Vampire Race

[JNAProductions]

Ability Score Increase
Vampires are sturdy, charming, and canny. You gain +1 to Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma.

Size
Your size is Medium.

Speed
Your speed is 30'.

Undead Nature
You have immunity to disease, as well as resistance to poison and necrotic damage and advantage on saves against poison.

Darkvision
You can see in darkness out to 60' in black and white.

Vampire's Bite
As an action, you may attack with your bite against an adjacent foe. This is a Finesse weapon that deals a base of 1d4 damage. In addition, it deals an extra 1d4 necrotic damage, and you gain THP equal to the necrotic damage dealt. The necrotic damage increases by 1d4 at levels 5, 11, and 17. If you have Extra Attack, you may replace any attack with a bite, but only one attack per turn may be a bite.

Innate Spellcasting
At first level, Friends.
At third level, Enthrall as a second level spell once per long rest.
At fifth level, Hold Person as a second level spell once per long rest.
Charisma or Intelligence is your casting stat, chosen at character creation.

[JNAProductions]

For the font-quote my post and find out. Or use this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521278-Preset-Class-Tables-for-5e-Homebrew).

For the spells, I forgot Tieflings had Cantrip/2/2. I thought it was Cantrip/2/3. Brought Hold Person down to 2.

And note that, for the bite, you ONLY gain THP from the necrotic damage. So if you have a +5 Dex at level 6, you deal 1d4+5 piercing damage, and then 2d6 necrotic, gaining only the necrotic as THP.

As for damage scaling... Yeah, I'll knock it down to d4.

[JNAProductions]

Thanks for pointing out the font. I'm going to use that.

You also still might want to deal with the scaling and attack switchability issue. A level 20 fighter with 4 attacks, as it currently stands, can do 3 normal attacks and then the fully-scaled bite as one action. I feel like the switching an attack with this seems a bit much when the rest of the ability balances it as a cantrip.

For reference, a Greatsword does 2d6+Str Mod damage, rerolling 1s and 2s, plus whatever magic knick-knacks a Fighter has to add to that.

A Bite does 1d4+Str or Dex Mod non-magical damage, and then 4d4 Necrotic damage.

Assuming your foe is NOT resistant or immune to non-magical damage, the Greatsword (with no magical upgrades) does 13.33 damage per hit, while the bite does 17.5.

I'm okay adding just over 4 DPR to a Fighter.

[Zhorn]

I like the look of this. Very neat.
Designer question though; why go for the race option over a template or class? When considering vampire thematically; wouldn't vampirism be applicable to any humanoid race? Just curious regarding this choice.

[JNAProductions]

I like the look of this. Very neat.
Designer question though; why go for the race option over a template or class? When considering vampire thematically; wouldn't vampirism be applicable to any humanoid race? Just curious regarding this choice.

Request from a friend for a Vampire race.

[Zhorn]

Request from a friend for a Vampire race.

As fair a reason as any

[MagneticKitty]

Ability Score Increase
Vampires are sturdy, charming, and canny. You gain +1 to Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma.

Size
Your size is Medium.

Speed
Your speed is 30'.

Undead Nature
You have immunity to disease, as well as resistance to poison and necrotic damage and advantage on saves against poison.

Darkvision
You can see in darkness out to 60' in black and white.

Vampire's Bite
As an action, you may attack with your bite against an adjacent foe. This is a Finesse weapon that deals a base of 1d4 damage. In addition, it deals an extra 1d4 necrotic damage, and you gain THP equal to the necrotic damage dealt. The necrotic damage increases by 1d4 at levels 5, 11, and 17. If you have Extra Attack, you may replace any attack with a bite, but only one attack per turn may be a bite.

