Vampire PC

[ZhanStrider]

Whilst making a vampire paladin (of tyranny), i realized that vampires have a level adjustment of +8. So at my first level I would have to be in a party of level 9 characters, but vampires don't get health, so I would only have 12 HP? is that right? it seems like it would be awfully easy to kill me?

[Nettlekid]

Yes on all counts. Very easy to kill you. Even with your Turn Resistance, that single HD means you could be pretty easily destroyed by an appropriate ECL Cleric. Vampire's LA is widely considered to be unfairly high. I think an LA of +4 is more appropriate.

One thing you can do is take a single, HD-less level of the Vampire Template Class posted online somewhere, and then take Legacy Champion to progress the template class. It's not 100% efficient (so you end up losing like 9 level instead of 8) but you gain HD, saves, and BAB for all but one of those levels, meaning you don't die as soon as anything wants to kill you.

[Callin]

Its the Savage Progression Vampire. Toss on Savage Vampire from Libris Mortus to rock and roll.

[HunterOfJello]

Taking the full +8 LA Vampire template is almost always a bad idea. The Vampire Savage Species progression (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a) could help you out a bit as an alternative. You can take only 1 or 2 levels in that instead of 8 which would make your character extremely weak.

[KillianHawkeye]

Whilst making a vampire paladin (of tyranny), i realized that vampires have a level adjustment of +8. So at my first level I would have to be in a party of level 9 characters, but vampires don't get health, so I would only have 12 HP? is that right? it seems like it would be awfully easy to kill me?

No. That would be correct, except that you cannot become a full vampire without already having 5 Hit Dice. Lower level creatures become vampire spawn when blood drained instead. Therefore, the lowest ECL you can play a vampire character is 13.

[WhamBamSam]

There's also the Vampiric template for Dragons in Draconomicon, which is only LA+5, and can be applied to a Dragonwrought Kobold. RAW, the kobold probably actually retains the dragon type and all the cheese that entails, since it still qualifies for Dragonwrought, which has the effect of your type being dragon, but gains all the undead immunities and loses its crappy Con score since they're mentioned as part of the template.

You lose some of the things the standard Vampire template gives, but lose some of the weaknesses as well, and you can vampirize Adult and older dragons along with the usual humanoids and monstrous humanoids if you can find a way to successfully pin them and drain their Con to 0 (I'm fond of Wu Jen 3/Totemist 2/Soulcaster 10 with a friendly War Chanter (probably one you vampirized somewhere along the line) to boost your BAB).

Though if you're making a Paladin of Tyrrany, you might have problems, since the Vampiric Dragon template says "Always Chaotic Evil" so you need DM permission to be LE, and you have no real access to size boosting, so it'd mean no pet vampiric dragons, though such things might make your DM hate you anyway.

[Thanatosia]

I've never understood the idea behind LAs.

I mean, a NPC with character levels has a challenge rating equal to it's Character Level.... a lv9 wizard is a cr9 encounter. so if cr=lv, then shouldn't a templates cr adjustment also be it's Level Adjustment for PC use?

[Nettlekid]

No. That would be correct, except that you cannot become a full vampire without already having 5 Hit Dice. Lower level creatures become vampire spawn when blood drained instead. Therefore, the lowest ECL you can play a vampire character is 13.

The Vampire Lord (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20021018a) template for vampires states that any spawn you create is a full vampire, not a vampire spawn. So feasibly you could have 1 HD vampires from that, but it'll take one heck of a backstory to justify how your Vampire Lord creator is dead or for some other reason no longer has direct control over you.

[The Glyphstone]

I've never understood the idea behind LAs.

I mean, a NPC with character levels has a challenge rating equal to it's Character Level.... a lv9 wizard is a cr9 encounter. so if cr=lv, then shouldn't a templates cr adjustment also be it's Level Adjustment for PC use?

CR adjustment is almost always lower because the monster will only get to use its template-granted abilities in a few fights, and probably only one fight. A templated PC will get to use their template-granted abilities in an average of 4 fights per day for their entire life, so they get vastly more utility/benefits from a given template.

[Flickerdart]

I've never understood the idea behind LAs.

I mean, a NPC with character levels has a challenge rating equal to it's Character Level.... a lv9 wizard is a cr9 encounter. so if cr=lv, then shouldn't a templates cr adjustment also be it's Level Adjustment for PC use?
No.

Consider an encounter. The monster you fight is facing down a guaranteed 3+ dudes who are decked out in sweet gear. It doesn't matter if it has unlimited use of all of its abilities because its life span is probably going to be under 30 seconds from the time it pops into being to the time it becomes XP and loot.

Now consider a PC. That sucker will see many a battle every day, and plenty of in-between time as well. He's going to take any unlimited or high-power abilities he gets from the monster race and run with it. WotC was really scared of this, so they made ECL higher than CR and now almost every monster is crap as a PC.

I mean, take the vampire template, since that's the topic. First of all, it freakin' encourages you to exceed your spawn caps by having your spawn make spawn. But even without that, a 5HD vampire can turn and command a 10HD vampire (with some help from his 13th level buds). Not only is that a lot more reasonable in a fight (being a CR12 creature) but it's a suicidal minion that actually comes back from the suicides. Oh, and he can also dominate a bunch of friends. So instead of wizard, cleric, fighter, rogue, you now have wizard, cleric, fighter, vampire rogue, vampire rogue, crowd of slaves, 2d6+2 rat swarms...it can get out of hand.

(Someone please tell me that there's a rule somewhere that says vampires can only create new vampires of their HD or lower like Animate Dead has, because this doesn't seem intentional)

[WhamBamSam]

Well in the case of things like Vampires and Liches, the big thing is how hard they are to kill in any permanent way. Whether the monster in question can go back to it's phylactery/coffin has story implications, but doesn't really make the individual encounters that much harder, in theory. A PC that can't die though? That makes a bit more of an impact.

In general, most things have unreasonable ECLs, but it's not entirely unreasonable to have LA>CR in some cases, like this one.