Vampire Thrall Player Species: Design With Me

October 2024 Series – check out the rest of the series!

This month is all about vampires. This series started last week with a breakdown of the history of the vampire myth, from its Eastern European origins to some of the modern permutations of that story. 

This article is a “Design With Me”. If you’re new to the blog, the “Design With Me” Articles are where I show you my creative process in developing homebrew... though it has been a while, and I think the last one I did was my post on Spiders back in February.

In this Design With Me, we’ll be making a homebrew species that players can use in their games. Remember to always get permission from your GM to use any homebrew you find! Our homebrew species for this article is going to be a Vampire Thrall, which you can pick up for any price on DMsGuild.

This species is designed to be a homebrew for the 2014 D&D 5e rules, AND the 2024 rules. Because the balance is different, as the species pulls less weight in the 2024 rules, I've marked several features as "2014 only". If you're playing with the 2024 Player's system, you should ignore those features.

Recap: What Makes This Feel Vampiric

There is more to a vampire than just sucking blood. As we established in last week’s article on vampire history, there are three key ways that vampires feel scary in their historical and mythological roots. 

First, an air of mystery. Vampires should feel somewhat unknown and unknowable. Their powers and weaknesses should not be so obvious that they fail to have surprises up their sleeve. Obviously, for content to be used by players, we need to balance this with avoiding incentivizing vampiric characters who are dark and brooding in a corner and who will not participate in the adventure alongside their fellow players.

Second, a human fear of the undeath. While vampires should not evoke the rotting, putrid sense that a zombie does, vampires should evoke a feeling of wrongness just in their existence. They should break the rules somehow so that they feel alien to our typical Dungeons & Dragons player.

Third, the ability to appear as human. That part is easy and done more through roleplay than mechanics – they're a player character, and so the player reading this blog who chooses to use this species should not make it obvious to the party that they are a vampire at the start. Let that become evident over the course of the narrative.

Fourth, a fear of others from distant and foreign lands. We’re aiming to modify this from Bram Stoker’s anti-Eastern European roots with the Dracula story. Instead, we want something that feels strange.

All three of these fears, particularly when we’re designing something for players, center around that vampiric characters should feel strange and off-putting.

Why Thralls?

This character species is called the Vampire Thrall. Why a thrall, rather than a full vampire? 

Full vampires should be rare. In all our historical roots, vampires are not lurking around every corner. Particularly when we draw from Dracula, one vampire is enough to set our protagonists on a grand quest to stop him. If vampires are commonplace, people would have heard about them more, and they start to lose that all-important sense of mystery that is essentially in making a scary vampire. Even in the comparatively "vamped up" world of Interview with the Vampire, we are told that there are perhaps 4 vampires in all of North America in 1910 (in the TV show).

Being a vampire is a full-time job. Dracula was not going around questing on top of being a vampire. Full vampires tend to be somewhat reclusive – again, the air of mystery. So making ‘vampire’ be as unimportant to your 5e character as species is feels wrong to me. If we were to make a full vampire, it should be a class: something defining to your character’s function and abilities in the world.

A thrall gives us the ability to still create a vampiric species that engages with what it means to be a vampire while avoiding these pitfalls. We don't create regular, adventuring vampires. We don't create a world that suggests hundreds of thousands of active vampires living in the world. Our true vampires, monsters, can still be distinct from their player counterparts. This also lets us build direct goals for our player characters that can help span a campaign, such as either ridding yourself of the vampiric curse or seeking to ascend into full vampiredom.

This also lets us build a character in the archetype of Astarion, from Baldur’s Gate 3. It gives the DM free plot hooks by letting us connect with, fight against, and have interesting decision points around a full vampire master responsible for turning us into a thrall. 

Critically, making our player species a vampire thrall does mean that our thralls are not entirely under the control of their vampiric creators. These are not mindless servants; our thralls, if they are to be adventurers, have at least a majority of their free will intact.

Ability Scores

In Dungeons & Dragons 5e (2014), player lineages/races/species tend to have a couple of unique benefits or mechanics. The biggest impact lineage has is by providing ability score increases, though the rules in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything encourage players to simply pick an ability score that they will gain a +2 to and a +1 to, and the 2024 rules link ability scores to background rather than species. So, for this homebrew, I'm going to provide an option for encouraged, specific ability scores, but also let players choose/connect them to backgrounds if they’d prefer.

What ability scores should our vampire thrall have?

