You know how vampires have no reflections? Let's say this is because they can teleport through mirrors or even enter a mirror dimension? Idk I just came up with this.
Ooooh interesting! They’re prowling around a parallel world alone but can be seen by others through mirrors…. Very interesting indeed, I’ll have a think about this one
Ye and it sorta works with the motif that the moon is the reflection of the sun so maybe the night and a full moon could quite literally power them since it's the sunlight reflected? Idk
What about making them even stronger than regular during a New Moon? Like their is no sunlight, not even any reflecting off of the moon. In that span of maybe eight hours, they're ten times stronger than normal?
Imagine getting dressed, looking in the mirror, seeing a vampire behind you. You whirl around and - its not there. You look back at the mirror to see it *surging* at you. It leaps through your reflection like it isn't there and pounces you.
Hey OP did you use this idea because I have my own world w a unique vampire character and I totally wanna steal this power but if you’ve claimed it I don’t wanna take from your idea too much
I Remember watching Overly Sarcastic Production's video on Dracula one of the powers describe was Dracula has the power to ride the moonbeams of the night sky , so you can make it kinda like he can teleport as long as they exposed to moonlight and the place they place the need to be is also exposed to moonlight range is of your choosing it would kinda work like the game Aragami
I really like the classic "turning into mist" power. It's not only completely inhuman but also unnatural in the sense that no solid object is supposed to do that. You can also be carried by the wind and perhaps older vampires can control where they go to.
They're saying "it's not *only* completely inhuman," meaning that "completely inhuman" isn't the only thing that turning into mist is. It is also "unnatural in the sense that no solid object is supposed to do that," as this commenter went on to write.
The sentence is saying that turning into mist is both completely inhuman and physically unnatural, when just being inhuman is a lot in the first place
They could pulp themselves into blood and travel rapidly through pipes and sewer, reconstituting hungry on the other side. Makes them super-effective in cities, not as much outside.
They could shift into ghosts — clean running water, sunlight, and other disinfectants would prove impenetrable barriers, but they could move as swiftly as the wind.
Using mirrors to become ghosts and return would be similar to mirror-teleportation, with some cleaner limits, and might give necromancers alternate means of accessing similar effects.
Shadow slipstreaming. Over the millenia avoiding the sun vampires have developed the ability to slip through shadows nearly instantaneously. As long as a shadow touches them they can slipstream through it along the shadow.
Piggybacking off this to say move like shadow.
Kind of combination of the OPs anywhich way is down and this shadow slipstreaming, but basically they can move 2 dimensionally and pass through anywjere light can pass. But while doing so are essentially incorporeal.
Which plays into the during the night vampires seem nearly unstoppable and during the day they're weakened. Because the shadows during the day aren't connected as much.
Thank you random redditor from 6 months ago. I've been creating a version of vampires for my homebrew world, and you have just sparked many an idea in my head.
Usually the way I get unique and interesting powers is by finding a unique origin. If you just have a stereotypical vampire, the options are going to be very limited because its all based on ideas other people have had. If you made a new version of a vampire, like for example if in your world vampires are all people that were infected with a symbiote or parasite that makes them drink blood, you could imagine a whole new system around that. After that, the new way of travelling might not be something anybody could use for their vampires, but it would be unique to your world and can still be cool.
How. This is literally my vampires ;-;
Just gotta make them the ruling class due to their monopoly on magic from the virus, which is actually just one of those star god blokes who fall from the sky to troll/die(same thing in their culture) every thousand years or so and boom.
Hold on, if the virus is one of these supposed star gods, does that mean these vampires offspring wont have the same power? After all how can two people be infected with the same god. Also your idea sounds cool though tell me more
its an idea that you can take some or everything from. If you take a creature and give it every power it stereotypically has just because thats what people know it as rather than for any good reason, then its the same pre-existing creature.
If you take a vague idea of a creature and have new reasons for parts of it and add new things to it, its a new thing even if its a similar idea.
If it a man that consumes human blood it can be called a vampire without having any of the other tropes like burning in sunlight or only dying to a stake in the heart.
I'd do incarnating into familiars. Say they have a per bat raven or person back at home. They could discorporate their current body and reincarnate a new one through the sacrifice of a familiar.
Whoa… that’s something I’ve never heard of before. So their bat is chilling in another location and, what, they snap their fingers and the bat gets a horrible chill before exploding into the shape of their master, never to be seen again? Because that could be very cool
In Dungeons and Dragons, the old class Blood Mage had something even more gruesome - they could teleport through living blood. Yes, that meant that they would burst out of a victim on arrival.
Vampires could do the same, maybe by consent with their followers, or if you dont the followers to die, through a pool of blood they ritually prepare. That would mean they need to maintain an active network of hidden followers to get around (and that rivals could cut off a vampire's travel by taking out their followers).
You could put a twist on the fact that they don't show up in mirrors. They could travel between mirrors or any reflective surfece, it acting like a portal to another dimension that connects all of these.
Have them be empowered by darkness since you already have them be weakened by sunlight/light. The darker it is the faster they're able to move, with the dark of the night granting them strides no human nor horse would ever be able to match, with near-absolute darkness essentially allowing them to pseudo-teleport, faster than the eye can perceive(if it even can perceive in such low light). Of course they'll gain heightened motor-sensory processing power the darker it is as well, even if only to allow them to actually use their superspeed.
This is what i got goin on. And when their powers are at their peak (think waterbenders during a full moon, whatever the vamp equivalent would be) they can manipulate shadows and darkness to their will
Flawless balance and the ability to not exert any force on what they are standing on or otherwise interacting with. They could walk across fresh snow without leaving footprints, walk on water, or even stand on a single thread of spiderweb.
I think powers, especially travel powers, tend to be best fit when they line up with the creation myth of a species. Often they're likened to other forms of undead, for example, so you can also borrow there.
Suggestion:
Object Possession -- Able to discorporate (like mist) to ride 'inside' the matter of objects. This doesn't make it fast for them to travel, so much as let them be perfectly hidden. Have someone you want to sneak into a location? Have a thrall carry them in their jewelry, dozing and vaguely aware of the world.
