In a world without sunlight...

[Greenfield]

Our campaign world has, as one of the precepts, an eternal overcast, like an ash cloud over everything. One of the long term campaign goals is to find the cause and clear it.

In honor of Halloween I've taken some liberties with this fact and run the party into a Vampire who walks around outside during the day. No direct sunlight, after all.

How much, if any, should I weaken him when he's outside during the day?

To be specific, the party is 9th and 10th level, and the vampire is a slightly modified version of the 5th level fighter sample found in the MM/SRD. I bumped his Charisma.

So far he has one of the party Clerics dominated, and their Cleric/Fighter. While the players know what he is now, the only two characters who even have reason to suspect are pretty much forbidden to pursue those suspicions.

He's the "head servant" of a wealthy merchant, at least when guests are around. He has the merchant and the bulk of the local village under his control.

The merchant, the party discovered, has a family fortune based on the slave trade, and in dealing in exotic animals for the arena. As he explained it, "Well, you can't very well throw heretics to the lions if you don't have any lions, now can you?" It was after this that he admitted that he also dealt in heretics. Most of the slaves, however, were criminals or captured warriors sent to battle for the entertainment of the crowds.

Note that the setting is ancient Greco-Roman, where this kind of slavery was perfectly legal, and practiced in the very best of houses.

To this end, the Vampire also has access to a number of trained warriors from the slave pits, and he'll use them if discovered.

For the most part he's been able to indulge his appetites by draining blood from village folk and the odd level or two from the slaves that pass through. They recover before they reach the arena (or they don't and they die in battle, but then somebody was going to anyway.)

In short, he's got a pretty sweet setup. Power behind the throne, as it were, and a constant supply of blood and life force.

He himself isn't a spell caster, but the merchant is, and will fight for the vampire if called upon to do so, so the vampire doesn't need to be overly powerful himself.

As a humorous aside, the player of the cleric is in the process of changing characters. He's also the player of the cleric/fighter, and had decided to leave the cleric to work at the merchant's home when the party moves on. And that was before he discovered the vampire.

The vampire has issued no orders other than the usual "These aren't the Droids you're looking for" thing, so the character is free to stay or go. The player is gritting his teeth, trying to find a reason to have the cleric change his mind.

Still, anecdotes aside, what impact should the situation have on the vampire? Does he need to feed more often? Penalties or limits on some of his powers?

 

[Rampant]

Well He probably still needs to rest in his coffin (or urn in a greco setting). Still can't cross running water and such. Without daylight however his ability to walk around outside is probably vastly improved. Such a world would logically have lots of vamps running around, the initial surge would of course be followed by a bit of a die off to weed out the stupid ones who think that no sun makes them invulnerable, but after that they should be fairly common.

 

[Vascant]

I am gearing up for a campaign that is completely underground and yeah there are things like this you have to give some serious thought too where in a normal world, life runs normal.

Don't think there would be the requirement for more food but I do see rest being just as key as before. There probably would need to be some sort of reason as to why the world is not full of undead especially with no sun light ever. Think about it for a moment, a medium strength undead could easily wipe out whole villages.

 

[Greenfield]

Well, one of the problems for the classic Vampire was the need to rest in his native soil. Thus the coffins, usually with dirt from native land in the lining.

But when the Vampire isn't traveling far from home? Any hole in the ground will do, so long as it keeps them out of sunlight.

In this case, the Vampire is right at home, literally.

As for there being a lot of Vampires around... I expect that they'd do a little population control of their own, taking care not to spawn more offspring than the local Human population can support.

Any undead that can spawn are a problem in D&D, one of those things that DMs and players have to play "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" with.

One Wight gets loose in a major city, and before dawn the entire city is undead. Remember that the average Human is 1st or 2nd level, so it doesn't take more than a hit or two, plus a few rounds of conversion time, and the local Wight population doubles. In a densely populated area, by the time word got to the local church or city guard, and they could send what help they had that help would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Presume a Wight in a slum neighborhood. Presume 2 rounds to drop someone, on average.

That means that, on average, 4.5 rounds after the Wight arrives, there are 2 Wights.

Each of those drops someone and 4.5 rounds later, there are 4.

Allowing for chase time, we're quadrupling every minute.

Say it takes 5 minutes for help to arrive, help that can actually do something about the issue.

Minute 1: 1 becomes 4
Minute 2: 4 becomes 16.
Minute 3: 16 becomes 64
Minute 4: 64 becomes 256
Minute 5: 256 becomes 1024.

So, from single threat to undead horde in 5 minutes flat.

Wraiths take longer, since they need to hit three times, on average, to drop the average mortal (D6 CON drain to people with 3D6 stats.) 5 1/2 rounds will usually do the trick.

They'll only have 512 after 5 minutes.

Shadows spawn at about the same speed as Wraiths, since they drain Strength at a rate of a D6 per round.

Spectres drain 2 levels per hit, so they reproduce in 3 1/2 rounds, on average. One becomes eight in a minute plus half a round. 5 minutes gets you around 15,000 or so.

