Vampire build help

[Zephyrz]

I'm looking to have a strong vampire for a campaign I will be running, however I have no experience with them. Does anyone have a good vampire build that they would be willing to share? Anything is allowed and it can be any level. If you have a rp story behind it that you would like to share I will try to work it into the campaign as well. Thank you to all who respond.

[singera]

i have one that relayed on the 3.0 vampire lord template and had paladin 10/blackguard 10 he was a charming villain who would thanks to appearing human work with the party to fight a cult while in truth was moving them against his enemies using the fact he appeared to be a paladin to gain there trust

[Darrin]

From Iron Chef LXII (Dungeon Lord): Vlad III Draculea (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18314182&postcount=113).

[dantiesilva]

I once built a vampire lord that started out as a paladin 4/rogue 1/ shadowbane inquisitor 10. However he was then turned into a vampire and for obvious reasons (and because of how my dm read shadowbane inquisitor) traded in all 4 paladin levels for black guard levels. It was his view that because of shadowbane inquisitor ability to count as paladin levels for certain things that black guard would be one. So he had all the powers of a fallen level 10 paladin without any of the loses, along with the abilities of a shadowbane inquisitor because you don't lose them for falling . At the end he became a master vampire who rode on one of those dragons from dracononica (not exactly sure of the name of it. I knew it was black with green eyes, away from books at the moment. ) raised an entire undead army to stop a half demon, half elf from taking over the world with her army of demons. Yes sounds a lot like warcraft.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A village built on a cliff overlooking the sea has been having disappearances. Locals speak of a song in the night that enchants them to their doom, and several days later a body washes up on the shore. What's actually happening is that there's one or more Harpy Vampire using Captivating Song to draw unsuspecting villagers out along the cliff away from the town. She sings as she moves, and anyone enthralled will follow until they reach her or she gets out of range.

She chooses a victim from among those she's lured, picks them up, still singing, and flies out over the ocean. Once she's a good distance from the shore she stops singing and starts drinking. If they struggle they'll fall to their death, and they're too far out for anyone to hear their screams. She drains them until near death and drops them to their doom. By the time they wash ashore they've been nibbled by fish enough that there's no longer any conclusive evidence of their fate. Nobody really knows what's going on.

The Harpy Vampire(s) rest in a cave in the cliff overlooking the ocean, about a mile down the coast from the town. The opening is very small and almost impossible to find. Within the cavern is a teeming community of kobolds, always weary of outsiders and always prepare to defend the home they've built. The Harpy Vampire(s) always enter in mist form, easily avoiding all the traps and even detection, and simply hang from the ceiling in a tall room that almost never sees visitors.

The kobolds themselves have made sure to be prepared to fight off invaders, as their paranoid high shaman has foreseen their violent end. Their main living quarters are in deep caverns, only accessible via tunnels barely large enough for a tiny size creature to squeeze through (per Slight Build (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a)). Along these tunnels are of course guard chambers with their most elite warriors, who invaders will most likely never even encounter. The tunnels which are accessible from the outside are deliberately built as a decoy to their main living chambers, easy for larger foes to traverse and explore. The initial entrance is a downward slope, gradually becoming steeper, and the last stretch of it is smeared with pitch so it's slick. The end of the tunnel intersects perpendicular to a very wide, deep trench going the length of a long hallway. There's a ledge along the wall of this hallway that can be used to continue on in either direction without falling.

The walls and ceiling of the initial corridor and the hallway are lined with holes for kobolds to pop out of, stabbing and throwing rocks and spears and taunting invaders to chase them further in. Once the invaders get near the end the kobolds drop bales of oil-soaked straw from the ceiling and ignite them, which then roll down the slope as wide as the corridor, chasing the invaders in further. Once the bales reach the pitch-smeared floor it ignites as well, and the invaders will have already been running so it's too late to stop. Once they reach the intersection they'll almost certainly fall over the side into the trench, which is filled with diseased stakes and rat swarms.

If they survive the fire, fall, stakes, and rats, there are a few directions they can go. The trench is easy to navigate, though it's slow due to the short stakes covering the floor and the occasional rat swarms which are drawn to light and the sounds of other rats... swarming. They may find some sort of disposal creatures in the trench, such as Otyughs, Gelatinous Cubes, and various other oozes or even Green Slime. The trench doesn't really go anywhere, so invaders will eventually have to climb out.

The ledge goes the length of the hallway, and there's one on the opposite side as well. There's an occasional log spanning the trench, though they're watched and the kobolds will throw spears from holes in the walls and ceiling, and can release a mechanism to cause the log to roll in place. There are more tunnels and rooms from the long hallway, but they're all just as hazardous, strewn with traps, and designed to make it easy for the kobolds to ambush.

[Urpriest]

Are you looking for a PC, or an NPC?

[Flickerdart]

How monstrous can the vampire be? A Savage Vampire (Libris Mortis) on a thri-kreen totemist is thrice as scary (each claw drains 1 level, and it can have 6 claw attacks easily). Add tauric monstrous scorpion for more claws and more death.

Otherwise, the vampire's most potent power is that he can create minions of double his HD. Often, the master is only half as strong as his servant...

[Zephyrz]

It will be a npc that the party hears rumors of long before they meet. I'm hoping more for a humanoid figure so that it can walk into a city without to much attention. Build paths are always welcome as it makes it easier to tone down a bit if needed, or it could push it up a notch. Thank you to everyone who has replied so far. I'm already getting ideas that I hadn't come up with before because of your input.

[BowStreetRunner]

While not actually from the 3.5 system, I ran a vampire in another game system (Cyberpunk Night's Edge) that might be of interest to you. The vampire had a stranglehold on a small European city. The PCs were sent in by a corporation planning a hostile takeover of a company whose headquarters and factories were in that city, so the corporation wanted to eliminate the vampire problem before they took control. The PCs met with the mayor of the city who referred them to a baroness living in the nearby countryside whose family had been at war with the vampire for generations. The baroness met with them and provided a great deal of information about the vampire and 'his' servants.

In truth the baroness was the vampire and had for centuries kept her country estate 'vampire free' and maintained the lie of the vampire being a man. She would ally with vampire hunters who came to the city, providing them with shelter on her estate, and even maintained rules for her minions that if a hunter made it to the sanctuary of the estate they were to be left alone. [Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.] She also altered her appearance every generation to appear as her own heir. Needless to say, the vampire always seemed to be one step ahead of the hunters no matter what they planned.

[VisitingDaGulag]

For a PC? Vampires suck. Many have tried (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=3746.msg49410#msg49410) to make them not suck. Few have succeeded.

I got this (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=8770) when I googled "a vampire PC that doesn't suck"