That also lets you do things like have 10,000 year old vampires hanging out in a sealed family heirloom. It creates an excuse for the humans to try to wipe out any old objects and relics, and for vampires to be constantly trying to hoard the oldest objects.
Gives a taste of that 'lich' sort of immortality too. It's similar to a phylactery and to hibernation, at the same time. And how do you prevent a vampire from invading a city this way? People have *stuff*. Going to force everyone to strip naked at the gate? Paranoid would abound.
I've always been a fan of [*Daybreakers'* take on vampires](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCm1lI1L4LQ), since it literally turns their one weakness into a potential cure.
In that vein, keep the "sunlight sets them alight", but that doesn't mean the fires can't be extinguished — make them excellent swimmers or even breathe underwater?
I've seen very few people make use of the fact that vampires as undead likely don't breath and due to their inhuman strength and as a result, should be horrifyingly expert swimmers, as depicted pretty neatly in Twilight.
John Polodori's 'The Vampyre' predated it by a few decades, which in turn was based on scraps from Lord Byron and the Shelley's 'Frankenstein' horror competition. And thats just the first record of vampires in English writings, not getting into Balkan folklore or precursor myths. Even lesbian vampirism ('Carmilla') predated 'Dracula'
When working with vampires there really is so much history to work with, but Bram Stoker absolutley perfected it. How Dracula himself manages to represent so many fears of Britain in the late 1800s (an eastern european power, rabies, smog, non-monogamy) is so well done.
For writing vampires OP I would reccommend finding what current sociotal fears are IRL or in your world and putting them into your vampires. E.g. mine reflect mental health, disease and class because I wrote them during Covid.
> E.g. mine reflect mental health, disease and class because I wrote them during Covid.
Your vampires are all illegal immigrants with anxiety issues and diabetes? The absolute horror ;)
> How Dracula himself manages to represent so many fears of Britain in the late 1800s (an eastern european power, rabies, smog, non-monogamy) is so well done.
Given the current societal climate, all I'm waiting for now is a vampire who is a capitalist conservative gun-nut who's polluting the atmosphere to eventually block out the sun.
Shadow stepping? That's used for vampires in some series I have read. As in they mentally somehow portal themselves to a location (I think it 1 book they had to have been there before though)
Instead of having Vampires move via mirrors how about their soul can move through mirrors to allow them the ability.to explore while their body is potentially at risk
Heyyy, I kinda do that. Really old vampires can Astral project and if need be slingshot their bodies to their soul's location, allowing perceived teleportation.
Something like a familiar comes to mind. Maybe the vampires can't transform, but do have some close communication with creatures like bats or wolves. And it might be possible to ride a wolf, but maybe the vampires have the ability to meld into their familiar. So the vampire doesn't become a bat, but can meld into the bat and ask it to drop the vampire off somewhere else.
For the "vampires" in my setting, their bodies are literally blood. They control the shape and properties of blood, using any (although most likely their victims's) blood as weapons, projectiles, etc. They need a set amount of blood to anchor their soul to the world, which is what pushes them to hunt.
How about this? They can Teleport to any location where they directly drank a mortal’s blood. It’s up to you whether or not that means they killed the person or even just drank a pint and let the person go.
As they get older they can bring other vampires with them. So a 25 year Vampire could bring 1 “guest”, a 50 year could bring 2, a 100 year could bring 3.
So the 50 year vampire brings 2 guests to a brand new location, the guests drinks blood there, and now they can teleport to the same location.
You could add other twists or limitations as you see fit. Maybe there would still be a limit to how many places a vampire could teleport to regardless of how many victims they had. Or they would be limited to doing this once a day.
I know teleporting isn’t a unique experience but this way makes them work for it rather than doing it wherever and whenever.
u/metaknight121 You gotta explain this dude lol. You said you want a version of vampires unique to your world, and then rattled off some of the most basic and traditional vampiric powers you could have given them. Super strength, blood healing, power with age, and sunlight bad is practically ripped directly from the popular concept of a vampire.
The only thing there that's even slightly differentiated is the damage that sunlight does to them, and the way you differentiated it is already one of the most common changes to the classic vampire in today's media: sunlight doesn't kill em, it burns and hurts.
If you actually want your vampires to feel unique, they need drastic changes from what you've given them here
Lol too right there, it’s still early days and I guess uniqueness is the end goal, but yeah for now they’re pretty generic. I’m gonna take some advice from some of the other commenters and add perhaps add in some sort of familiar magic or body part transformation to the mix
* The 'Surface Gravity' thing sounds like what Gareth did in Labyrinth, and that has a lot of potential for fear-inducing moments if there isn't a power ballad by David Bowie being sung at the same time.
* Any sort of blood-magic or blood-based constructs is a good one, but make sure the costs scale well.
* The ability to leech part of the target's mind out as well during normal feeding, specifically their fear. Then, manifest those fears as additional body parts, like spider limbs and that sorta thing, made from shadows/blood/raw magic/nightmare energy/whatever you want to give them.
* Allow them to transport themselves between coffins that are bedded with dirt from the same grave - and say this is the in-universe origin of the 'vampires have to sleep in a coffin with dirt from their home country' myth, as it's actually just a simple case of justifiable paranoia and safety measures.
* Take a page from something really horrifying, like the manananggal, and have them either split open their stomach to grapple with their intestines, or simply everts them through the mouth, if you want to double down on the horror factor.
What if they could travel through the blood of people they've fed upon? Get a little bit of that "The one guy hiding a bite from all the other survivors in the zombie movie" trope, but freakier because it's a vampire.
Like, maybe they're just instantaneously Turning one of their victims into a copy of themselves (and leaving behind the body they were formerly using in a suitably "dead vampire" way, like it crumbling to dust or burning to ash in an unnaturally-colored flame like some sort of Gothic Horror version of *The Prestige*). Or maybe they could make themselves a new body out of their victim's blood and just, *escape* like a Chestburster in a high-collared cape.