All of this makes the decidedly false presumptions that the Undead have an essentially unlimited supply of fodder in easy reach, and that they hit every round. A crowded slum has a lot of people, but not an unlimited number, and they will give the undead a run for their money. And even though all of these are based on a touch attack, low dice rolls happen even when your target is such an easy mark.

Even so, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, or he'll probably eat your face off.

Happy Halloween!

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Note well that in the original novel Dracula was quite capable of walking around in daylight. He just didn't do so very often. He had the ability to control weather to an extent in "summoning" dark clouds/storms and heavy mists and fog, seemingly to assist him in remaining in darkness or shadow, but he DID walk around in the sun without particular issues. Maybe some minor penalties but really it should be a ROLEPLAYING issue of a vampire simply not WANTING to be outside in the daylight very much.

He DID always have issues about crossing running water except at high/low tide - which, of course means his movements over rivers is constrained by the position of the moon during both the day and night. And that doesn't mean he can't wade into water or stand under a waterfall.

As mentioned, he needed to rest in his coffin/grave soil. Another screwed-up detail, however would be mirrors. They had no particular effect upon him. He detested them because he couldn't be seen in them but was not turned or held at bay by them.

LOTS of stuff that we "know" about classic vampires today comes from monster movies, more modern novels and so forth. Maybe a few things borrowed from vampire-like myth and legend from various cultures around the world. Stoker's original book presents rather different "rules" for vampires than people often THINK were in it.

 

[the Jester]

I'd say he still needs to rest a few hours every day, but that's about it.

While not directly worth an increase in CR, I'd say that this makes him a potentially very devious foe.

 

[Greenfield]

Oh, rest is absolutely required.

Right now, he throws Dominate Person, at will, as a 12th level caster. The Save is 10 + 1/2 the Vampire's hit dice (2 in this case) + his Charisma mod. That's a DC 16 Save, which you wouldn't think is all that hard to make.

The +4 to Charisma he gains with the Vampire template is a killer.

But his other powers, like alternate forms and summoning rat or bat swarms, could reasonably be weakened or even removed during daylight hours. Level drains might be reduced to a single level.

Yeah, I know that they'll trash this guy real quick once they actually face him, presuming they ever get him alone, but the way it's working out he may own enough of them to win when the time comes. And getting him alone is more than a little problematic.

The Dominate ability lets him spy on the party as he chooses, receiving sensory input from the Dominated PC (though not actually seeing through his eyes). That advance warning means that, if he has any brains at all he'll always be prepared for whatever they're bringing.

The PCs are supposed to win Halloween dungeons. This one may stretch beyond Halloween, and they may well lose, bit time.

Not sure what I'm asking any more. Maybe we should write this one off as a general rant.

 

[Rampant]

Before the cleric sends everyone on their way he should through basic spell security, a detect magic should reveal the dominate effect on a party member and even if they can't break the spell themselves they now know someone is dominating their party members, once they start investigating things should resolve themselves fairly quickly since the merchant is probably of insufficient level to do something like that himself.

Look honestly if your PCs aren't making use of things like Detect magic, and the various scanning and scrying spells at their disposal don't they kinda deserve to get vamped?

I don't know why you're so worried about this. Unless you're making the Vamp too subtle and undetectable with your DM powers you shouldn't need to weaken him. Direct sunlight is a problem, but how often does a vamp fight anywhere/when Sunlight outside of certain spells become a factor?

 

[Empirate]

Before the cleric sends everyone on their way he should through basic spell security, a detect magic should reveal the dominate effect on a party member and even if they can't break the spell themselves they now know someone is dominating their party members, once they start investigating things should resolve themselves fairly quickly since the merchant is probably of insufficient level to do something like that himself.

Look honestly if your PCs aren't making use of things like Detect magic, and the various scanning and scrying spells at their disposal don't they kinda deserve to get vamped?

Detect Magic will be largely useless, dispelling impossible, since the Vampire's Dominate ability is supernatural, not spell-like.

Also, what do you suggest the party do? Only two of them suspect a thing - and those are dominated. Do you think the average adventuring party is running around with a custom Detect Vampire spell up all the time, just on the off chance of meeting one? Especially when the shady guy is obviously a merchant dealing in slaves, and not his head servant? Seriously, look at this from the PCs' perspective and tell me how they could know. There's no way.

 

[Rampant]

Detect magic doesn't care if something is supernatural, spell-like, or an actual spell, it still registers as magic.

Once you know an unknown party is casting spells on you you start snooping around. You may not not realize it's a vampire, but you can easily extrapolate a threat from noticing that someone is mind controlling your party. Worst case scenario you round your people up (not telling them too much so the drones don't get suspicious) and get some bloody distance.

I mean what sort of caster doesn't do at least one Detect magic scan on his party per day?

As for a custom detect vampires spell, that's stupid, detect undead is a level 1 cleric spell.