Bored with current characters and frustrated by quest bugs, I'm looking at roleplaying a vampire for something interesting to do:

My plan is to

1. Get bit by a vampire as soon as possible. There is a spot north of Helgen that should be accessible from level 1.

2. Level illusion, sneak, and try not to do much else. This should make my illusion and sneak higher in proportion to my level than they would be for a typical thief type character, and hopefully get me to the powerful illusion spells / perks before they become obsolete.

3. Live in the shack near Riverwood until I can buy a house. Some safe containers, plus not too secluded, plenty of vamp food nearby.

4. Get Namira's ring from the cannibalism quests in Markarth

5. Do the dark brotherhood quests, possibly some of the thieves guild to get appropriate looking armor?

Questions for the group

Anyone have any other fun ideas on how to roleplay a vampire character?

Anyone have any suggestions as to my character build plan of trying to only level sneak and illusion?

Anyone know of any armor, other than TG and DB stuff, that looks appropriate? I'd love some evil looking robes, but honestly I'm deathly afraid of running around with no armor on a character that will have poor damage output.

At some point I am going to have to join the college of winterhold to get spell access; any recommendation on when to do this?

Level up speech, wear fine clothes, seduce people, invite them to your hose, murder them and eat them

Like your idear!

I myself plan to do this with my current character at some point but first i need to get rid 'o my present accursed affliction, lycanthropy! *Sigh*

So tired of smelling like wet dog all the time...

I've also made a vampire recently who stays in the 4th and final form (blood starved) as much as possible to gain all the vampire benefits. It adds a very unique way to play the game when almost everyone attacks you on sight. You'll need to use illusion spells (calm, invisibility, etc..) a lot to get by. Getting something from the city becomes a puzzle in of itself and some area's are harder than you average dungeon.

Give it a try, you might like the idea.
Topic is here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1312052-master-playthrough-40-hp-vampire-assassin/

If you want to level illusion fast get muffle. Works like a charm (pun intended).

I don't think they ever become obsolete (though I'm simply calculating it and not speaking of experience yet). The perks add approx 20 points to the level max and if you dual cast it doubles again. By the look of it the Novice spells (Calm/Fear/Fury) might not completely reach the enemy level cap of 50 but very close. The adapt/expert and master spells should be more than capable of handling the toughest non-immune enemies.

Thats great information, I hadn't looked closely at the perks or considered dual casting. If I don't have to worry about speed-leveling illusion, then I can probably pay more attention to things like lockpicking and speech.

What enemies are immune???

And are you going armor-free? How do you handle it when you get noticed or otherwise screw up?

No problem. You still might want to level illusion fast though. You'll want the +level perks fairly fast otherwise you'll have to dual cast everything. At 75 you'll get invisibility and at 90 you can use the illusion effects on undead, daedra and automatons as well. Luckily illusion is one of the easiest skills to level.

By the way:
- Vampire +25% illusion bonus works on level cap, including perks.
- Master spells can't be dual cast. So in the end there might be some enemies that are higher level (but not for your dual cast expert spells). Drinking an illusion potion should solve this when you encounter these rare situations. Potion bonus on the other hand only affect the spell level, not perks.


Haven't yet met any normal types besides "undead, daedra and automatons" before that perk. Undead especially are abundant and therefore a bit tricky sometimes. With restoration you could make them flee and then stab 'em in the back in the meanwhile.
Dragons are definitely immune to illusion though and I wouldn't be surprised if a select few more are immune to magic in general or something. For 99.8% of your encounters though, a fully perked illusion tree = le awesome.

Read the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1312052-master-playthrough-40-hp-vampire-assassin/ I posted I'm playing on master difficulty and not putting any points in health so whenever I screw up, ever so slightly, I die. Makes the game a lot of fun I have to say. I'm afraid of everything, yet extremely capable of beating everything as well. Good balance that way.

Having said that, I do level up light armor for the perks. The 50% stamina regeneration one is nice (especially during daylight as a vampire since otherwise you don't regenerate *at all*) and a 10% dodge isn't too bad either. Currently I am using some thieves and brotherhood mix and match gear for the +sneak enchants though, till I enchant my own armors.
I refuse to wear heavy armor as I don't want to level up any skills I don't use anyway (nor read their books). It will only make the enemies stronger but not me.

So in short, I focus on:

- Illusion
- Sneak
- One Handed (Back'smashing' with maces with 12x back'stab' bonus)
- Light armor

After that some points in Restoration to get the mana regeneration perks (and stamina when healing). Smithing and Enchanting is optional.
Paralyze in the Alteration tree is cool as well, though I might not invest any perk points in it. Same with Conjuration. Lategame I perhaps will have enough perk points to make them permanent and/or have two of them at the same time but that's not needed for now. Besides as a stage 4 vampire you already have a summon "powerful dead body" spell once a day.

My vampire character has to kill every npc that he feeds from,I have a lot of fun with it because it requires me to be pick meals carefully, afterall you will need somebody who won't go down without much of a struggle
Since there are only so many named npcs out there as well, you will have to restrain yourself, no staying as a level 1 vamp for weeks at a time, only killing when necessary

Oh I like that idea!
I rarely feed anyway so I could definitely implement that feature into my gameplay. In fact I'm gonna go back and retroactively kill the only one I've fed on so far.
Poor old mill lady. You shouldn't sleep alone at night...