Greetings everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster. As everyone is most likely aware next month will see the release of Dawnguard on our beloved PC platform. One of the highlights of the mod is sure to be the Vampire Lord form.
Ever since I first saw it kinda clashed visually on how I like my vampire. I like them aristocratic, haughty, etc, etc. So as you can imagine perhaps, the whole freakish bat monster is not to my tastes. I understand if people like it, a friend of mine likes his vampire horrorish and monstrous. To each his own and I don't mean that in a condescending way.
The first question you will most likely ask is of course; well whiny little brat don't use it or only use it when you are in a tight spot and roleplay as a reluctant etc, Roleplay argument, etc. But here comes the problem for me, the spells and perk tree seem real cool to me and i'd love to utilize them to the fullest.
My request is thus; Is it possible to create a mod wherein instead of transforming to the new creature skin/model you simply remain as you are(visually that is, I dont mind floating around that would be kinda cool actually). Let's just compare it to the current werewolf form, in that you still become a werewolf(you can only maul, eat, etc.) only your player model is not changed(bad comparison but it was the closest I could get)

TL;DR: Can you guys create a model replacer for the vampire lord in which you look like your regular avatar.


P.S: I know Dawnguard won't be released for another month but I thought it would be smart to start exploring some options before the expension is released.

It's possible, just make a duplicate race of the vampire lord and then edit it to use a normal vampire race. It might cause all kinds of trouble though because all the new animations are probably tied to that new lord mesh and won't exist on a regular race. It would be like trying to do a dragon animation on the player, it isn't going to work because the skeletons are different.

Could you not tweak it a bit more manually? I.e. give the wings an invisible texture, prettify the face as has been done for characters already? Then i'd personally leave the claws/animations as they are.
That would mean remaking a mesh and texture, but you could copy a lot from normal vampire assets.

That would prevent animation issues, as it would have the same skeleton (but invisible wings). Only issue I see is that the wings would have a hitbox, so you might have arrows hitting you and sticking in midair.

It depends how drastic you want to go, I'm sure there will be "prettier vampire lord" mods within days of Dawnguard's release.