My Top Three Characters

"Tomorrow is the dawning of a new day. ONE WITHOUT YOU IN IT!"


I was talking to Ray and he asked people for their top three characters. I urge everyone to answer this question in their own way, because it's a lot of fun looking back. I didn't respond immediately to him, because this question kinda fucked me up for a little bit. I've played so many characters with so many people. I started to wonder how you should even quantify this question. Is a character less valid if you only played them in a short game? Hell, I have characters I love that saw ten or fewer game sessions. Fuck me, do NPCs count? For sake of sanity, I'm just going to talk about favorite NPCs separately. Should you let drama or even the game's plot affect your decision? Sorry to say I did, even if that's not very fair. I rarely end up hating my characters, but some that I really like were either fucked with too much or were in games that were too awful, and it makes me not enjoy remembering them.

I'm rarely masturbatory on this blog, so I hope ya'll don't mind me doing it this time. Here we go, in no particular order, because otherwise it'd feel like picking my favorite kid.


Elle Arcineau. Nobody who's played a game with Elle in it or even heard of the character is surprised by this pick, I think. She was the first time I decided to challenge myself with a character, due to online, text based games letting you flex better without feelings of social anxiety or embarrassment. I picked a lot of traits that directly opposed the ways I usually play. I don't like casters and favor melee, so she's a ranged controller modeled after Green Lantern. I favor large, broad and strong characters, so she's five two and slender. I play wilderness types, she's a rich, ambitious city dweller. I usually hate expies, so I modeled her after a pre-existing character. She's bubbly, easily distracted, I could go on. I put together a ton of traits I usually shy away from and decided fuck it, if I don't click with her I'll just change characters. It was a four-color superhero game, so a rotating cast wouldn't be weird. Luckily, it worked and she remains one of my favorite characters.

Elle is a young CEO of a powerful company who built a fortune due to her insane ambition and a little bit of thanks to insight granted by her mutant powers. She can summon and control candy. The idea was, like Speedball or Paige Guthrie, to take a power that sounds dumb or useless and twist it to her advantage. Candy isn't as funny or dumb when it's white-hot molten sugar sticking like napalm, hundreds of pounds of caramel anchoring you in place or a jawbreaker so tough and flying so fast it can literally break your jaw. So thanks to a super-powered sense of taste and her power, she sold candy patents for nest-egg money then moved into investment. She hired reformed mad scientists and, by the time the game began had moved into being a large tech company. It was surprisingly fun to RP. Her devices led to taking a feat that let her wear any clothing she wanted instantly, and that was a huge amount of fun to watch her fashion sense go down a weird rabbit hole of bright colors, animal patterns and odd mixes.

It was also fun to play someone so hyper and distracted. She's mouthy, and pushy, and aggressively nice. She's comedic. all things I didn't think I'd enjoy as much as I did. She got turned into an elf at one point in the game (It was a modern world but with elves. Just go with it.) and it marked a pretty nice, memorable turn for her. She even had a great romance with another PC, Rela C'rar. And yeah, she was 'involved' with like half the PCs and NPCs in the game in some fashion too, but Rela is the one she married.

I adore Elle, but out of the three characters presented, She's the only one I'm not likely to play again. She's great, but I like the idea that she's happy somewhere with Rela and they act as controllers and leaders for a team.

I have a ton of stuff I could probably share, but I'll keep that for another day. I'll leave you with some of the pieces of artwork of her that were commissioned as a gift.

Elle Arcineau, by Lemonfont

Elle Arcineau, by Valerie Nystrom.

>(@)<

Inkless, Professor of History and Runaway Angel. This game really wasn't THAT long and was plagued by being unable to push forward sometimes, so I guess some people would think it was weird that she made my top three, but I love her pretty dearly. This is another Mutants and Masterminds character, set in a world where magic, mystical things were constantly happening just underneath the surface. She was a professor at a University that both taught and protected those sorts of people who knew the truth and could use magic of their own.

Inkless, or Thessa as she was known once other Professors asked for a more normal name, is literally an angel. She is an eternal being of light that's supposed to live in the Christian idea of Heaven. She was a sort of muse(It's not the same as a Greek muse, I know. Shh.) who was meant to go down to Earth in secret and urge people on to greater things. As you'll start to see, I love Inkless as a person but I also love all of the themes that came together to make her. She "ran away" from her duty in Heaven because she didn't feel like she was making an impact. She started to dread the idea that she can only ever do what she was made for. That nobody can truly defy God's design. The catalyst? a well-meaning Archangel told her she was doing a good job and that she was appreciated.

I think everyone knows how bad that can fucking sting when you don't think you've done anything.

She slums around Earth for years, encountering fantasy types of all kinds. This was a world where EVERY Religion was "Right", and it became obvious that Inkless wasn't alone in the way she thought. She eventually gravitated toward the University and became a professor. It wouldn't occur to her until much later that she still wasn't able to escape her "duty" of inspiring people.

