How much clobber do they wear? I can well imagine that they can get away with the hood/robes outfit but they wont be particularly comfortable under the mid day sun.

Magic darkness and bad weather will help considerably but they would still have to be careful.

How to prevent PC from becoming vampires?
1) Dial it down. Reduce the power level of vampires
2) Dial up the risk factors. Make becoming a vampire a crap shoot of horrible risks and instant death.

My suggestion? Ignore everything D&D says about vampires and use the fluff from Warhammer Fantasy. A vampire is, with all pretense stripped away, a predator. The blood of animals is worthless to them, only that of humans will do. And what's more, what does the predator care what his prey thinks of him?
Thats a good place to start. Now a way to understand a preditor is to understand the prey. The human animal is:

1) Weak for its size
2) Vision reliant with poor night vision
3) Clever
4) Social

Now assuming that vampires are nocturnal ambush predators that live amongst us. To make a living they would have to:

1) Pas unnoticed amongst human society
2) Track likely prey (isolated humans at night)
3) Bring down the prey
4) Secure the kill
5) Escape trouble.

The kill: As said humans are smart but weak. Being stronger is an advantage but they don't have to be that much stronger. 10-20% with the benefit of ambush and careful target selection is all that it would take. The mind is the biggest thing to factor in, they don't have to be smarter than us; just the ability to could our minds would be more than enough.

Secure the kill: by this I mean disguising their activities, this is important because humans are social creatures who have a fine and long history of exterminating predators who threaten them. The could achieve this by;
  • using scavengers to destroy the body
  • clouding the victims memories
  • picking socially acceptable targets
  • dumping or destroying the body


The escape: Not only do they require the ability to flee the scene but the also require the ability to flee the mob. They could do this by turning into animals, turning into mist, summoning magical darkness, summoning animals to cover the escape or my favorite ...levitating.

In summation being strong is good but it is not as important as being able to pass unnoticed. They also have to be able to out think us and I think the ability to could our minds would be more advantageous then just being smarter than us.