Dhampir
by Prince Phantom
Let me just get this out of the way, this is my favorite race. I fully and readily admit it is not the strongest, but it is definitely one of the most powerful non-flying races. It does actually have the potential to be the strongest race in the game, but we’ll get into that in a minute. As for why this is my favorite, I just love the idea of being a half vampire, and the mechanics of this race exemplify that concept perfectly. Let me explain why.
Dhampir Features
Ancestral Legacy: Okay, so the Lineages in the Ravenloft book work a little differently than a normal race. You can select this race at character creation as normal, or you could potentially become this race through the events of your campaign. Perhaps a vampire bite taints your blood and begins to turn you, and this race represents your state as you slowly become a full vampire, at which point you’d loose yourself. This can be a very fun character motivation, but it can also be incredibly broken. The only things you retain from your old race are proficiencies and movement speeds, meaning if you were a flying race, you retain your flying speed. I’d reckon that a Winged Tiefling who has been turned into one of the three Ravenloft Lineages is probably the single strongest race in the game, and I don’t think it’s very close. I do not recommend that DMs allow this, or you play to this extreme. This race is plenty strong enough on its own, you don’t need to boost it with a fly speed.
Speed: 35ft walking speed: This bonus to speed is very helpful, and works really well with our other features.
Darkvision: Always nice to have.
Deathless Nature: Not needing to breathe actually come up quite a bit, and is very helpful in certain campaign settings like aquatic campaigns or adventures in space like Spelljammer.
Spider Climb: A climb speed is nice, but the real power is at 3rd level where you can now walk and stand on walls and ceilings. This is like a fair version of flying, leaving our hands free to attack or cast spells but relying on there being a wall to walk up to get out of melee range. I absolutely love this both mechanically and flavorfully, as nothing screams vampire like casually standing on the ceiling.
Vampiric Bite: Holy cow, this is not your standard racial unarmed strike replacement. This bite has so many special properties that I could write a whole article just on it, so I’ll try to stay concise here.
First, this is not an unarmed strike, our teeth are a simple weapon. That means you can enchant them potentially. You can smite with your teeth. Any spells like Holy Weapon that interact with weapons work with your teeth. There is so much more that you can do with this than an unarmed strike because it counts as it’s own weapon.
Second, we use Constitution for our attack and damage roll of these teeth. This is the only instance in all of 5e where you can use your constitution to attack. This means you can potentially build a character that focuses solely on constitution, and there are some real benefits to doing so since constitution determines our maximum HP. Constitution is also normally the second or third highest stat on most characters, meaning just about anyone can be pretty good with this bite.
Next, this bite attack has advantage if you have less than half of your maximum HP, and it has special effects with limited uses. You can either regain HP equal to the piercing damage dealt by this bite, or empower your next ability check or attack roll by the same amount. This means we want to find ways to make this bite as strong as possible. Monks are pretty good at this, as this bite counts as a monk weapon and would be increased as our martial arts die increases, but that won’t really feel like a bit increase until very high levels. The Piercer feat could help a little, but there are many class abilities that can boost the piercing damage this deals. Battle Master Fighters maneuvers frequently increase the damage of an attack, the Gloom Stalker Ranger has a feature to boost damage on an attack on round one of combat, the Hunter Ranger can deal extra damage to wounded enemies, Rune Knight Fighters deal extra damage once per turn when enlarged, Kensai Monks can give the bite attack +3 to hit and damage, Hexblades can make the bite their hex weapon and deal extra damage to enemies targeted by Hexblade’s Curse, and I’m sure there are many other ways to boost this piercing damage. I’d recommend that if you want this bite to be a core part of your build, pick up two ways to boost its damage. My favorite personally is to combine Gloom Stalker and Battle Master, as both add an additional die of damage to the bite and are great choices individually. However you choose to use this bite, it’s a powerful tool that you can get a lot of milage out of.
This race is just so cool. There’s so many interesting ways to build it, and all of them offer unique and powerful options that really make you feel like a half vampire. Grab a Cloak of the Bat and you are living the dream. I love a race that feels like it’s a class in of itself, and asks you to build around its unique features. I cannot recommend this enough, give the Dhampir a try next time you want to roll up an edgy anti-hero. You won’t be disappointed.
Final Rating: 5/5
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