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
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.
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