The Vampire Spawn
The night was thick with fog as Adrian trudged through the overgrown forest, his heart pounding in his chest. The moon, a ghostly sliver, hung high in the sky, casting eerie shadows that danced among the ancient trees. He had heard the rumors of the vampire lord who dwelled in the heart of the forest, and though fear gripped his soul, curiosity had driven him to seek the truth. As he ventured deeper, the air grew colder, and the silence was broken only by the distant hoot of an owl. Suddenly, a chilling presence enveloped him, and before he could react, a pale figure with crimson eyes emerged from the shadows, its fanged grin sending shivers down his spine.
Adrian's scream was swallowed by the night as the vampire lord's icy grip fastened around his neck. The world blurred, and a searing pain shot through him as fangs pierced his flesh. His struggles grew weaker, and darkness claimed him. When he awoke, he was no longer in the forest but in a dimly lit chamber. The walls were adorned with grotesque tapestries depicting scenes of torment and bloodshed. The vampire lord stood over him, a cruel smile playing on his lips. "Welcome to your new life, my spawn," he hissed, his voice a sinister whisper that echoed in the stone room. Adrian tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy, and a hunger unlike any he had known gnawed at his insides.
Days turned into nights as Adrian grappled with his transformation. The thirst for blood consumed him, driving him to madness, his humanity slipping away with each passing moment. The vampire lord reveled in his torment, teaching him the ways of their kind, instilling a cold, merciless instinct in his once gentle heart. Adrian's soul cried out, but his body obeyed the dark commands, and soon he was hunting in the dead of night, preying on the unsuspecting. His existence became a twisted nightmare, forever bound to the shadows, a spawn of the darkness.
Lost to the insatiable hunger that now defined his wretched, immortal life.
Overview
Vampire Spawn, do I even need to make an overview? Well, I’m gonna.
We all know how Vampires act1 thanks to all other media over the past century and a half or so and obviously they are undead. They come with all the stereotypical drawbacks that Vampires have: abhorring sunlight, no reflections, all that jazz. If you have seen a vampire movie or read Dracula, then you already have a good baseline for how to run a Vampire, but how does the Vampire Spawn differ, well…
The first thing we should note is they are created by and are under the direct control of a Vampire. Acting more like a ravenous creature than a hunter in the night, the Vampire Spawn is the attack dog of a Vampire. A Vampire Spawn will remain a Spawn indefinitely, unless the controlling Vampire lets their Spawn drink their blood turning the Vampire Spawn into a proper Vampire. This is unlikely to happen as it involves the Vampire giving up power and control of a creature.
It is also important remember that Vampires, and by extension Vampire Spawn, have lairs. This is where the Vampire Spawn will rest, be it in a coffin or a crypt or just a grave yard, when they have to return to their place or rest during the day, the lair is where it happens. Now it is not the Vampire Spawn’s lair, however if you are running a campaign for lower level players and are using the Vampire Spawn as the boss, then you can have the lair set up for them by their Vampire master. This is purely flavor, mechanically it works the same.
Finally, Vampire Spawn may retain memories from their former life. The emotions from these memories slowly decay overtime becoming twisted version of what they were. Love and adoration become obsession or a fixation on beauty, a love of art becomes the pursuit of perfection, and a rude personality becomes cruel and vindictive or even torturous.
Stat
Okie does, now let’s take a look at what our beastie can do.
With a decent armor class and slightly below average Hit Points for a CR 5 creature, we have a fantastic early boss or a fantastic lieutenant for a bigger baddie. Additionally having a bonus to stealth, lets the Vampire Spawn stalk their prey.
Having resistances makes a creature, just slightly deadlier than normal. However, with only a specific resistance to necrotic and the standard non-magical BSP2 resistance, it becomes less of an issue. By the time your party is facing a Vampire Spawn, the martial should have some form of offence that can overcome non-magical resistance, and your casters can do any type of damage other than necrotic.3
Regeneration. This ability will make some players annoyed4, enemies that can heal or passively heal makes fights last a turn or two longer. Unless, the healing factor has a way to be shut off. Although, let’s look a little closer at Regeneration before getting too far in the weeds. When a Vampire Spawn is damaged and has at least 1 Hit Point, they will receive 10 Hit Points at the start of their turn, UNLESS the Vampire Spawn is in: sunlight, running water, was damaged by Holy Water, or took Radiant damage. There we have the juice, and while yes there are also a small number of spells that deal Radiant damage, there are two classes5 that specialize in Radiant damage. This means the likelihood that the Regeneration gets turned off each turn goes up. Additionally healing 1/8th of the total health of a creature per turn, seems like alot, but you and I both know that having more than 2 players means that the 10 Hit Point regen will only slow the death spiral of the Vampire Spawn and not negate it.
Next we have Spider Climb. I cannot emphasize this enough.
USE.
THIS.
ABILITY.
If your fight starts with your Vampire Spawn on the ground and not on the ceiling in the shadows, the you are doing a Vampire Encounter wrong. There are exactly 26 instances where a Vampire Spawn should start on the ground; 1. the adventurers interrupted their feeding and 2. the Vampire Spawn is in their coffin. If neither of those instances meets what is going on with the introduction of the Vampire Spawn, then why are they not skulking in the shadowy corner of the vaulted ceiling of the gothic or baroque castle the party is searching, then you are depriving them of a creepy and unexpected event. Am I guilty of not doing this, Yes, will I be taking my own advice going forward, Absolutely.Vampire Weakness. There are a few abilities tied in with this ability, most of which are standard vampire lore; there will be a few questions that will arise from players if they gather this knowledge, Primarily Harmed by Running Water. To nip this in the bud, casting Create Water/Shape Water or pouring a waterskin on the Vampire Spawn does not constitute “running water”. I don’t care your player tires to describe their action as the water “running” that was not the intent of the ability. I usually rule in favor of the rule of cool, but for this case I am all for Rules as Written and Rules as Intended. Now, there are spells that are acceptable to be considered “running water”, the first that comes to mind is Wall of Water or Tidal Wave, these two spells are where I believe the intent of the writers was.