Because an eternal being would go insane and perception of time would prevent interaction eventually, Angels(and most other celestial beings) in this world were "locked" at a certain perception, a certain mental maturity. They can change, of course, but it isn't that common. Despite being hundreds of years old, Inkless was eternally locked at nineteen, mentally. This was a source of a lot of her issues. She hated responsibility, but was rabidly protective of her 'kids', to the point that it caused some arguments.

I got to play with some pretty serious and fun themes, all in all. Ones like being able to grow beyond your purpose or duty and giving people a second chance. I don't know when or where, but I'd love to play her again.

>(@)<

Chief Tumbling-Dice. Yeah, this might be a shorter one but he's no less loved. I was a kid when I made him, and he's a D&D 2e character at heart. It means there's neither any heavy themes nor a super interesting build to talk about, even though he had a pretty fun set of stats when he cameoed as an NPC in a 3.5 game.

The name came from a stand-up comedy bit from...I think it was Robin Williams. Obviously it's a pretty crass joke on the fact that Native Americans build casinos. I loved absurdity so I ran with it. He's a devout (and sincere) worshipper of Faerun's Goddess of Luck, Tymora. He also happens to be a lizard-man. He wore a tall top hat with feathers stuffed in the hat band. He had a black vest, black dress slacks(tailored for his tail. Obviously) and no shoes, because you can't put shoes on claws. These days I imagine him as wearing spats like a cartoon character, I won't lie.

We needed a party cleric for Against the Giants, and if I was gonna be forced to play a cleric I was gonna have fun, god dammit. He made zombies(because those corpses are LESSER races, they don't count), happily waded into combat, and had a floating skull he hit people with. I honestly don't remember if that was some kind of item or just me reflavoring the spell Spiritual Weapon.

The Chief also had a thing for random chance. Obviously. It was matched only by his love of bluffing and fooling people. He became an ad-hoc leader for a while(He IS a Chieftain, let's be fair) so he would generally lead the party on where to go. He'd roll dice(he owned several pairs) then decide between however many corridors were there. The joke always was, from the beginning, that he never revealed the method he was using. I waited for someone to question him so I could drop the punchline that the rolling and the decision were 100% removed from each other. He was just rolling dice then deciding where to go. Two completely separate actions.

In twenty years, nobody ever asked. Call me optimistic but I'm hoping there's at least one person out there who had no idea.

In my mind, his whole tribe are named similarly. Names like Cashed-in-Chips, Double-Down, Marks-the-Cards or Bets-On-Pocket-Aces. They run a massive Casino-Church in the middle of swampland, using secret underwater passages to get around faster than their patrons and to hide the riches they've collected in service to Tymora. I'll definitely play him again some day.

>(@)<

Because I'm wimping the fuck out I have some honorable mentions. I've played a ton of beloved characters. They're my babies. Hey, if you don't like it...write your own blog!

Riyo'to. A miqo'te street urchin who learned black magic by spying on classes. It was a lot of fun not only playing a kid, but one who was basically scared of women. That's completely opposite from the usual male miqo'te stereotypes and kind of why Riyo'to exists in the first place, that subversion. He grew up with fifteen sisters. You'd be scared of them too!

Seras Heartstring. Seras needs a rebuild mechanically, but he was a blast. He's a good person, but kind of the male equivalent to a ditzy blonde. He was a comedy character, with tons of jokes surrounding his feminine looks(He can be mistaken for a woman. I figured that was valid for an Aasimar) and that he was a priest of fertility and bounty. It was my first time since Elle playing a comedy character and I feel like it worked really well. He's definitely due for more time and another game.

Blind Mary. You'd think more Vampire characters would come up, and while I've played a lot, she's my favorite. Mary had an interesting life, from Latino gang member, to devout Nun, to Lasombra shovel-head. Her faith was never shaken, and in fact she took the vampiric curse as proof that God is Real. She was quiet(maybe too quiet) and I never did enough with what she knew of the Book of Nod, but I loved her. Note: Not actually blind. The nickname was metaphorical, from her gang days.


So that's it, I hope me being wholly masturbatory at least entertained you a bit. If you were hoping to see a character on this list and didn't, don't be sad. I've got so many beloved characters that this was very hard for me, and it was very close.

"Backwards" Character Creation

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."


I kicked around the idea of doing a theme month. I had quite a few post ideas in a row focused on stupid stuff. You've seen two of them, but...well, since the month started with trap monsters and that's not the kind of stupid I meant, I put aside the idea. Well, that and I had a few stupid things to talk about that aren't the jovial kind of stupid. It's not really giggle Ha-Ha stuff. I'm gonna yell the loud funny words about some things that annoy me, and hope that somewhere inside this there's a lesson.


