I thought that I would make my mage a vampire in preparation for the Dawnguard DLC coming soon.

So I did a lot of the DB quests so I could get to the point where you can pick up a free 'Worn Shrouded Cowel' that I could enchant with fortify destruction and restoration to go with my black robes.

I also enchanted other items with 'Fire Resistance' and it took me ages to finally get infected with the vampire disease.

You see, I thought being a vampire would be the same as in Oblivion, where if you fast travel and arrive at your destination during the daytime, then your Health Bar would go down very quickly and if you didn't get inside a building within 15 or 20 seconds then you would die!

But oh no, in Skyrim, a vampire can stand out in the sunlight and wear any clothing and doesn't die. Only has 60 points taken off health/magic/stamina which don't regenerate in sunlight (but my magicka did?), a -100% weakness to fire and at level 4 vampirism gets attacked.

What a huge waste of time.

And even worse, once you install Dawnguard you don't even get attacked at level 4!

Yeah, the penalties to being a vampire in Skyrim do not outweigh the bonuses to me. It makes it kind of OP.

werewolfs get suppa strength!

The stage 4 100% weakness will also drop down to 50% with Dawnguard.

i never get the point why vampires are MAGES in the TES games