What would you do with the current Type/subtype system?

[PhoneLobster]

Yes thats right, the original genuine one true way of killing a REAL Vampire with several random steps and a nailing to the ground routine.

D&D should be realistic in representing how real people really killed vampires.

Why many a time while out vampire hunting I found myself wondering, heck why don't D&D vampires hop on one leg and fail to see me when I hold my breath?

Vampire mythology is a muddled mess of confused peasants mixed in heftily with a wide variety of contradictory Hammer horror films (and at least in my case a strong dose of Mr Vampire).

The ORIGINAL REAL use of the wooden stake was Vlad the Impaler using great big sharpened wooden poles onto which the entire bodies of his still living soon to be proven mortal enemies were impaled to kill them in slow public agony.

It only got into the mythology because peasants and folklore a dumb and easily confused, a random selection of items are remembered and jumbled around until not one clear story but a whole spluttering mess of a myths come out.

More modern vampire mythology for a variety of reasons, like keeping consistency for at least the length of a movie plus spin off sequels, is much clearer and more fun. And in that mythology a stake through the heart tends to kill a vampire.

[squirrelloid]

1153902348[/unixtime]]Well to be fair, the entire thing about the staking a vampire was so it would stop moving while you followed the four easy steps of vampire killing:
1) cut off the head
2) fill the mouth with holy wafers
3) burn the head and body separatly
4) scatter the ashes

The fact is, that's a very specific and wierd weakness so staking became the thing to do.

Thats way to much work. Stake them and leave them out to see the sunrise.

The point of staking a vampire is not just to stop him from moving, but to stop him from turning into a cloud of bats/what-have-you (represented in D+D by gaseous form) and running to his hidey-hole.

An attack with a stake should probably force the vampire to make a fortitude save (against a DC based either on damage dealt, or 10+character level/2 + str mod) or be paralyzed as long as the stake is there. However, we could make it a scarily hard DC that it only has to save against on a critical too (admittedly, any serious fort DC is pretty scary for undead).

But a stake is basically death because you can do whatever you want (hello sun), not actual death except in crazy vampire movies with more vampires (read bodies) than they want to show being carted outside.

[Digestor]

1153894898[/unixtime]]Yeah, I'm with Crissa. The idea that you can only kill Vampires with carefully prepared and powerfully enchanted wooden stakes is... well, retarded. It gives vampires an unnessissary powerup and it really has no basis in legend. I've heard that you have to use specific TYPES of wood, and hey, I'll even go with Nidhogg's Cemetery Wood theory because of the whole sympathetic magic angle, but fer crap's sake, if you're blessing it or carving eldrich runes on it, then I don't see why you can't use a sword and get the same undead-slaying properties added to something MEANT to be a weapon.

I mean, the reason for the stake, the actual reason they used it, WAS TO NAIL THE fvckER TO THE GROUND so it couldn't get up. You guys are SERIOUSLY overthinking this.

-Desdan

To be perfectly honest, the only reason I reccomended that was entirely as a response to your query of "well they'll just use arrows". I have no problems whatsoever with simple stakes being used, it just seemed as though you didn't like the idea of stakes being the method. But, while I'm at it - wouldn't it be kind of silly for a powerful enough party to bust into a vampire's keep, bitchslap him around a bit - then take the chair he was sitting on, break the leg off of it and ram it into his heart? Vampire's would have no incentive to purchase any kind of wooden furniture (or any kind of furniture since you can get the same effect out of anything the same shape/size and density!). The economy would take a drastic hit, vampires are rich and they provide those measly peasants with a lot of funds, despite the fact that they then prey and terrorize them... if I was a vampire, I really wouldn't want to be in constant fear of my own dining table... or chair... or desk.. or door... or (enter random piece of home here).

As for weapons being used instead of stakes... that was basically my main idea, I even mentioned it...

If silver, garlic, crucifixes, water from a church's chamber pot or whatever series of mythological banes you follow can work, why not ... sayyy a weapon blessed by a good god of life or some such to be used for the extermination of the undead? Or just some mystical weapon for that matter, say like... the mace of disruption?

As for no basis in legend (about the runes on stakes)...

[Crissa]

Well, in Frank's campaigns, we have:
[*]Fought hopping vampires.
[*]Fought vampires that hunted us through scent.
[*]Fought vampires that couldn't cross running water.
[*]Fought vampires who could only be permanently killed by use a wooden stake and a coup de gras, followed by the cutting and the burning to make sure no one would bring the guy back to unlife.

And honestly, I didn't see anything wrong with that. Why make it tougher than it has to be? Make them immune to anything but critical damage, I don't care.

Just stop with the rules that say I both can and can't kill the thing with a coup de gras with his chair leg.

-Crissa

...Unless his chair is made of bone, which might explain morbid furnature...

