PC turning into a vampire

You take the character away, I'm almost positive nearly every system says to do this once a character becomes a vampire, thrall or lord. Vampires in D&D are incomprehensibly evil and maniacal. They would only seek to end the lives or turn their party members.

You either should have killed the PC, thrall'd him, or taken it away.

I told my player that if he chose to take strahd's offer and become the next vampire lord, he would lose control of his character, but the party would inevitably meet him in the future, or in another game if they decided to replay ravenloft. Unless everyone is top-tier, it isn't even close to viable. even at high-tier, he needs to role play a vampire correctly, and it isn't conducive to playing as a party

Pick a different system if you want vampires. Don't skirt around it by coming up with stupid bullshit like half-vampires and shit. It isn't the same thing to a player and it's dumb to just make exceptions when they already fought a vampire.

>Vampires in D&D are incomprehensibly evil and maniacal
Not him, but fuck D&D fluff.

Bullshit it because it's your game.

For the sake of the game claim vampires don't start off that powerful, and it only builds up to that point after a couple centuries.

Then come up with a fun system for the player to level up their bonuses and abilities related to their vampiric nature, and only give them enough to counterbalance the negative effects of being a vampire, which you then insist on enforcing.

Vampires have weaknesses that everyone knows, people won't like vampires, etc. Some of those weaknesses can get in the way of everyday adventuring.

So balance those with a few bonuses and abilities, promise more as the character levels up.

different levels of vampires. master vampires are straight up like normal vamps in D&D. vampire apprentice has some of the important factors, like aversion to daylight and blood sucking, but maybe not the best spell-like powers. they instead grow into it over the course of time or victims sucked off in game. make it like every 10 people, they get an ability from their vampire side. as a cause, to survive they need blood, but the more blood they consume, the more powerful and depraved they become. its a slow, painful, forced descent into evil.

depending on the edition of course, there are between 5 and 10 abilities (maybe more if you want to extend it longer) that could easily be gained. if you are in the long haul of the game, you could easily stretch this out over the course of years in game. but if the player becomes power hungry, they could do it all in one night or in a few weeks. of course, that would call in the paladins. and the more victims they have had, the more they want it.

I could. I just don't like making up special cases but that seems to be the only reasonable way.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this btw:
So, we use the 5e system as normal, but we do have a few official stuff added in as well from the previous editions. That includes Lord of Darkness, way back from the first edition.
The trouble comes in the way he was turned into a vampire. Because his character was a stereotypical sex oriented bard, I thought it would be fun to throw a succubus his way, but he ended up rolling critical successes on all his four persuasion rolls, making the succubus fall in love with him. Now, according to Lord of Darkness, a kiss of death from a loving succubus turns you into a greater vampire instead of killing you, and to my shame I found that out much later than I should have. I would never throw the succubus his way if I knew that in the first place.
But whatever hapoened happened, and now i have this mess in my hands.
Nerfing other him wouldn't not make sense as he is supposed to be a greater vampire, much stronger than all the regular ones. In fact I believe it is one of the most overpowered kind you can come across.

Whoops forgot to tag you.
See this:

seeing as d&d vampires are very much taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula, as well as all the conventional movie vampires of the earlier decades, it makes absolute fucking sense you mong.

The only "good", or even "decent" vampire is nu-age fantasy bullshit. Vampires are self-serving, self-indulgent, narcissists. They care only for themselves, and do what ever they do to make ends meet or reach their goals.

>Implying that's any different from your average D&D party.

Does he know this information? If so, you fucked up right there. Retconning that succubus power is perfectly fine as long as you don't do this for other creatures or NPCs in the future. change things, but stick to your amendments.

If vampires are going to be a theme in the future, it's best you keep them the same and figure something out for him.

Have the vampirism set on slowly. This answers why he didn't notice until recently. Food turns to ash in his mouth, sex gives him no pleasure, the sun gives him great migraines and irritation. He even grows to hate garlic, something he loved so before recently.

Have him go to a sage with this information and give him the news. Tell him FIRMLY at this point, he needs to rid himself of the curse, or he will lose his character and it will become an evil NPC. quest to obtain an obscure cure, a potion, a scroll, a ritual, whathaveyou.

Why can I play an indulgent, narcissistic and self-serving human and not play the same but as a vampire?

>What is the best way to handle this as a DM? This is especially a problem in DnD, seeing how overpowered vampires are.
Change their race template to a modified Warforged? What edition is the game btw?

Unlike adventurers in your typical d&d campaign, vampires are destroying entire communities, blighting forests, and creating rampant thrall problems in the realm. Your typical d&d character also isn't completely unharmed by normal weaponry, can't resurrect in a matter of hours to days, and has per-turn hit point regeneration. All of this is the stuff of (in the OP's case) extremely high level character play, surely which we all know, people rarely play and I doubt he is either.

