Can a DM expose a vampire character to sunlight with combat actions?

[LostSoul]

ok so in theory I am level 27... I have +13 from half level, +7 stat, +3 prof, +6 magic... so I have a +29 to hit then I get disarmed, and id I have no back up weapon this fight sucks... then if I can't get it back, what do i do...

You manipulate the terrain to your advantage:

Epic Standard: Dominate, stun, or petrify
Paragon Standard or Epic Move: Blind, daze, immobilize, restrain, or weaken
Heroic Standard, Paragon Move, or Epic Minor: Grant combat advantage, allow a mark, or penalize a defense by up to –2
Heroic Move, or Paragon and Epic Minor: Avoid intervening obstacles during a move; grant concealment and/or cover; knock prone; push, pull, or slide enemy up to 4 squares; deafen; or deal level-appropriate ongoing damage
Heroic, Paragon, and Epic Minor: Add a damage type to an attack or allow a 1-square shift​

I'm sure you can come up with something that will work; maybe it won't be as good as an attack, but the bad guy did spend a standard action that didn't deal damage, so that's a plus on your side. If you're fighting on the bridge of an elemental ship, maybe you rip open the control panel to blind everyone from the released elemental energies in a burst 5 or something.

I think it's rare that your magic item will be lost without a chance for recovery; there's going to be a window of time where you can get it back*, and that provides another meaningful choice for you to make! I consider a game balanced when it contains meaningful choices, so that's why I think allowing disarms adds to balance instead of the other way around.

* - Slowly sinking into the pool of lava - do you take damage to get it or spend an action to recover it (eg. Mage Hand)? Sinking in an ocean of acid - do you jump in and grab it and take damage or lose the item? Thrown over a cliff/into the astral sea/into a portal to Hell - do you spend the time to go back and find it, eating away at daily resources? These are all interesting choices that, in my opinion, add to the game.

 

[eamon]

Well, if you think disarming fits in your game, I must concede that a standard action to push back someone's cloak is in the same spirit.

Since this thread has taken the typical windy road to get here, I'd just like to reiterate that I don't object to the notion of using the vampire's weakness, merely that I felt that meddling with equipment is tricky in 4e, so I'd prefer one-off unique plot powers (but just like you, to also use whatever you do more broadly).

To each there own, eh?

 

[Votan]

Apparently the designers must know of ways to implement this into combat, if they didn't then they never would have added it. I saw a thread on the Wizard's site where people were comparing this to the Paladin's Code of Conduct from 3.5 and saying that it shouldn't be exploited in combat because it's unfair to the player. Sounds to me like people just can't accept when a player class has a built in weakness.

If the designers didn't mean for it to be used they shouldn't have added it to the class.

The question is whether it was meant to be used to add flavor (vampires in cloaks during the day) or to be a mechanical disadvantage. It's perfectly fine to tinker with the rules but remember that balance is an odd beast.

To cite the other example in the thread, if disarm is common enough then players will have multiple weapons with a lower plus rather than one weapon with the highest bonus available. Is this a desirable outcome? Maybe, but it is worth thinking about.

Appeals to flavor over mechanics don't seem to be part of the standard 4E design goals but may work really well at specific tables.

 

[Ferghis]

I've gathered the suggestions on how to bring the vulnerability into play in combat here. The assumptions are that the attacker in question must reasonably know of the vampire's vulnerability, that the action should not deprive the vampire of magic item benefits, and the action should be of the kind that players can try against NPCs to achieve similar results.

As a standard action when you have combat advantage, a thievery check could do it once per encounter. [...] The vampire can fasten the cloak again with a minor action, thus wasting a round, but not falling for this trick again...

The result of this is not good enough. The attack forces the vampire to waste a minor action, and results in no damage, since the vulnerability triggers at the end of the vampire's turn. Further, if a -10 penalty should apply (see below), the action is likely to yield no benefit. I do like the idea of limiting the attempt to once per encounter, like intimidating a surrender is. Also, I like the idea of requiring CA.

Melee [Touch]
At-Will
Must have combat advantage
Target must have clothing protecting them from sunlight. Make a roll to grab. If successful, the target is not grabbed. Instead, the target's hood, etc, are pulled back, exposing them to sunlight. The target may use a minor action to re-place their hood.
Critical hit: The target's cloak is removed with more force. It is not completely removed, so they keep other benefits, but to re secure the cloak takes a standard action instead.

The same comments as above apply here.

