Vampires

[Trey Bright]

So if a player or NPC becomes a vampire, is there any official statement on where the vampire's soul goes? Vampires are undead which means they don't have their soul anymore right? So does their soul pass on? Head to final judgement? Is it possible to be cured if this is the case? Or would that take a resurrect type spell? If you were powerful enough to head to the underworld as a vampire, could you bargain for your soul back and then use your newly acquired soul to become a lich? I'm just wondering if there's anything official in 3.5 or pathfinder on these questions. I know there isn't really any answers to anything like this in 5e, so I thought I'd turn to the older, bigger edition to look for information to pull from.

[InterstellarPro]

I'd recommend reading page 89 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. It basically says that the DM should pick the option they like best, but it does give some potential options. One of them suggests that the original soul of the creature turns into the vampire's essense, which would imply that the soul does not move on. The soul instead becomes corrupted to become the vampire.

[Jowgen]

Definitely a question for afroakuma's planar oddities thread. Chances are, he's already answered this in a previous one (I suggesting searching before asking, lest you incur his wrath).

My take is that intelligent undead created from mortals do indeed have souls, because it just simplifies the metaphysics
for Liches and Ghosts.

[Trey Bright]

I'd recommend reading page 89 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. It basically says that the DM should pick the option they like best, but it does give some potential options. One of them suggests that the original soul of the creature turns into the vampire's essense, which would imply that the soul does not move on. The soul instead becomes corrupted to become the vampire.

Interesting! Is that what they did in the OotS with Durkon?

[InterstellarPro]

Interesting! Is that what they did in the OotS with Durkon?

In OotS, it appears that they are using the notion that a demon coinhabits the body, exercising ultimate control of both action and thought, leaving the soul in place to watch in horror.

[The Viscount]

The official stance on vampires is found, rather confusingly, in the text for Magic Jar.

Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.

So a vampire, like other sentient undead, has a soul. (Bonus fun fact: A lich's phylactery doesn't hold its soul. It holds its "life force" which is never described more.) Due to the limited nature of souls in D&D it is almost certainly the soul of the original creature. I can't exactly prove that, but otherwise it would have to be the generation of a new soul or pulling a soul back from the afterlife. The first is unlikely considering how aberrant undead are generally regarded by the D&D cosmological rules, and the second is very unlikely due to the way the afterlives work.

That being said, there is an interesting bit of lore about vampire souls. The Shadow Sun Ninja Prestige Class has a capstone that if used too heavily, can turn you into a vampire. It qualified with "legend has it" but it does say that the soul of a shadow sun ninja transformed in such a manner is trapped in Dis, the second layer of the Nine Hells, and can be freed to return the person to life. Combining this with the above information, you might say that specific trumping general means that these specific vampires have no souls. You might combine the rules and say that these vampires must still have souls and thus they are a new soul specific to the vampire or some repurposed older soul. Or you might say that all vampires have their souls trapped in Dis.

The default rules about restoring a creature that has been turned into an undead state that you have to use resurrection or stronger, and the undead creature has to be destroyed (at least it specifies this in the text of resurrection that they must be destroyed, undead traits doesn't mention this part).

[KillianHawkeye]

If you're going with pop culture Buffy the Vampire Slayer rules that say vampires have no soul and are merely corpses possessed by demons, that's one way to look at it. But D&D doesn't really specify that undead in general nor vampires specifically lack a soul. What exactly happens to the soul is left unclear, and is thus open to interpretation.

According to the 3e/3.5 rules, you cannot resurrect someone who's body has been made into an undead creature until the undead has been destroyed. This applies even to the most powerful forms of resurrection, which don't even require access to the original body.

Therefore, my interpretation has always been that making someone into an undead effectively locks off their soul in some way. That means, either the soul becomes trapped within the animated corpse of the undead creature, or that the magic of necromancy upon the corpse that the soul once resided in effectively nullifies the connection between the soul and the material plane.

Note that there is no cure for vampirism in D&D. The only "cure" is for the abomination to be destroyed; only then can the person it once was be brought back to life. Nor can a vampire, even one in possession of one's soul, be transformed into a lich. At least, not my normal means. Anything is possible if you really want to make it part of the story, but that wouldn't normally be a thing that happens. Those are two totally different forms of undead. It's sort of like asking if a mummy can become a ghost.

[vasilidor]

according to some of the old stories floating around vampires came about in one of two ways: a deal with the devil, or being a victim. in the first scenario the soul is condemned to hell, in the second it is in purgatory. I think.

[Mato]

In OotS, it appears that they are using the notion that a demon coinhabits the body, exercising ultimate control of both action and thought, leaving the soul in place to watch in horror.Rich Burlew is just using the rules already printed.


The official stance on vampires is found, rather confusingly, in the text for Magic Jar.And in the dedicated section about death in complete divine which is pretty easy to find.


Definitely a question for afroakuma's planar oddities thread. Chances are, he's already answered this in a previous one (I suggesting searching before asking, lest you incur his wrath).Questions shouldn't be met with any sort of wrath but he provided an incorrect answer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22652292&postcount=444) (many plants/oozes have souls) last month if you're interested.


So if a player or NPC becomes a vampire, is there any official statement on where the vampire's soul goes?Yes.

Some undead such as vampires and wights create spawn out of a character they kill, trapping the soul of the deceased in a body animated by negative energy and controlled by a malign intelligence. Sometimes the undead creature can access the memories of the deceased ...