Strength: Vampires do have some level of supernatural strength, but I do not see them as especially strong. To me, vampires are more nimble than demonstrating brute force.

Dexterity: Much better! Vampires are often seen as ‘fast’, particularly in more modern media where speed can be a contrast to the more slow, shambling undead form of the zombie. In Twilight, for example, vampires have super speed. Dexterity, as the stat governing nimbleness, might be a good fit.

Constitution: This also seems to fit. Vampires are notoriously hard to kill. In Dracula, a vampire must have its head chopped off and a stake through its heart in order to be permanently put to rest. I think a bonus to constitution granting extra hit points could make sense as well. 

Intelligence: The main thing that vampires have going for them in the intelligence department is their age. Being immortals, it makes sense that vampires would have a lot of time to learn. Vampire stories also often have vampires learning dark magic, which would probably be intelligence-based for a vampiric wizard. But I don’t think intellect is particularly relevant to a vampiric character’s archetype.

Wisdom: Similar to strength, vampires are sometimes portrayed as having superhuman abilities to sense things, which would connect to wisdom. However, that is not essential to what makes something a vampire. 

Charisma: This, I think, is where a vampire’s true strength lies. Vampires are charming. They have the ability to compel people to do their bidding in many stories, particularly modern retellings of Dracula. I don’t want our vampires to be sexy; vampires are dangerous and often used as metaphors for abuse (just look at Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3). However, the idea that our vampire should have a powerful sort of aura, an ability to be charming and manipulative, is key to much of the vampire’s metaphor.

So, if we’re doing suggested ability scores, I think Charisma should be a +2 and Constitution should be a +1.

This has the side effect of being a good ability score combination for a warlock – main spellcasting ability and hit points – which fits the ‘vampires made a deal with the devil’ archetype that Western, Catholic interpretations of vampires often adopted and which we talked about last week.

Sunlight

I said last week that I did not want my vampires to be at risk from the sun. Having your vampire walk directly into the sunlight and be unharmed can be so against-trope that it might make people wonder if you really are a vampire, or if you’re something else – a key element in building the air of mystery.

This has the added benefit of being good for a player character. If you can’t be exposed to the sun, you’re either going to be obnoxiously insisting that your character only goes out at night – being a drag on your party, on the sorts of options your GM has, and not being a particularly fun restriction at the average table. Better to just leave it entirely off.

Lastly, having vampires be fine in the sunlight connects us better to our original sources – traditional folklore and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, both of which are totally ok with letting their vampires face the sun. 

So, no sunlight sensitivity for our species.

Representing Undeath

We need some ability that reflects that our vampiric thralls are undead. Vampires—even vampiric thrall PCs—should be difficult to kill.

The easiest way to apply “hard to kill” to a character species is the half-orc’s Relentless Endurance. This ability states: “When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.” I think we should just take that trait – we know it does not horribly disrupt the game because it is a standard feature for an existing species, so we can pretty safely balance around it.

In Dracula and a lot of our traditional myths, killing a vampire means stabbing them through the heart with a stake and cutting off their head. This restriction would be a bit too powerful for a vampiric player character, but I do think that we can use this heritage as a way to modify our vampiric character’s relentless endurance trait and make it more unique.

D&D does not really have support for multiple types of physical damage, so we can’t say that our character needs to be beheaded AND stabbed simultaneously. Stabbing through the heart with a stake is definitely the part of the myth that resonates more in depictions of vampires (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer), so let’s borrow that aspect as a way of shutting down our relentless endurance – giving our vampiric characters and appropriate fear of stabbing weapons.

Our final trait for being hard to kill will be this

Vampiric Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You cannot use this feature if you were reduced to 0 hit points by piercing damage. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

I also think that our vampires should be resistant to necrotic damage. This feels like it just makes sense – the rotting influence of undeath should not damage our undead creature.

An additional trait would be to give our thralls vulnerability to radiant damage. A lot of undead monsters have that vulnerability. However, vulnerability for PCs is very risky and generally should be avoided. There’s a reason none of the officially published species have vulnerability to a damage type. Double damage can wipe out a player character really fast. While radiant damage is pretty uncommon as a damage type for enemies and I certainly think it would be thematic, I’m going to stay away from thralls having radiant vulnerability for the sake of balance.

Innate Spellcasting

Vampires should be able to cast spells. From Dracula learning the “Scholomance” to the classic image of a vampire leeching blood to the way that vampires can compel certain behaviors in their enemies in more modern depictions, magic is a key part of the vampiric mythos.

