The woman's eyes turned up in her head, and she moaned with pleasure. As the creature bestowed its kiss, I saw the woman's youthful beauty begin to fade. Her skin dried and stretched over the bone structure of her face, wrinkles deepened around her eyes, and her lustrous black hair began to grey. I closed my eyes in soul-sick horror.
- From the personal journal of Dr. Van Richten
Life-blood: Vampiric Feeding Habits
For obvious reasons, the aspect of vampirism most important to mortals is that of their feeding habits. Vampires must gain sustenance by feeding upon the living. If they do not do this, they suffer terribly and will eventually die.
Vampires prefer to drink blood directly from the living body of a victim, preferably one of their former race. The most efficient method of doing this is to use their prominent eye teeth to open a wound in a major blood vessel of their victim. In (demi)humans, major vessels are closest to the surface in the throat. Because the neck is also one of the least protected parts of the body (even when the victim wears armor), this adds to the desirability of this target area. Sometimes vampires will choose another major blood vessel such as the femoral artery, on the inside of the thigh near the groin, if circumstances make this possible. One advantage of tapping this artery is that the marks left by the feeding are rarely seen by others.
Some tales describe the eye teeth of the vampire as hollow, and claim that the creature drinks blood through them as through a straw. In no case that I have studied, however, has this ever been the case. The teeth of a vampire are identical in structure to normal human teeth, albeit somewhat enlarged and often angled almost imperceptibly outward. My observation is that the vampire simply uses its teeth as implements to open a wound in the victim. It then sucks or laps up the blood using its lips and tongue, much as a babe drinks its mother's milk.
In the vast majority of cases a vampire will open only a small wound that will quickly heal, through which it can drain only a small amount of blood. "Small" is a relative term here; the debilitative effect is related to the robustness of the victim - while a battle-hardened warrior might shrug off a single feeding with no ill effects, the same blood loss might kill a weaker victim through shock.
Vampires usually feed through such small survivable wounds because they do not want to kill their victim. Any (demi)human killed through blood lost to a vampire will of course rise as a vampire itself, subservient to the creature that killed it, unless the body is decapitated or destroyed. In most cases, vampires do not want to create subservient vampires, for reasons that will be discussed later.
If a vampire does not care whether or not its victim survives, it can open a massive wound in the throat. This wound will kill its victim as would a dagger drawn across the throat. So fast is the blood flow from such a wound that the creature probably cannot drink it all. It can usually ingest enough to sale its hunger, however. Such a victim is not necessarily raised as a vampire, unless the vampire is somehow able to drink all of his blood.
Vampires usually feed only from unresisting victims, which includes victims that have been gaze-charmed or victims that are immobilized in some manner. In order to drink the blood of its victim, the vampire must be undisturbed for a period of at least one minute. Thus, a vampire in the heat of combat cannot feed.
Generally, a vampire will drain enough blood to inflict 1d4 hit points of damage to a victim per round of feeding. If the victim's throat is torn open, a vampire can drink up to 12 hit points worth of blood from such a wound. If the victim has fewer than 12 hit points, however, the vampire can drink only as many hit points of blood as the victim possesses, remembering that -10 hit points is dead. For example, if a mortally wounded, comatose character is at -8 hit points, a vampire could drain only 2 hit points worth of blood, and this drain would immediately kill the victim.The maximum amount of blood that can be drained from a corpse is the equivalent of 4 hit points. This decreases by 1 hit point per hour that the subject has been dead. Thus, a vampire cannot feed from a corpse that has been dead for more than 4 hours.
If the victim is willing, charmed, or otherwise completely immobilized, the vampire does not have to make an attack roll. It can automatically open the type of wound it wants, small or catastrophic, and drink for as many rounds as it wishes, provided it is left undisturbed.
The sensation created as the vampire opens the wound is often enough to cause a sleeping victim to wake. A steeping victim is entitled to a saving throw vs. poison. A successful save means the victim has awakened; a failed save means the victim remains asleep and the vampire is free to feed for as long as it likes.
