Need help with rules for Vampires

[STARP_President]

We all know Vampires are killed by stakes, right? My problem is coming up with combat rules to allow players to do this. If I said to you, as my DM, "I want to stake the vampire," what rule/s would you use/make up to allow me to do it, or at least attempt it.

 

[PurplePCEater]

There's nothing to my knowledge in the core 3.5 ruleset, but have you tried looking at the d20Modern rules?

For staking you need to use a wooden weapon that can do piercing damage (examples given are things like pool cues, spear shafts and so on). Said weapon threatens a critical on a 20 only (even though undead aren't normally subject to crits), and a successfully confirmed critical destroys the vampire immediately, turning it to dust.

As DM I might well allow that, but maybe with the -4 improvised weapon penalty if the wooden weapon in hand isn't really designed for that purpose.

Traditionally though, the D&D way is to beat the vampire to a mist, track it back to it's lair and then stake it while it recovers lying down in native earth. Or at least, that's what always seems to happen IME.

 

[STARP_President]

The rules sound reasonable to me. Anyone got any other ideas?

And the traditional D&D way to kill vampires may be effective, but pretty dull from a dramatic point of view.

Oh, and in my particular world, staking doesn't dust vampires - they just die and come back to life if you pull the stake out. The dusting thing is cool and it's great for TV (Buffy, for instance), but in my world it's less appropriate.

Thanks

 

[Clifford]

hmmm

well maybe a Coup de grace or something like that. Critical hits, Hmm how about if a vampire is flat footed and gets nailled. I seem to remember that you can use a bluff check to make someone flat footed. I think it was in sword and fist. In buffy for example she always seems to sneak a stake in verry suddenly and unexpectidly. Or how about the player can take a single attack in a full round action to make a called shot if it dose more than say 5 or 10 points of damage the vamp is suficiently staked.

cliff

 

[BOZ]

we actually did this recently. brought one down to 0 hp, and before it turned to gaseous form, we coup de graced it with a stake to the heart.

 

[Shade]

Dungeon #84 had some rules for staking vampires. Essentially, you make a melee attack at a -4 penalty, and if you hit, you and the vampire make opposed Strength checks. If you win, the vampire is paralyzed until the stake is removed.

Not quite the same as dusting 'em, but you might be able to tweak it a bit.

 

[STARP_President]

I actually think I like PurplePCEater's the best. It makes it sufficiently hard to do. The thing about my players is they tend to roll over monsters - whatever I put in their path, they squish with ease. Making it very hard to actually stake a vampire means they might actually be fighting for more than a few rounds. I could add the whole flanking and flat-footed things in there as well - one of them could distract the vampire while the other, behind it, shoves the stake in.

Thanks, people. Lotsahelp.

 

[Alzrius]

The problem with this attack form is that it essentially bypasses the creature's hit points - the vampire in question could be of epic level, but a single critical hit wipes it out.

The real danger here, from my point of view, is that it begs the question, why can't this be done to every other creature the PCs encounter? After all, wouldn't a stake through the heart be just as effective on, say, an evil human cleric? It becomes somewhat hard to find a rationale to say why the PCs then can't use the same tactics.

Personally, I wouldn't allow it, simply because its more of a can of worms than its worth, not to mention it essentially means that any vampire ever encountered becomes far less challenging.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Here's my suggestion:

Allow wooden, piercing weapons to bypass a vampire's DR if the unreduced damage is enough to kill the creature. In this case the vampire doesn't turn to mist, but is instead staked, and is considered helpless. A staked vampire can be coup de graced (decapitated) by an edged weapon.

After all, Buffy can kill low level vampires (vampire spawn) with a single blow, but has to beat up a normal vampire before she can stake it. In the Buffyverse vampires turn to dust when staked, but if you are doing a more Bram Stoker kind of vampire a staking would paralyze the vampire, and render it subject to decapitation.

Of course, you can stab other creatures with a wooden stake if you like. An evil cleric or deputy mayor dropped below 0 hp by a stake in the chest should be helpless or dead no matter what rules you use.