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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4174167" data-attributes="member: 32536">I think the idea is to get them through the heart because it does weaken them somehow... I would need to actually bother to read those old medieval vampire-slaying manuals to actually know the justification, so I don't. The truth is that there is evidence to suggest people actually ran a stake into the chest of a corpse laying in a coffin in the real world, and the justification made was keeping the vampire from rising from the grave, not necessarily killing it (and certainly not reducing it to a pile of ash instantly).The problem with saying "a stake through the heart kills instantly" is that the question "how do you define a stake?" becomes extremely problematic. How do you differentiate a wooden stake from a metal stake, or a wooden stake from a wooden arrow? What are the weapon stats for a wooden stake? Do you need to use a hammer or not in order to get the effect you want? The whole issue can get pretty messy without a lot of rules lawyering and unnecessary text on the designer's part. Even if you can define the stake, you still need to define how to rule whether it gets through the heart, which is its own unwanted can of worms. If you say "staking an unconscious/inactive vampire to his coffin keeps him from rising", then a stake is something which can keep them held down, so the definition becomes far less problematic, since the stake is being used as a stake, and very few weapons can be used like a stake in this manner. This makes things a lot simpler for everyone.</blockquote>

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