I thought we were done with this one. I talked about it a few times by now, but always inside another post somewhere. The people I knew who were the worst with this no longer game with us. This is the idea that there's a certain order to the steps of generating a character and that anything that bucks this trend is backwards or wrong. To be specific, this is the idea that you complete a character's background and personality before you ever touch their mechanics.

I have several problems with this.

This happens because most people believe the role-play and story of a pen and paper RPG is its most important aspect. They may even go so far as to believe that the rules and mechanics exist only in service of that. I've certainly met very many people who'd say that openly. So, when they make a character(or an encounter, an NPC, or anything) the 'idea' isn't just the most important thing to them: It's the only thing that matters. We talked about unoptimized or deliberately 'bad' characters before, and this is where that starts too. Assuming we don't attribute the malice, spite or other negative things to this practice which are often(but not always) present, they 'accept' a bad character because they're using the mechanics solely to fit to their pre-existing concept.

Before I continue, let's talk about kink shaming. This is whenever you make someone feel bad for what they're sexually attracted to. Most people don't really know what they're doing when this happens. Some fetishes are just funny to outsiders, you know? So we see adult baby fetish, sissies, or even basic BDSM fetish and laugh our guts out at how dumb it is. It's okay to think it's funny on some level, obviously. We can't help that. However, when you go too far or worse, start criticizing or mocking it seriously, you're making someone else feel bad for something they can't help.

So yeah, I'm making that comparison. We're going there.  People can't help what they enjoy and trying to tell them they're playing the game 'wrong' when it doesn't impact anyone else is pretty shitty of you. Even if I had no other point to discuss, this would still be true. Even if they were right and I was wrong, trying to force or convince someone to enjoy something your way still wouldn't be very nice. If a person has a personality, a background and a set of stats when they show up, it isn't impacting your experience.

I'm not gonna pretend we're not talking about a larger issue, though. Mechanics focused theorycrafting, emphasis on mechanics or rules, or even just discussing cool abilities sometimes gets you a reputation as a "munchkin", or at least gets people tsk-tsking at you. I'm often standing in defense of mechanics enjoyment, but only because the other side of this(roleplay focused) is often the aggressor. I firmly believe both are equally important to the hobby and, if you find your group prefers to lean one way or another, it's best to find a system that fits you better. People who love games focused on interpersonal relationships and story focus will love the Apocalypse system. More on that in another post.

So now that everyone knows I'm the man in the middle of this, I'm gonna try to explain where misconceptions are coming from, in no particular order. Now, I (and a lot of people) put together outlines or pregen characters, often without regard for their background or personality. I do sometimes put together backgrounds or other descriptives, but it's rarer. There's several reasons for this. The first is that mechanics are often far more universal. GMs will sometimes introduce house rules that will make you want to change a build, but that doesn't often happen. Most house rules, if they're even introduced, are sweeping changes that you can't 'build' for like "Armor as DR" or its sister rule "Class AC Bonus". Character histories, however, can vary wildly based on the world the game is set in, or even the other player characters. You'll often want to tailor it to specific world concepts or events or include something to tie you to someone else's idea. This happens often enough that I'm often hesitant to fill out character histories, instead keeping them in my head.

Can someone else's character make me want to change a mechanical build? Absolutely! Does that happen as often? Not to me it doesn't. If it DOES happen, is it way easier to alter a build than a history? Absolutely. Maybe it's just me, but shuffling some feats around just doesn't compare to altering a whole story or background.

But we should build our characters together. We never do that. We never build characters that work together.

Come with Papa Mousetrap on an uncomfortable little tangent. I used to hear this a lot, usually from people who were annoyed that I showed up with an idea ready. I have to say I've never felt as though I was building a truly complementary character to another person. Even when agreeing to do that. Even when talking, at length, with the party about what to build. Even around people who seriously believe in the (now ancient) idea of the perfect party balance. The whole idea of complementary builds is kind of ephemeral anyway, outside of super deliberate stuff like D20's "Teamwork" feats. Which aren't even very good. What's complementary to someone's character is often pretty arguable, open to interpretation. I feel like a lot of the time I've heard this someone just wanted to drag me down to their (unprepared) level by making me think of a new character.

I always try to do something with the other characters, though. In terms of the role-play aspect of the game. Even if it's themes, or preplanned story points or something. The thing is, it's pretty easy to fit a build into these. That's why I always hesitate to write out backgrounds. Builds and backgrounds can often be treated as separate. Not entirely, of course, but I can usually plug a build in pretty easily. Backgrounds that exist as a collection of ideas and not rote definition can be more easily molded into someone else's concept, adding a family, friend or confidant. A build that is only an idea isn't including wiggle room...it's just undefined. Shuffling around skills, cyberware, feats, powers, et cetera is pretty easy, and often not even required.


Talk about mechanics is often more compelling than backgrounds because it comes from a place that already has structure. It creates rigor that not everyone can include into a discussion of backgrounds, personalities or themes. It's not that mechanics are more fascinating than roleplay, it's that they're easier to talk about. Pure art is often subjective, and mechanics, on some level, aren't. You can argue if you like or dislike a class, but there will be provable facts about it regardless of your opinion.

