Ravenloft Setting, D&D 5th Edition conversion
Dhampir
Dhampir are the offspring of vampires and humanoid women of the same base race as the vampire. Almost always physically beautiful and extremely seductive, they are tragic creatures that spend their lives caught between their powerful predatory urges and all too human self-loathing. Dhampir receive supernatural powers from their fathers, but their mother's humanity protects them from the vampires' weaknesses. None of the supernatural weaknesses that can destroy or repel a vampire limits a dhampir, though sunlight does neutralize most of a dhampir's powers.
Most dhampir grow up ignorant of their heritage because the mothers almost never survive childbirth. Their undead sires rarely bother to keep track of such events and are often surprised when confronted with their offspring many years later. Most dhampir find the predator urge too strong to resist, and follow the bloodthirsty path of their sires, even before they realize their true nature. Those that do resist their predatory leanings usually focus their urges into hunting down and destroying vampires, including their fathers.
A dhampir does not have any powers in childhood, but once reaching puberty, they begin to manifest, and by adulthood, have fully developed. Likewise, an adult dhampir who dies will rise within a few days as a fully fledged vampire, yet a dhampir child will not rise as a vampire.
A dhampir is an epic adversary. In addition to its supernatural powers, all dhampir develop a character class, and those skills should be added to the base creatures stats given below. A dhampir is a terrible foe for a vampire or a PC.
Updates
07-25-19: Minor updates, fixing formatting and typographical errors.
01-23-19: Added in Blood Empowerment, if this is too much for your game, it is easily disregarded. The change of the piercing damage of the Blood Drain to 1d2 is a balancing issue. It was just too powerful for first through fourth level characters to potentially deal 12 points piercing and Necrotic damage with a single bite attack.
02-21-19: Blood Lust added in as a balancing factor to the Blood Empowerment, removed the Piercing Damage Resistance for balance considerations.
05-11-19: Update to Call of the Blood special quality, allowing for changes in the status of the dhampir's sire, and who effected the change.
09-20-19: Update to Blood Empowerment, added Blood Sense
09-28-19: Minor update to Blood Empowerment, to reduce the chance of a dhampir gaining a lot of bonuses for little trade-off in very low rolls. Such as boosting Strength up very high while only losing three or four maximum hitpoints. Slight alteration to the Ability Score increase.
10-16-19: Minor update to Blood Sense, range limited.
Creating a Dhampir
"Dhampir" is a template that can be added to any humanoid or monstrous humanoid creature referred to hereafter as the "base creature"), though human is the most common. The creature's type changes to "montrous humanoid," if it is not one already. It uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.
Senses: Darkvision 30 feet(if base creature had none), the first round the Dhampir is in bright light(natural sunlight, or due to a light spell), the Dhampir is considered semi-blinded for one round, and may make ability & skill checks as well as attacks at disadvantage. The next round, the blind condition is removed.
Abilities: Increase from the base creature as follows; +1 STR or DEX, +1 INT or CHA
Skills: The Dhampir receives advantage on two skills chosen from: Deception, Insight, Investigation, Stealth, Perception. This cannot be changed.
Feats: Dhampir gains Alert, Grappler, and Skulker, assuming the base creature meets the prerequisites.
Special Attacks
A dhampir retains all the special attacks of the base creature and gains those listed below. Saves have a DC of 8 + ½ dhampir's HD + dhampir's Charisma modifier unless noted otherwise.
Charm (Su): The dhampir targets one humanoid she can see within 30 feet of her. If the target can see the dhampir, the target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against this magic or be charmed by the dhampir. The charmed target regards the dhampir as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn’t under the dhampir’s control, he takes the dhampir’s requests or actions in the most favorable way he can, and he is a willing target for the dhampir’s bite attack. Each time the dhampir or the dhampir’s companions do anything harmful to the target, he can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on himself on a success. Otherwise, the effect lasts 24 hours or until the dhampir is killed, is on a different plane of existence than the target, or takes a bonus action to end the effect.
Blood Drain (Ex): A dhampir can suck blood from a living victim with its fangs by making a successful grapple check. She must then make a melee bite attack. If successful, she can drain blood, inflicting 1d2 points of Piercing on the initial bite and 1d6 Necrotic damage for the first round and every round that the grapple is maintained, unwilling targets may make a CON Save for half Necrotic damage.
The Necrotic damage increases to 2d6 at level 5, 3d6 at level 10, 4d6 at level 15, up to 5d6 at level 20. The target’s hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. The reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0.
A humanoid slain in this way and then buried in the ground rises the following night as a vampire spawn under the dhampir’s control.