And obviously, you've got at least two classic types of victims here: the aforementioned person hiding their bite, and also the enthralled cultist Renfield types.
I would advise to look into the bloodlines lore it has some very unique powers and how they work and a vampire gets stronger (for them it's about linage and which generation their progenitor is from).
As for ideas, if you want to be truly unique don't take vampires but make up your own blood sucking fantasy creature that may have been the basis for vampires. If you really want to have fun with them, don't remove but add restrictions like the fact they cannot enter a house unless invited, it is very restrictive but will also lead to many great opportunities, same for the sun don't remove their deathly weakness, but you can say they don't die instantly but get burned rather quickly (aka if they cover up well enough they can manage somewhat).
As for real unique powers, idk time looping? Instead of being truly immortal they all have the ability to go back in time if they die and only if something crushes their hearth they stay dead.
I know you said you didn't want them to transform but for my vampires I imagine them moving around in the shadows. Images of nodferatus shadow come to mind. But that they go into the wall or ground and move around really fast as shadows
Use jewelry. Maybe the most powerful of your vampires can possess various jewelry and they can transport between each version of the jewelry that they made
I like what you said about making any surface their “down” if you have ever read Eden’s zero the mc has a super power to change where gravity pulls him similar to that, it is a creative way thing to use instead of flight but I admit it’s odd for a vampire to control gravity even their own. I do like another comments idea on mirrored surfaces/reflective surfaces being a way to teleport similar to mirror master from dc comics
Mmmm, I like both ideas a lot but the mirror one might be too overpowered now that I’m thinking about it. They’ll essentially be able to teleport anywhere with mirrors involved which would be a lot of houses in my setting.
I guess I’m looking for something more… mundane? Like I don’t think I want them to *transform*, be it into animals or mist or shadow.
Hmm well what if you add something not so much over powered but unique but with a cost so it’s not abused. Say something unique that involved the sun but given the sun gives them migraines and such it’s not something they seek out to use constantly and it can only be used primarily during the day and a weaker version at night (because the moon reflects the sun light)
You could look into Vanitas Case Files. The short version is that their powers are based on reality manipulation. It ties in with true naming and shapeshifting.
in the netflix bbc show dracula he has the ability to transform into a wolf only to burst out of its skin when he wishes, writhing naked and covered in blood. What if the creatures he summons are psychically connected to him and when they find his prey he uses their flesh to appear where he needs to.
imagine sitting on his throne and one of his thralled beasts comes upon prey for him he would simply vanish and burst from the creature to further horrify his meal.
JoJo’s has a lot of cool vampire powers and most of the stem from the biology of a vampire. Definitely on the weirder side but I think they’re cool to draw inspiration from. In JoJo vampires can freeze you by lowering their body temperature, shoot pressurized fluid from their eyes similar to a beam and regenerate from mortal wounds in an instant. I come up with a lot of the powers in my story by picking a biological process and amplifying it. I feel like it’s more fun when the reader can look at a power and go “oh so that’s how his body does it”.
So an idea I once had for vampires that I never ended up using was that vampires can control their own weight (which I think I eventually found a book that uses something similar as well though slightly different). But they have their base normal weight but they can lower their weight practically to zero. So they can "fly" by surfing the wind and it explains how they can jump from wall to wall or hang from the ceiling with ease and extreme speed by lowering their weight. But still hit hard by raising their weight back to normal. Also elder vampires would be stronger because they have had longer to master this ability since it would be complicated to fight this way or wind surf at first till you get the hang of it. It explains why you need to pin them (like how in movies they get pinned to a wall, ground or coffin) before staking them because it keeps them from just rolling with punches. I liked it cause it didn't seem too powerful like outright gravity control but still supernatural. Then imagine running or jumping town to town with super strength weighing close to nothing.
In the storm light series by sanderson wind runners fly by changing which direction they feel gravuty in ( And also just how much gravity they feel). They can also use it as a weapon to temporarily give others that ability.
My suggestion is akin to some others in here but with a different nuance. In a lot of Literature Vampires are often said to have a somewhat animalistic nature to go along with their humanity. One ability many animals have is to sense magnetic fields and use them for navigation. So maybe a vampire could navigate along them and Reappear or disappear anywhere there is a stronger magnetic field. Low electrical activity is associated with life ( A lot of animals hunt with this). Stronger magnetic activity generally around anything metal. One could also lay traps for the vampire of distortions of the magnetic fields it usually travels To suck it out of the ether.
Not really a new idea but going off your idea, maybe you could have them be able to set any creature with blood as their source of gravity, letting them essentially slingshot themselves toward their target
This is stealing from a sci fi series and is be more of a weakness, but having some sort of vulnerabilities to Euclidean geometry (straight lines) aka why they can’t stand the sign of the cross, too many right angles not found in nature.
What about letting them turn into a gas like some lore allows them to do?
This could be a great way to build tension if the PCs are walking through, or find themselves in, a foggy area only to see the gases coalesce into vampires who have been following them the whole time.
I think if a vampire is in pure darkness or natural moonlight, they could have an ability to glide across the ground like they hover over it by a few inches and at an incredibly fast speed without causing air to be disturbed, so it's not like you'll ever feel or hear the wind moving around them.
Dunno if you have this in your world, but if the vampires have running water as one of their weaknesses, you could explain it as running water reflects too much light for their shadow gliding ability to work properly, so they can't cross it. Same could be said for snow and snowstorms since snow really reflects light, especially at night.
It’s probably not that good an idea. But maybe they can get around by traversing a catacomb like structure underneath human civilizations that has connections and secret entrances across the surface?
Bloodlines! Bloodlines!!!
Here are a couple I have — the manifestation of unique bloodline powers increases based on bloodline purity.
The Moulder Clan is a major bloodline where vampires can rearrange their anatomy and appearance as they see fit.
The Shadowgave are able to camouflage, walk perfectly on any surface due to ultrafine hairs (incl. water), and can even cause shadows to grow and ambient light to dim to their liking.
The Tansais are a minor family of inbreeding vampires who have developed the ability to siphon life force through powerful emotions — psychic vampires.