There's also the idea of inspiration, though. Some people get inspired from different places, and that's obviously where they're going to start with their character. Ray, the person who inspired this whole post, has a reputation for getting excited about mechanics. Usually he'll see a cool ability and want to center a character around it. That's where he starts with his concepts.

He always shows up with a personality and a background. However, because he has this reputation of being excited primarily about abilities, people seem to think he's "doing it wrong" or ignoring the more important aspect of gaming. He's even been through people forcing him to build a character "the right way" in some of the most insulting, condescending GMing I've ever seen.  I won't go into that today, except to say the whole game was a massive disaster.

His characters may have similar themes, but we all do. He shows up with a great character, then gets crapped on. It's happened way less lately, thank god, but it does every once in a while. Ray shrugs it off, though...so why am I always a little protective of him?

You get upset at inequality, right? Everyone does. You ever see someone get chewed out for something you've been doing for years? That's right, me and Ray build characters exactly the same way, most of the time. I'll admit to coming up with a concept first sometimes, but usually that's really deliberate, like my attempt to challenge myself with Elle Arcineau. I nearly always draw inspiration from some cool combination, build, class, or even feat. I do that, then I build outward from there. Class and build gives me ideas on description. Personality. Story beats or backgrounds. I start with mechanics more often than not.

So why does Ray catch shit and I don't? Well, beyond people talking behind my back about this and me never knowing about it, I really couldn't say. He's...louder than me? I guess he is, anyway. Nobody should be lectured on something so trivial as where they got their inspiration, though. Or worse, forced to build a certain way or have their stats dictated solely by what someone else thinks of their predefined background. The arguing and pedantry that goes along with this is so tedious. Real people are weird, and have weird, wild lives but for some reason a lot of people are far more strict with justification of PC stats than they would be with real people. I've heard a lot of it.

I don't think a video store clerk would have anything more than 4 in firearms.

If your character is a pilot he wouldn't have that.

Nobody would install this cyberware on that person.

If you were a Y you wouldn't have Z.

No X would ever Y or Z.

Pointless! Pointless arguing and nitpicking that causes anxiety. I mean, I haven't even gotten into that. Having to play a deliberately inefficient character gives me anxiety. I hate it. I don't like playing a character I know could be better with simple fixes or changes. Even having to live with uneven stat points in D20 annoys me greatly. This is why I like systems with wiggle room where a few skill points, some spell choices or a feat aren't a big deal and can be 'absorbed' into a build to justify a background. I can totally play a noble or diplomat just by pumping ranks into diplomacy. I don't have to be amazing at it, skill points aren't that restrictive. Certainly less restrictive than ability scores. If you told me like someone told Ray that I had to define my entire background and then the GM would hand pick my character's build based on that, I would hate it. I would hate it on the level of not wanting to play. There would be no care put into the build, statistics would feel like they're placed randomly to me, even if they weren't. It would be, at best, a serious drag factor to my enjoyment.

And for what? For someone else's satisfaction that I finally built my character "Right" "For once"? I'm not going to go off onto the tangent of explaining why poor characters don't make for better roleplayers, because I've already done that. Instead I'm just going to close with the same advice that I gave like a year ago when I briefly went into this concept.

So long as someone still shows up with a background and personality and role-plays as seriously as everyone else...let it go, man.

Defense of the Magic Shop II: Stupid Magic Items

"Wha'dya need the stupid fuckin' rope for, huh?"


Everyone knows I'll defend magic item shops to the death. There's two reasons for this: The first is that in Dungeons and Dragons 3.X and Pathfinder, your magic items are a core part of your character's build and the player should have some level of agency over this. The second is that I fucking love custom made magic items. They add serious flavor to characters and I try to start with one or two every time I make a character. It'd be a shame to give a flat "no" to such cool stuff just because nobody in the group has the magic item creation feats, especially given that they're willing to pay full price. I mean, the alternative is the magic item creation rules and feats and...let's just...gently guide you away from that disaster.

But there's another reason people like making their own magic items. It's because a lot of the magic items in the books are retarded. I don't like using that word lightly, particularly because I've met plenty of mentally challenged people who wouldn't want to be associated with the items I'm about to talk about. So, without further adieu, let's get on with a bald-faced attempt to convince you guys that sometimes people want to make their own magic items because the ones presented in the book aren't worth even close to what they cost!