This isn't a matter of can the player do it. It's a matter of the party now being imbalanced, and leading to not only encounter building problems, but balancing the fun at the table.

Yeah, that's probably what I am gonna end up doing.
He probably doesn't know the thing with Lord of Darkness, he doesn't even know he's a vampire yet. So if I wanted to, I could actually go one step further and just not make him a vampire, that works too.
The only thing is, at the very start I promised to the group that this would not be the rules bendy kind of campaign and that I would not lie to them in with the rules. They really like that, because going into this, none if them was familiar with DnD at all.
But oh well, I don't think I have the luxury of choice anymore. It's either this, or he breaks the entire campaign. I guess I gotta do what I gotta do.
Thanks for the advice user, it's really appreciated.

OP here, pretty much this.
Even though the character who is turning into a vampire is a very good hearted and a pacifist bard, and the player playing him is a reliable kind of guy, I still don't wanna trust the entire balance of the game onto his hands.

Does it say in the 5th edition handbook or monster manual that if a succubus lovingly kisses a (insert race here), he becomes a greater vampire? If not, you aren't breaking any rule-as-written.

Secondly, being someone who doesn't like to pull punches on his players, I understand, but some things need to be skirted around in order to keep the game balanced and fun for everyone. If giving the player this opportunity is going to do those, you should do your duty to ensure it doesn't happen.

Just retconning the love-kiss power bullshit is perfectly acceptable. Telling him of those symptoms and making a neat quest out of it is interesting too (as long as the party and the player think it's worth it to save him).

A similar thing happened to my characters when we were playing Curse of Strahd, and it made for quite a good quest. They were travelling back from a hag coven lair, when they were accosted by werewolves and they ALL failed their saving throws. They told lady Irena to go fuck herself and trudged off west, toward their quest goals, looking for nightshade and ergot to form a lycanthropy cure. They did this because they valued their characters and I told them through the local priest that they would certainly lose control to their insatiable blood lust and be one of them (they would lose their characters due to this).

This made a very memorable quest to them. They loved finding the cure more than fighting strahd in his stupid maze of a mansion.

Yeah, as I said I'm gonna retcon the kiss. Thanks for the advice.

Oh yeah FYI:
The succubus kiss turning people into vampires is not from 5e. It's from Lord of Darkness, which is an undead focused content expansion for the first edition. I like to include previous official stuff into my campaigns to spice things up a little and we decided on which ones to include together at the very beginning. So the whole thing is a result of that.

Actually, there are two instances of it occuring in lore- one with the master pimp Maid-fetish Elf Jander Sunstar, and another which is the facilitation of an Ocrus-bound ritual- which later became what we know as the vampire lord Ritual.
Also, in every given edition of D&D, it has been a constant that PC's are never to play vampires- it's something talked about more than once in Q&A sessions in pretty much all issues of D&D edition Dragon magazine covered- and is also partly a reason why Libris Mortis had Vampire Spawn playable over the base kind- which was done in a web enhancement.
The easier means to 'playable' Vampirism is to use a vampire variant such as a Kassian Vampire, Vampire Spawn, and monster class levels or whatever you can scounge up for the edition you're using.

I have a feeling you never even read Bram Stoker's Dracula, let alone all the shit that came before it that he took and wrapped into one.

Vampires are not overpowered my man. The only remotely OP thing about them is that if you reduce them to 0 hp they become mist and return to their coffin instead of dying.

Unless you're playing some peasant edition that made them overpowered that is.

Tell your player they're being a faggot and ruining the game. The same answer you give to anybody that tries this shit. Or, conversely, if they are high enough level let them just become a vampire.

>He doesn't know about the age categories, Kanchelsis, master vampire, life drinker, Lyssa Von Sarovich, Blood ghouls, The Blood of orcus, Monstrous Vampires, the ways to abuse the Coffin rules with Cursed earth shown in multiple iterations, salient abilities and weaknesses, Domination applications, Regional Children of the Night use, Bonuses to Fast healing, and Swarmshifter and enhanced undead templates and necormantic intelligences or what happens when your vampire gets Monk levels, or the feats they can get such as villanous, and monstrous feats

You know nothing about the dangerous power creep Vampires are canonically privy to in D&D that can completely change the game's style and slog it down to a halt.

I'll use the opportunity to ask: why the hell is balance considered so important? It's not (in normal conditions) a fucking competitive game.

This.

Seriously, if your PC has become a vampire under most circumstances they are effectively dead and replaced with an evil NPC.

Make it the equivalent of a few magical items and then give the other party members some more magical items.

>why the hell is balance considered so important

>X problem. Ten seconds later character A solves it.