Children of the Night (Su): Dhampir command the lesser creatures of the world and once per day can call forth 2d4 swarms of bats or rats, provided that the sun isn’t up. While outdoors, the dhampir can call 2d6 wolves instead. The called creatures arrive in 1d4 rounds, acting as allies of the dhampir and obeying its spoken commands. The beasts remain for 1 hour, until the dhampir dies, or until the dhampir dismisses them as a bonus action.
Special Qualities
Vulnerability to Sunlight (Su): A dhampir cannot use her supernatural special attacks or special qualities in natural sunlight.
Damage Resistance (Su): A dhampir's body is tough, getting resistance to bludgeoning and slashing from a non-magical source and to necrotic damage.
Spider Climb (Ex): A dhampir can climb sheer surfaces as though with a spider climb spell (caster level 12).
Blood Requirement (Ex): A dhampir must feed on at least one pint of blood once a week or she cannot use her supernatural special attacks or special qualities.
Stolen Life (Ex) :A dhampir whose Blood Drain effects a valid target(humanoid or monstrous humanoid), heals by the same number of hitpoints. A dhampir may gain a number of temporary hitpoints once a day in this manner. The most she can have above her normal is equal to her character level + CON Mod. These hitpoints are consumed first by damage and are not healable. A character may choose to forgo Healing or Temporary Hit Points to gain increased powers, this is called Blood Empowerment.
The Call of the Blood (Su): A dhampir gains advantage on Charm effects on all sources other than her sire. Should the dhampir gain advantage from another source, instead, add +5 to her save vs. charm. The dhampir has disadvantage on saves to charm effects from her sire, the dhampir's sire is calling to her blood, dissuading others from staking claim on their progeny. Should a dhampir's sire be slain by anyone other than the dhampir, this quality is lost. If the dhampir slays his own sire, the dhampir gains a flat +5 bonus to saves vs charm, gained as a newfound confidence.
Restless (Su): Dhampir are doomed to rise as vampires after death, regardless of the cause of their demise. 1d4 days after burial, the "dhampir" template is removed. If the base creature had less than 5 Hit Dice, it rises as a vampire spawn. If the base creature had 5 or more Hit Dice, the "vampire" template is applied.
Destroying the dhampir's body as one would destroy a vampire can prevent this. Gentle Repose does not work on a dead dhampir, the spell simply fails. A dhampir can still be brought back to life prior to reanimation or after destruction as a vampire, however.
Blood Sense (Ex): The longer a dhampir goes without feeding, she gains an ability that allows her to sense that which she needs. The blood of the living. This blood sense works much like a Detection spell for the living, except for only living creatures with blood(no plants or plant-creatures, no constructs, no creatures who exist only through magic).
This allows the dhampir to know what living entities are around her, but not to necessarily see them, if the conditions do not allow her to see.
This becomes active after a week of having not fed upon blood, and at the DM's discretion, may distract the dhampir in social interactions as the hunger for blood is rising.
This is not a spell, spell-like ability, or supernatural ability, it is the dhampir's natural senses tuned up higher and focused on the sensation of blood.
The effective range of this ability is 30 feet.
Blood Empowerment (Su): A dhampir who has used Blood Drain, may exchange one d6 of necrotic damage she could gain to instead, temporarily increase her own powers, in one of several possible ways.
Each d6 worth of necrotic damage can instead increase any Attribute by 1. This can either heal attribute damage or temporarily raise it until the next long rest.
This can also be used to empower the dhampir's Supernatural abilities to remain effective in Sunlight. Two d6's worth of necrotic damage can be exchanged to empower one Supernatural ability. Abilities that require a saving throw have their saving throw increased by 2 when empowered in this way, this increases by another 2 when exchanging 4 d6 worth of hitpoints.
Furthermore, if the dhampir is a spellcaster, two d6's can be used to regain one level 2 spell slot, or two level 1 spell slots, and so forth.
If the dhampir needs to empower herself, but does not have ready access to blood in which to do so, the dhampir can instead burn her own blood to access this ability. The dhampir can reduce her maximum hitpoints by 6 per number of d6 based on what she is capable of and what she wishes to do. Her maximum points are then reduced by this number until completion of the next long rest.
Blood Lust (Ex): A dhampir who goes more than two weeks without feeding upon a pint of blood risks undergoing a state of discombobulation known as Blood Lust.
Two weeks of having not fed causes a dhampir to make daily Wisdom saves with a DC of 14, and increasing by 1 every additional day they fail to feed. When a dhampir succumbs to Blood Lust, she blacks out and loses conscious control, begining to act on base animal instinct. She will hunt, she will kill, and she will feed.
After feeding, the dhampir's Blood Lust will subside and she will fall unconscious for 1d4 hours. Upon awakening, she may only remember brief flashes or vague ideas of what occurred, but not the whole story.