As a combat opponent, the vampire in the 5th edition Monster Manual doesn't pose a strong threat. Comparing it to the beholder, another challenge rating 13 monster, the beholder is ruining mages with antimagic, petrifying fighters, and blasting the cleric with a 55 point death rays while the vampire is slashing for 8 points of damage and, maybe, biting for 17. As a legendary foe, the vampire just doesn't hold up.
It's time we DMs unsucked our vampire and turned it into something players will fear. Let's get started.
Making the Most of Charm
Our first order in unsucking our vampire is to make the most of the vampire's charm. Unlike the standard charm spell, the vampire's charm twists the target's mind to defend the vampire. It doesn't outright say it in the description, but we can rule that defending the vampire includes attacking enemies threatening the vampire - the other PCs. If we don't adjudicate it that way, the PC will end up sitting in the corner and the player will be totally disconnected from the rest of the battle.
As written, the charmed PC doesn't give the target an additional saving throw until the vampire or an ally of the vampire damages the PC. We might want to alter this for the fun of the player running the charmed PC by giving the PC a saving throw any time it takes more than ten points of damage from any source. This steers towards PCs attacking PCs just to trigger the potential saving throw, and a mere slap won't do it. Fun!
Charm taking up an entire action robs the vampire of a full set of attacks. We can help the vampire out by making charm one of the vampire's legendary actions with a cost of 2 actions. This lets the vampire use charm outside of its regular action but still limits it to once per round.
Increase the Vampire's Damage
As written, the vampire needs a lot of extra damage output to justify it's challenge rating of 13. Vampires are badass so let's double the damage dice of the vampire's attacks. This takes the vampire's unarmed attack to 2d8+4 and its bite to 2d6+4 with 6d6 necrotic damage. Now we're talking!
At CR 13, the vampire should also have an extra melee attack, giving it two claw attacks and one bite attack per attack action. The vampire can replace any of these attacks with a weapon attack if it chooses and doubles the dice of those weapons when used. A vampire with a greatsword would attack up to three times for 4d6+4 on each hit. Serious damage!
Nastier Special: Lifedraining Touch
Stealing an idea from the fantastic 13th Age, we can add a nastier special to our vampire—the lifedraining touch. Back in the 1st edition of D&D, vampires used to drain levels right out of a PC. While level-draining is a bit severe, we can make our vampire significantly more dangerous by adding the following ability to the vampire's claw attack:
Lifedraining Touch: When the vampire hits with a claw or a bite attack, if the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 17 Constitution saving throw or have its hit point maximum reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. The target dies if this attack reduces its hit point maximum to 0. The reduction lasts until removed by the greater restoration spell or other magic.
If you add this special, you probably don't want to increase its number of attacks.
Children of the Night! Hurry Up!
Looking at the vampire's "Children of the Night" ability, we may want to remove the 1d4 rounds it takes for the creatures to show up and have them show up immediately. A battle in 5e might not even last 1d4 rounds and what are all those rats going to do if they show up to see a dead vampire on the ground? Eat it, I suppose.
Our Tricked Out Vampire
When all is said and done, we have a hell of a vampire ready to drop on our players. Let's take a quick summary:
- Let the vampire use charm as a legendary action that costs two actions.
- Let the target of the charm make a saving throw if it takes more than 10 points of damage.
- Double the vampire's damage dice, including any weapon attacks.
- Give the vampire an extra melee attack or add the nastier lifedraining touch ability to it's claw and bite attack.
- Let the vampire summon its children of the night immediately instead of waiting 1d4 rounds.
A Final Alternative: Treat the Vampire as a CR 7
One last trick is to simply downgrade the vampire's CR to somewhere around 7. With the vampire's damage output it isn't likely to kill any PCs very easily but its DC 17 charm will be very hard to avoid. If you're not interested in tweaking the vampire up, this is a solid alternative. Where a beholder would wipe out a group of level 7 PCs, the vampire would give them a good challenge without being totally lethal.
Special thanks to Bart Hennigan for the excellent title of this article.