Encounter with a good aligned vampire, what do you do?

[TheAuldGrump]

To me the answer depends very much on setting - in Eberron, as an example, she might not even be all that unusual. If she is taking care in her feeding - avoiding killing prey, etc.. and the paladins & co. chasing her are a bunch of Silver Flame bigots then, yeah, I'd help her. (As a side note - for me the difference between 'Deathless' and 'Undead' is semantics - the Deathless elves are just as much undead as any vampire. Their moral compass is different, but that is a cultural, not inherent, distinction.)

In a setting where undead are tainted by the powers of Hell, and have given their souls over to the Great Adversary in return for eternal life, where soon or late the loss of her soul is inevitable, then it is time for the stake, or possibly time to help her to win free from her creator's dominion. In that case, I would allow the death of her creator to reverse her creeping doom, and bring her back into the realm of the living. (Hey, if you are going to steal the whole 'is killed by sunlight thing' from movies then you might as well steal the trappings from other movies as well.)

You can also make it tragic, as her undead nature slowly overwhelms her goodly nature.

In my homebrew vampire spawn are little more than intelligent zombies - the original soul sped. A master vampire has made a deal with Darkness for eternal life.

For that matter, a vampire in daylight is dead, but when the sun goes down they can once again walk the earth. Sunlight is only temporarily fatal, but does make it easier to drive the stake home and cut off the head.

The Auld Grump

 

[pawsplay]

My very first post!

Okay, down to business.

I'm currently DMing a 3.5e D&D campaign. This is a mid level campaign right now (lvls 10-17ish). There are 3 players (all good aligned), a Barbarian, Cleric, and Paladin...well Ex-Paladin. The Paladin lost his Paladin status for doing something very NOT Lawful Good. The PCs are currently on a quest bestowed on the Paladin to prove himself worthy of an atonement spell. The details of what he did and the quest itself are irrelevant to this thread.

Perhaps the details are irrelevant but the context is not. If the Paladin is seeking atonement for some misdeed, it seems like destroying the vampire would send the message that there is no forgiveness for those who exist in sin. Further, the very fact of the vampire's alignment suggests she is not only Good, but exceptionally enlightened, probably the equal of the wisest monks and clerics in the land. Clearly, the paladin must accept her as someone deserving of his mercy.

As to what should befall her, it depends on the nature of vampirism. If vampirism is truly unnatural, they should try to cure her. If, however, she has accepted her state, and her state of being is simply the way of the universe, that sometimes the strong must prey on the weak to survive, then the Paladin is not bound to do anything. Being Lawful, he reasonably would have to accept a Good creature's need for survival.

 

[The Shaman]

Of course, she's still a walking corpse, and she has a deathly pallor. That might turn a few people off.

She'd blend right in on the Sunset Strip.

Just sayin'.

 

[Starfox]

By D&D definitions, undead are perversions of the cycle of life and inherently evil. If you've presented your game as a standard DnD game, that will be the player's expectation (if they are read up on the system). There might be a point in shocking them by showing that some of the base assumption (or natural laws, if you will) of the campaign is different than they think - in this case that undead can be good - but this needs to be done carefully. If they destroy this vampire right away, not really thinking it was a moral choice since "all undead are evil", and you punish them for this "evil" act, they are in their rights to become grumpy. But, as you said, the game theme right now is ethics, and maybe the players will be sensitive enough to investigate further.

Or they may just think vampires are hot. Which may (or may not) be good role-playing, but questionable ethics.

In a world like DnD where souls are sorted according to alignment, the choice to "kill them all and let god sort them out" actually makes kind of sense for a good vampire. The best way to handle a good vampire might be to destroy her - freeing her of the curse of undeath and letting her soul go to its final reward. Even a good vampire might create spawn, and if she regularly loses control and thus involuntarily creates spawn she is very dangerous - like a plague carrier, only much worse.

 

[Horatio]

Kill her. Then ressurrect her. That way, she will be alive again, with no need to feed on mortals. If she is really good aligned and a bit smart, she should ask the group if something like that would be in their powers.

 

[avin]

I won't kill her. My second RPG character, in fact, had a romance with a good aligned vampire.

She was hot and gave me this really cool blood armor, so...

 

[Mallus]

It may be cliche at this point, but the answer is "ask the vampire out on a date". Or at the very least, out for a drink.

(there's a joke in here about a virgin Bloody Mary, I'm sure of it...)

 

[Whisper72]

I wouldn't kill her. But then again, in my campaigns, races are rarely 'all evil', and good orcs, goblins etc. are also about. So the idea of a good vampire is not that strange. As long as she does not kill innocents (and really, that is not really necessary if she preys on evil beings and animals etc.), then the mere fact she is undead is not a moral problem in my campaigns (the whole idea that undeath is a mockery of life is a matter of personal taste, in the same vein, one could conclude a Golem is a mockery of life and that ticks are evil for drinking the blood of the innocent...)

So, the facts are: she helped out the party using valuable resources (her spells), while she herself is on the run (so even when in trouble, she goes out of her way to help others) and risks destruction (she is already injured) to help out total strangers...

In my book this means she is practically a saint. That she fed on the barbarian for getting to close, well that is the barbarian's fault. She warned him. He should have listened, the provocation is totally the barbarian's fault, not hers...

So, because she was so selfless in helping out, the party should go all out to help her next. Convince the hunting party of paladins/clerics that she is not evil. Convince the druids of the same so she can go back to her home, hopefully now in harmony with the druids (so they can help eachother out), then help her hunt down and kill her (former) master to make sure she remains free willed and cannot be made into his thrall again.

Seems pretty clear to me...

 

[Aeolius]

It's time for her to quest for the hidden subterranean garden where a unique strain of heart-shaped turnips grow, over a forgotten cemetery. There she will meet the ones who have learned how to squeeze blood from a turnip.

 

[frankthedm]

She has to die, no if ands or buts. Not just because D&D Vampires feed by PERMANENTLY harming their victims , but because as [MENTION=12460]airwalkrr[/MENTION] & [MENTION=63829]Horatio[/MENTION] pointed out, they can't resurrect her until after she is destroyed . And since quick, if violent death is more merciful than slow starvation in my book, the party really shouldn't just let her go.

Good news is that once resurrected, she'll be a useful member of the party who won't potentially overshine the PCs.

And as a player if i sensed even the slightest hesitation on the DM's part to this plan, I'd either kill her or accuse the DM of trying to slip a DMPC into the group.