Vampires, am I right?
Really the standard-bearers for Gothic Horror, among the most iconic D&D villains is Strahd von Zarovich, the multiverse's first vampire and the first Darklord of the Domains of Dread. Also, you know, the big bad of what is pretty broadly considered the best published D&D adventure, Curse of Strahd.
The Vampire tribe in the new Monster Manual has grown from two entries to now five, though the lowest-CR of these is actually a humanoid.
The 2014 Vampire relied a lot on evasiveness, not really dealing a ton of damage, but creating a lot of chaos for the party by repeatedly charming foes and being extraordinarily hard to pin down. Like Liches and other legendary creatures, Vampires have a bit of an escape clause, where the DM can sort of keep them alive even if the party defeats them, though there's a more obvious route to permanently destroying them if you can find said route.
The new vampire has been buffed, though, dealing more damage with its attacks, and also with some clarifications on its Charming ability.
As a note, there is a higher-CR vampire as well, though it's not profoundly higher, being CR 15 instead of 13 (personally, I'd have liked to see a CR 20 variant, like some kind of herald of endless night). We might look at the Umbral Lord after we take a look at the classic vampire, but for now, I wanted to do a deep dive on this one.
The various Vampire Weaknesses are intact, like Sunlight Hypersensitivity and Forbiddance. Interestingly, the new Vampire doesn't actually have health regeneration, so you won't really need radiant damage in order to defeat one. Really, the only "weakness" to radiant damage now is just the fact that they take radiant damage while in sunlight (or acid while in running water). The good news is that your Ranger or Fighter themed as a vampire-hunter will do just fine.
Well, I say that...
Their Charm ability is a bonus action (as I believe the old one was,) but it's now the Charm Person spell, albeit one that doesn't use spell components, so unless you're using something like Detect Thoughts, you can't Counter it. Notably, their Bite attack explicitly does not break this charm. The charm also specifically leaves the victim unaware that they were charmed (a great way to do that classic "I don't know why, but I let them bite me!" thing straight out of Dracula).
The Bite attack is actually not an attack at all, and is instead a Constitution saving throw. This does an average of 6 piercing and 13 necrotic, reducing the target's max HP by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken, and if this reduces them to zero, a buried target wakes up as a vampire spawn on the next sunset (savvy people living in vampire country probably adopt cremation as the preferred funeral custom - unless vampire nobles outlaw it).
The vampire also makes two Grave Strikes, which are attacks that deal 8 bludgeoning in and 7 necrotic on average, and will grapple the target it hits. (Large or smaller targets, and they are limited to two hands). Like a lot of new abilities, this grapple has no save (though a character can attempt to escape it with an action, DC 14).
Thus, with successful attacks and a failed Con save, the Vampire can do about 49 damage per round (not counting legendary actions). That's respectable, but we also need to consider the conditions afflicted, particularly Charm (this has a DC of 17, which is pretty decent).
As for its legendary actions, it can cast Command once per round, and then its remaining two or three (if in its lair) legendary actions allow it to move half its speed and make one Grave Strike. So, if we assume it uses Command each time, outside of its lair it'll be making 4 Grave Strikes per round, meaning 60 damage plus the 19 from Bite.
Between its 40-foot speed (with spider climb) and its Shape-Shift that allows it to turn into a Bat with a 30-foot flying speed, and the movement with its legendary action, the Vampire can pretty easily flee a fight not going its way.
If you want to ensure the vampire is not so easily destroyed, you'll want to make sure that it doesn't go too far from its resting place. Still, it has 2 hours to get there with its Misty Escape. If a 20-foot movement speed (which it has with its cloud of mist form) is roughly 2 miles per hour, that still gives it a radius of about 4 miles. Naturally, I think having servants (such as the Vampire Familiar) putting its Grave Dirt all over a city (you know, like from Dracula) would be a good way to make a particularly tough vampire to get rid of. (Note for Druids and the like, Moonbeam prevents a creature form Shape-Shifting, which would be a powerful way to kill a Vampire, though it needs to fail its save).
A Vampire can be a great persistent villain over the course of a campaign. Naturally, cribbing from Curse of Strahd is a great idea. It's not a bad idea to just fully commit to all the gothic horror tropes you can get your hands on, with everything from Animated Armor to Werewolves to Bats, Ravens, Wolves, as well as Gargoyles, Zombies, Will-'O-Wisps. And that's before you get to the obvious, like Vampire Familiars who serve the Vampire by doing its business in the daytime or kidnapping victims to bring to the vampire to feed on, or Vampire Spawn being their perverse imitation of a "family."
Moving out of the obvious conventions, though, we might think about what the vampire really represents.