Thievery has a -10 penalty in combat.

I couldn't find this in the compendium. The only place I see it is on a rogue utility power that refers specifically and only to pick pocket (Dangerous Theft). Would you mind pointing to a source?

But there is an encounter power that Rogues can get that would let them steal in combat without this penalty.

If you're talking about Thief Novice, that power also damages and makes the target grant CA until end of next turn. Whatever people come up with will certainly not tread on the toes of that power.

Our DM has decided that creatures that have anything that can be used as a reflective surface can take a full round action to reflect the sunlight into the vampire's face, but if the creature is attacked or does anything else then the sunlight reflection is broken.

So, a Standard, Move and Minor to trigger the vulnerability? I like the simplicity of this idea, even though it's expensive in terms of actions. I imagine if the vampire escapes around a corner or moves or prones the guy with the mirror, the effect would end.

Also if a grab is maintained then the person doing the grab can remove the hood and the vampire will have to escape and replace his hood.

Again, simple is good, and there's a nice mechanic explaining why the vampire cannot simply put his hood back up. This is probably my favorite.

Have the enemy make a Grab check. If the PC doesn't escape, next turn as a standard action the enemy tries to yank that damn cloak off.

Standard Action
Str vs. Fort
Hit: rip off the dude's cloak.

This adds a second attack roll to remove the hood (or perhaps the whole cloak). I don't like the idea of removing items because it affects characters' combat performance dramatically in 4e, even if you're using the optional dark sun rules for inherent bonuses. However, I'm not opposed to a second attack role, even though I like the simplicity of just letting the grabber lower the hood.

 

[eamon]

In collecting suggestions you've left out mine:

Coup de grace sounds like a better option; or turn it into a unique plot power.

E.g. have the party encounter a blink-thief; a thief that teleports short distances, until at some point he teleports you a short distance, but (with thievery check) somehow your sword didn't go along for the ride, what the.... !!! If introduced as an exceptional ability, it's easier to believe. And if later on such an ability happens to be used against the vampire; that's perfectly reasonable.

That way, you can introduce a novel challenge that will certainly "screw" the PCs, but not have to deal with the balance issues since it's not a fundamental part of the game.

 

[Saracenus]

As I am reading the ideas in this thread about disarming PCs and such I keep flashing to the Supernatural episode with the convention:

Chuck: Oh uh... (Dean and Sam tilt their heads curiously). It just... came to me. Okay, the hook man.
Fan Dressed As The Hook Man (German Accent): Okay, so why in every fight scene, Sam and Dean are having their gun or knife knocked away by the bad guy? Why don’t they keep it on some kind of bungee?
Chuck: Uh, I really don’t know.

As a player of a Vampire in this season's D&D Encounters if I was constantly having my protective gear torn off in every combat it would get old. However, if it were something that drove the plot every once and a while I wouldn't mind.

It could be something as simple as being critted and instead of taking full damage my skin exposed to the sun. This means my friends have a choice, cover me up and burn actions to do this or I fry (and if low enough on hit points I die) and I can put the protection back up as a minor.

It could be an out of combat threat. Say all the PCs are captured and the bad guy wants us to give up the "muguffin" or they are shouting "tell us where the money is Lebowski!" They have my vamp staked out but covered up and they expose me if the party doesn't fork it over or tell them what they want to know.

All of these things create tension and dramatic choices. If that is the intent, the groovy. If the intent is to punish the player for playing a vampire... ugh, no thanks.

 

[Ferghis]

In collecting suggestions you've left out mine: [coup de grace]

That way, you can introduce a novel challenge that will certainly "screw" the PCs, but not have to deal with the balance issues since it's not a fundamental part of the game.

I should have commented on that. You're certainly right, in that is quite balanced, since it replaces a critical hit.

The problem with that suggestion is that it requires a helpless PC. While a helpless PC is not quite the same as a dying PC, it's pretty close. And, for good reason, the DMG suggests not attacking dying PCs unless there are exceptional reasons to do so. If the character in question is helpless but not dying, that's a pretty rare instance that can be analyzed more specifically, but the discussion here is more general.

Some may think that the assumptions I listed in my prior post are pretty close to the requisite exceptional reasons, but I disagree. The relevant assumption here is that the enemy know of the character's vulnerability. I can't see this as necessarily a reason to attack an unconscious character. It could be (if, for example, the enemy in question knows that the character in question is a vampire and has a higher than normal reason to exterminate vampires), but that instance is specific enough that it can be analyzed on its own, and I aim the discussion here to be a more general one.

