Vampires --- what is a DM to do?

[wlmartin]

I'll be honest... for a one-shot, any one of those ideas sounds great.

I'm drawn in particular to the band of vampire hunters so convinced of their own righteousness that they'll force innocent townsfolk to put themselves in the middle of what will no doubt be a bloody and violent affair. If that does sound a bit dry (as per your OP) then give them some other agenda: perhaps they're werewolves enacting a bloodletting ritual that will cleanse them of their curse, or some-such. Either way the zealout angle always appeals to me.

I like the idea
Werewolves pretending to be Vampire Hunters take the entire village hostage and lay the Vampire PC as bait. The group come in and the trap is pulled with Vampire

Interesting!

But now to lead from the first trap encounter to something more substantial

mmmmmm

 

[Neonchameleon]

The L15 issue is easy to sort out. No magic items for our L15 vampire as she's been captured and she's effectively a L11 with slightly different bonusses.

But the big issue with the rescue scenario is what the rescuee is to do while waiting for being rescued. Here I'd suggest you exploit the "Can't cross running water" limitation. Rescuee is on an island, and can't cross off it. Rescuers are all vampires so they can't get on to the island. Have the non-rescuees tell you in advance what their rescue plan is. And the whole thing goes pear-shaped when a cranky vampire about to be crisped by the dawn bursts her bonds. Cue combat - there are people on the island who will try to stick the rescuee, and people off it who will try to rescue people by turning them into pincushions.

This leads naturally into part 2. The gnomes surrendered when the hunters were taken out (if there were any left); the gnomes didn't want to provoke high level vampires but better that than the hunters who were already there. But part 2 is a skill challenge about the running water. Vampire still can't cross the river. Other vampires still can't cross either. So you have only a short time to do something about that river - either engineering works to slow/stop the river, convincing the gnomes to undo the artificial island, or both.

Step 3: It's daytime. Hide!

Step 4: The hunters who threatened the gnomes into being their catspaws came from yonder lawful stupid monastry. Which more or less needs reducing to rubble. A head on assault is doomed to failure- you'll be heavily outnumbered and have problems even crossing the moat. However the gnomes take barrels of beer up there regularly, and if thoroughly restrained (e.g. in a coffin or a barrel), vampires can be taken across running water. Raise it to the ground - if you trust the gnome... (Or find another way in).

 

[wlmartin]

The L15 issue is easy to sort out. No magic items for our L15 vampire as she's been captured and she's effectively a L11 with slightly different bonusses.

As I said before, I designed the game to function this way - having 2 toons at 15th lvl and 2 at 11th lvl is fine for me.

In fact I will be having the L15 vampire run on Inheritent Bonuses to make life easy.

But the big issue with the rescue scenario is what the rescuee is to do while waiting for being rescued. Here I'd suggest you exploit the "Can't cross running water" limitation. Rescuee is on an island, and can't cross off it. Rescuers are all vampires so they can't get on to the island. Have the non-rescuees tell you in advance what their rescue plan is. And the whole thing goes pear-shaped when a cranky vampire about to be crisped by the dawn bursts her bonds.

I do like the running water moat idea...
That being said, I pretty much am leaning towards the "Its a Trap" idea where the Vampire is held as bait and the action starts once his bonds are freed.

The idea isnt to keep the party split or to run the first encounter with some people included and some people not. The idea is just to create an interesting hook that has the 2 PCs not captured have to do a little RP busy work until they can release their friend and then the action starts with everyone free to play.

Thanks for the advise on this one... very useful.

I am leaning to this crazy idea that the Gnomish village all cute and light is in fact a Weretoad settlement. All of the gnomes are in fact a lycanthrope version of a toad where the theme of the Weretoads are using Hypnotism and mind control as part of their attacks (anyone seen Futurama : HYPNO TOAD!)

Unlike humans who can pull off Werewolves with style, Gnomes get to be half a toad and because of their small stature - this actually plays well in my head.

The whole thing was a trap where they lured in the vampire in the first place in an attempt to bring more Vampires so they could off them all at once.

The Weretoads will use a variety of attacks but mainly involve some kind of power where they become hypnotized (i dont want it to be as overbearing as Dominate but then needs to be a bit more than dazed or something else)

I am still working on this aspect of it.

The encounters go from the rescue + trap encounter
Then they must search the nearby houses for clues, they will have the choice at some interesting encounters that play on enviroments raiding any village would see (family homes, shops etc) and will culminate in a showdown at the Village Community Hall where they will face off against more WereToads and the WereToad Queen - a full fledged Hypno Toad!!

This idea is fun, original (using custom monsters I will make) and completely flips the Vampire vs Werewolf idea on its head!

Since the group are expecting some kind of battle vs the gnomish villagers, the last thing they will expect is that the entire village is a pack of Weres let alone Weretoads!!

I still have yet to design the Weretoads and since they are Lycans I think regen is important however since it is hard to justify the group FINDING silver anywhere in the town and doubtful they brought it with them - I am open to ideas on how to use Regen...

: Regen tied to a fire perhaps?
: Regen only works if they have hit with an attack the turn previous
: Regen requires them to have a current hypnotic link with someone, so if they are hypno linked to Jeff the Fighter and on his turn he saves against the effect, their Regen fails (and perhaps using this idea, half of the Regen (10 becomes 5) comes directly from the Hypno target and is treated like Ongoing damage that only kicks in on the Enemies turn not at the start of theirs

Since they are fighting vampires, I can introduce a disease effect that occurs if they are bitten but since none of the powers really say "You bite the target" you can argue that the lifeforce is SUCKED magically from them.

I suppose I could say that if the Weretoad takes additional damage due to an add-on effect, the Weretoad can roll an immediate reaction to try and give them the disease



I am pretty much sure the above is what I want to run so if anyone has any critique about my ideas or ways to improve on them, I would apprecate that