Efficient Quiver. Yes, this is the magic item that inspired this whole post. It's my poster child for terribly designed magic items. For 1800 gold, it can hold 60 arrows, 18 javelins, and 6 bows. You can flex within these definitions to anything similar in shape. So, does anyone see the problem yet? Can anyone tell me any reason why someone in any pen and paper game ever made or even real life would carry a bow AND javelins? No? That's what I thought. So, for 1800 gold, this quiver holds less arrows than you want it to, up to 6 bows, a compartment which you will never in your life fill to capacity, and one third of it remains completely empty because nobody in their right mind would carry a javelin if they had a bow. Not even people whose only ranged combat option is the javelin carry javelins. And yeah, there's magic javelins that do lightning or whatever, but they're never going to BUY those. Bets are that if they find them in random treasure, they fucking SELL THEM because consumable magic items without spell trigger or spell completion are inordinately expensive. And finally, when have you EVER bitched about how many arrows the archer has on him? Have you ever even looked at his sheet? Would you even know how many arrows a quiver held without looking it up? In Pathfinder, QUIVERS COME FREE WITH THE ARROWS!


Decanter of Endless Water. Okay so, this is kind of a good magic item that's on the list because it's famous for its implications. For 9k gold, you can create up to 30 gallons of fresh or salt water a round. That's every six seconds. That is an ecology ruining amount of water. Given enough time, it could destroy a city. An ecology. Probably a planet. Given the right dungeon, it could probably flood and drown whole encounters. I mean, a decent GM would never let that happen, but as soon as that bright idea comes up, your game becomes an episode of Benny Hill for at least an hour. The decanter is exactly like the Robe of Useful Items: In the hands of a party whose only ever going to use it for obviously intended purpose, it's nice. In the hands of a creative person, though, this item is insane.


Apparatus of Kwalish. This is called Apparatus of the Crab in Pathfinder and is the same item. This thing is so classic that it's honestly pretty unfair that I'm putting it on this list. For a whopping 90k gold, it's a submersible. That's it, for 90 thousand gold you can go under water and slowly derp around at 20ft per round like a complete idiot for three times more gold cost than a permanent Water Breathing item or helm of underwater action, or over twelve times the cost of a Bottle of Air. That's assuming your game ever goes underwater enough to justify those items in the first place. Go on, count up the number of times this item, or ANY underwater item, would have been useful enough to justify the cost of it. I've got 20 years of gaming experience, and lemme tell you: my answer is less than ten.


Rod of Lordly Might. 70k gold. What does it do? Fuck me, it'd probably be easier to list what it doesn't do. Hold person once a day. Fear once a day. 2d4 damage touch attack once a day. It can turn into a +2 light mace, a +1 flaming longsword, a +4 battleaxe, or a +3 longspear. It can turn into a climbing pole, be used to force open doors, and determine magnetic north and approximate depth underground. IT CAN FUCKIN' JULIENNE FRIES AND KEEP YOUR WINDOWS SPOTLESS!

The Rod here is a stand-in so I can point out a common problem. Basically, the more random capabilities you stack onto an item, the higher the price goes and the less the player actually cares about the fucking thing. Many, many items do a cool thing then ruin it by providing a spell or something the player will never use. The Rod of Lordly Might is one of the worst culprits of having a giant laundry list of shit nobody will ever actually use it for. All it does is inflate the cost of the item.


Rod of Alertness. This is an item the size of a light mace that costs 85k gold. You leave it sticking in the ground. Up to like 120 feet away from you. It's not magically sealed to the ground, it's just sticking up out of the dirt. A reliable, huge-range alertness spell or a 1HD goblin's biggest payday ever? You decide.


Elemental Gem. Blah blah consumable item blah blah spell. Nobody's going to buy this overpriced consumable bullshit. Not even if they don't have any other choice. They're so expensive that they often rival the price of an item that lets you use a spell once a day. Players will always, ALWAYS lean toward buying non-consumable items, and the only consumables that will ever see much use are potions, scrolls and wands: all much less expensive than book listed consumable wonderous items.


Chime of Opening. Sure, ten +11 disable device checks is worth 3k gold. Okay. You know, you can easily buy locks that are DC 25? Those would reduce your chances to open the lock on a single charge below fifty percent. So, basically, this is a chime that's for opening the locks on poor people's houses? Because DC 25 is an average lock. Like, the town baker's house would take you two or more charges on this thing to open. Unless you think "Average" implies something other than the majority of people using this sort of lock.

Oh, and yes, I DID gloss over its ability to automatically dispel Hold Portal and Arcane Lock.


Feather Token. 50 gold to make an anchor that disappears in 24 hours? 300 gold for a single use of Animal Messenger? 400 gold for a tree? A boat so big no PC will ever effectively use it AND it STILL fades after 24 hours? These are great! I'm buying ten.


Hand of the Mage. Actually, I secretly love this item. "Hey, can I get a version of this magic item that isn't a severed mummified hand hanging from a chain around my neck?" / "No. No you can't, This is a mass produced magic item and they all look like that."


Robe of Eyes. An incredibly powerful and expensive(120k) magic item that can be disabled with no save by a 0 level spell. Slow clap. Also a shoutout to poor wording that leads the reader to believe the person wearing the robe is blinded and not just the robe itself.