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Digestor: Hey Neat! My legends don't have slick computer-generated graphics. How much did that one run you?

-Desdan

[Digestor]

1153958109[/unixtime]]Digestor: Hey Neat! My legends don't have slick computer-generated graphics. How much did that one run you?

-Desdan

Tee hee! It's freeware, you can get it from www.eLegends.com/trialv92_install.exe - though I'd reccomend you uninstall any previous versions before installing the new one....

(About 2 minutes and 30 bucks to take the screenshot out of Baldur's Gate 2, incidentally, I was recently whiping out the vampire lair, convenience ahoy!)

Kay, now to be serious... (Crissa and Desden), I'm 100% for the DM of the current game to just house rule on how to kill the vampires in that campaign, to make up as many vampire types requiring different ways to kill, and to come to a consensus with the players as to an agreed upon standard or whatever else you can imagine. So I'm not only for using enchanted stakes, weapons or chair legs, but I'm also for bathing them in holy water, having a small gem that entraps the light of the sun and shoots it out in one focused 'zap', beheading, burning, and possibly a combination with one, more, or all of the above. Vampire's aren't equal, so I guess methods of slaying shouldn't be the same either...

It's just that I LOVE the (il)logic of vampires and vampirism and so I took the opportunity to hop in.

I'd also like to ask a 'logistics and dragons' question - do vampires have normal bodily functions? That is to say, aside from needing blood to live... do they also need vitamins, nutrients, water, 2 days off a week, alone time, to go to the bathroom, a shoulder to cry (evily) on (with evil tears of evil, in an evil way), etc. ? Or is it all covered in that sweet package when you hock your soul?

[Nidhogg]

I don't even make vampires *need* blood, they just crave it, and don't fight the craving because they are all jerks (because in my homebrew campaign setting, negative energy *is* evil, in a literal sense, so there are no good undead. Ever).

[The_Matthew]

1153923435[/unixtime]]

1153902348[/unixtime]]Well to be fair, the entire thing about the staking a vampire was so it would stop moving while you followed the four easy steps of vampire killing:
1) cut off the head
2) fill the mouth with holy wafers
3) burn the head and body separatly
4) scatter the ashes

The fact is, that's a very specific and wierd weakness so staking became the thing to do.

Thats way to much work. Stake them and leave them out to see the sunrise.

Well, originally that wouldn't do because vampires only had problems with sunlight because they were nocturnal. Hell original vampires weren't even supposed to have fangs, they just cut you open and drank from the wound or bled you into a bowl.

[Digestor]

1153980409[/unixtime]]I don't even make vampires *need* blood, they just crave it, and don't fight the craving because they are all jerks (because in my homebrew campaign setting, negative energy *is* evil, in a literal sense, so there are no good undead. Ever).

While the notion of not having a ghoul for a pet, a skeleton butler, and a wise-cracking ghost side-kick makes me frown, I do find some solace in the hilarity of watching a skeleton be summoned, fight off the enemy then turn around and start drawing upside down crosses in the durt, scratching in "SLAYER!!!" into whatever he/she/it/robby can find, and sodomizing anything and everything, even itself.

[Save_versus_Stupid]

1153980409[/unixtime]]I don't even make vampires *need* blood, they just crave it, and don't fight the craving because they are all jerks (because in my homebrew campaign setting, negative energy *is* evil, in a literal sense, so there are no good undead. Ever).

Is a Lich's shirt by definition, "evil" if he's doing his laundry? If so, when does his shirt stop being evil?

[Nidhogg]

Just because someone *is* evil doesn't make everything he *does* evil, it just makes doing evil things part of his nature, and make doing good things not rank particularily high on his 'to do' list. 'Normal' actions that aren't an evil act don't suddenly become 'bad' if the person doing them is evil, so a lich who ambles down the street isn't ambling evily, he's just getting from point 'a' to point 'b' (though it probably *is* to do something that is evil, like kill puppies or vote Conservative).

[Digestor]

Damn, I liked Frank's explanation of undead being utterly evil more, it just made those 5 minutes inbetween battles so much more... uhh... sodomized... I guess... yeah, not sure where I'm going with this.

Do Lichs even wear shirts?

[Nidhogg]

I don't think my theory is incompatible with Frank's, but as it stands, I have already established the nature of the undead and negative energy in my campaign's canon. I took most of established RAW, removed crap that I didn't like, and clarfied exactly what kind of acts turned you in to what types of undead when you die (with exactly who gets undead-ed left up to DM fiat). I also tinkered around with creature types, certain character classes, and revised and clarified the alignment system, but that's beyond the point. Well, except for the creature types thing, I guess.

[fbmf]

[TGFBS]
Alignment discussion added to the classic"Alignment sucks" Thread.
[/TGFBS]

Game On,
fbmf