In a world without sunlight...

[Arrowhawk]

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

I think this is crucial to checking the abuse of this spell. I would submit that Dominate is meant to be overt mind-control. Detectable and easily discernible to others by virtue of the DC 15 Sense Motive check which is not restricted as to who can detect it. Hell, our party has a 1st level Monk who has like +8 on his SM. This low DC check, like one you'd make to learn a rumor in a bar, is a red flag that Dominate is specifically designed to prevent a PC from taking over an entire town one person at a time.

Greenie can do whatever he wants. But I think this is taking it too far and I know I'd call foul if the DM tried to perpetrate this on us, at least in how it's been conveyed.

 

[Empirate]

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".

Tiny nitpick: Dr. Goldstone would translate as "Dr. Goldstein" in German. Frankenstein I'd translate as "Frankstone" or something like that ("Franken" means the Frank people [the guys to be ruled by Charlemagne], "Stein" means stone).
There's actually a lot of place names in German-speaking countries that have a "Franken-" or "Frank-" in it. Franken itself is even the name of a region in south central Germany. Frankfurt is the name of the place where the river Main was fordable in ancient times, and the Franks used to get across there (Furt=ford). Etc.

 

[Greenfield]

Tiny nitpick: Dr. Goldstone would translate as "Dr. Goldstein" in German. Frankenstein I'd translate as "Frankstone" or something like that ("Franken" means the Frank people [the guys to be ruled by Charlemagne], "Stein" means stone).
There's actually a lot of place names in German-speaking countries that have a "Franken-" or "Frank-" in it. Franken itself is even the name of a region in south central Germany. Frankfurt is the name of the place where the river Main was fordable in ancient times, and the Franks used to get across there (Furt=ford). Etc.

Okay. I don't speak German, but when I asked Babelfish for the translation of "Franken", it said that it referred to the Swiss gold Frank, or in more generic terms, "gold"

Thanks for the language tips.

 

[Greenfield]

Regarding Dominate: I'm a bit lost here.

Charm makes someone your friend, but nothing more. It doesn't really grant any control.

Geas gives you a mission, but you can refuse or ignore it if you choose, you can talk about it, and even seek to have it removed. Coercion, but no control.

if Dominate turns someone into your zombie/slave, then...

Is there some spell that grants a level of control in between "pretty please" and "...brains..."?

Lacking such a thing, I'm tempted to house rule that Dominate is detectable by a Sense Motive if and only if the person is currently carrying out unusual orders. If ordered to "Go on about your business", their behavior wouldn't be out of the ordinary.

 

[Rampant]

"Go on about your business" is admittedly less likely to cause suspicion, in fact many characters (Yeargar for instance) could go days without triggering sense motive checks under those orders. The trick is the PC victims at the very least have not been given this command, the cleric that first used detect evil has in fact been told to lie to his group about the results. Now assuming that the cleric is not out to get his party killed this should have triggered no less than 4 rolls. 1 extra saving throw for the cleric, 1 for his bluff check, and then two sense motive checks for every party member who was there (one each for the lie, and one each for the dominate effect).

If your party failed all those sense motive rolls, and the cleric has anything less than a +20 bluff then the only conclusion is that the dice gods hate your players, and you should offer up a stack of playing cards or a bag of doritos in sacrifice.

As for a control effect that doesn't leave obvious signs, there's not many, the simple fact is that in order to take a person over enough to control their decisions and actions with traditional magic you have to squelch their personality a bit. A smart manipulator would make liberal use of charm, suggestion, and social skills to take over, he could have the whole house convinced he's a damphyre or a good vamp, or that he's simply too valuable to let random ruffians screw up the deal, or both. The evil aura could have been explained by the vampirism being inherently evil magic overriding his actual intent/alignment. Really your vamp screwed the pooch when he dominated the cleric.

Now what your guy could do to control people without making them robots is to turn them, if it's been overcast more than a few years everyone's probably getting pale so it's easier for vampires and their spawn to walk amongst the people. Now of course this has limits since undead generally have a limit to how many HD of spawn they can control (generally their HD times their Cha mod), and this might be a house rule but I think in addition to having a limit on the number of HD the spawner can control I think they automatically lose control of any spawn with more HD than them.

 

[Greenfield]

Actually, the order was, "Don't concern yourself with what you just saw, and go on about your business."

He detected high level Evil. That can come from Demonic presence, and Evil Outsider, an Evil cleric, an Undead, or some form of possession. All quite viable suspicions, so there's no guarantee that the Cleric immediately concluded "Vampire", or even "enemy".

