D&D 5E Are vampires and their spawn kinda anemic for their CR?

Are vampires and their spawn kinda anemic for their CRs? Just looking over them makes them seem like the just won't have the offensive output to be much a challenge for their respective CRs. Sure they can get allies (but those are worth XP in their own right and take an action +1d4 rounds to bring to bear) and play keep away to make use of regeneration, but overall I'm just not seeing the vampire pulling it's weight.

Maybe I'm missing something.
 

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Well, yeah. That's why they're so pale and drink blood.

...

Look, someone was gonna say it. Now it's out of the way, the conversation can actually happen. ;)
 

Prism

Explorer
I'd say the CR reflects the difficulty in killing a well played vampire rather than its straight combat ability. Its not really a straight combat type of monster. Put a vampire in its lair/castle/mansion with a well hidden coffin (no non magical access, gaseous only). The vampire will hunt at night, picking off party members while asleep, charming those on watch, sending swarms, wolves and vampire spawn against them repeatedly.

Trying to kill a vampire can be an incredibly frustrating thing as a player - one of the hardest monsters to defeat - but only if the goal is to permanently destroy it. If its just an encounter on the way to something else then its not going to cut it
 

Staffan

Legend
It's well known that the monster design guidelines don't match up so well with actual monsters - particularly, most high-level monsters punch like a grandma. Vampires, however, seem to match up fairly well.

Defensively, vampires are fine. They have about 140 hp, with regeneration giving them 60 effective extra hp and resistances effectively increasing that by an additional 25%. That gets us a bit over 250 hp, which is on the low end of what you'd expect from CR 13, but fine. Legendary Resistance count for an additional 90 hp, bringing us to 340, which is more like CR 18.

Offensively, they can hit for about 50 points per round if all their attacks hit (multiattack for unarmed + bite, and then again with legendary actions). 50 points is more like CR 7-8. Their attack bonus is a little high for their CR, but within reason. If you include 10 wolves as well, the damage goes up by 70 points (but with a much lower attack bonus), and that gets us as high as expected CR 19. Using swarms instead only gets us about 25 points of extra damage, but that's still enough to get us to CR 12-13.

IMO, monsters summoned over the course of an encounter should be considered part of the summoner's CR, not as independent monsters, and as such be included in the summoner's damage. If you consider the wolves or swarms separately from the vampire's challenge rating, they fall quite a bit, but their strong defense still makes them fairly CR-appropriate.
 

Offensively, they can hit for about 50 points per round if all their attacks hit (multiattack for unarmed + bite, and then again with legendary actions).
Except they have to forgo unarmed damage if they want the grapple to occur.
If you consider the wolves or swarms separately from the vampire's challenge rating, they fall quite a bit,
Thanks, that's exactly what I'm talking about
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
In my personal experience? No, they are pretty killer.

Main reason is the the bite attacks, both on the lord and the minions. Latch on to someone, bite, and drain. You deal damage and recover hp at the same time. The Lord has that plus his normal regeneration which makes them very hard to bring down.

Maybe my players don't play as well as others, but both times I've used vampires it has been a very hard fight (one was a convention game that ended in a TPK)
 



Eric V

Hero
From what I've seen (one of my groups is playing a 5e version of the classic Ravenloft), the CR is, as [MENTION=9501]Prism[/MENTION] noted, a reflection of how they are amazing hit-and-run adversaries. Great stealth, phenomenal regeneration, good control abilities.

As a straight up fight, they are weaker than CR 13, but then, there are several threads out here outlining how most creatures are not as tough as their CR (the rakshasa and mummy lord immediately spring to mind).

-E
 


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