Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4174792" data-attributes="member: 32536">Anything that can be pushed into the ground and keep something there works as a stake. Mostly, that means stakes (wooden or otherwise). If the DM is generous, a sword or spear. Arrows are not strong enough to really work. I admit, it is not perfect, but it is still a lot better than the &quot;kill with a stake&quot; alternative, in which (thanks to a certain popular TV show), people will argue that anything and everything made of wood is a &quot;stake&quot;, regardless of original purpose or structure, so the word &quot;stake&quot; itself becomes meaningless, and you might as well say &quot;wooden weapon&quot;, which is a lot less interesting.It means that, while the vampires undead nature might not be fully gone, it is pretty much stuck being a normal corpse, and is effectively dead so long as the stake is in place. In other words, it is a set-up for the &quot;grave-robbers unintentionally unleash the terrible evil&quot; scenario. I am pretty sure that one or two Dracula movies start with some variant of this premise...Also, the Vampire can not obviously remove the stake, since it would not be a weakness if he could.&nbsp;The idea in this case is that it is pretty hard to kill vampires. The stake through the heart has always been the method used by frightened peasants or common scholars who can't confront the monster directly, but instead try to take advantage of the vampire's moment of weakness (when it is asleep in its coffin). Real heroes armed with powerful magic swords should never have to resort to this tactic, because they are tough enough to fight vampires directly.To put it more clearly... It is people like Van Helsing from the original Dracula, common people who happen to know something of vampire lore, who use stakes through the heart. For strong heroes who fight vampires professionally, wooden stakes are unnecessary, as is proven by the Castlevania videogames. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 4174792, member: 32536"] Anything that can be pushed into the ground and keep something there works as a stake. Mostly, that means stakes (wooden or otherwise). If the DM is generous, a sword or spear. Arrows are not strong enough to really work. I admit, it is not perfect, but it is still a [i]lot[/i] better than the "kill with a stake" alternative, in which (thanks to a certain popular TV show), people will argue that anything and everything made of wood is a "stake", regardless of original purpose or structure, so the word "stake" itself becomes meaningless, and you might as well say "wooden weapon", which is a lot less interesting. It means that, while the vampires undead nature might not be fully gone, it is pretty much stuck being a normal corpse, and is effectively dead so long as the stake is in place. In other words, it is a set-up for the "grave-robbers unintentionally unleash the terrible evil" scenario. I am pretty sure that one or two Dracula movies start with some variant of this premise... Also, the Vampire can not obviously remove the stake, since it would not be a weakness if he could. The idea in this case is that it is pretty hard to kill vampires. The stake through the heart has [i]always[/i] been the method used by frightened peasants or common scholars who can't confront the monster directly, but instead try to take advantage of the vampire's moment of weakness (when it is asleep in its coffin). Real heroes armed with powerful magic swords should never have to resort to this tactic, because they are tough enough to fight vampires directly. To put it more clearly... It is people like Van Helsing from the original Dracula, common people who happen to know something of vampire lore, who use stakes through the heart. For strong heroes who fight vampires professionally, wooden stakes are unnecessary, as is proven by the Castlevania videogames. :) [/QUOTE]

Verification