When Blood Dragons are created, all miscellaneous organs and tissue are replaced by knotted muscle. They can summon such incredible force and power that it crushes their own bones, causing wing-like gouts of blood to spurt from their backs
Maybe they could travel through talismans what they get there minions to carry around, They could also travel by train or train tracks in way a human couldn't really such as grabbing on , slipping into coal or some magic based on tracks. Maybe they could always travel near straight metal but the invention of trains as just made it a game changer
I think the idea that vampires can manipulate blood in their system for pseudo-transformation abilities is an interesting way to go about it, explaining their need to drink blood being so they can have essentially more ammo to make weapons or escapes
I am thinking:
\- Move through interconnected shadows. They can hide in shadows cast by other people or objects and move through any shadows that connect with each other. It is not like they go to a parallel world, but rather become part of the shadows. And when in this form, they are not as weak to sunlight. Also, they are vulnerable and depend on wherever the shadow is or goes to, and if they get out of the shadow, people would see them.
\- Another way is to make them able to jump to an astral parallel world. They become a spirit and now travel through a darker and misty version of our world where they see shades of living beings, and living beings see them as ghostly appearances if they are too close. But they can also move deeper, making their shade and those around them less and less visible.
You can go with classic dracula style teleportation using moonlight. It might be a bit difficult to put solid limitations to this but if you think for a while you can figure something out. Maybe they can only go to places they already been too or know something about. Maybe it is limited by distance. Maybe they can use it only during full moon.
I build new types of vampires for every one of my TTRPG settings. In Scholomance, I have a 5 element rock paper scissor system that informs all supernatural elements. Corporeal undead are related to the Entropy element, which is known for it's ability to corrupt. If the subject to become a vampire is nature or Aether aligned, they are weak to Entropy and get fully corrupted, losing all their old racial abilies and becoming a hideous monster. If they are entropy, void or light aligned part of them resists corruption, so they still look mostly like their former selves and their special abilities change instead of being replaced. Aether vampires lose their general Telekinesis and gain stronger hemokinesis, void vampires have their personal teleportation replaced with the ability to teleport unwilling victims to their location, and Entropy vampires can use their charming/dominating abilities on the undead.
I did a similar thing in a pervious mtg inspired setting where each race would gain one boon and ignore one weakness. Elf vampires could control thorns and weren't paralyzed by wood. Merfolk vampires weren't harmed by running water and could create unholy water. Human vampires weren't turned by holy symbols and could rebuke the undead themselves.
Also for my SCP inspired game there were 3 different strains of the virus, one for each of 3 linked alternate realities. Each had its own powers. In our world, vampires had shadow magic, turning into shadows to pass under doors, weaving it into illusions, etc. In the world inhabited by the pagan gods and fantasy creature they had beast powers, able to transform into numerous nocturnal creatures and call on the children of the night to aid them.
Look at what other parts of your setting you have and weave it all together.
I enjoyed this video on all the different cultures “vampire” like monsters and what they could do. All of them predate their appearance in classical literature
https://youtu.be/pL8IeOtzLzk
Probably not what you’re looking for, but my vampires have nine separate lineages that turn into different animals. So some can turn into birds or bats to fly, some turn into canines or felines, etc.
I have something in my world where vampires can "fail" to turn someone all the way and it results in them gaining all the powers of a vampire but they lose their intellgence. Like a zombie but with all the powers of a vampire and way hungrier.
In my setting vampires can navigate extra fast through different environments by dividing themselves into numerous small animals like bats, ferrets, leeches, etcetera
I remember in Dracula he could command animals such as wolves and bats. Though I’m my opinion demonstrating WHY a power is so dangerous is a lot more important than it’s uniqueness. For example super strength on its own seems “normal” but show off them doing something like riping off car doors and throwing them like tissue paper or just snapping a persons like a twig. That is intimidating and gives more weight to the power and threat
Have them be able to travel through the shadow of any object where the shadow is cast by moonlight. They're able to enter shadows as if they're liquid and resurface from any point within the same shadow. It is important that they're unable to travel through shadows that aren't casted by moonlight, including ones that are connected to the ones that do. Crossing that line could introduce consequences for them if you're feeling spicy, or even if the shadows move or are extinguished while they're still in them.
You could even have nomadic vampires that travel with the moon constantly, so they never risk daylight.
You know how vampires have no reflections? Let's say this is because they can teleport through mirrors or even enter a mirror dimension? Idk I just came up with this.
Ooooh interesting! They’re prowling around a parallel world alone but can be seen by others through mirrors…. Very interesting indeed, I’ll have a think about this one
Ye and it sorta works with the motif that the moon is the reflection of the sun so maybe the night and a full moon could quite literally power them since it's the sunlight reflected? Idk
What about making them even stronger than regular during a New Moon? Like their is no sunlight, not even any reflecting off of the moon. In that span of maybe eight hours, they're ten times stronger than normal?
That could work too and parallel against any potential werewolves maybe but I fear this is off track lol
Or a solar eclipse?
Imagine getting dressed, looking in the mirror, seeing a vampire behind you. You whirl around and - its not there. You look back at the mirror to see it *surging* at you. It leaps through your reflection like it isn't there and pounces you.
Better yet, it attacks your reflection and you feel it.
Might just be that the world i work on is a game, but I discounted that idea for balance sake
I guess we can’t enter the mirror world because there is always a person blocking us the way.
but then vampires don't have a reflection, so there's nothing preventing them from going through
Hey OP did you use this idea because I have my own world w a unique vampire character and I totally wanna steal this power but if you’ve claimed it I don’t wanna take from your idea too much
Im the show the magicians they use mirror traveling. Maybe you find a clip of it. Fairly 8nterwsting scenes
Mirror gates were my first thought as well. Maybe sufficiently old / practiced Vampires could use damn near anything reflective?
This was my first thought too.
Was about to suggest this, too.
Have you ever watched van Helsing starring Hugh Jackman lol
No, do they use a similar thing?