Vampires' thirst for blood can often function as a sort of metaphor for greed and selfishness. Naturally, there's a ton of vampire stories in which their bloodthirst is a metaphor for sexual desire (fun fact: Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in part as a response to Carmilla, which had come out a couple decades earlier, and was charged with deeply sapphic themes, where the eponymous vampire preyed upon women. Stoker, who very well might have been a gay man, was troubled by the unconventional sexual politics, and chose instead to write a novel in which women were once again placed in a more passive role while men were the heroes there to protect them. Of course, later adaptations have often given Mina Harker a more central role as not just Dracula's intended victim, but as the one who ultimately defeats him).
While there are, historically, some unfortunate antisemitic tropes sometimes associated with vampires, modern depictions have often had vampires function as the corrupt nobility, an aristocratic class that feeds off the common people - not just metaphorically in this case. Indeed, the image of the classic vampire's castle overlooking a terrorized village evokes this medieval/feudal class brutality.
Thus, going into a modern era, you could imagine Vampires as being members of the elite, corporate business class (indeed, in Dimension 20's Unsleeping City, there are vampires who are deeply tied to the New York Stock Exchange, amassing wealth as they drink blood). In a less modern setting, you could still have them function as wealthy merchant-princes, likely controlling vast amounts of wealth while remaining hidden from the public eye.
It might just be my own personal obsession, (and maybe drawing a little inspiration from the Castlevania anime - which notably featured both Dracula and the aforementioned Carmilla,) but the fixation on blood to me also makes Vampires a good fit for strange esoteric occultism, perhaps using alchemy to seek further transformation and greater power.
In D&D, Vampires originated with Strahd in the Domains of Dread, themselves (at least as of 4th edition) a part of the Shadowfell. But I think that their indefinite lifespan and relative indestructibility, as well as their depraved bloodthirst, means that they probably feel pretty comfortable treating with fiends. Given the typical refinement and faux-civility vampires often have, they might be on good terms with devils. But those who fully embrace the ravenousness of their thirst might find in demons their kindred spirits. Hell, the brooding vampire, committed to their endless existence but always unfulfilled in their insatiable thirst, might feel fully at home in the bleakness of Hades.
I guess we should figure out encounter difficulty.
A vampire is worth 10,000 xp or 11,500 in its lair. Let's assume the big boss fight we're looking for is in the lair, so we'll assume it's the higher value. For five players, that's 2,300 xp per player, meaning it's close (a little high) to a High difficulty encounter for 8th level characters, halfway between Moderate and High difficulty at level 9, and smack dab at Moderate difficulty for 10th level characters. (Again, assuming 5 players).
Vampires work quite well as tier 2 final bosses - once again, the prime example being Strahd von Zarovich in Curse of Strahd (though he uses a unique stat block).
I actually think this version of the Vampire might do a little better in higher tiers than the old one, but we'll need to start adding in minions. At tier 3, your basic skeletons and zombies are unlikely to work all that well, as you'll need a massive number of them. But the obvious minions are Vampire Spawn. Vampire Nightbringers (which are CR 7) can also work, though Nightbringers have a somewhat different vibe from the other vampires. If we wanted to really push the occult vampire, Nightbringers could work. Likewise, I think Death Cultists could as well.
As mentioned before, Fiends could easily be allies of Vampires, so throwing in some alignment-appropriate fiends could certainly work here.
Now, what about that Umbral Lord? What makes them different?
These are somewhat more mystical, magical vampires - actually quite good for that "occult vampire" option. (Fun fact, in my original campaign, right before it kind of fell apart, I was just starting on an adventure that would culminate in a vampire transforming into an eldritch abomination, trying to become a "blood god." Never got to actually run most of that adventure, unfortunately).
The Umbral Lord is CR 15. They don't Charm targets, but they have some ranged magic attacks that can poison the target, as well as a Recharge cast of Hunger of Hadar. Their Sanguine Drain bonus action, more or less the equivalent of their Bite, requires only that they can see the target and it isn't a construct or undead, with a 30-foot range. I suppose because there's no contact, they don't actually infect a target (though it does reduce the target's HP maximum). Umbral Lords also have an inherent fly speed, and in place of Misty Escape, they have Shadow Escape, which can teleport any distance (and even, depending on DM interpretation, another plane of existence) to their resting place.
In terms of raw power, the Umbral Lord actually has less HP than the standard vampire (though it's immune to Cold damage - can these things travel through space? Or does that count as being in sunlight?) For damage, they make two attacks, dealing 21 average with their melee attacks (so 42 for both attacks) or 16 for their ranged attacks (32 total) plus the poisoned condition. Then, of course, there's the Sanguine Drain bonus action that deals 14 and heals the Umbral Lord for the amount drained (though only on a failed DC 18 Con save).
The legendary actions are basically the same (though Command has a higher DC). If we assume, then, that they use Umbral Strike (which allows either of their normal attacks) for 2 (or 3 in their lair) of these actions, that's potentially another 42/32 damage. If they can afford to be in melee and everything works, that means 182 total damage done per round. Not shabby!
