Friday, August 24, 2018

The idiosyncracies of vampire killing

Vampires are difficult to kill because they do not stay dead due to special traits variously known as "misty escape" and "rejuvenation." When killed in combat they transform into mist and retreat to their coffin to recover. However, if you interpret the rules too rigidly you get a number of strange possibilities...

Generally, there are only a few ways to kill a vampire: sunlight, running water, delaying their misty escape, staking their heart and mutilating their body.
  • Sunlight or running water: Exposing a vampire to sunlight or running water will burn them to a crisp without any chance of misty escape.
    • Vampires that were aquatic in life are not harmed by running water.
    • Vampire lords are not harmed by running water and sunlight merely renders them effectively shaken, sickened and unable to use their supernatural powers. They cannot make a misty escape under sunlight, with incapacitated lords appearing to be normal corpses, but can escape as soon as the sun sets.
  • Delay their escape: A vampire in mist form only has a few hours to reach its coffin and ceases to exist if it fails to beat the time limit. This is probably the most frustrating method, for reasons that should quickly become apparent.
    • Vampire lords extend this to twenty-four hours and dread vampires extend this to two days. (Presumably this means they have until the time runs out or they are exposed to sunlight. Although gaseous form cannot be immersed in running water, I would think it should disperse under sunlight.)
    • Bastion Press' Out for Blood simplifies this by tweaking vampires to effectively teleport to their coffins instead, so the party never has to worry about whether the misty escape worked or not.
    • 13th Age simplifies this by removing the time limit. The vampire turns to mist and retreats to fight another day unless killed by an appropriate method (which varies by campaign at the GM's discretion).
  • Stake through the heart: Hammering a wooden stake through a vampire's heart will instantly slay the monster.
    • Only vampire spawn are destroyed immediately. (Only as of 5e. In 3.x, including Pathfinder, they are merely paralyzed a la head vampires.)
    • Head vampires are merely paralyzed and regain mobility if the stake is removed.
    • Vampire lords and dread vampires are neither destroyed nor paralyzed by wooden stakes.
    • Dread vampires are paralyzed only by blessed wooden stakes.
  • Corpse mutilation: vampires that are not destroyed by stakes, sunlight or running water need more effort. The mutilation methods are typically quite complex and the rules never explain what happens if you fail to follow them exactly (the descriptions below are abridged for clarity).
    • After being staked, head vampires may be destroyed by sunlight, running water or mutilating their body. The typical method of mutilation is decapitation followed by filling the mouth with holy waters. (Does the head reattach without the wafers?)
    • After being incapacitated, vampire lords must be decapitated, cremated, the ashes immersed in holy water, and scattered over running water or buried in consecrated ground. Even then, if the ashes are recovered, dried, sufficiently unhallowed, and placed within its coffin, the vampire lord will rejuvenate in a week.
    • After being staked, dread vampires may only be killed by sunlight, running water, or mutilating their body. They must be decapitated, anointed with holy water, ritually sanctified, and buried in hallowed ground. Even then, dread vampires may be revived by bathing their remains in the blood of a good person of equal level. The method for permanently destroying them is unique to each dread vampire.
    • Oddly enough, vampire lords and dread vampires are both permanently destroyed by trapping their gaseous form before they reach their coffin. This renders the overly complicated methods of mutilation superfluous, so I doubt the designers really intended them to work that way. 
    • Out for Blood introduces numerous vampire variants and each has a unique method of mutilation. The book explains at the onset that vampires may only be permanently disposed of by sunlight, running water, or specific mutilation.

There are also numerous weird rules about the vampire tiers and resting places and so forth that I will not explore here. For obvious reasons, vampires are some of the most house-ruled monsters out there. Hope you found this educational!

Research Links

Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)