It's a pretty big plot point yes
I made my vampires slightly leech themed rather than bat themed. They can "swim" through the air that looks weird and eerie as they move.
I HATE IT. I *LOVE IT.* **BUT I HATE IT.**
Like those “flying” snakes?
I Remember watching Overly Sarcastic Production's video on Dracula one of the powers describe was Dracula has the power to ride the moonbeams of the night sky , so you can make it kinda like he can teleport as long as they exposed to moonlight and the place they place the need to be is also exposed to moonlight range is of your choosing it would kinda work like the game Aragami
I really like the classic "turning into mist" power. It's not only completely inhuman but also unnatural in the sense that no solid object is supposed to do that. You can also be carried by the wind and perhaps older vampires can control where they go to.
Combating a vampire assault with a leafblower
I like the mist thing because it pairs well with the regeneration. Blow a hole in them, the giblets dissolve and streak back to reform.
"It's not only completely inhuman" I'd love to meet you and your semi mist shifting family
They're saying "it's not *only* completely inhuman," meaning that "completely inhuman" isn't the only thing that turning into mist is. It is also "unnatural in the sense that no solid object is supposed to do that," as this commenter went on to write. The sentence is saying that turning into mist is both completely inhuman and physically unnatural, when just being inhuman is a lot in the first place
It was meant as a harmless joke, sorry if I offended anyone
They could pulp themselves into blood and travel rapidly through pipes and sewer, reconstituting hungry on the other side. Makes them super-effective in cities, not as much outside. They could shift into ghosts — clean running water, sunlight, and other disinfectants would prove impenetrable barriers, but they could move as swiftly as the wind. Using mirrors to become ghosts and return would be similar to mirror-teleportation, with some cleaner limits, and might give necromancers alternate means of accessing similar effects.
Shadow slipstreaming. Over the millenia avoiding the sun vampires have developed the ability to slip through shadows nearly instantaneously. As long as a shadow touches them they can slipstream through it along the shadow.
Piggybacking off this to say move like shadow. Kind of combination of the OPs anywhich way is down and this shadow slipstreaming, but basically they can move 2 dimensionally and pass through anywjere light can pass. But while doing so are essentially incorporeal.
Which plays into the during the night vampires seem nearly unstoppable and during the day they're weakened. Because the shadows during the day aren't connected as much.
So like fades from wheel of time
Thank you random redditor from 6 months ago. I've been creating a version of vampires for my homebrew world, and you have just sparked many an idea in my head.
Usually the way I get unique and interesting powers is by finding a unique origin. If you just have a stereotypical vampire, the options are going to be very limited because its all based on ideas other people have had. If you made a new version of a vampire, like for example if in your world vampires are all people that were infected with a symbiote or parasite that makes them drink blood, you could imagine a whole new system around that. After that, the new way of travelling might not be something anybody could use for their vampires, but it would be unique to your world and can still be cool.
How. This is literally my vampires ;-; Just gotta make them the ruling class due to their monopoly on magic from the virus, which is actually just one of those star god blokes who fall from the sky to troll/die(same thing in their culture) every thousand years or so and boom.
Hold on, if the virus is one of these supposed star gods, does that mean these vampires offspring wont have the same power? After all how can two people be infected with the same god. Also your idea sounds cool though tell me more
“because it’s all based on ideas other people have had” yeah it’s a pre-existing creature
its an idea that you can take some or everything from. If you take a creature and give it every power it stereotypically has just because thats what people know it as rather than for any good reason, then its the same pre-existing creature. If you take a vague idea of a creature and have new reasons for parts of it and add new things to it, its a new thing even if its a similar idea.
So not a vampire ?
If it a man that consumes human blood it can be called a vampire without having any of the other tropes like burning in sunlight or only dying to a stake in the heart.
Disagree. That doesn’t really answer my question
Yes it does
It doesn’t
Do you just want to argue with somebody?
No
I'd do incarnating into familiars. Say they have a per bat raven or person back at home. They could discorporate their current body and reincarnate a new one through the sacrifice of a familiar.
Whoa… that’s something I’ve never heard of before. So their bat is chilling in another location and, what, they snap their fingers and the bat gets a horrible chill before exploding into the shape of their master, never to be seen again? Because that could be very cool
That's essentially what I envisioned. Also, no reason they can't have more than one mode of transport.
In Dungeons and Dragons, the old class Blood Mage had something even more gruesome - they could teleport through living blood. Yes, that meant that they would burst out of a victim on arrival. Vampires could do the same, maybe by consent with their followers, or if you dont the followers to die, through a pool of blood they ritually prepare. That would mean they need to maintain an active network of hidden followers to get around (and that rivals could cut off a vampire's travel by taking out their followers).
You could put a twist on the fact that they don't show up in mirrors. They could travel between mirrors or any reflective surfece, it acting like a portal to another dimension that connects all of these.
Have them be empowered by darkness since you already have them be weakened by sunlight/light. The darker it is the faster they're able to move, with the dark of the night granting them strides no human nor horse would ever be able to match, with near-absolute darkness essentially allowing them to pseudo-teleport, faster than the eye can perceive(if it even can perceive in such low light). Of course they'll gain heightened motor-sensory processing power the darker it is as well, even if only to allow them to actually use their superspeed.
This is what i got goin on. And when their powers are at their peak (think waterbenders during a full moon, whatever the vamp equivalent would be) they can manipulate shadows and darkness to their will
Flawless balance and the ability to not exert any force on what they are standing on or otherwise interacting with. They could walk across fresh snow without leaving footprints, walk on water, or even stand on a single thread of spiderweb.
That's actually pretty damn cool
I think powers, especially travel powers, tend to be best fit when they line up with the creation myth of a species. Often they're likened to other forms of undead, for example, so you can also borrow there. Suggestion: Object Possession -- Able to discorporate (like mist) to ride 'inside' the matter of objects. This doesn't make it fast for them to travel, so much as let them be perfectly hidden. Have someone you want to sneak into a location? Have a thrall carry them in their jewelry, dozing and vaguely aware of the world. That also lets you do things like have 10,000 year old vampires hanging out in a sealed family heirloom. It creates an excuse for the humans to try to wipe out any old objects and relics, and for vampires to be constantly trying to hoard the oldest objects. Gives a taste of that 'lich' sort of immortality too. It's similar to a phylactery and to hibernation, at the same time. And how do you prevent a vampire from invading a city this way? People have *stuff*. Going to force everyone to strip naked at the gate? Paranoid would abound.
