I’m back and ready to ruin 5e even more

Big shout out to ❀✿ A Colorful Death ✿❀#2508 on discord, who pointed the rules for player lycanthropy and vampirism out to me.

do you need to be stronger, faster, tougher, and generally better than you were before? Do you like immunity to non-magical weapons? Well, I have something for you; blood science

Blood Science: The Benefits of Drinking cursed blood

There are some optional rules about making your PC into a vampire or lycanthrope in the monster manual. Here’s that explanation:

“A character who becomes a lycanthrope retains his or her statistics except as specified by lycanthrope type. The character gains the lycanthrope’s speeds in non-humanoid form, damage immunities, traits, and actions that don’t involve equipment. The character is proficient with the lycanthrope’s natural attacks, such as its bite or claws, which deal damage as shown in the lycanthrope’s statistics. The character can’t speak while in animal form.

A non-lycanthrope humanoid hit by an attack that carries the curse of lycanthropy must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + the lycanthrope’s proficiency bonus + the lycanthrope’s Constitution modifier) or be cursed. If the character embraces the curse, his or her alignment becomes the one defined for the lycanthrope. The DM is free to decide that a change in alignment places the character under DM control until the curse of lycanthropy is removed.

Thanks to Nandos for showing this to me originally

There’s a particular kind of poison that can apply lycanthropy as a curse, this nets us Wererat, Werewolf, and Wereboar. All of these are pretty useful, and we can easily conjure this.

The following information applies to specific lycanthropes.

Werebear. 

The character gains a Strength of 19 if his or her score isn’t already higher, and a +1 bonus to AC while in bear or hybrid form (from natural armor). Attack and damage rolls for the natural weapons are based on Strength.

Wereboar. 

The character gains a Strength of 17 if his or her score isn’t already higher, and a +1 bonus to AC while in boar or hybrid form (from natural armor). Attack and damage rolls for the tusks are based on Strength. For the Charge trait, the DC is 8 + the character’s proficiency bonus + Strength modifier.

Wererat. 

The character gains a Dexterity of 15 if his or her score isn’t already higher. Attack and damage rolls for the bite are based on whichever is higher of the character’s Strength and Dexterity.

Weretiger. 

The character gains a Strength of 17 if his or her score isn’t already higher. Attack and damage rolls for the natural weapons are based on Strength. For the Pounce trait, the DC is 8 + the character’s proficiency bonus + Strength modifier.

Werewolf. 

The character gains a Strength of 15 if his or her score isn’t already higher, and a +1 bonus to AC while in wolf or hybrid form (from natural armor). Attack and damage rolls for the natural weapons are based on Strength.

Wereraven. 

A character cursed with wereraven lycanthropy gains a Dexterity of 15 if his or her score isn’t already higher. Attack and damage rolls for the wereraven’s bite are based on whichever is higher of the character’s Strength and Dexterity. The bite of a wereraven in raven form deals 1 piercing damage (no ability modifier applies to this damage) and carries the curse of lycanthropy.

Werebat. 

A player character who becomes a werebat gains a Dexterity of 17 if their score isn’t already higher. Attack and damage rolls for the werebat’s bite attack are based on the character’s Strength or Dexterity score, whichever is higher.”

Notice how having one kind of lycanthropy does not exclude us from others. We can also gain lycanthropy via being inflicted with a curse from an attack, or through ‘some other means’ that the game does not define.

Another particular note is that we can be in hybrid form for multiple lycanthropes at once, since some of these provides a bonus to AC, we can actually gain a passive +3 to our AC just by embracing all the versions of lycanthropy at once.

We can also gain a 60ft passive blindsight, a 50ft flyspeed, and resistance/immunity to nonmagical bps, as well as some stat increases, the highest of which brings us to 19str and 17dex. This isn’t as important as we’ll see later there is an even better stat increaser.

Were-raven also gains regen 10, which is hugely important. Regen lets us take more hits and not worry about any kind of healing between fights. This combined with ice troll hearts should keep us up through almost anything.

Vampirism

Player Characters as Vampires

The game statistics of a player character transformed into a vampire spawn and then a vampire don’t change, except that the character’s Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores become 18 if they aren’t higher. In addition, the character gains the vampire’s damage resistances, darkvision, traits, and actions. Attack and damage rolls for the vampire’s attacks are based on Strength. The save DC for Charm is 8 + the vampire’s proficiency bonus + the vampire’s Charisma modifier. The character’s alignment becomes lawful evil, and the DM might take control of the character until the vampirism is reversed with a wish spell or the character is killed and brought back to life.

So, we can possibly become a vampire. How this curse is transferred, however, is a bit unclear. Drinking vampire blood is a good start though. I think if you’re bitten by a vampire and drink vampire blood, this should at least start the transformation process, but it is ultimately up to the DM. However, this is listed as a character option.

Once we’re a vampire, all of our physical stats get set to 18 if they weren’t already higher. This makes it pretty optimal to set all your physical stats as low as they can go, assuming you’re doing this early.

We also get other vampire stats like 120ft darkvision, decent attacks, and resistance to necrotic and nonmagical bps.

Vampires can use their bite as a decent damage tool as well as a way to heal even more in fights. Sadly, we do not gain the vampire’s regen, but we also don’t gain their flaws like sunlight hypersensitivity, holy water weakness, or forbiddance from entering without permission.

Blood Magic

Where are we getting this blood? Well, with the use of prestidigitation, we can make the urn of our family member, then with druidcraft, we can get a flower that casts resurrection. [see my prestidigitation and druidcraft guides for all that]. Minor conjuration is another way we could get a near infinite supply of were-kind and vampire blood, as long as we’ve seen it.

The amber sarcophagus in curse of strahd, the western one, can turn us into a vampire under the DM’s control. A great option if you’re in a CoS campaign.

We could also be a lich, but there is no way to break out of DM control once doing so. For vampires, this way is explained later
[Thanks to Haen for pointing this out]

Drink blood and/or have a dead relative bestow us the curse once we bring them back. In this way, we can actually gain every version of lycanthropy and vampirism.

Our str is now 19, our con 18, our dex 18, and we have regen 10, blindsight, nonmagical bps resistance, necrotic resistance, and good early game attacks.

Unfuck Yourself; avoiding the negatives of being cursed

you may have noticed the big warning about the DM possibly taking over your PC until certain conditions are met. Here is how we can overcome these obstacles

1. Die; we have access to resurrection magic and friends, we can take our transformation, and have it set up where we will die shortly after a full transformation. Then, we can be brought back. This ends the effect of the DM claiming your PC from vamparism.

2. Ceremony; Ceremony can restore our default alignment. Go ahead and set a glyph of Ceremony to target you if your alignment changes.

With these tools, we can fully avoid becoming an NPC.

Conclusion

This is a great way to customize a PC, as well as adding cool, powerful options, and actually helps martials the most by giving them better weapons, resistances, and physical stats.

We can finally start every pointbuy game at 19 / 18 / 18 / 16 / 16 / 15 in our stats. This also makes multiclassing less of a pain in the ass.

We can also make our jar targets go through the vampirification and lycanthropification process after we jar them, making them even better.