Vampire bat

Vampire bats and their giant vampire bat cousins were species of flying living creatures that fed on mammalian blood, unlike their fruit and insect feeding relatives. Vampire bats were often associated with lycanthropes and vampires.

Abilities
Like other bats, vampire bats relied on echolocation rather than sight when flying and hunting in the night skies. Echolocation was a type of auditory radar sense what was achieved by bats screeching and receiving echoes of the sound bouncing off objects and obstacles. Bacuse of reliance of hearing, vampire bats had a weak eyesight which made them virtually immune to spells and abilities that blinded the targets or affected them via light. However spells such as silence effectively crippled and "blinded" vampire bats.

Giant vampire bats' bites had a chance of rendering their targets unconscious for 1-10 minutes, allowing the creature to feed freely. Even though giant vampire bats were not undead themselves, the victims who perished from being drained by them had a chance of raising as undead 24 hours after their death.

Behavior
Most vampire bats fed exclusively on non-humanoid mammalian blood, however oftentimes their presence fuels panic and paranoia in fear of true vampires.

Ecology
Werebats could take on a form of a vampire bat or a hybrid of a humanoid and a vampire bat. Vampires had affinity for vampire bats, they were able to summon individual and swarms of creatures that included vampire bats and bats often could be found within their lairs.

Occasionally, wizards were able to use vampire bats as familiars.

Some sages speculated that stirges were closely related to vampire bats due to both species sleeping while hanging upside down. Furthermore, exceptionally large species of stripes were known to inhabit dense tropical jungles and they often intermingled with giant vampire bats.

Habitats
Vampire bats were often spotted in the night skies over Waterdeep and in the vicinity of the Dragon Tower of the wizard Maaril in the 14century DR.

Outside of Toril, vampire bats could be found in the land of Barovia in the Domains of Dread.

Notable Vampire Bats

 * Gothma: the fabled giant vampire bat of Gillian's Hill that many believed dwelt under the town's graveyard and was surrounded by its undead servants. The vampire bat was believed to be behind a plague of 1372 DR.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * The Chaos Curse
 * Sword Play
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford
 * Game Books
 * Knight of the Living Dead
 * Board Games
 * Mertwig's Maze
 * Card Games
 * AD&D Trading Cards
 * Card Games
 * AD&D Trading Cards
 * AD&D Trading Cards