Prestige Class: Vampire [Fifth Draft]

Available on the DM's Guild (pay what you want) at this link!

With April here, I'm finding myself in interesting times.

I'm starting to transition my work to the DM's Guild, meaning I'm remastering and putting the finishing touches on old favorites, modifying them to use public domain works rather than utilizing images under fair use, and updating rulesets to fix old mistakes and create finished works.

I'm also starting up a new job and a new side project or two, so my ability to produce more homebrew is slowing down substantially. Making new homebrew is always important to me, but for now expect to see a few remastered projects coming in before entirely new work starts appearing again.

This time, the Vampire gets the remastering treatment! I've always been almost-satisfied with the vampire, but after four drafts I decided it was as good as it was going to get, and I needed to let it lie.

The benefit of having half a year between drafts is I've had a good deal of time to think of finishing touches, and of what truly final tweaks the vampire needed to be an ideal prestige class offering. And on that note:

CHANGELOG: 

• Added Vampiric Quirks, a table of mostly-fluff quirks that help define your vampire and introduce additional minor weaknesses or visible traits that draw in from vampire lore while allowing your character to be distinct!
• Added a sidebar rule for Prestige Classes, because PrCs are a lot more niche of an option and require some additional explanation.
• Vampiric Arcana is now Spellcasting, allowing synergy with features, items, and similar that require the Spellcasting class feature. 
• Granted Elementals exemption from being fed upon, because it's very hard to find the blood in a fire elemental. 
• Added a sidebar explaining Sanguine Strikes / Smite synergy, because that was a question that came up often.
• Retooled Blessing of Form, tying Mist Form to the spell gaseous form, increasing the blood cost of all forms, and introducing transformation limits to Wolf Form so you can't wolf-tank a monster, drop to 0 wolf HP, then reassume your form and keep wolf-tanking it. 
• Moved Blessing of Darkness to 5th level, allowing Sinister Nourishment (the ASI ability) to stand alone at 4th. Most ASIs similarly stand alone, and it was a bad idea to double up anything at 4th level. 

CONCERNS:

• I was almost tempted to make this option entirely without Sanguine Strikes, but I dialed that back. That would be a much larger retooling that I'd need immense feedback and brainstorming on, and the end result probably just wouldn't be worth it.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Once you stockpile a lot of it, public domain art is actually surprisingly easy to make work for an option like this. 

Prestige Class: Vampire [Fourth Draft]

When the changes get smaller, the drafts get closer to completion. And this draft is full to the brim with small changes, which I take to be a good sign.

Incidentally, this is the first draft of the vampire I'd actually play. For most things I design, that's v0.2, but prestige classes are pretty special for a lot of reasons.

But about those small changes: What are they? To the changelog!

What I Changed:

• Hit dice are now d8s, in accordance with the highest hit dice given to full casters.

• Undead Fortitude no longer requires you be wielding no shield.

• Sanguine Strikes now caps the spell slots it can use at 3rd level, bringing it in line with what a paladin's Smite offers and not making the class inherently better for casters. 

• Somber Elegance is now Eyes of the Enticer, and has been rebalanced in line with other similar charm effects.

• Minor verbage changes throughout, and a sidebar added on the last page explaining the details of multiclassing.

Concerns:

• I almost feel as if I didn't change enough. Everything feels very balanced and flavorful, though, so I'm not sure what I would change. 

What I Learned:

• This is easily the most satisfying project I've worked on, now that it's nearing completion. Prestige classes are hard, balance nightmares, but I'll definitely do one again sooner rather than later. 

Prestige Class: Vampire [Third Draft]

This last round, I got feedback loud and long about how people wanted a vampire, but that the Crimson Blessings were wacky and made the vampire feel as if it had no direct progression, among a host of other gripes.

And that's great! When you have gripes, I get to fix gripes. Crimson Blessings are no more, replaced with a scaling pick-one-of-three-blessings reminiscent of the totem barbarian, and all of the other gripes have been fixed.

But wait, this sounds like I'm getting into the changelog already, and I haven't even thrown up the header yet. Let's fix that:

What I Changed:

• Well, that thing I said, above.

• Total blood points have increased, now scaling at 5/10/15 instead of 2/4/6/8/10. 

• The drawback from having no blood has been changed to levels of exhaustion instead of leaving you paralyzed in the middle of wherever, at the whims of whatever.

• Hit dice back up to 1d10, in lieu of the blessing that would let them be increased. 

• Blood drinks per target per day is now a function of the target's size, rather than its CON score.

• Somber Elegance and Blood's Vigor have been compressed into the Blessing of Blood, Lifeblood, and buffed up to a reasonable level.

• Wolf Form has been buffed, to make it an ample competitor for Mist Form and Bat Form.

• Vampiric Celerity has been folded over into Deathly Reflexes.

• Predatory Gaze has been reworked and rebalanced. It now costs an action and two blood points.

• Somber Elegance returns as a charm spell, the spiritual successor to the nix'd Dark Beckoning, built off the charm available to the vampire monster. 