This happens about six more times. The groups dissolves and people stop playing the game.

You don’t just become a vampire. It starts with you becoming a vampire spawn first where you are effectively an intelligent thrall. Though if you’re running a non-evil game then this will probably be too much of a problem and the character should just become an npc.

I find D&D completely evil monster vampires to be refreshing in this age in which ‘muh good vampire character’ has been done to death. They keep all of their mental capabilities and memories but have now become remorseless and cunning monsters. It’s a great and dramatic thing when a beloved pc becomes a powerful antagonist. Even if your players might be a little annoyed at that at first they’ll change their minds when the realise how awesome it is.

Not him but it’s true that the game is about playing a role rather than about the character abilities primarily. I play 5e so lack of balance isn’t a particularly big issue like it is in pathfinder and 3e. I’m just going to keep saying it until people realise it’s true.

dude just tack some minor vampire power like bigger physical strength on player and let him struggle for greater control of The Dark Gift if he bothers to

What's stopping you from using the Libris Mortis Vampire Spawn monster class?

>3.pf
хдд

1) The most dangerous thing about vampires isn't their supernatural powers, but the person they were before they became a vampire and how they've continued to develop over their immortal lifespan. A random shmuck who's just been turned yesternight won't immediately know how to use all their powers. Even then, a vampire with the entire powerset but no skills to back it up is just an animal. However, a badass who's been turned a hundred years ago, and has not only spent that time developing their powers but also honing mundane skills, as well as learning how their powers and skills complement each other, is a force to be reckoned with.

The fact they can't go into sunlight, cross running water, or even enter private property without permission isn't going to fuck them over? Also the reliance on the coffin, needing blood, and holy symbols rendering them powerless with ease?

Nigga did you even READ the rulebook? Vampires are dangerous does but absolutely terrible as player races unless you're in the underdark.

Vampire PCs are pretty much awful in any party for any system, both in game balance and narrative terms.

So, your options are "don't" or "they're an NPC now"

This is the best solution. How many opportunities will someone get to play a vampire? It happened naturally and is potentially a great and memorable story and you shouldn't throw it away just because it might cause some challenges.

>d&d vampires are very much taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula

So you surely know that Dracula's many powers and weaknesses stemmed not from him being a vampire, but due to him being a mage and servant of the devil.

The only things inherent to being a vampire are bloodlust, incredible strength, speed, and endurance, immortality, spawning other vampires, and burning under the sun.

The rest, the whole bit about magical charm spells and domination, turning into bats, wolves, and fog, the whole being repelled by crosses, garlic, silver, stakes through the heart, living in coffins with dirt, and being unable to cross running water, or being invited to homes part is purely being a mage who learned his arts from the devil.

(I'm sure you'll add all those weaknesses to your mages and warlocks in your D&D game to be more true to the source material eh?) ;^)

You'll notice none of those things have anything to do with morality or good and evil, except the bloodlust which can sometimes be uncontrollable depending on the mythos. That's the whole point of FREE WILLED undead, they have their own wills and desires and aren't forced to act in any particular fashion or alignment.

That said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so there's nothing to say he won't slowly turn evil over the decades and centuries as he uses and abuses his vampiric powers and feels more distant from mortal humans. But that's still his choice, and is a far more interesting journey than to say he's magically compelled to do evil from the outset.

>Dungeons: The dragoning
This sounds like a meme, is this supposed to be a serious suggestion?

yeah, it's homebrew of sorts
1d4chan.org/wiki/Dungeons:_the_Dragoning_40,000_7th_Edition

>as I said I'm gonna retcon the kiss.
And OP turned out to be a fag all along.

>Why can I play an indulgent, narcissistic and self-serving human and not play the same but as a vampire?
Very strong assumption on your part desu senpai

My reasoning is that powerful vampires are like that because they
a) Have trained upon their abilities
b) Have accumulated power over time

If a PC became a vampire they would start as a lowly thrall-level vamp who would only have the most basic of vampiric abilities (immortality, improved endurance, levitation), none of the flashy stuff like transforming into mist or commanding animals

>How many opportunities will someone get to play a vampire?
That's a good point. I was on the fence but if given two choices, always pick the one that's more exciting.

Was that a hyperlink or a drop of acid?

Both, my friend, both at once...

>and burning under the sun.
But Dracula never did that. In fact, he walked out in the sun several times. You're thinking of Count Orlok. I suppose that's a common enough mistake.

You both run a shit game.

This is a pretty cool read, but better as a premise than a game you actually play.

It can be super fun, but like many niche systems, requires people to all be on the same page.

>toad on a leash

That's the best answer in this thread, though.

As someone who has GMed it, it's actually a pretty good system, although a bit rough around the edges.