He wasn't ordered to lie to anyone about anything, but rather to ignore something he'd seen. A subtle distinction, but the essence of using the Vampiric power without getting caught is to use it subtly. And Vampires who get caught get driven out or killed.

Yeah, I know, it's a subtle sledgehammer, but you'd have to expect a Vampire to be well practiced with one of his main powers. According to most books, Renfield was a failure, a man whose mind was broken by too harsh an application of the power. He saw too much when he was in Transylvania, and Dracula used too heavy a hand in controlling him. It broke his mind. The power Dracula exerted over Mina Harker was a lot more subtle. All he asked her to do was open her windows and invite him in, and then afterward pretend that it didn't happen. "Go about your business."

The only measure Van Helsing had to notice this by was that she was weak and anemic, even though he knew what Dracula was, and that he was around.

She was anything but a zombie/slave.

On the subject of 100+ dominated people... He doesn't have that many, I was just saying that he could if he needed to. 10 rounds a day refreshing a link? The biggest challenge would be the bookwork of keeping track of who's up for a booster shot. The actual time needed is one minute.

To compare, you'll probably spend more time than that reading and thinking about this post.

As for spying, all he has to do is pick one of the PCs he owns and step into the driver's seat. Then have him ask, "Okay, so what's the plan again?". The spell says that he'll experience his victim's sensory input, as understood by the victim, but won't actually be able to see through is eyes.

To me that says he won't hear the exact words, but will instead get what the target understands of what's said, better than having the conversation repeated from memory, but not as good as actually being there. No "Sense Motive" through the link because he can't hear voice inflections or catch the subtleties of body language. He has to rely on the victim's observation abilities and skills for that sort of thing.

In any case. we'll see how it plays out. Our game is on Sunday and that's when the whole thing comes crashing down, one way or another.

 

[Rampant]

Dracula is The Vampire the effing rules don't apply to him.

Dominate in 3e DnD is far less subtle than the power of Dracula. Furthermore if you have to put it in DnD terms those could easily have been diplomacy checks and liberal use of suggestion, which is essentially a more subtle short term version of dominate.

So wait it's within the clerics nature to detect large evil signatures and not tell his friends? Otherwise you owe him a save. None of the PC's asked about the results of the cleric storming off then coming back? otherwise you owe everyone sense motive checks.

Look either you're not following Dominate as written (in which case you need to drop some extra hints to balance things out), or your party is colossally stupid and really does deserve to die.

 

[Greenfield]

The Cleric didn't "go storming off". He wandered the house scanning for Evil, running 9 minutes at a time per casting.

After spotting nothing out of the ordinary he decided to check the head servant, who he hadn't seen. He was by himself when he found the man and got taken.

Is it in his nature to keep such a find a secret from his friends?

Another question should be, is this a particularly Good Cleric? There have been a few times when he might have set off that alarm himself, and he knows it. He participated in the torture of a prisoner, and personally skinned part of the man's arm in order to save a tattoo he found curious. He randomly dropped called lightning bolts into a major city to cover his own escape, without concern for people killed or damage done. And he participated in a human sacrifice, just so we could get a special kind of guide (that we didn't really need, I might add. We were going down a straight tunnel.)

So, keeping reports of major evil activity from his friends? He'd do that three times before breakfast and never think twice about it.

Note that he isn't of Evil alignment, but has a few dark deeds on his record that he hasn't chosen to share with his companions. That's all I'm saying.

The Vampire has been nothing but friendly and helpful to the party, as far as they can tell, and his ability to be pleasantly charming to guests and command the rest of the household staff are being written off to professional competence, rather than raw Charisma. And in a game world with Point Buy stats and stat boosts from levels, as well as stat items, running into an 18 Cha isn't as unusual as all that. It just tells them that he's someone for whom personal charm is important.

The good stat helped choose the career, and the career helped form the good stat.

Besides, the homeowner/merchant has a 22 Charisma (Sorcerer with a boost item.) The Vampire pales by comparison.

As a final note on the Cleric: He's a PC that's in the process of retiring. Technically an NPC at this point, the player who was using him is still running him simply because he knows him best. He's supposed to be an NPC at this point.

What's odd, and quite silly, is that he's choosing to retire him in this village, less than a day from a major city where he just broke jail, where there's a hefty reward on his head, in the middle of a nation that's at war with his homeland, and which thinks he's a foreign spy.

And that wasn't the compulsion of the Vampire, just the thoughtless decision of the player. Can you say, "Long term plot hook"?

Thought you could!

 

[Rampant]

So he didn't bother to report a strong aura at all? the nature of the aura isn't the issue, the issue is the strength of the evil aura, that's the part that makes it worth reporting.

