Vampire Gish

So, I was thinking of starting a vampire, inspired by Castlevania. And I was thinking I wanted to be able to fight in melee and cast spells. Simple enough, both cleric and druid come to mind. Druid even gives me wildshape, which fits nicely. Cleric generally has a spell list I like more though. I considered paladin and ranger, but paladin requires me to be lawful good, and neither really has any spells I want. (If only blackguard had actual spells. And was a base class).

However, I actually like the sorcerer/wizard spells best of all. But there's not really much there for melee ability. I mean, eventually you could auto-still everything and wear heavy armor, but that's not really enough.

Anybody got any thoughts?

Cleric is good for melee and spells.

For arcane... sorc/blackguard. Yes it would take auto-still to wear heavy plate (or suffer the ugly that is chitin armor), but you could also use a mithril shirt. That has no spell failure, and you can craft it's appearance.

How much sorc and how much blackguard will be left to taste... I find the 35 sorc/4 bg/1 assasin build pretty good. 4 BG pre-epic gives you 3 APR, and access to divine might/shield. Assassin for umd/tumble/ect, and it's death attack will stack with the BG sneak attack. And 35 sorc... spells, epic bonus feats, ect. Buff up, finish buffing with tensors, you're good to go.

Maybe for just a little "spellcasting" I could add firestarter to something like fighter.

EDIT: Don't want to reply to myself, so... maybe something like fighter 4, which gets me proficiencies and weapon specialization. Then sorcerer until I get the BAB to take blackguard 10, then finish taking sorcerer. Most of my pre-epic levels would be full BAB classes, but I'd still have a lot of sorcerer. Obviously, I wouldn't be relying on spells that give saves. Blackguard gives me a little sneak attack (can't hurt), plus some in-built buffing and summoning. (Paladin would work instead of fighter, but alignment requirements suck).

Make custom armor with reduced arcane failure.... save your feats.

I've just remembered the horror of trying to think up names.

Fang? Scratchy? Notavegan Norzarovich?

I sometimes has that problem as well, thinking up names, generally I then go to -this site- for reference/"aid". It also has the meaning behind the name which I find superb!