I could go on. I even will, in later posts. However, for now my point is made. A lot of the items in the books are stupid, or created without thought to what an average person would actually want. Imagine the Efficient Quiver is a mass produced consumer product, and it's got a competitor. We'll call it the iQuiver. The Efficient Quiver holds whatever dumb bullshit I explained above, and the iQuiver just straight up holds 180 arrows. Nothing else. Same cost. Which do you really think would get better sales? Exactly.

So, take this to mean that if magic item shops and custom items don't exist, the players are always settling for second best. Instead of going to Longhorn Steakhouse then seeing Die Hard at the movie theater, you're eating at Applebee's and seeing Lethal Weapon IV. You're creating a vague but palpable feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction. Players aren't ever getting what they really want, and all because you think it "makes sense". This will be addressed in a future post, but "That's life" is the worst justification you could make for your actions in a Pen and Paper game. Let's leave it at that for now.

You can mitigate this by talking with the player and trying to provide things they want. Or, you can restore their agency and let them do it themselves with the gold you've given as a reward. To me, it's just simpler.

Trap Monsters: The Vampire

"Oh, Lestat. You deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to Hell."


I love White Wolf. I love Vampire: The Masquerade. The new White Wolf games weren't bad either. Here's a secret, though. I hate vampires. I think they're lame and boring. VtM saves it by offering a billion different kinds of vampires, but even then I internally roll my eyes every time classic vampire stuff comes up. They definitely had a cloud around them of limp, maudlin lamentation of their state before Twilight came out and removed much of the gravitas of the vampire stereotype. It wasn't great before Twilight, and it's certainly not better now. So, I grew up thinking vampires are lame and thinking awesome characters like Dracula were hamstrung by being associated with the vampire stereotype and not elevated by it.

But there is...another reason.

I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a very long time and Vampires have been complete horse shit in every edition I've played. I think them being abjectly unfair monsters calls back all the way to 1e, but I'm not entirely sure. They've had a giant laundry list of horse shit abilities for as long as I can remember, and I would say it probably came to a head in 3.0. Not only that, but Pathfinder carried this torch forward when it likely shouldn't have: a problem I'm seeing more often than I'd like as I analyze the system.

Today I'm doing something a LITTLE different than the other entries in Trap Monsters. This is because Phase Spider and Illithid both have very few but very negative abilities. Not only that, but you can't really remove those abilities without ruining the fantasy of the monster. This isn't the case with Vampire, and underneath all my wailing and gnashing of teeth I'll go into that. However, the other reason is that the vampire template has a huge amount of crap in addition to some negative, fun-sucking abilities, and we need to talk about nearly all of them.  So, I'm basically going in fucking order.


Basic Defensive Capabilities. Vampires get +6 natural armor, DR 10/magic and silver, resistance 10 to electricity and cold, and lightning reflexes, toughness and dodge for free. There's nothing exactly bad here, but we're putting it on the table right now. They get ALL THIS SHIT in addition to the horse shit we're discussing later. This is even in addition to all of the stuff you get from being undead. As you'll see, there's a problem in volume as well as scale. Remember, Vampire is a +2 CR.

Basic Offensive Capabilities. They also get +6 STR, +4 DEX, +2 INT, +2 WIS, +4 CHA. They get alertness, combat reflexes, and  improved initiative. They get an eight point racial bonus to bluff, perception, sense motive, and stealth. They get beast shape into a bat or wolf, and spider climb at will. Again, none of this is trap monster stuff yet, but we're getting close with those fucking skill bonuses. An eight point advantage means the vampire is never going to lose stealth checks OR perception checks against a party, removing stealthy tactics and some other skill tactics from the table. Otherwise, I'm putting this here so you know the pure volume of crap that was stuffed into a TWO POINT CR template. I've gotten to the point of assuming that vampires get a bonus to whatever they want.

Gaseous Form. They can use gaseous form at will, and more importantly, automatically use it at 0 hit points and travel to their casket, where they begin fast healing normally after one hour. So basically your time limit is an hour and like three minutes before you have to start the whole fight over. First off, this is one of the only monsters in the game with an automatic escape. Even the tarrasque falls down at sub-0 hit points and just needs a special method to permanently "kill" it. Remember what I said about monsters escaping? The players are never going to feel good about it. They'll be far more accepting of an escape they could have prevented, though...and this one is just too easy to make unbeatable.

Basically, we're having the phylactery problem again. A Lich's phylactery needs to be destroyed before he can be permanently killed, and it's very easy to make a phylactery impossible to destroy or find. You see this kind of talk all the time in D&D groups, it's a thought experiment. The gaseous form capability is the same thing. After all, he doesn't need to keep you out permanently: Just an hour and change. That's not hard at all, and a GM can easily fall into creating a frustrating experience post-fight by thinking about what's "Logical". See my opinion of "Logical" for more on that. This creates a frustrating experience by detailing the vampire's precautions based on what's "logical" or what's "easy to do but effective" instead of keeping your mind on the challenge you're creating for the party. This is a very common problem to begin with and vampire guides less experienced(or even veteran) GMs into making it worse without realizing it.