A victim will feel weak after the vampire has fed only if the vampire has drained one-quarter or more of the victim's current hit-point total. The damage caused by blood loss heals normally; the lost hit points can be restored through curative magic.
Even a relatively small and survivable wound left by a vampire causes notable trauma to the flesh of the victim. There is not only the wound itself, which is often less than half an inch in length, but also discoloration caused by bleeding below the skin. This appears as a bruise that is usually an inch or so in diameter. The wound is easy to spot.
It causes no pain to the victim, however, and is not sensitive to the touch. This may be the result of some unknown component of a vampire's saliva, or could arise from some other cause entirely; I have no way of knowing. Thus, victims might be totally unaware of the wound until they see their image in a mirror, or until someone else brings it to their attention. The victim may feel some weakness that arises from blood loss, and may appear somewhat pale.
Vampires almost exclusively insist on the blood of living creatures: (demi)humans are preferred as victims, and members of the same species as the vampire above all. Why is this? It could be a physiological issue whereby, for example, blood from a human is most restorative to a once-human vampire. Or it could simply be symbolic: the evil creature holds within its heart a great hatred for the species to which it once belonged, and wishes to wreak the maximum amount of havoc on its erstwhile fellows.
Vampires prefer healthy victims, but can also draw blood from those who are mortally wounded and sinking into the final coma, i.e., characters who are below 0 hit points, assuming the optional "Hovering on Death's Door" rule is in effect (sec the DMG Index under "Combat, death"). The amount of blood that can be drained from such a victim is usually limited because generally it was severe physical damage (hence blood loss) that put the character into that condition in the first place.
Vampires can also feed from the corpses of freshly-slain characters. Blood spoils rapidly in regards to serving it as a foodstuff for vampires, so the corpse must have been killed within four hours of the vampire's attempt to feed. Because the heart of the corpse is not pumping, the vampire is drastically limited in the amount of blood it can drink from the body, and this amount decreases with time.
In time of dire need, I believe that a vampire can feed on the blood of animals, although the creature will find this foodstuff bland and unsatisfying, and it will leave the vampire ill. (When drinking from a rancid pool becomes a question of survival, then tainted water is better than none.) Because vampires are masters of all creatures whose form they can assume (generally wolves and bats), in regions where such creatures dwell a vampire will never starve. The subservient creatures will obey the commands of their undead master even to the death, and so will offer their lifeblood to preserve their master's unlife.
Within Ravenloft, vampires cannot take sustenance from any creature other than a demihuman. Outside of the demiplane, such emergency feeding is possible.If the vampire feeds from creatures that are roughly man-sized or larger, the rules for vampiric feeding remain unchanged. It can drink 1d4 hit points of blood per round from a small wound (up to the victim's hit-point total. of course), or up to 12 hit points of blood from a catastrophic and immediately lethal wound.
Smaller victims are more problematic. It the victim has fewer than 1 HD, a survivable wound is impossible and the vampire has no option but to kill the creature. It can then drink as many hit points worth of blood as the creature possesses.
I shake in horror to think about it now. But at the time, as the fiend spoke, I felt its velvet voice thrilling through my body. So seductive were its words that I gladly opened the collar of my coat and bared the skin of my neck, and then stood trembling as I awaited the approach of the dark figure.
I gasped aloud with pleasure as its tips touched my flesh, and its hands grasped my shoulders. Then came an instant of pleasure so piercing it was like pain - or pain so sweet it was like pleasure. I could hear the throbbing of my heartbeat in my ears, and also a deep and distant thudding that must have been the beating of the vampire's heart. The drumbeats synchronized until the sounds were one. I cried out from the ecstasy of it...
- From the journal of Alathea Greenbough
How can a vampire charm a victim into submitting to having his or her blood drunk? Surely the very nature of a charm, which cannot force its recipient to put itself in imminent danger, prevents the subject from accepting a command so obviously self-destructive. Then again, the vampiric charm-gaze is not the charm spell.
