In a world without sunlight...

[Greenfield]

The departing party Cleric was one of the two Dominated. He was in the middle of a general Detect Evil scan through their host's household.

Their host wasn't evil, though some of the household were. Nothing more than you'd expect over all though. Then he specifically sought out the head servant, who'd been avoiding him. Ping! In big, bold letters he got the "EVIL" reading, of the level that says "Evil Cleric" or "Evil Outsider" or "Evil Undead".

The servant, seeing the Cleric staring at him, stared back and asked what the problem was. The Cleric, not being ready to face the guy down by himself at that moment, said he was just "lost in thought. Sorry if I started through you." The servant smiled, since their gazes had met, and I asked the Cleric for the Will save. His dice were cold and now he's the property of the Vampire.

The character that's replacing him is the Cleric/Fighter. The Vampire got him the night before.

And while nearly everyone in the party is a spell caster of some kind, in character they're trusting their Cleric to warn them of any of that sort of danger. And he's under orders not to.

The players know that he's owned. In fact they know that both of his characters are owned. In character though they have to grit their teeth and walk into it.

I hate to put players in that position, but if we'd excused ourselves from the table for the private conversation they would have known something was up, and would be in essentially the same position anyway.

 

[Greenfield]

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.

They know that a Cleric/Fighter, who had been in a fight, traveled all day, spent a night sheltering from a sandstorm in the lee of a wagon tilted on its side, then traveled another day, followed by volunteering for an all-night guard duty, was feeling very tired. He was down 2 Con points.

The Cleric did a Cure on him to repair accumulated damage before he did any Heal checks that might have spotted bite marks. Oh, did I mention that the fight had been against Assassins that used CON draining poison?

I didn't run the Assassin battle, and I didn't plan things to stack up that way, but circumstance stacked against the group when it came to noticing the CON loss from the first Vampire attack.

They knew that something was hunting them when, after a Lesser Restoration, the same character turned up level drained. That's what sent the Cleric through the estate with Detect Evil running.

Yeah, Detect Magic on the party would have told them that the Cleric/Fighter was under some form of Enchantment/Charm effect, but since they already knew he'd been drained they didn't think to look for anything else.

For the most part, my group uses Detect Magic as a treasure sorting tool and not much more.

 

[Rampant]

Well then feel free to execute them for stupidity or drop a damned hint, like playing up the lack of reflective surfaces in the house or something.

Your problem isn't that your monster is too powerful, it's that your party isn't paranoid enough.

EDIT: List of other clues that a vamp is in a greek household

1. Lack of garlic in public meals were the staff would be expected to show up
2. Unusually low wine/mead intake (the greeks of myth drank it like water)
3. Keeps a funeral urn on the premises
4. Avoids the family shrine and local temples, even on feast days

 

[Greenfield]

They're actually in a Persian household, but the points are well taken.

I think they may be closing one eye, so to speak, since they know this is a Halloween dungeon.

For the record, the merchant, known locally as Dotorre Thehab, is working on an odd creation in one of the towers, and experiments that involve natural lightning.

"Thehab" is the Arabic word for "Gold". His real name, aside from being nicknamed essentially "Dr. Moneybags", would translate as "Goldstone", or in German, "Frankenstein".

And yes, they did take shelter in the local equivalent of a castle to escape a terrible storm.

So they were quite paranoid, they were just looking for the wrong things. They expected the Flesh Golem in the tower to break loose and go on a rampage through the countryside. And he still might, in fact. The Vampire controls the Doctor, and the Doctor controls the Golem.

Besides, the group has a mission to the local graveyard that they're getting ready for.

(Yeah, I'm throwing a whole stack of Halloween standards at them, all at once. 'Tis the season, and all that. )

 

[Arrowhawk]

Sounds like a very interesting campaign, but I see a couple of problems.

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.

There's no reason to think this unless there is some overlord controlling all the undead. If this non-daylight state is something recent, like in the last 30 years, the undead are going to go hog wild. None of them, especially not a bunch of solitary vampires are going to start analyzing food supply. As you alluded to, the wight, ghoul, and shadow population would be rising on endemic levels and every town would be like a scene from a post-apocalypse movie.

Perhaps the real problem for your party is that you've created an environment whereby you're able to justify something that isn't necessarily obvious to the other players. Now maybe they are expecting this to involve vamps and what not, but it's not immediately obvious that a cloud cover would protect a vampire. I don't recall vampires in movies coming out during the rainy season and hanging out at the local bar. Unless we're talking black as night cloud cover...like thick black volcanic-sulferdioxide cloud cover. And then I'd drop lots of hints that vampires and other undead were known to be protected by this during the day.

