monster compendiums. Just the VR book alone has a ton of salient abilities you can give a vamp.
Just saying.
I am NOT saying you use a torrent program to download these, but if you can somehow get your hands on old 2nd edition Ravenloft books you'll find plenty of vampire varients in the Van Richtens guide as well as the ravenloft monster compendiums. Just the VR book alone has a ton of salient abilities you can give a vamp.
Just saying.
+1 - there are 3.5 versions from White Wolf out there for the Ravenloft setting, too.
In that vein (couldn't resist), Green Ronin's Fang & Fury has some interesting vampire variants (and an assortment of feats to allow a vampire to do some funky stuff, like feed off of other humors than blood).
I was just about to reccomend Fang & Fury as well. Awesome book.
Drop the death by daylight schtick as per Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Get rid of energy drain entirely. Have the vampires feed on pain. Add a sort of vampiric touch ability.
Instead of shapechanging, have the vampires become invisible.
Vampires could even use a form of misdirection not to be noticed or a similar ability as bit of a change, instead of shapechanging or invisibility.
Interesting.
How about vampires that control shadows? Give them various illusion spell-like abilities and Strength drain.
You could have vampires that sigh a lot and sparkle in daylight. They're special attacks could involve inducing migraines and boredom.
Go alien and make vampires oversized, hyperintelligent ticks. They're not undead at all, but instead are aberrations. Their bites inflict a dominate-like effect, and they then use their dominated minions to hunt more prey.