Article: Vampires At Different Ages

The rules presented for the vampires presented in the D&D 3.5 Edition Monster Manual is at best both broad and vague. That is after all, one of the reasons why The Immortal: Vampires was written, to give both players and dungeon masters options when dealing with everyone's favourite undead creature.

But what happens when a child is mad into a vampire, or an old man?

Vampires at Different Ages

When a creature becomes a vampire, many things change in their physical body. One of them is the effects of aging. The vampiric body is frozen in time, a perfect mirror of what the individual looked like at same age at which he or she died.

As a result, vampires do not age as other members of their physical species do. Indeed, their physical bodies do not change at all with time, at least not in appearance, and they certainly do not experience the ability reductions to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution that older members of their species do.

However, just as other members of their species do, vampires gain the benefits of increased intelligence, wisdom and charisma with age, just as the elderly members of their species do.

Young Vampires

Due to the nature of the way that vampires are created, it is very unlikely that a young adult or younger character is going to become a vampire, as they are likely to have only 1-2 HD, which according to the vampire template found in your core rules MM, requires that a creature have 5 or more HD and be blood drained to rise again as a vampire.

However, The Immortal: Vampires is a versatile book, full of options and variant rules, not to mention dozens of alternative vampire types, you may rule that in your campaign, it is possible to create vampires out of creatures with 4 HD or less, including children.

See the table below for details on the aging effects for creatures younger than adult.

A child is almost incomparable to an adult in terms of physical strength, agility, speed, as well as its mental faculties. While becoming a vampire might increase the base abilities of a child, a child's mind has not yet developed to the point where she is capable of adult thought. Children are inherently selfish, not establishing an awareness of other people's feelings and emotions usually before the human age of ten, and seldom being thoughtful of them until adulthood.

Creating a vampire child stunts the body and mind. The result is an immature creature of the night, weaker than others of its kinds, and eternally trapped in the premature body of a child. A vampire child will long to grow up, and will be devastated to learn that this will never happen. They are prone to tantrums and selfish thoughts, just like a child, despite the fact that they might be many decades or even centuries old.

Though a child vampire might eventually gain the intelligence, wisdom and charisma of a higher age, she progresses at a much slower rate. Treat the child vampire like her natural lifespan would be a number of times that of a normal member of her species equal to the number of age groups beneath adult she has +1.

So if she starts off un-life as an 8-year old child vampire, she will not gain the mental faculties of a young adult (+1 to Int, Wis and Cha) until she is 36 years old. Likewise, she will not reach the maturity of an adult until she is 48 years old. If instead she was only a 4-year old toddler, it would take her until the age of 20 to become a child, 48 to reach young adult, and 64 to reach adult.

A non-human child if made a vampire, especially an elf, could be literally hundreds of years old before gaining the mind of an adult.

No matter how a child vampire progresses, her physical abilities are never improved by changing age group, unless she has gained an age category as a vampire.

Variant Rule: Growth Spurt on Creation of a Child Vampire

When a child vampire is created, she immediately gains a growth spurt to the next age group as a part of the transformation. However, she only receives the benefits of the physical ability increases of her new age group. The mental abilities of the new age group will come in time, but do so at the normal, stunted rate for a child vampire.

For example, a human child of 8 years old made a vampire, immediately physically matures to the body of a 12-year old young adult (gaining +3 Str and +2 Dex), but her mind remains a child's. When she ages to 36 years old, she mentally matures into a young adult, gaining the +2 to Int, Wis and Cha, but not before.

Older Vampires

Just as it might be possible to create child vampires, it is most certainly possible to create older vampires from the middle age, old or venerable ageing effects. However, depending on your preferences for what kind of changes the process of becoming a vampire enacts on the physical body (i.e., stays the same age, becomes younger, etc), the vampires derived stats from age category might change.

If a becoming a vampire restores youth to an elderly character's appearance, it might also restore the physical penalties incurred by age group, while keeping the benefits experienced in the mental abilities. In general, unless the character is an adult, he is likely to return to one age group younger.

So a vampire who was old when created, reverts back to the middle age group, keeping the cumulative +2 bonus to Int, Wis and Cha, whilst dropping -1 of the cumulative -2 penalty to Str, Dex (and technically Con) that he has previously experienced.

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