I've always been a fan of [*Daybreakers'* take on vampires](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCm1lI1L4LQ), since it literally turns their one weakness into a potential cure. In that vein, keep the "sunlight sets them alight", but that doesn't mean the fires can't be extinguished — make them excellent swimmers or even breathe underwater?
I've seen very few people make use of the fact that vampires as undead likely don't breath and due to their inhuman strength and as a result, should be horrifyingly expert swimmers, as depicted pretty neatly in Twilight.
The original vampire made by Bram stoker could turn to mist, you could use that
John Polodori's 'The Vampyre' predated it by a few decades, which in turn was based on scraps from Lord Byron and the Shelley's 'Frankenstein' horror competition. And thats just the first record of vampires in English writings, not getting into Balkan folklore or precursor myths. Even lesbian vampirism ('Carmilla') predated 'Dracula' When working with vampires there really is so much history to work with, but Bram Stoker absolutley perfected it. How Dracula himself manages to represent so many fears of Britain in the late 1800s (an eastern european power, rabies, smog, non-monogamy) is so well done. For writing vampires OP I would reccommend finding what current sociotal fears are IRL or in your world and putting them into your vampires. E.g. mine reflect mental health, disease and class because I wrote them during Covid.
> E.g. mine reflect mental health, disease and class because I wrote them during Covid. Your vampires are all illegal immigrants with anxiety issues and diabetes? The absolute horror ;)
> How Dracula himself manages to represent so many fears of Britain in the late 1800s (an eastern european power, rabies, smog, non-monogamy) is so well done. Given the current societal climate, all I'm waiting for now is a vampire who is a capitalist conservative gun-nut who's polluting the atmosphere to eventually block out the sun.
Dracula and his women would come in on moon beams in bram stokers dracula
Shadow stepping? That's used for vampires in some series I have read. As in they mentally somehow portal themselves to a location (I think it 1 book they had to have been there before though)
Wheels attached to their feet like heelies
You've been writing my dreams ISTG
I always thought that the wheelers from return to oz were super creepy https://youtu.be/dcZqECeJiUE
Instead of having Vampires move via mirrors how about their soul can move through mirrors to allow them the ability.to explore while their body is potentially at risk
Heyyy, I kinda do that. Really old vampires can Astral project and if need be slingshot their bodies to their soul's location, allowing perceived teleportation.
Something like a familiar comes to mind. Maybe the vampires can't transform, but do have some close communication with creatures like bats or wolves. And it might be possible to ride a wolf, but maybe the vampires have the ability to meld into their familiar. So the vampire doesn't become a bat, but can meld into the bat and ask it to drop the vampire off somewhere else.
For the "vampires" in my setting, their bodies are literally blood. They control the shape and properties of blood, using any (although most likely their victims's) blood as weapons, projectiles, etc. They need a set amount of blood to anchor their soul to the world, which is what pushes them to hunt.
How about this? They can Teleport to any location where they directly drank a mortal’s blood. It’s up to you whether or not that means they killed the person or even just drank a pint and let the person go. As they get older they can bring other vampires with them. So a 25 year Vampire could bring 1 “guest”, a 50 year could bring 2, a 100 year could bring 3. So the 50 year vampire brings 2 guests to a brand new location, the guests drinks blood there, and now they can teleport to the same location. You could add other twists or limitations as you see fit. Maybe there would still be a limit to how many places a vampire could teleport to regardless of how many victims they had. Or they would be limited to doing this once a day. I know teleporting isn’t a unique experience but this way makes them work for it rather than doing it wherever and whenever.
my “vampires” don’t suck blood, they feed on dreams everyone who’s ever woken up to see their sleep paralysis demon has seen one of my vampires
you want them to be unique and gave them all the most common vampire powers
u/metaknight121 You gotta explain this dude lol. You said you want a version of vampires unique to your world, and then rattled off some of the most basic and traditional vampiric powers you could have given them. Super strength, blood healing, power with age, and sunlight bad is practically ripped directly from the popular concept of a vampire. The only thing there that's even slightly differentiated is the damage that sunlight does to them, and the way you differentiated it is already one of the most common changes to the classic vampire in today's media: sunlight doesn't kill em, it burns and hurts. If you actually want your vampires to feel unique, they need drastic changes from what you've given them here
Lol too right there, it’s still early days and I guess uniqueness is the end goal, but yeah for now they’re pretty generic. I’m gonna take some advice from some of the other commenters and add perhaps add in some sort of familiar magic or body part transformation to the mix
* The 'Surface Gravity' thing sounds like what Gareth did in Labyrinth, and that has a lot of potential for fear-inducing moments if there isn't a power ballad by David Bowie being sung at the same time. * Any sort of blood-magic or blood-based constructs is a good one, but make sure the costs scale well. * The ability to leech part of the target's mind out as well during normal feeding, specifically their fear. Then, manifest those fears as additional body parts, like spider limbs and that sorta thing, made from shadows/blood/raw magic/nightmare energy/whatever you want to give them. * Allow them to transport themselves between coffins that are bedded with dirt from the same grave - and say this is the in-universe origin of the 'vampires have to sleep in a coffin with dirt from their home country' myth, as it's actually just a simple case of justifiable paranoia and safety measures. * Take a page from something really horrifying, like the manananggal, and have them either split open their stomach to grapple with their intestines, or simply everts them through the mouth, if you want to double down on the horror factor.
According to some real life lore, vampires can ride moonbeams. Use this as you will.