On the other hand if he's as mind numbingly dumb as you say this may be completely in character (in which case see my above statements about executing the party for stupidity).

I still think you should be handing out either hints or more sense motive checks, domination is not easy to hide. Even the most skilled dominators, thrallherds, elder brains, and mindbenders suffer the limitations discussed. Some podunk little level 5 vamp fighter isn't gonna be in their league, much less dracula's.

 

[Greenfield]

He isn't dumb, but he wasn't at his best at that moment.

Perspective: The character had been arrested in Bhagdad as a Roman spy, a story put forth by our group's enemies to obstruct us. He'd gone ahead, alone, ostensibly leaving the party. The DM at the time (not me) used him as a plot hook, and we had to break him out.

In a world where the Teleport spell is pretty much unknown (agreed upon magic limit from day 1), prison cells actually work. He was rescued, but without gear. He didn't have his holy symbol, a pair of shorts, or any fingernails when we got him out. No divine focus means no spells for a Cleric.

From there we got ambushed as we fled the city, and in the fight an enemy Fireball, followed by an Ice Storm, hurt us and killed all our horses. We lost our party Rogue (An NPC gone missing, not dead), and though we won we had to get out of there pretty fast.

At that point I took over as DM for the Holiday special dungeon. They used a magic item to summon a stone horse (Figurine of Wondros Power, based on the Marble elephant), and had it pull the small cart that belonged to the Rogue. Those Con drained by poison got loaded in, along with gear from the dead animals, and the party took off. They left the main road just as soon as they could, rolling through the collection of huts and tents that tend to build up around a walled city. They left that area as quickly as they could, since they could be tracked and were a fairly memorable group, and there was still a reward on their heads.

That night they decided on a dark camp, and decided to avoid local farmhouses. Instead they found shelter in a stand of trees, where they rode out a sandstorm. Everybody took some damage from being sandblasted, and those on guard duty took more.

Next day they staggered into a small village, with the Merchant's house dominating. They needed horses, and a place to rest.

The Merchant's household welcomed them. When the Merchant found that they were in need of horses, he offered to sell them some from his own stable. They discovered that he was a trader in "exotic wares", including large predators and fighters for the arena, but also in rarities and magical paraphenalia. They took the opportunity to sell off some loot, buy a few spell scrolls, and yes, buy some horses.

The Cleric, in borrowed clothes, had been driving the cart, and chose to play the part of a servant. He ate with the servants, and stayed in the servant's quarters.

When someone mentioned that he was a holy man, the merchant invited him, gave him fine clothes, and had his head servant dig up an appropriate holy symbol for him. One thing that put them off the servant as a Vampire was the fact that he handled the holy symbol, and didn't hesitate to provide it. By the rules, he'll recoil from a strongly presented holy symbol, but takes no actual damage from one, so handling it was safe for him.

That night the Cleric did a Call Lightning for the Merchant, targeting the lightning rod on the tower. Cries of "It's Alive!" soon followed. The Cleric and the Cleric Fighter decided to keep an eye on the Flesh Golem that had just been animated, one in the chamber with the Merchant, the other outside the door.

At about Midnight the head servant brought up food and drink, and all but ordered the Merchant to eat something, acting like the mother hen in many ways. This was when he took the Cleric/Fighter. Failed Save, and he was drained of 2 Con points worth of blood.

Next day, having stood awake all night, after two days of running with no real rest the night in between, the Cleric/Fighter's player was informed that he was exhausted and needed to rest. He was told of the Con loss, but the other Cleric did a Cure on him before he did any Heal check that might have shown bite marks. So a key bit of evidence was missing.

Th Cleric's aid in calling Divine lightning (Something the Merchant, being a Sorcerer couldn't do), made the Merchant so happy that he knocked 10% off the prices of most of the goods he sold them. (The value of that spell, according to the table for hiring spellcasting services, was essentially taken off their collective bill.)

Rather than drag out more detail, suffice it to say that I created a place with a safe enough vibe, and enough interesting things going on that the players saw fit to split up and pursue personal interests while they and their companions recovered from a really rough couple of days.

And splitting the party, when there's a Vampire around, is a really bad idea. That's why Vampire's encourage it.

Were they suspicious? Of course. They knew it was a Halloween dungeon, after all, and they've played in my games enough to know that there are always plot twists. But one common comment around our table, no matter who's DMing is, "If the DM has gone to all the trouble to set up such a neat trap, the least we can do is fall into it." It's a "sporting" kind of attitude, and it kind of works for us.