Castle Ravenloft - Stronger or Error?

[Dog Moon]

Okay, so in like the second encounter in the book, there's a pair of Vargouille. I want to note that two characters in my campaign are currently being turned into Vargouille and when the battle was over, one of the players wanted to look into the MM because he thought they were cheap. Looking in the MM, I saw that there were two main differences: the Shriek in the MM lasts for 2d4 rounds while the Shriek in the Ravenloft doesn't have that - it doesn't list a maximum out of time. Thus when I was using it, when it had paralyzed most of the group, I just had it hover in sight, but out of range from the remaining character, which in effect would cause it to keep the others paralyzed until it attacked them, goes out of range, or leaves their sight - the way I played it would essentially be never until that last character killed it or everyone was turned into Vargs.

Which brings me to my next part: when the last character was fending off the zombies and dire maggots, the second Vargouille was going to town on the others, kissing them and basically starting the process into turning them all into Vargouilles. The book had a DC 19 for the Kiss whereas the MM has the DC set at 15. All three characters failed.

So where these changes made to make the Vargs stronger, or where they simply errors?

 

[stonegod]

Didn't notice, but it didn't harm us too much (the vargs were killed right quick).

A good list of errata can be found on John Cooper's review, though he didn't note your issue. Look like they were just bugged.