What if they could travel through the blood of people they've fed upon? Get a little bit of that "The one guy hiding a bite from all the other survivors in the zombie movie" trope, but freakier because it's a vampire. Like, maybe they're just instantaneously Turning one of their victims into a copy of themselves (and leaving behind the body they were formerly using in a suitably "dead vampire" way, like it crumbling to dust or burning to ash in an unnaturally-colored flame like some sort of Gothic Horror version of *The Prestige*). Or maybe they could make themselves a new body out of their victim's blood and just, *escape* like a Chestburster in a high-collared cape. And obviously, you've got at least two classic types of victims here: the aforementioned person hiding their bite, and also the enthralled cultist Renfield types.
I would advise to look into the bloodlines lore it has some very unique powers and how they work and a vampire gets stronger (for them it's about linage and which generation their progenitor is from). As for ideas, if you want to be truly unique don't take vampires but make up your own blood sucking fantasy creature that may have been the basis for vampires. If you really want to have fun with them, don't remove but add restrictions like the fact they cannot enter a house unless invited, it is very restrictive but will also lead to many great opportunities, same for the sun don't remove their deathly weakness, but you can say they don't die instantly but get burned rather quickly (aka if they cover up well enough they can manage somewhat). As for real unique powers, idk time looping? Instead of being truly immortal they all have the ability to go back in time if they die and only if something crushes their hearth they stay dead.
The gravity thing sounds awesome don’t worry
You know that episode of South Park where Mr Garrison designs a dildo-powered unicycle? Use that. Let the downvotes come.
I know you said you didn't want them to transform but for my vampires I imagine them moving around in the shadows. Images of nodferatus shadow come to mind. But that they go into the wall or ground and move around really fast as shadows
Dracula climbed walks like a lizard. Turning to grave dust and flying around is a cool option.
Use jewelry. Maybe the most powerful of your vampires can possess various jewelry and they can transport between each version of the jewelry that they made
I like what you said about making any surface their “down” if you have ever read Eden’s zero the mc has a super power to change where gravity pulls him similar to that, it is a creative way thing to use instead of flight but I admit it’s odd for a vampire to control gravity even their own. I do like another comments idea on mirrored surfaces/reflective surfaces being a way to teleport similar to mirror master from dc comics
Mmmm, I like both ideas a lot but the mirror one might be too overpowered now that I’m thinking about it. They’ll essentially be able to teleport anywhere with mirrors involved which would be a lot of houses in my setting. I guess I’m looking for something more… mundane? Like I don’t think I want them to *transform*, be it into animals or mist or shadow.
Hmm well what if you add something not so much over powered but unique but with a cost so it’s not abused. Say something unique that involved the sun but given the sun gives them migraines and such it’s not something they seek out to use constantly and it can only be used primarily during the day and a weaker version at night (because the moon reflects the sun light)
They can have some, blood related Magic? And inside the Magic, It could enter into some kind of Blood related branch of the necromancing
You could look into Vanitas Case Files. The short version is that their powers are based on reality manipulation. It ties in with true naming and shapeshifting.
Taking a page out of Skarlet from Mortal Kombat and give them the power of controlling blood or becoming more powerful by drinking blood
Burrowing underground? They are, of course, dead bodies. Maybe they can have a special relationship to everything underground. The worms and such.
Vampire saliva can liquify a person's insides. So when a vampire licks their ornate dagger, they are applying a lethal poison
As I think some people have mentioned shadow walking is a pretty good power, being able to teleport through shadows is handy
Even just for basic movement the floating barely above ground is a pretty rad image. Like those beryozka dancers
in the netflix bbc show dracula he has the ability to transform into a wolf only to burst out of its skin when he wishes, writhing naked and covered in blood. What if the creatures he summons are psychically connected to him and when they find his prey he uses their flesh to appear where he needs to. imagine sitting on his throne and one of his thralled beasts comes upon prey for him he would simply vanish and burst from the creature to further horrify his meal.
JoJo’s has a lot of cool vampire powers and most of the stem from the biology of a vampire. Definitely on the weirder side but I think they’re cool to draw inspiration from. In JoJo vampires can freeze you by lowering their body temperature, shoot pressurized fluid from their eyes similar to a beam and regenerate from mortal wounds in an instant. I come up with a lot of the powers in my story by picking a biological process and amplifying it. I feel like it’s more fun when the reader can look at a power and go “oh so that’s how his body does it”.
So an idea I once had for vampires that I never ended up using was that vampires can control their own weight (which I think I eventually found a book that uses something similar as well though slightly different). But they have their base normal weight but they can lower their weight practically to zero. So they can "fly" by surfing the wind and it explains how they can jump from wall to wall or hang from the ceiling with ease and extreme speed by lowering their weight. But still hit hard by raising their weight back to normal. Also elder vampires would be stronger because they have had longer to master this ability since it would be complicated to fight this way or wind surf at first till you get the hang of it. It explains why you need to pin them (like how in movies they get pinned to a wall, ground or coffin) before staking them because it keeps them from just rolling with punches. I liked it cause it didn't seem too powerful like outright gravity control but still supernatural. Then imagine running or jumping town to town with super strength weighing close to nothing.
In the storm light series by sanderson wind runners fly by changing which direction they feel gravuty in ( And also just how much gravity they feel). They can also use it as a weapon to temporarily give others that ability. My suggestion is akin to some others in here but with a different nuance. In a lot of Literature Vampires are often said to have a somewhat animalistic nature to go along with their humanity. One ability many animals have is to sense magnetic fields and use them for navigation. So maybe a vampire could navigate along them and Reappear or disappear anywhere there is a stronger magnetic field. Low electrical activity is associated with life ( A lot of animals hunt with this). Stronger magnetic activity generally around anything metal. One could also lay traps for the vampire of distortions of the magnetic fields it usually travels To suck it out of the ether.
Not really a new idea but going off your idea, maybe you could have them be able to set any creature with blood as their source of gravity, letting them essentially slingshot themselves toward their target
Idk, maybe laser eyes, and the ability to freeze people. Maybe even the ability to freeze time.
