Vampires in the party

[Esprit15]

How do you handle it? Or any acquired template that would be vastly unbalancing and yet is applied by a monster to some of its victims.

This is likely to come up in a game I am running. One member of the party has been making plans to go up against a figure that they don't know IC (and probably don't know OOC) is a vampire, though there have been hints in both areas and he may have put 2 and 2 together. If someone in the party should turn, but not everyone, what would be good ways to go about acquiring that power? Applying a weaker version of the template? Giving him only a few powers at a time? Something else?

Obviously if everyone gets turned, I just note the new new ECL, note that the LA is too high, and eyeball challenges for something maybe 4 CR higher rather than 8. My concern is more at the sudden acquisition of power by one or two individuals than the party as a whole.

[Crake]

Easy, use the vampire savage progression detailed here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a). I personally like to use it in conjunction with my homebrew gestalt rules, allowing players to essentially "gestalt" with the savage progression, making it less painful to deal with than +8 LA, because as many people agree, it's really not worth that.

[frogglesmash]

There's a few options that I've thought up/collected.
1. [this one's pretty essential] depending on the optimization level you play at either nerf or remove the ability to create minions (creating spawn is fine, creating minions is a problem).
2. Treat the template like a magic item and adjust treasure accordingly. Some discussion with your players is necessary for this one so the vampire knows why he's getting shafted as far as loot is concerned.
3. Change the LA. Seriously, it's too high. Just guesstimating the template's value I'd bring it down to +4, +5 at highest.
4. If you change the LA to something more manageable LA buyoff becomes a viable option.
5. Give everyone else a power boost of some sort as well, be it magic items/templates/grafts etc. This will bring everyone up to a similar power level and make balancing encounters easier.
6. In the vein of option 5, try to get your undead PC to turn everyone else into vampires as well, this has the added benefit of solving a lot of the scheduling issues that having a vampire in the party can cause.
7. Have the newly dead PC take the Vampire savage progression and acquire their powers more slowly(I'd suggest adding hit dice, skill, save, and bab to it though so it's not as s**t). I personally don't like this option because it makes becoming a vampire suck when it really shouldn't.
Edit: I dislike this option far less if used in conjunction with gestalt rules as Crake suggests.

Something to consider: If you do something to bump the rest of the party's power level you'll end up throwing tougher mobs at them resulting in super high XP output for their level. Don't let this become a problem, decrease the XP rewards accordingly.

[AnachroNinja]

When using any of the general class of "involuntary" templates, you should remember that your players may not want it and may feel their character is no longer playable if they have it. Vampire in particular is going to limit day time activities, cause possible allignment changes, and vastly change a characters concept.

I'd recommend seeing how the combat plays out, and if anyone does contract vampirism, speak to them about whether they actually want to keep it. If not, that's a fun side quest to get it cured. If they do, the party needs to decide if they can accommodate it, and if so, to what degree. It may be reasonable to adapt the template to be less powerful but less restrictive, or they may enjoy the challenge of working around it, but it should be a decision you make with their input.

[frogglesmash]

On a side note, I generally edit a few aspects of the vampire template when using it in my games, these are mostly about personal preference, but I figured I'd share. I change the blood drain attack from con drain to con damage because it means that vampires can now live sustainable off of a handful of blood slaves without having to resort to having a cleric on hand. I remove their ability to inflict negative levels because I don't like it. I also remove a few of their weaknesses, namely their aversion running water, entering private homes, and their dependency on coffins, consequently I also remove their ability to run back to their coffin if they lose a fight. The reason I remove those weaknesses is because they're little than arbitrary hindrances and irritations to the players, and I myself find them a little silly.