• Someone pointed out this prestige class needed a level 4 stat increase, and they were completely correct. Added a variable stat increase a la the Rune Scribe's Living Rune, named it Sinister Nourishment, and made it function off of your daily consumption of blood.

• Changed Vampiric Siring to Curse of Eternity, now raises a minion from a properly prepared body, with the additional fluff power of being able to turn your friends into vampires if you can, y'know, kill them with your bite first. 

Concerns:

• I'm not 100% on how the respective options for each blessing balance against each other. If someone could look at that and tell me what they think, that'd be great. 

• Blessing of Darkness comes in at 4th level, the same time as the stat increase. It's pretty weak though, but I'm not sure if it's okay to double-up on a stat increase or not. 

• Curse of Eternity has a small mechanic that functions off of total character level, which nothing else in the game does aside from multiclass spell casting. Still, it enables you to raise a vampire spawn at a level which would be appropriate for it, and prestige classes are a little different anyway - I'm leaning towards saying it's probably okay. 

• Overall feel. Does it feel solid, like it has meaningful progression? Let me know!

What I Learned:

• Modularity is nice, but not when it comes at the expense of feeling like you're making progress. 

• A player character conjuring a minion should be assumed to conjure a CR's worth of minions equal to 1/3 of their character level (based off of create undead and similar). Thus, a level 15 character should be able to conjure CR 5 worth of creatures, or one vampire spawn. 

• All classes are "about" something. A prestige class needs to also be "about" something, and it has significantly less time and space to carry the same fluff weight a normal class has. 

• Prestige classes are still really hard. =( =( =(

Prestige Class: Vampire [Second Draft]

Prestige classes are complicated things.

Essentially, you're making an entirely new class in miniature, and expecting it to slot in near anywhere along another class' progression. Damage needs to be kept consistent with whichever class the PrC's levels will be replacing (which, ideally, is any of them), and the options afforded by the PrC have to be appealing without being imbalanced.

Basically: It's a massive pain in the ass. And yet, I love every second of it.

The Vampire is a perfect candidate for being a prestige class, being something that can apply to any character. This second draft aims to solve a few of the problems the rough draft presented, rounding out what the PrC offers and making it feel more substantial and fleshed out.

This is one of those times I fully expect to do several drafts. That in mind, let's look at our friend, the changelog.

What I Changed:

• The vampire has actual vampire spells, with the Vampiric Arcana class feature. They're all basic utility things, none of which do combat damage, but it gives the vampire a spell progression and helps round out that aspect of the character.

• Unlike anything else in 5e, you choose your casting stat out of Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. From what I can tell, PrCs in 5e are supposed to be roughly stat-agnostic, so this keeps to that particular piece of design schema without breaking too much (or getting involved in the wonky "Spell Level + 12" saves that the Rune Scribe has).

• Removed Minions of the Night, placed another Crimson Blessing at level 5 in its place. More streamlined, better use of features, and the Crimson Blessings are fun enough that this is a logical choice. 

• Changed Vampiric Siring to keep you from raising a CR 13 monster because holy fuck what was I thinking.

• Added the crimson blessings Masquerade and Vital Blood. 

• Touched up verbage here and there, to keep things working well and making sense.

Concerns:

• Does it do enough damage? Sanguine Strikes is very good at covering that particular gap, but the Vampire prestige class mostly contributes utility rather than raw combat power.

• How does it feel? Does the prestige class feel right, for what it is?

What I Learned:

• When making something from this much whole cloth, a million little mistakes pop up. It's good to have nit-picky eyes to help me spot them. 

Prestige Class: Vampire [ROUGH DRAFT]

In the latest Unearthed Arcana, it has been revealed that prestige classes are officially a thing in D&D 5e!

Well, un-officially. Sort of. The rune scribe sure looks cool, though.

In that vein, I emulated the rune scribe's design to make my own prestige class - something fitting the concept and the dark n' spooky holiday season that's almost upon us.

And so, I give you the Vampire prestige class. The longest and toughest project I've worked on to-date, and one that promises to involve even more work once you folks tear into it.

Features:

• Vampiric strengths and weaknesses! Jump on people and drink their blood in pitch darkness, but stay the heck away from running water. 

• Blood Points! A side resource that you drink blood to fill, and that you expend to fuel your vampiric powers. Just don't run out when you take a long rest. 

• Build-your-own-vampire! Crimson Blessings allow you to mix and match different vampiric powers to make a unique vampire all your own!

Concerns:

• SO MANY CONCERNS. Is it balanced? Does it work right? Is it not powerful enough / too powerful? This is the first thing I've made nearly from scratch - I really hope it works out. 

• Crimson Blessings are all roughly balanced against one another, but there exists a possibility that some are strictly better than others. 

• Vampiric Siring doesn't feel right just yet. It's a total fluff power, but still - something feels off about it. 

What I've Learned:

• Prestige classes are hard.

• Prestige classes are VERY hard.

• Prestige classes are REALLY REALLY COOL.