Play As A Vampire In D&D With This Official Free Expansion – Screen Rant

Dungeons & Dragons players can select vampire as the race for their character with the help of the Plane Shift Zendikar rules document.

Dungeons & Dragonsplayers can try to drink Strahd under the table, as there is an official expansion that offers vampire as a playable race. These vampires are strong, but their abilities and weaknesses aren't quite the same as theDracula-style undead fans will be used to.

In D&D, vampires aren't quite as fearsome as they are in other settings. This is due to players having access to a number of abilities that are tailor-made for dealing with them. The positive energy powers ofDungeons & Dragons' Clerics and Paladins can burn a vampire to ash where they stand. The fact that lots of class abilities allow characters to conjure fire is also a huge advantage. This doesn't take into account the standard vampire weakness to sunlight and running water. Vampires are still cool, however, and it's only natural that players will want to make their own Alucard or Blade-style character.

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ThePlayer's Handbookmight not have rules for playing as a vampire, but fans can look in a strange place for their playable undead. There are several official D&D/Magic: The Gatheringcrossover documents that can be found on the Wizard of the Coast website. Game Designer James Wyatt released short supplements forD&Dthat brought otherMagic: The Gatheringplanes into the game. These were part of a series calledPlane Shift.ThePlane Shift Zendikardocument included a playable version of the vampires of Zendikar for players to use.

The rules for Zendikar vampires can be found on page 15 ofPlane Shift Zendikar.If the player isn't using the alternate racial ability rules fromTasha's Cauldron of Everything,then the vampire will have +1 Intelligence and +2 Charisma. Their physical attributes are similar to humans, but they possess Darkvision and resistance to necrotic damage. The most frightening ability of the Zendikar vampires is Blood Thirst, as it allows them to temporarily drain hit points from grappled foes. If the player slays a foe with this ability, the enemy turns into a null, which is similar to a zombie.

In terms of lore, their vampiric nature is the result of a disease, putting them more in line with theBladevampires than Strahd. This disease allows them to drink the life force from other beings, and it keeps their flesh icy cold. These vampires are not automatically evil, but their feeding method is likely going to cause conflict with their party members. This means the character can have some built-in angst, even before defining other aspects of their personality.

InVampire: The Masquerade,members of the Sabbat faction would mass-embrace mortals into their clan if they needed shock troops. This involved choosing candidates who managed to dig themselves out of their grave after turning into Kindred, earning them the name "Shovelheads." It was also possible for vampires to transform mortals into powerful ghoul companions, by making them addicted to their blood.

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These two elements combined caused a problem, as the ability to mass-produce loyal servants caused all kinds of issues in campaigns, and later editions of the game introduced rules that restricted their use. Zendikar vampires inD&D suffer from a similar issue, as they have an unlimited ability to create undead servants. A combat-orientated vampire could focus on slaying enemies with its Blood Thirst attack, so that it could transformits enemy into a null and turn it against its former allies.

There are a few waysaDungeons & Dragons DM can restrict this ability to balance it out. For one thing, there's nothing to suggest that the null is bound to the vampire. By slaying an enemy, the vampire might have just given it an undead upgrade, and now they have to deal with it. The other alternative is to impose a strict time limit for long the null remains active. It's possible that the negative energy coursing through the null's body only lasts for 1d6 or 1d4 rounds in Dungeons & Dragons, after which they collapse into dust.

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Source: Wizards of the Coast

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Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz. A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early 90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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