Blood Drain. This isn't too bad, it's at least 1d4 con damage and not con drain, but I'm mentioning it because the logical extension of giving a monster an ability they can use when grappling is to make them really good at grappling. Nobody wants to see your luchadore vampire, guys. Nobody thinks this is clever. Nobody thinks it's fun to fight. El Santo kills vampire luchadores for a reason.

Negative Energy Slam. Yeah, they get a slam attack that causes 2 negative levels. This is on top of all the rest of their dumb bullshit and is supported by absolutely nothing in vampire lore or fantasy. Negative levels can KILL YOU in 3.X, but even in Pathfinder they can rapidly lead to a character being battered into worthlessness. Oh, and they heal the vampire. Remember that part of Dracula where he punches some guy in the face repeatedly to heal himself? No? Must just be me.

Children of the Night. Okay, so I'm guessing this ability is just like, a fluff ability because it can't be used in combat, but it creates this weird thing where they're throwing a low CR encounter around. Or, worse, if you've foolishly thought vampire being a template meant it could be used at low levels, an encounter potentially just as deadly as the vampire themselves. I'm just sort of wondering why this is even here, other than to inform the GM he can use bats or wolves as a plot device...which he could have done anyway.

Dominate. Show of hands, who figured out I was stalling until I got to this one? Yeah, that's just about everyone. It's obvious, this is some of the dumbest shit ever put on paper. Having infinite access to a spell isn't the end of the world...but it depends heavily on which spell you're given access to. Lemme explain something about dominate before we move on to vampire's problem.

I told you before that you need to use kid gloves when applying crowd control to the PCs because it removes agency and, in extreme cases, creates a situation where a player wants to get up from the table and do something else. Dominate is the worst one, the king of bad CCs. Not only does it remove you from combat, but it makes you act against your friends. Dominate swings fights heavily. Dominate removes agency. Dominate even causes arguments. Why? Because you get an additional save if the caster forces you to act against your nature, and this fact is woefully under-explained in the core book. How often do you get a resave? It doesn't say. What constitutes someone's nature? The book gives no guidelines. In Pathfinder, the writers of Ultimate Intrigue go into this ability at length...but let's face it, you're rolling the dice on if anyone in your group read that. Even if they did, I've known a lot of people who would readily roll their eyes and say the information is less valid because it's a supplement and not in the core book. More arguing.

Dominate sucks, and no permutation of it should ever be used by a GM in a pen and paper game. I'm sorry, but there are things the players are allowed to do that the GM isn't, just as there are a whole host of things the GM is allowed to do that the players aren't. One of those things a GM isn't allowed to do is take over someone else's character with a spell, removing their agency and making them watch while their character does things they don't want them to. Dominate lasts for DAYS, and it can easily take a character out of not just the fight, but the whole session.

Moving on to this power in specific, the vampire's problem isn't as simple as just a few castings of dominate person. First off, it's a supernatural ability. This is something most people would consider minutiae, but it's a huge advantage. It provokes no attack of opportunity and does not require somatic, verbal or material components. It can be used grappled and never needs a concentration check. It can't be interrupted or counterspelled. And...it will always have a save DC of 10 plus half hit dice plus a relevant ability score...in this case Charisma. This means, theoretically, that it's more balanced at lower levels, but also that it rises higher than a caster can ever go by casting the spell.

It also creates for some tactics that range from irritating to insane. In combat, it behooves the vampire to repeatedly try to dominate enemies or instruct vampire spawn to do the same, until half or more of the group is dominated. They will pick out any players with low will saves and make them do the "against their nature" dirty work of attacking each other. Succeeding the save doesn't make you immune, and that means they can spam you with this ability.

The vampire's abilities do seem intended to spam in combat, on top of all problems presented by dominate itself. Vampires being able to create spawn also guides GMs toward gang tactics such as using their horse-shit energy drain slam to lower saves while other vampires spam dominate. The core of a "trap monster" is a monster whose abilities inform basic tactics that turn out to be insanely tedious or frustrating to deal with...like these.

And before we move on, I want to make it clear that while a vampire is intended to be a monster you strongly prepare against, there can be issues with this. The first and most obvious is if the GM doesn't think preparation is important and just randomly springs vampires on the party. Obviously. The other is that you have to understand that there is a limit to what the party can prepare with. Keep in mind that a severely exploited deficiency, like a low will save, can't be raised by "preparation". Your justification for shitty, un-fun tactics can not be "Then you shouldn't have played that class". "Preparation" is different from your character's build. The two can not be combined well, and build-centric preparation usually exists inside of a character aiming toward a specific goal such as vampire hunter. This is not usually practiced by the average player, because...well...what does he do when he's not fighting vampires? The more you specialize inside your build, the more things you've wasted in every other circumstance. In 3.X and Pathfinder, this does extend somewhat to gold. Promote your players having a "group fund", be mindful of what they can buy or prepare with, and intended preparation will go smoother.

