Cannon or Fiction

What flavor of vampire are we looking to use?

Are there common powers / abilities / attributes to all vampires? Are we humans with a strange bloodborne disease a. la. Blade? Are we the magically cursed creatures of Anne Rice?

Can we cross running water? Does a stake through the heart slow us down, kill us, or tickle us? Do we get more powerful as we grow older or do we crumble to dust? Can we prance about during the day as Bram Stoker envisioned or are we destroyed by sunlight?

I guess the best question to answer first would be how powerful are we going to make our characters? Do we envision vampires (or which ever creature) as being basically human with a few extra edges or are vampires dramatically more powerful than their mortal kin? Here's a way to simplify the question (and I do apologize for the genre crossing):

Is a vampire like superman (nearly unkillable, amazingly super-human powers, ability to defy reality, etc.) or is a vampire like batman (while superior to humans, not so different from them, has to worry about things like falling to death / bullets / etc.)???

Your thoughts?