Innate Spellcasting
At first level, Friends.
At third level, Enthrall as a second level spell once per long rest.
At fifth level, Hold Person as a second level spell once per long rest.
Charisma or Intelligence is your casting stat, chosen at character creation.
Here's my eval:
12 pt standard 3 asi points

5 pt Poison res and advantage
3 pt One medium resistance (necrotic)
2 pt immune to disease (not in guide, but resistant to disease is 1 or and this doesn't come up much)

4 pt 2d4 natural weapon
+1 damage other than mundane
+1 finesse
+7-10 heal from attacking does not cool down. Should be once per rest, too powerful, compare with similar abilities shifting once per rest, stone's endurance once per rest .
Scales like a cantrip but does not take entire action... nothing to compare this to, I'd add 6 points for it scaling
Net 22 pt for this feature.

7 pt 1 cantrip and two lv 2 spells at 3rd and 5th

51 point race... normally races are geared to 20 -30 points. Needs some balance, especially that op bite.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vq1kz6PRAbw5LHy6amH-bNb4OuB8DBXL1RsZROt03Sc/htmlview#

Here is the point guide.

I made a half vampire (dhampir) class if you wanna see it sometime

Also a problem with full vampires: aren't they contagious? Making vampire spawn or undead? Maybe this should be a vampire spawn or a half vampire instead of full vampire to avoid this.

[JNAProductions]

So, you're valuing an attack that does (for most of your career, if the game ends like most do around levels 11-13) 2d4 or 3d4 damage, and grants you up to 8 THP (assuming you actually do 8 points of damage-you can't fill up more than 1 THP on, say, rats) as worth 40% of this race?

I like the point guide for races, don't get me wrong. But they certainly ain't the be-all end-all.

[Zhorn]

Going by MagneticKitty's balance comment, it would at the very least make sense to add sunlight sensitivity (-3 pt) and a radiant damage vulnerability (-8 pt), would get you down to 40 points without touching the bite mechanic.

[CunningKindred]

So, you're valuing an attack that does (for most of your career, if the game ends like most do around levels 11-13) 2d4 or 3d4 damage, and grants you up to 8 THP (assuming you actually do 8 points of damage-you can't fill up more than 1 THP on, say, rats) as worth 40% of this race?

I like the point guide for races, don't get me wrong. But they certainly ain't the be-all end-all.

I think that evaluation is probably a bit high and since it is temporary hit points, its probably not as powerful as it might at first appear but the power is written in a way that is a little strange. At first it reads like the equivalent of a cantrip and scales accordingly but then it allows you to substitute it for an attack, which you can't do with anything cantrip-like. If it could be substituted for a normal attack (during an Attack action) than it should not really scale. The multiple attacks are the scaling in this case.

Generally, I would advice you to make the ability more of a stand alone option. A cantrip-like effect that scales as you go up level and does have a pretty nice benefit but I would play up the vampire nature (require the individual being attacked to be grappled or incapacitated first) and maybe does a little piecing damage as well as necrotic.

I created a vampire race for my own group. It's been playtested a bit but the work is quite extensive and we haven't had a chance to test all of it but you might find it a helpful reference to rip off ideas. Vampires are such a broad concept its difficult to do with just a single race so we took the approach of parcelling out the different necessary concepts to different portions of the rules.

Vampire House Rules: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2sp8w9z31k5eell/Homebrew%20%28Vampire%29.pdf?dl=0

[Unavenger]

So, there are already two vampire races: one in Planeshift: Ixalan and one in Planeshift: Zendikar. Both are almost strictly worse than this one: they have a worse bite and lack the innate spellcasting and the disease immunity/poison resistance/poison advantage, keeping only the necrotic resistance.

[CunningKindred]

So, there are already two vampire races: one in Planeshift: Ixalan and one in Planeshift: Zendikar. Both are almost strictly worse than this one: they have a worse bite and lack the innate spellcasting and the disease immunity/poison resistance/poison advantage, keeping only the necrotic resistance.

Although in both cases, the bite actually heals, pretty much at will, which does make it's utility rather better than that presented here. Although, as I said before, I agree that this bite does not work as written. I really don't think it should be a weapon that stacks with a fighter's multiple attacks per turn. That's just a really weird image for a vampire biting someone. The bite of a vampire is surely supposed to be deep, take time, as s/he draws the life from the victim. This rather evokes the image of a vampire that nibbles rapidly on those around him, which is a little "funny" in my mind's eye at least.