Another thing is that if someone has a vampire as a butler, with a +4 charisma modifier (which you bumped up), that's going to demand an explicit description to the party for the specific purpose of sending them a warning that something's up. Vampires are dominant personalities and I've never heard of them masquerading around as servants. A local nobleman..sure, a head servant? come on now. I don't even live in a world of vampires and if I saw a charismatic servant on the level you've described this vampire, I'd know something was up.

So the point I'm making is that your world is incongruous with the established paradigms and the players are paying the price. Personally, I think you're not playing fair, but that's for the party to decide and sometimes people don't really care.

The servant, seeing the Cleric staring at him, stared back and asked what the problem was. The Cleric, not being ready to face the guy down by himself at that moment, said he was just "lost in thought. Sorry if I started through you." The servant smiled, since their gazes had met, and I asked the Cleric for the Will save. His dice were cold and now he's the property of the Vampire.

Sorry, got to call "bogus" on this one if it went down as you described. How do you justify the vamp suspecting the Cleric? How does the vamp know the cleric is casting DE, and if he did, wouldn't he make sure to leave the area rather than be discovered? The idea that the vamp would immediately cast Dominate on the cleric without knowing a thing about the cleric and how powerful the cleric was or what his chance of resisting the Dominate is common problem of DM's who fail to set aside their metagame knowledge when playing creatures. If the vamp fails this Dominate...he's opened a can of worms.

I also have to call shenanigans on vamps dominating every person that suspects them, specifically in the situation you described. The main reason is that the more people you dominate, the more people you have to continue to dominate or kill.

Let me quote you the SRD on dominate:

Once you have given a dominated creature a command, it continues to attempt to carry out that command to the exclusion of all other activities except those necessary for day-to-day survival (such as sleeping, eating, and so forth). Because of this limited range of activity, a Sense Motive check against DC 15 (rather than DC 25) can determine that the subject’s behavior is being influenced by an enchantment effect (see the Sense Motive skill description).​

This section is extremely important for limiting the power of the Dominate spell and preventing vamps from taking over entire towns. This section can be interpreted as allowing lots of Sense Motive checks by various people to ferret out the problem, by anyone who comes in contact with the dominated person. The idea that a person could go around friends and family for days without someone suspecting something...in a universe were people know all kinds of stuff like this goes down...isn't plausible. You said the party members are 10th level? They would get a huge positive check modifier for sensing something is out of whack as they have been around the guy presumably since level 1.

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.

Such an interpretation would be an abuse of the rule. Dominate requires that the dominator is "concentrating fully" on the spell. So unless the vamp is in his room spending the entire day tracking every single person he's dominated (which he can't do) there's no way he's going to know what the party knows or discovers at the time they discover it, or, whether anyone else has figured out if one of his subjects is dominated. Nor will he be able to read the subject's mind to discover what they know. Your best bet is to command that person to ask the part questions while he concentrates. But that should trigger more Sense Motive checks by everyone in the conversation.

If the party came to me and laid out what went down as you've described, I'd call shenanigans. Now look, I realize that you're trying to make a fun campaign for players. I get that sometimes you have to fudge a thing here or there...but you're suggesting the players will end up losing and if so, it's because you've got to consider whether you've been playing this straight up.

What you've described, imi, isn't plausible. You also have consider whether the environment within which you've made this setting is consistent the reality of the situation. As an objective person, I'm not seeing it.

I'm not trying to call you out Greenie, but just saying you might want to rethink some of the things if you really think you've got the party over a barrel.

 

[Dandu]

In a world without sunlight... will a vampire still sparkle?

 

[Greenfield]

The aspect that undead are more powerful because of the lack of direct sunlight is well understood by all at the table. We take turns as DM, and we've all had opportunity to abuse.

As for the hordes of undead taking over cities... My analysis of the spawn rate was presuming a normal world with day and night. It didn't need the cloud cover to be out of control The only think that keeps them from spawning like a nuclear chain reaction is that DM's everywhere have realized that the spawn rules are extremely broken. So we just look the other way and pretend that they aren't. Hence my "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" line. You have to avoid looking behind that curtain, or any world with any undead in it at all is doomed.

The "butler" is a role he assumes when there are guests. Normally he's very much in charge. This is him being paranoid, when a party of adventurers with three Clerics in it arrives unexpectedly.

Maintaining control over 100+ people? The duration on the control is 12 days, so he needs to spend a moment with perhaps a dozen people each day to refresh his control. Not even a blip on the radar, in terms of time and effort. He could do that while feeding. And since each victim will recover from the blood loss in two days (Con drain is never permanent for Vampires) he's in no danger of killing his flock.