Alright, let’s get into the attacks. We will start where the attacks should start, Claws. Now, if the Vampire Spawn hits a creature, and the +6 makes it pretty likely, they can decide to grapple instead of dealing damage. This bypasses the Grapple Check that the target needs to make, they can still try to escape but the initial grapple automatic so long as they hit. This gets the follow up Bite easier to make happen.
Now the Bite attack has a couple caveats of when it can be used and on who. The bite can only be made against grappled by the Vampire Spawn, restrained, or incapacitated. This plays in to the Claws attack perfectly, the two were obviously designed to work into on another. Now the the damage is has a secondary hit with the necrotic damage reducing the maximum Hit Points equal to the damage. This reduction only lasts until a long rest, but if the party cannot get a long rest in between Vampire Spawn and Vampire encounters it can stack to be extremely fatal; Especially since if the total Hit Points are reduced to zero then the target dies, no checks or saves.
Combat Example
Now that we have our fluff and stats sorted lets consider how we can use them in combat. We will have two combat encounters; the first with the Vampire Spawn used as the boss at the end of the first arc of a campaign, the second will use the Vampire Spawn as a surprise encounter leading up to an encounter with the Vampire master in the lair.
Long shadows hang over the town of Vardenhelm. A series of gruesome murders have left the once content townsfolk paranoid and suspicious of one another. Hired by the local lord to restore order in his town, our adventurers have followed what little clues they have found to an old mansion near the heart of the town.
This first combat encounter will pit 2 Vampire Spawn against 4 sixth level adventurers. When the adventurers enter the mansion the Vampire Spawn will take to the dark recesses of the vaulted ceilings7 waiting to strike at the most opportune moment. If you are using a battlemap for your game, go ahead and put the game on the grid, you don’t need to get an initiative order just yet, but this may incentivize your players to spread out and explore the rooms individually or in groups of two. This is exactly what we want to happen, but we should not influence this decision outside of setting up the map and drawing out8 the floor plan of the mansion. Now, decide where the Vampire Spawn are and pre-roll their stealth checks. Some may find that to be a bit controversial, but if the players enter a room and you roll your dice the players will become instantly suspicious and never leave that room. Alternatively, if you roll for every single room you may nullify the suspicion.
We have covered checking for an ambush several times, so with that in mind, if the players are unaware they are in the room with the Vampire Spawn, the ambush is sprung. On their first turn the Vampire Spawn will leap down from the ceiling and make Claw attacks at the closest target. We won’t be having the Vampire Spawn make a Bite attack yet, only to prevent the start of a death spiral. The Vampire Spawn will continue to attack the target they originally made the Claw attacks against, OR they will change their attacks to a target that hits them with radiant damage.
Our second combat encounter will be in the estate/castle of a Vampire, the adventurers have fought their way though weeks of being hunted by the Vampire and it’s minions. Having gathered enough strength and allies, they have launched their final assault on the Vampire master. The combat will pit 4 Vampire Spawn against 4 ninth level adventurers, this combat will happen within the Lair of the Vampire the Spawns are beholden to and their Vampire master will be watching in someway to be able to use some of the Lair Actions (see below).
Our intrepid adventurers have toiled and bled to get where they are now. Having a small group of allies in tow, and a fair collection of magic items, our adventurers have begun their assault on the Vampire lord they have been fighting against. Splitting from their allies to form two search parties, our adventurers are now on alert ready for the next strike.
Since the party is expecting trouble the opportunity for a surprise attack is very low, but not zero. You can make a stealth check, but I feel at this point it would be better to just make an attack to have the party burn their spell slots and limited use abilities.9
On the first turn of combat, the Vampire Spawn will swarm a single target. You can decide to have this be the healer or the tank, whoever really, but I would recommend having the target be the adventurer who has made themselves a personal enemy of the Vampire. The Vampire Spawn will make Claw attacks against this target with the intent of grappling the target. Once the target is grappled the rest of the Vampire Spawn will make a Bite attack and a Claw attack. I wouldn’t fret too much about the maximum Hit Point reduction at this level, 9th level character will have a large Hit Point pool (even a wizard) and this will just be a distraction for the larger fight to come with the Vampire itself that is happening soon.
Lair Actions
On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the Vampire takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects (the Vampire can't use the same effect two rounds in a row):
The Vampire summons a swarm of bats, rats, or insects is summoned and appears in an unoccupied space the Vampire can see. The swarm acts on initiative count 20, immediately after the lair action.
The Vampire calls forth a cloud of mist that fills a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point within 60 feet of it. The area is heavily obscured. The mist lasts until initiative count 20 on the next round.
This is a limited selection of what the Vampire can do since they are not actually in the battle.
Final Thoughts
Vampire Spawn are a great way to introduce the Vampire plot of a game or an undead plot. They can create a decent threat for Tier 2 adventurers and a deadly threat for Tier 1, Vampire Spawn can work well alone and with other Spawn, or other undead. Really a great use for introducing players to the Gothic horror style of play, which is one of my personal favorite themes.
Something something Spider monkey.
Non-magical Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing.
About 4% of spells deal necrotic damage, so casters will more-than-likely have an alternative readily available.
Shout out my partner <3
As opposed to effectively one subclass that specializes in Necrotic damage.
This is hyperbolic.
I told you I would be using their Spider Climb ability.
Or place out the tiles, whatever you use for your encounters.
Yes, I am evil. I am aware.