That said, innate spellcasting for 5e species never goes above 2^nd-level spells. Otherwise, it would be too powerful. This tragically removes “Vampiric Touch” from the available options, when that would be a natural choice for our thralls. 

Looking over the official list of D&D 5e spells, there are two low-level spells that feel important and relevant for our vampiric thralls. The first is Inflict Wounds – which we’ll flavor as a bite – and the other is Command, representing the way that vampires can compel actions from their enemies. Charisma, as our +2 from our species' ability score increases, should be the spellcasting trait. Here’s our trait:

Innate Spellcasting. You know the 1^st-level spells Command and Inflict Wounds. You can cast each of these spells at first level once per long rest without expending a spell slot. Charisma is your spellcasting ability modifier for these spells.

Making the Vampire Feel Wrong

One of our key ideas that we wanted to make our vampires feel scary is to make them feel distinct and off-putting, to capture a sense of undead mystery, and to make them feel ‘other’. 

To me, I think this means we need to push against one of the major pillars of D&D: player agency. Traveling with a vampire should feel dangerous and risky. I am imagining the scene in Baldur’s Gate 3, where you confront Astarion about wanting to drink your blood and having the opportunity to kick him out of the party. This can also help our vampiric characters from falling into being “brooding and sexy,” reminding us that vampires are dangerous companions.

I think the way to do this is to play into a vampire’s compulsion to feed on human blood. And yes, human (or humanoid, for D&D purposes) blood is important too; if your vampire can feed on animal blood, they stop being something dangerous.

Consume Blood. Whenever a humanoid creature within 30 feet of you dies, you may use an action to feed on it and drink its blood. If you do, you regain hit points equal to your level.

Blood Compulsion. Whenever you take a long rest, if you have not used Consume Blood at least once since your last long rest, you become crazed with a desire for blood. Roll 1d4 and consult the Blood Craze table below. You suffer the relevant effect.

This combination of traits mechanically incentivizes the player to ensure that their character regularly feeds. If they don’t, they risk attacking their allies, becoming weaker, or jumping into combat with potentially friendly NPCs.

This is not something that normally exists for a PC, which will help make playing a vampiric thrall feel unique and distinctly “wrong” and other. It creates a real risk to traveling with a vampire – you never know if they are going to hit a blood craze and try to damage you the next time that you’re in combat.

Minor Things

Let’s polish off our species with a few of the minor things every species gets.

First up is language. Language is rarely relevant in most campaigns, which I think is a shame. Vampires should speak Common, mostly because otherwise our player characters would be unable to communicate. I think vampires should also just get a language that they knew in life – remember that all vampires used to be someone else. So let’s give our vampires Common and one other language that they knew in life.

For size, our species is medium – just like most other PC species.

Next, vision. A lot of PC species have darkvision, but I also think that vampires logically should be able to see in the dark. They have bat and wolf powers in a lot of myth; extra sight feels just like it makes sense. Let’s do Darkvision 60 feet.

For walking speed, let’s stick with the default and give our thralls a speed of 30 feet. While I think there’s an argument to be made for a faster vampire (as inspired by Twilight and Interview with the Vampire), that’s an aspect of vampirism that is not really grounded in the original myths, where vampires are depicted as closer to humanoid.

That said, just to up the “weird” factor, one of my favorite scenes from Bram Stoker’s Dracula is where one of our protagonists sees Dracula crawling along the walls of his castle: “I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.” It’s a weird part of the Dracula story that has gotten forgotten in retellings, and it is just so utterly inhuman that it gives a great sense of weirdness. Let’s give our vampire thrall characters a Climb Speed of 30 feet and Spider Climb to reflect this particular Dracula ability.

Checking Balance

Now, let’s make sure that our product is mostly in line with official published options. Rather than completely reinventing the wheel here, I use “Detect Balance” – a spreadsheet produced and available for free over on reddit. It is not flawless, but I've found it to be pretty decent at balancing.

Plugging all my powers in, I get a strength score of 32, which Detect Balance tells me is in line with the recent median species scores from official source material like Mythic Odyssey of Theros, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, & Monsters of the Multiverse. Great! This means we don’t need to tweak anything substantial or remove or add additional powers.

Final Product

The finished Vampire Thrall species, complete with formatting, can be found on DMsGuild as a Pay-What-You-Want title! Please consider supporting the site (and helping me pay for the site’s upkeep and hosting) by paying for a copy, but feel free to pick it up for free as well.

Thank you again for your support and your readership!