This is one of the most insidious factors in the nature of vampirism. It would seem that there is some deep and dark desire within the psychology of (demi)humans that makes submitting to a vampire's "kiss" somehow attractive. Vampires are often portrayed as creatures with an intense sensual appeal. This, it seems, allows charmed victims to believe that offering their throat to a vampire is not the self-destructive nor even suicidal act that it is.
In addition, some victims who have survived the attentions of a vampire report that the experience was highly pleasurable, much as this may fly in the face of reason. They felt no pain as the beast opened the wound in their flesh, and described the actual sensation of the feeding as one of "voluptuous pleasure". (I find my gorge rises when I consider this, but I have heard it from so many sources that I cannot disregard it.)
I have also heard the words used by a vampire while attempting to charm a victim into allowing it to feed. The monster seems to instinctively perceive a desire to submit that lies in the dark recesses of the human mind. It plays upon this desire, talking about "the gentle joy of surrendering", of "opening oneself". and of "experiencing the unequalled bliss of total sharing".
Vampires will often feed from sleeping victims. If the victim is not awakened when the vampire makes the wound, he or she will remember nothing of the experience when they awaken normally. At the very most, the victim will recall that he or she experienced a dream of intense and sensual pleasure.
Unless the subject of the charm-gaze has some concrete reason to believe that the vampire will kill him or her out of hand, submitting to feeding is not a self-destructive act within the parameters of the charm spell effect.Drained attribute points will typically regenerate at a rate of 1d3 points per day of rest. Hit points drained by a vampire heal at the same rate as normal damage. The effect of having a spell drained is just the same as if the spellcaster attempted to cast the spell, but failed. He or she is free to rememorize the spell the next day.
Philosophical Considerations - Why Blood?
Why must vampires drink blood? Even those few "atypical" individuals who do not drink it require sustenance that is in some way an equivalent to blood. (Note: "atypical" is certainly as subjective a term as "typical" when referring to vampires.) As with so many facets of vampirism, the answer is likely symbolic. Generally speaking, vampires are creatures of undying evil who hold an implacable hatred for the living. Even those who do not actively hate the living consider them to be somehow meager reflections of vampires, and "cattle" whose sole purpose is to act as victims and tools for the vampiric "elite". This belief system carries with it the implication that vampires feed upon the living in both a spiritual and metaphorical sense, it would be appropriate, then, that vampires should also feed on the living in a physical sense as well.
Where does this symbolic equivalency arise from? Some sages believe that it is a jest of the ancient and evil deities who originally set vampires loose upon the worlds of the universe. Others hold that a parallel arises from the very nature of reality; in other words, we know that evil preys upon good, and vampires vindicate this axiom on the supernatural level.
Alternative Forms of Sustenance
The variety of "foods" on which "atypical" vampires may subsist is staggering, and usually particularly disgusting, I personally know of some vampire-like creatures who feed on cerebrospinal fluid, draining this clear liquid through holes that they punch in their mortal victims' skulls or spines. Obviously, such wounds are much more immediately debilitating to the victims, and much slower to heal. Similarly, there is reputed to be a line of vampires that subsists on lymphatic fluids drained from the glands of their victims. Recurring but unsubstantiated rumors also tell of creatures who drain the aqueous and vitreous humors from the eyes of (demi)humans, rarely if ever killing their victims through this feeding, but always leaving them blind.
There are also known to be vampires that "feed" upon life energy directly from their victims via touch, without the intermediary of blood. These creatures feed upon the actual life experience levels of victims, who will eventually perish if they are completely depleted of their acquired memories and skills. Other creatures feed in ways that are more arcane or symbolic, tapping their victims' intelligence, will power (Wis), strength, dexterity, force of personality (Cha), even physical vigor (Con). Some can drain these characteristics simply by striking a target in melee; others, and thankfully, the more common monsters, can feed only from willing or immobilized victims, and do so through a "kiss". Still others drain vigor from their victims by inflicting physical damage, seeming to draw their sustenance from the pain they cause to their prey (i.e., they absorb hit points directly when they strike a victim in combat).