In fact, the healing from Sanguine Drain probably makes up for their lower HP.
Now, what about Hunger of Hadar? They cast this at 5th level. The spell now scales with level, so in total, we'd be looking at 6d6 per turn (and more or less relocating it if they successfully recharge it). That's 21, so I think I'd probably only use this if I could hit three players or if I really needed the area denial. The Umbral Lord has Blindsight, so they can shoot through the spell's effect, and while they have immunity to the Cold damage, they can still take the Acid damage, so it's not like they could just hang out in there. (Also, as a note, because you can get guaranteed damage from Hunger of Hadar's Cold damage, I'd recommend boosting that half of it with the upcasting. Good advice for Warlocks as well).
The Umbral Lord, I do think, really gives us a good tier 3 villain character. While only two CR higher than the standard Vampire, its ranged capabilities, inherent fly speed (with hover) and lack of an ability to rely on things like Grapples and Charm make it a little more consistent of a threat.
By tier 4 you might need to load one of these up with a somewhat absurd number of minions. If I wanted to use this, for example, when my party has to retrieve a shard of the Golgothian Sylex from Innistrad (Magic the Gathering fans know what I'm talking about - well, at least what those proper nouns are) I could use one of these as the boss guarding the shard, but as my players will be level 18 by then, that means for a Hard encounter with my six regular players, I'm looking at an XP budget of 85,200. The Umbral Lord only takes up 15,000 of that, leaving me with the need to populate the encounter with enough monsters to fill up 70,200 xp. (Tier 4 is taxing - basically any fight that isn't a trivial cakewalk has to involve enormous numbers). Again, while I think this Umbral Lord is a pretty good stat block on its own, I'd have liked if they made it a few CRs higher. I guess the intention was for this to be the equivalent of the "Vampire Spellcaster" variant from 2014, but I think what I could have used was something more on the scale of Liches and Death Knights (though I guess Death Knights are only a little higher than these).
Honestly, maybe the best option for a vampire who has truly, fully reached apocalyptic, "blot out the sun forever" levels of villainy would be something like a Nightwalker from Monsters of the Multiverse.
I already did a pretty big pre-release analysis of the Vampire Familiar, so I'll leave that for now.
The non-legendary vampires that are left, then, are the Vampire Spawn and the Vampire Nightbringer.
Vampire Spawn are, of course, well and truly low-level vampires, but there are a couple differences that I want to really point out:
The more obvious is that Spawn don't have the ability to shape-shift, and thus can't do their Misty Escape. They also can't charm victims, so unless they have some other way to make a victim a willing target for their bite, they just have to grapple them. Granted, that's easier now given that any hit with the attack will grapple a target.
However, the less obvious one is this: if the Vampire Spawn is incapacitated, driving any weapon that deals piercing damage into its heart will destroy it instantly.
As someone who watched through all of Buffy my freshman year of college (which, dear lord, is over half my life ago,) this is quite satisfying, given that her "patrols" through the Sunnydale cemetery typically had her beating up a recently-risen vampire and then staking them, turning them to ash (including at one point a long-before-he-was-famous Pedro Pascal, in one of the more experimental episodes).
But, practically speaking, it creates the opportunity for an instant-kill for these monsters. You get a Monk to successfully Stun them (they only have a +3 Con save, so it's very doable) and... then we hit some rules ambiguity.
There's no precise explanation of what kind of action is required for this. Naturally, finding a sleeping vampire spawn in its coffin in the middle of the day would give you a perfect opportunity for this kind of thing. But if you want a mid-combat staking, does this simply count as a weapon atttack, like with a Rapier. Does a bullet from a Pistol work? And what do we need to do to hit the heart, specifically? Does that require a critical hit? Or do we have to call the shot and get disadvantage? Does it not count as an attack, but instead take a "Utilize" action? Can a Thief Rogue thus do a Knock Out Cunning Strike followed by a Fast Hands Staking? I mean, that's freaking badass.
But it would be good to get some clarification.
The Vampire Nightbringer is the odd duck in all of this. They're the only one in the group (other than the Familiar) without the Vampire Weaknesses traits (except for sunlight hypersensitvity), and their lore suggests they might not even be turned in the same manner as other vampires. Indeed, the art looks more akin to a kind of Ghoul (though they're also kind of classic Nosferatus, though not the Nosferatu from Van Richten's). They're sneaky, and tied to darkness, getting a Shadow Stealth bonus action to Hide while in dim light and darkness. Their bite also doesn't require them to grapple a target.
This is all well and good, but frankly, I find this vampire a little boring compared to the others. The name, as well, feels very much like what I'd have wanted to see in that imagined CR 20 Vampire.
Still, I can imagine using a lot of these stat blocks in future adventures. The base Vampire really feels like it's now hitting at its weight class. And for all my complaints, the Umbral Lord does really seem to get that "occult vampire" vibe pretty well.
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