In Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft,Dungeons & Dragonsfinally gained official access to the Dhampir species. This group can be extremely powerful in combat and incredibly fun to roleplay with if you don’t hesitate to lean who your character is.
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Dhampirs don’t necessarily have to be born full-vampiric and can be made, though whether you start as a Dhampir or you’ve been turned into one, you might end up a bit concerned on how to play. This definitely isn’t a class that should be recommended to people on their first time playing, but it can be a fun one to experiment with.
8Pick Your Hunger
Generally, when making a Dhampir you can choose your hunger off of the Hunger Table by rolling a d8 or just picking one that suits your needs. There are eight different hungers you can have: blood, flesh/raw meat, spinal fluid, psychic energy, dreams, and life energy.
Rolling a d8 may give you an option that you never would have taken, which could lead to some interesting situations or even moments for you and your party to deal with,especially during improvised moments. Of course, you’ll also want to check in with your Dungeon Master to make sure that it fits with the campaign or won’t be too difficult to deal with.
Hunger adds more of a challenge to your gameplay, but you don’t want it to prove so challenging in your campaign that you stop having fun.
7It’s Feeding Time
No matter what hunger you pick for your Dhampir, you need to make sure that you can fulfill that need. Whether you do it during fights or you opt to be a bit more discreet and stealthy about it, you can’t go forever without eating.
More so than any other character, it’s important for Dhampirs to keep track of their own “rations” and when they last ate. With standard adventurers, be they human or even a Tortle, it’s generally assumed that they eat their rations during breaks but that isn’t necessarily the same for Dhampirs.
You don’t have to indulge your hunger as often as normal food, but you certainly can’t ignore it without some serious consequences.
6Your Other Half
You already know that a Dhampir is half vampire, but will the other half of your heritage be? Traditionally, you could opt for something like human, which will make figuring out stats and heritage bonuses much easier.
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Of course, you could also work with your Dungeon Master to look at how other races could impact your stats and inherited traits. If you want to get creative, consider looking at classes that you wouldn’t traditionally associate with the deathless grace of vampires like orcs, goliaths,or even an owlin.
5Play To Your Strengths
When picking your class, you usually want something that’s going to work well with your species. Of course, most Dungeons & Dragons classes are flexible enough that you won’t even have to worry about that.
However, there are some classes that work to create an absurdly powerful Dhampir build, such as mostmelee fighting classes like the Paladin. The Dhampir species also works really well when paired with a few ranged classes like the Ranger. The Ranger works exceedingly well with the Dhampir’s inherited skills and melee fighting classes tend to work extremely well when paired with your Vampiric Bite.
4Remember Your Skills
Dhampirs have a set of skills that are unique to their species. Unlike their full-vampiric relatives, they can actually venture out into the sun and unlike whatever their other half may be, Dhampirs can walk up walls and on ceilings without much of a fuss.
Your unique Spider Climb ability allows you to climb at your walking speed and, after level three, you may move in any direction you want and even stand on the ceiling without using your hands. This can technically be mimicked with the Spider Climb skill, but for Dhampirs, this trait is completely permanent. Not needing to breathe can be a huge boon too, especially if you have to go underwater for extended periods of time.
3Your Backstory Counts
Dhampirs aren’t just spawned out of thin air and your background could end up playing heavily into the campaign, given the table provided when you’re making your Dhampir. Whether you opt to roll a d8 or you pick and choose, there are a handful of different things to pick from.
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Either you are the reincarnation of a vampire, a pact changes you into a vampire, it’s caused by a parasite, a ritual or experiment was messed up, or one of your parents was a vampire. Whatever the case, it likely plays a large role in who your character is and why they’ve taken up the path of adventure and will affect how they handle the world around them.
Plus, who knows, perhaps it will result in some fun encounters for your party later on down the line.
2Roleplay, Roleplay, Roleplay
Dhampirs don’t particularly belong with full-fledged vampires, nor do they belong to humanity or the other part of their being. As a Dhampir you walk a very fine line between life and undeath and you can use that to your advantage to create a more multifaceted and nuanced character.
You can be a bubbly and bouncing ball of energy one moment and suddenly ripping into the throats of your enemies the next and that could generate some interesting roleplay scenarios for you and your party. Don’t shy away from this because it can be a genuine advantage for you and help you to connect with your party and your character more.
1Work With Your Party
Dhampirs can be a huge asset to the team, but everybody needs to be on the same page. You can indulge in the bloodlust side of Dhampirs, just don’t go full murder-crazy if everybody isn’t on the same page - and that includes the Dungeon Master. Work with your party in Session Zero, or just before you become a Dhampir, to establish limits.
Not everybody wants the gory details of you ripping into an enemy and you may not even want to hear your Dungeon Master describing you feasting an enemy. Set up boundaries before they become a problem and if you realize during a session that one needs to be established or doesn’t need to be there, don’t hesitate to speak up.