 

[Ferghis]

It could be something as simple as being critted and instead of taking full damage my skin exposed to the sun. This means my friends have a choice, cover me up and burn actions to do this or I fry (and if low enough on hit points I die) and I can put the protection back up as a minor.

If you can put the protection back up as a minor action, the vulnerability almost never enters play. You'd have to either be dazed and REALLY have something more urgent to do, or stunned. Daze and stun powers have a fun-killing way about them, since they exclude players from the action, so the DM has to use them sparingly. Similarly, this could happen if the character is unconscious, but see my post above about the coup de grace idea.

It could be an out of combat threat. Say all the PCs are captured and the bad guy wants us to give up the "muguffin" or they are shouting "tell us where the money is Lebowski!" They have my vamp staked out but covered up and they expose me if the party doesn't fork it over or tell them what they want to know.

If it's out of combat, it doesn't really need to be given combat details. Plenty of DMG monsters simply state something like "If the vampire is in direct sunlight and does not get out of it immediately, it dies." More to the point, and I hate to put it this way, that's not what I'm interested in exploring here. I want to know how this class feature is implemented in combat.

As a player of a Vampire in this season's D&D Encounters if I was constantly having my protective gear torn off in every combat it would get old. [...] All of these things create tension and dramatic choices. If that is the intent, the groovy. If the intent is to punish the player for playing a vampire... ugh, no thanks.

If a DM is trying to punish a player for character choices, you have worse problems than this vulnerability. I don't think this is something that should be attempted every encounter. But it should be something a vampire character should be concerned about, and it's something that the DM should play up to (just like a character's strengths). As in everything, balance is necessary.

I agree that creating dramatic tension out of combat is great, but 4e tends to leave the out-of-combat parts of the game up to the DM, while focusing on the combat details to make that part of the game fun. I'm interested in figuring out how this nugget gets actually used in combat, since they've made the effort of describing it in combat terms.

 

[Saracenus]

If you can put the protection back up as a minor action, the vulnerability almost never enters play. You'd have to either be dazed and REALLY have something more urgent to do, or stunned. Daze and stun powers have a fun-killing way about them, since they exclude players from the action, so the DM has to use them sparingly. Similarly, this could happen if the character is unconscious, but see my post above about the coup de grace idea.

From the Compendium: If you end your turn in direct sunlight and lack a protective covering such as a cloak or other heavy clothing, you take 5 radiant damage (plus additional damage from your radiant vulnerability) from the sunlight, and you are weakened (save ends). If you drop below 1 hit point from this damage, you are instantly destroyed.

Huummph. I hadn't really looked at this too closely. For some reason I thought being exposed to the sun was like ongoing damage that happened at the beginning of the turn, not the end.

Then I guess the only dramatic way to put the vamp in jeopardy is to damage or destroy the protective clothing forcing the other PCs to cover him/her up or the vamp making a b-line to cover from the sun.

This is a tricky balance because at low levels vamps are going to have at most 2 to 3 rounds before the sunlight kills them, they just don't have the hp. Less if they start with damage or damaged as they are burning.

If you use the coup-de-grace idea, why would you bother. Your normal coup-de-grace would be enough by itself to severely damage, if not outright kill the vamp. Plus the fact that its damn hard to maneuver a PC into a coup-de-grace situation anyway.

I think this is something that is not going to come up in combat all that much, sorry. This looks more like something that will occur outside of combat.

My two coppers,

 

[eamon]

I should have commented on that. You're certainly right, in that is quite balanced, since it replaces a critical hit.

Coup de Grace, or use a specific unique plot-power. That way you can tear off his cloak, and it won't get old quickly (as Saracenus says), because it's not something easily done by anyone.

As for the coup-de-grace:

The problem with that suggestion is that it requires a helpless PC. While a helpless PC is not quite the same as a dying PC, it's pretty close. And, for good reason, the DMG suggests not attacking dying PCs unless there are exceptional reasons to do so. If the character in question is helpless but not dying, that's a pretty rare instance that can be analyzed more specifically, but the discussion here is more general.

Yep. It does happen though, but I could well imagine it would if he's fighing a vampire hunter. Of course, from a meta-game perspective, that's a death sentence: If he's dying (thus unconscious), he'll almost certainly be unable to raise his hood before the end of his turn, and that means he'll be destroyed instantly. Whether that's OK depends on what kind of game you're playing.