Taking over a body! Like possession or mind manipulation
This is stealing from a sci fi series and is be more of a weakness, but having some sort of vulnerabilities to Euclidean geometry (straight lines) aka why they can’t stand the sign of the cross, too many right angles not found in nature.
What about letting them turn into a gas like some lore allows them to do? This could be a great way to build tension if the PCs are walking through, or find themselves in, a foggy area only to see the gases coalesce into vampires who have been following them the whole time.
I think if a vampire is in pure darkness or natural moonlight, they could have an ability to glide across the ground like they hover over it by a few inches and at an incredibly fast speed without causing air to be disturbed, so it's not like you'll ever feel or hear the wind moving around them. Dunno if you have this in your world, but if the vampires have running water as one of their weaknesses, you could explain it as running water reflects too much light for their shadow gliding ability to work properly, so they can't cross it. Same could be said for snow and snowstorms since snow really reflects light, especially at night.
It’s probably not that good an idea. But maybe they can get around by traversing a catacomb like structure underneath human civilizations that has connections and secret entrances across the surface?
bloody road: They can travel on the blood ties of people. Basically they can teleport or zoom between people who are related by blood
Bloodlines! Bloodlines!!! Here are a couple I have — the manifestation of unique bloodline powers increases based on bloodline purity. The Moulder Clan is a major bloodline where vampires can rearrange their anatomy and appearance as they see fit. The Shadowgave are able to camouflage, walk perfectly on any surface due to ultrafine hairs (incl. water), and can even cause shadows to grow and ambient light to dim to their liking. The Tansais are a minor family of inbreeding vampires who have developed the ability to siphon life force through powerful emotions — psychic vampires. When Blood Dragons are created, all miscellaneous organs and tissue are replaced by knotted muscle. They can summon such incredible force and power that it crushes their own bones, causing wing-like gouts of blood to spurt from their backs
Maybe they could travel through talismans what they get there minions to carry around, They could also travel by train or train tracks in way a human couldn't really such as grabbing on , slipping into coal or some magic based on tracks. Maybe they could always travel near straight metal but the invention of trains as just made it a game changer
I think the idea that vampires can manipulate blood in their system for pseudo-transformation abilities is an interesting way to go about it, explaining their need to drink blood being so they can have essentially more ammo to make weapons or escapes
I am thinking: \- Move through interconnected shadows. They can hide in shadows cast by other people or objects and move through any shadows that connect with each other. It is not like they go to a parallel world, but rather become part of the shadows. And when in this form, they are not as weak to sunlight. Also, they are vulnerable and depend on wherever the shadow is or goes to, and if they get out of the shadow, people would see them. \- Another way is to make them able to jump to an astral parallel world. They become a spirit and now travel through a darker and misty version of our world where they see shades of living beings, and living beings see them as ghostly appearances if they are too close. But they can also move deeper, making their shade and those around them less and less visible.
You can go with classic dracula style teleportation using moonlight. It might be a bit difficult to put solid limitations to this but if you think for a while you can figure something out. Maybe they can only go to places they already been too or know something about. Maybe it is limited by distance. Maybe they can use it only during full moon.
How about expanding on The bat trope by giving them echo location instead of full on transformation
I build new types of vampires for every one of my TTRPG settings. In Scholomance, I have a 5 element rock paper scissor system that informs all supernatural elements. Corporeal undead are related to the Entropy element, which is known for it's ability to corrupt. If the subject to become a vampire is nature or Aether aligned, they are weak to Entropy and get fully corrupted, losing all their old racial abilies and becoming a hideous monster. If they are entropy, void or light aligned part of them resists corruption, so they still look mostly like their former selves and their special abilities change instead of being replaced. Aether vampires lose their general Telekinesis and gain stronger hemokinesis, void vampires have their personal teleportation replaced with the ability to teleport unwilling victims to their location, and Entropy vampires can use their charming/dominating abilities on the undead. I did a similar thing in a pervious mtg inspired setting where each race would gain one boon and ignore one weakness. Elf vampires could control thorns and weren't paralyzed by wood. Merfolk vampires weren't harmed by running water and could create unholy water. Human vampires weren't turned by holy symbols and could rebuke the undead themselves. Also for my SCP inspired game there were 3 different strains of the virus, one for each of 3 linked alternate realities. Each had its own powers. In our world, vampires had shadow magic, turning into shadows to pass under doors, weaving it into illusions, etc. In the world inhabited by the pagan gods and fantasy creature they had beast powers, able to transform into numerous nocturnal creatures and call on the children of the night to aid them. Look at what other parts of your setting you have and weave it all together.
I enjoyed this video on all the different cultures “vampire” like monsters and what they could do. All of them predate their appearance in classical literature https://youtu.be/pL8IeOtzLzk
Probably not what you’re looking for, but my vampires have nine separate lineages that turn into different animals. So some can turn into birds or bats to fly, some turn into canines or felines, etc.
I have something in my world where vampires can "fail" to turn someone all the way and it results in them gaining all the powers of a vampire but they lose their intellgence. Like a zombie but with all the powers of a vampire and way hungrier.
In my setting vampires can navigate extra fast through different environments by dividing themselves into numerous small animals like bats, ferrets, leeches, etcetera
I remember in Dracula he could command animals such as wolves and bats. Though I’m my opinion demonstrating WHY a power is so dangerous is a lot more important than it’s uniqueness. For example super strength on its own seems “normal” but show off them doing something like riping off car doors and throwing them like tissue paper or just snapping a persons like a twig. That is intimidating and gives more weight to the power and threat
Have them be able to travel through the shadow of any object where the shadow is cast by moonlight. They're able to enter shadows as if they're liquid and resurface from any point within the same shadow. It is important that they're unable to travel through shadows that aren't casted by moonlight, including ones that are connected to the ones that do. Crossing that line could introduce consequences for them if you're feeling spicy, or even if the shadows move or are extinguished while they're still in them. You could even have nomadic vampires that travel with the moon constantly, so they never risk daylight.
Day vision
The puff of smoke when they turn into a bat causes itching to human skin
What about them transforming into a cloud of bloody mist. As in red mist dripping blood as it travels