Protection from Evil trumps this ability to dominate, but even this presents several issues. First off, as Chris and I found out, it's secretly some of the poorest wording ever put to paper. Your group absolutely will either interpret it wrong or argue over what the entry means. Here's what it does as clarified by the devs: It gives you a single additional save at a +2. If you succeed, you're golden. However, if you fail, you are still dominated, but the vampire can not give you commands. This is a problem for several reasons. First off, the vampire can dispel Protection from Evil with impunity because dispel magic can't get rid of dominate. In fact, because it's not a spell, your only hope is Break Enchantment. Second, Protection from Evil lasts a number of minutes and Dominate Person lasts days. With the vampire's infinite, unbeatable escape methods it's not really hard to envision a vampire simply fleeing and returning later that night, this time probably skirting the "true nature" re-save by luring the dominated player away. And finally, the way saves are set up? There's a lot of characters out there who don't really benefit from one extra save at a +2. Low-save classes like fighter can be given a whole handful of saves and still not make it.

Do you see how dominate fucking sucks? That's not even an uncommon or mean thing to do with dominate but it still ends with one or more PCs being completely out of the game for hours, or more! I can't believe I still have to say this to people, but whenever a situation you created leads people to want to go do something else instead of PNP gaming, which you all showed up wanting to do...it sucks!

Ahem. In non-combat situations, this is even worse. The vampire can go around simply tapping people with dominate over and over until he succeeds and eventually have control over an entire town or more. This is less an issue because it's perfectly fine for a GM to use dominate like this as a plot contrivance for some sort of fight with the vampire's "minions", but taken the wrong way the GM can easily create a wholly unfair situation by accident. Even a basic plot point such as "This whole town is under the vampire's control" eliminates much of the skill-based character's impact on the plot, since the vampire will know everything that's going on as soon as his minions report back. The only saving grace here is that a dominated person is easy to spot. However, that only gets the PCs so far: like I said, the only thing that can remove it is Break Enchantment, and no party of any level has many of those to throw around.

Weaknesses. AND FINALLY, here's the bit where I explain that their weaknesses are not a mitigating factor to an open fight. Because they're not, they're positional weaknesses that will only come up before the combat. Garlic wards a room and prevents them from crossing it. A cross being beared against them allows a save and takes an action...so that one's kind of out. Basically, garlic(along with their insistence on being invited) means the party can create a safe space to rest. That's it. Our local game saw garlic used to restrict mobility, but a team with lesser stealth bonuses, or even different circumstances would be unable to leverage this bonus. Remember the vampire gets a +8 bonus to perception; range penalties to perception plus my character's bust-ass goblin stealth bonus may be the only reason this plan worked out. Additionally, because she was hiding in a sewer and not say, a building where there are more ways to escape via gaseous form.

And about that. Sunlight destroys them as well as immersion in running water. You'll find it shockingly easy to avoid these two things and the smallest amount of planning on the vampire's part completely removes them from the table. No vampire is going to let themselves get into combat anywhere near where either of these things is a danger. These are precautions so simple as to practically be plot holes if not addressed, things as simple as putting their coffin in an inside room or, better yet, the basement. Even if you can grapple him and drag him around(all the while taking con damage from those bites) you're not going to drag him through ten or fifteen rooms to the castle's only window. He's immune to nearly all of the game's crowd control thanks to being undead, so your options for actually getting him into sunlight or water are very low. Essentially, these are weaknesses that the GM has to allow you to exploit and, at that point, they're a plot contrivance at best.

Really, that's the most irritating part. In practice, the impact of its abilities is amplified and its weaknesses are mitigated. It punches far above its suggested CR adjustment of +2. Is there hope, though? Well, unlike our other trap monster candidates, absolutely. The difference lies in theming and acceptance. With a vampire, we can remove offending abilities without destroying the fantasy of the vampire: What would you think about a vampire who can't dominate people? Would your mind jump to that being strange or unreasonable? Probably not. Especially not if he were bestial, animalistic or appeared as a nosferatu. We can't do this with the phase spider or the illithid: their offensive abilities are iconic in the case of a nosferatu, and in the case of the phase spider...really, it's all they have. Remove it and you're just fighting giant spiders. You can also bump the vampire's CR a point or two to compensate. You can build up the fantasy of the vampire in other ways. Watch some Hammer films for inspiration.

Some monsters really are better as masters, and the Vampire definitely is one of them. Given a mind toward being fair but challenging to the players, and an emphasis on making the PCs plan out the encounter, and vampires can be memorable. Leave Dominate out, and mitigate its gasous form invincibility by being fairly challenging over being simply realistic. Like I keep saying...trust me when I say realism isn't even in your top twenty for things you need to worry about in a PNP game.