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DnD’s Dhampir species is back in Astarion’s Book of Hungers. It’s pretty similar to the previous version, but they made an impactful change to Vampiric Bite.
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The damper is back for D&D 5e. And I
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don't think this will surprise anybody,
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but they slipped it into Asterion's Book
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of Hungers, which is the new digital
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only supplement that ties into Heroes of
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Fyun. The stats are almost identical to
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the 2014 version that we got in Van
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Richton's guide. The one change is to
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their bite attack, like the the vampire
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bite thing. In the 2014 rules, it was a
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simple weapon that you were proficient
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with, so you could do things with it
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that worked with weapons. For example,
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you could cast magic weapon on it. You
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could use it for sneak attack
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potentially, things like that. And that
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led to some really fun abuse cases where
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you could find ways to add additional
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piercing damage to the bite and then use
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it to empower yourself to either heal
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for a whole bunch or get like a stupidly
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large bonus to some upcoming skill check
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or attack. In the updated version, the
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bite is just an unarmed strike. It deals
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1d4 damage plus your constitution
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modifier. Like any other unarmed strike,
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it's going to use your strength to
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attack instead of constitution as it did
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previously. So that changes the
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interaction with other things. And
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unfortunately, that means that this is
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going to be really underwhelming for
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most characters. High strength
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characters with decent constitution can
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still get some value here. So like
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barbarians, paladins, strength-based
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fighters, you might still find this
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useful because you could do this instead
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of a weapon attack, get some healing or
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buff your next attack potentially. But
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the class most likely to benefit here is
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the monk. Of course, it's not super
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clear if the monk's martial arts die can
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replace the damage when you want to do
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the like special bite and empower
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things. You might have to talk to your
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DM about that one until we get a rata
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for it. But a lot of the things that
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monks do improve their unarmed strike,
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which gives you more opportunities to
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benefit here. Uh, if you throw in
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piercer and if you fish for critical
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hits with this, you can get the damage
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up pretty high and you can still get
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yourself a whole bunch of healing and a
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pretty sizable bonus to your next attack
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or check. But one other thing they
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changed there in the 2014 rules, the
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bonus would last however long you
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wanted. like it. You could only use it
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once, but you could hang on to it and
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then the next attack or check you made
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would get the bonus. In the updated
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version, it only lasts for one minute.
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So, you could do something to queue it
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up before you go into combat or you
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could use it during combat. But, you're
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not going to like go chew on a rat, wait
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an hour, and then the first attack you
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make gets a huge bonus. You've got to be
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a little more strategic than that. But,
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this is still very much vulnerable to
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the bag of rats abuse. So, if you can go
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and like get your bag of rats, pull an
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Asterion, and eat a series of rats until
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you crit one to maximize the amount of
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bonus you get, then use the uh the
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empower, which you can only do a few
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times before you need to rest. There are
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still ways to abuse it, but it's not
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quite as abusable as it was in the 2014
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rules.
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