Spy on the party? As I said, he could if he cared to. He has two available spies, as well as all the household servants, and all he has to do is find a quiet place and concentrate. Or become a cloud of mist and mix with the incense or cooking smoke, or linger in a fireplace or chimney.

He's kept his control light. While it can be heavy handed, like Golem's obsession in LOTR, I don't see any reason why his orders can't be applied with a light touch. "Ignore that and go on with your business.", seems like a perfectly valid order, and one that won't necessarily cause the subject to behave with noticeable oddity. "These aren't the Droids you're looking for.", so to speak.

Vampires don't all have to dress in evening wear and say "Goot Evening!" with thick Romanian accents.

As for the moment the Cleric got taken: The duration of Detect Evil isn't forever. The Cleric sought out the Vampire, cast the spell right in front of him, then stared at him for 18 seconds (3 rounds). It was hard to ignore, so of course the Vampire reacted. If he'd fled, to avoid detection, that would have been an (un)dead giveaway that something was wrong. If he'd failed to control the Cleric he would have had to try and kill him. And with the Cleric alone in the household, away from his allies, the Vampire might well have taken him. In a way, failing that Save probably saved his life.

You kinda had to be there to see how it worked out, but nobody at the table even blinked at the way things developed.

 

[Greenfield]

In a world without sunlight... will a vampire still sparkle?

Only in the Twilight...

 

[Arrowhawk]

If the cloud cover thing is understood by all, then obviously disregard, I'm just going on what you've described.

I still call fie on the "butler" thing. This guy has the force of personality to lead an army and the grace to lead a nation and he's masquerading as a house servant? Like someone said, kill the party for stupidity so long as you've made it clear to them the nature of the person before them. If you've barely mentioned the natural charisma someone like this would have, then I think you're throwing curve balls.

One vampire maintaining control on 100+ people? That's pure power gaming and total rules abuse, imo. While technically it could be done, it's not believable in the situation you've described with a 5th level vamp who fronts as a house servant. As the town mayor? Maybe. Now if your'e telling me it's more like he's Wormtongue, well that's different. But I still think you're beyond plausability on that one. The problem is that I have no way to prove it or say it couldn't be done. As a player I would feel like the DM was just hand-waving away the real problems with this setup which would make it untenable. I guess my point is that it seems bogus, contrived, just to enable a story line, but that is wholly subjective, so it doesn't matter what I think.

With 100 people, he's go to to see like 8 people a day to reestablish control. Are you actually alloting time for that and considering the implications of those actions? I'm guessing no, you're just assuming it's no big deal.

And time and effort isn't the main issue, it's the nature of controlling them in a manner which does not make them reroll saves and what not. I don't buy the "go about your business" The person is DOMINATED. They don't think for themselves beyond basic survival when you give them commands. You tell Johnboy to dig a ditch and he ignores the fact that it's raining and mud keeps filling the hole. Johnboy is out there all day and someone comes along and says, "WTF? This guy is acting like he's under mind control," because you do know people in D&Dverse are familiar with that sort of thing, right? It's not even real in our society and people would think it.

Dominating a family? Sure, 100+, no way. Someone, somewhere, somehow, would break control or get discovered and then word would get out. As a player, no way is the DM in the clear by just saying the vamp tells everyone to "act normally."

As far as "light touch," there is no such thing as Dominate Light. They are dominated. The only question is whether he commands them to do something against their nature. Let me put it this way. There is no way I'd let a caster in the party maintain Dominate over 100+ people without a barrage of daily rolls for people being discovered. Are you rolling daily? My guess is no.

He's got spies? Are they Dominated? So he's got to give them specific commands to spy. Anyone who comes in contact with the spy is going to suspect something...Sense Motive. What if spying is against that person's nature? Reroll saving throw.

We can go back and forth about this, but I suspect you're abusing the Dominate ability in a way you'd never let a player character get away with.

Romanian accent? Not sure what that has to do with any of the points I'm making.

How does the Vampire know what spell was cast? Did the Vamp make a Spellcraft check for divine spells? My guess is no.

Look, I'm not buying it. But that's irrelevant. As long as you remember, the vampire doesn't automatically get to know what his subjects are seeing and feeling unless he's specifically concentrating on that subject, at least you can extricate yourself by using that Sense Motive check and possibly having someone escape the Vampire's Dominate through some event and warn the party.

 

[Rampant]

Actually if he's commanding the household servants to spy on the guests they probably wont get free rerolls, they do that anyway. Reporting it to him is what would give them the free save chances, or worse yet to the heads of household. Now if he established himself as the spy master through intimidation and bribery among the servants then that would be doable.

The other points about dominate stand. Dominated creatures by definition don't do subtle.

Otherwise my thrallherd senator wouldn't need to run for re-election every 3 years.