Most feared by spellcasters, there are even some who seem to feed on the magical power that flows through the body of a wizard, or even a priest. A touch from such a creature causes the victim to forget spells that have been memorized, and - in one extreme case of which I know - allows the vampire to cast the forgotten spell at the level of ability possessed by the victim!
Being of extremely high Intelligence, a few vampires are sensitive to natural balances, albeit in a sense warped by their undead state. Thus, they may occasionally depart from their usual diet of blood in order to avoid depleting the neighboring village of all life.
Here allow me to summarize some of the possible dietary items:
Blood
Spinal fluid
Heart (eaten)
Brain (eaten)
Bone marrow
Body water
Body salt
Life energy levels
Abilities (Con, Int. etc.)
Memories (spells or proficiencies)
Bodily health (hit points)
Mental disciplines psionic strength points (if used)
When a vampire feeds, its body shows various physical signs. Its skin, normally cool and pale, becomes warmer and takes on a healthy, almost ruddy tinge. In addition, the creature's levels of energy and activity seem higher.
In contrast, when a vampire has gone without feeding for a period of time, the reverse effects occur. Its skin becomes colder and paler, sometimes inhumanly so. The creature also becomes more sluggish. (Do not misunderstand this: the monster is still capable of incredible feats of exertion when necessary. The "sluggishness" relates more to its preferred level of activity than to its capabilities. A sluggish vampire is very much like a sluggish shark: to consider either of them to be weak is a dangerous error.) These symptoms become even more pronounced if the creature has been unable to feed sufficiently, as discussed in the following section.
Note that the above comments refer to "typical", blood-drinking vampires. Vampires that depend on other sources of sustenance may exhibit similar changes, but it is foolish to depend on these signals in any way.
How often must a vampire feed? This question has been debated for years, perhaps centuries, by sages everywhere. The following comments are based on my own research, and are not guaranteed to be true. Other reputable researchers might have different answers.
Generally speaking, a "typical" vampire must feed once in any 24-hour period. Not doing so causes the vampire to grow weaker until, with prolonged denial of sustenance, the creature is destroyed. It may be surprising, but it seems to be the case that a vampire's need for food decreases as it ages. Perhaps this is a result of its growing connection with the Negative Material Plane, from which it draws much of its unnatural energy. The vampire's hunger for blood increases with age, however. A Patriarch can subsist on much less blood than can a Fledgling, but the ancient creature has the desire to drink much more blood than its youthful kin. Should its source "dry up", so to speak, it can subsist on "starvation rations" much better than can the Fledgling creature, however.
A typical Fledgling vampire must drink 12 hit points worth of blood in every 24-hour period. The source of this blood is immaterial; it can come from living victims, fresh corpses, animals, or even scaled "caches" of chilled blood. This requirement is decreased by 1 hit point for every age category beyond Fledgling. Thus a Patriarch could subsist on only 6 hit points worth of blood every day, but would be unwilling to do so without good cause.For each day that a vampire does not feed sufficiently it loses 1 HD, with all concomitant losses of THAC0, saving throws, etc. In addition, it "regresses" in power with regard to Str, magic resistance, and period of sunlight tolerance as if it had lost one age category for each day it fed insufficiently. As an example, a Patriarch on the first day of starvation loses 1 HD (decreasing to 13). In addition, its Str drops to 19, Its magic resistance to 25%, and its period of sunlight tolerance drops to 1 hour. If it doesn't feed enough the next day, it loses another Hit Die (decreasing to 12). Its Str remains at 19, but its magic resistance drops to 20% and its period of sunlight tolerance to 3 turns.
A vampire cannot "regress" below Fledgling with regard to Str, magic resistance, or period of sunlight tolerance. It does continue to lose 1 HD for every day on which it does not feed adequately.
Vampires quickly regain the HD and abilities they have lost. On each successive day that a vampire feeds sufficiently, it regains 1 lost HD and one age category.
If a vampire is ever reduced to 1 HD, the creature becomes a raging beast, incapable of doing anything but attacking any source of blood.
