Café de Nuit

Recently IMC this happened:

For those bored to read through all this, read the end

- Wizard casts locate creature (vampire) and roams the land for a few days (only at morning). He locates a vampire's lair from the safe distance of 600' from the entrance where the dominated guard hasn't noticed him.

- Wizard casts scry on the vampire the next morning and founds the coffin resting in the bottom of a small (10' radius) but deep (10') pond full of stagnant water. He studies the pond carefully. He sees the feet of a couple of dominated humanoids. The humanoids see the sensor of the scry and jump in the pond,wake the (lightsleeper) vampire and get out again.
The wizard is under the effect of a magic circle against evil so the gaze attack of the vampire doesn't work at all. The wizard freely studies carefully the vamp's pond.

- The adventurers get away from the inn and within 2 hours they are in a stream outside the village. The wizards studies the area carefully. It is a place without any trees or any considerable shadow in 30' - 40' distance. The river is about 15' wide in this place and about 4' - 5' deep in the middle.

- The wizard casts water breathing on himself from a scroll, invisibility, polymorph, fox cunning, mage armor, mirror image, fly and the cleric casts again circle against evil on the party.

- The wizard casts teleport on himself and teleports in the vamp's pond. Since the dominated thralls are aware that someone may intrude since about 2 hours ago they were scryed upon, some guard the entrance some check the pond.
One of them notices the water level of the pond rising slightly as the wizard's volume is added in the mass. The wizard get's the initiative though! All humanoids except that one are considered surprised and they play quite later than the wizard.

- The wizard casts web in the surprise action. The pond is about 10' radius, the web has 20' radius. So the web ancors on floor and ceiling in a ring around the pond and the 10' radius that would ancor in the pond disappear as they don't have somewhere to ancor.
Both the humanoids that are near the inner ring of the web loose the reflex save. The one that is not surprised spends the time trying to struggle free of the web and enter the pond to wake its master.
The vampire in its coffin in the lake fails the listen check to listen the spellcasting.

- In the first round, the wizard flies up and casts greater shadow conjuration: solid fog around the pond. Now the thralls have to deal with both web and solid fog! Even if they realized that the spell was illusionary (they didn't) they would need much time to disentagle them selves from the web in the thick cloud.

- In the second round the wizard flies down, grabs the coffin and teleports to the river spot about 10 miles from the vampire's lair. The vampire succeeds in its listen check this time and understands that somebody is grabbing the coffin and talking. It spends the round to unbolt the door from the inside (the coffin is bolted and trapped to prevent easy opening). The coffin with the vampire, the water and the reinforcement was weighting about 380 - 400 lbs. The teleport limit was 450 lbs and the wizard. It worked.

- The vamp gets the initiative in the 3rd round. As they appear in the riverbank (around 2 pm in July) it kicks open the coffin's lid dealing 5 subdual to the wizard who hasn't let loose the lid yet.
Instead of its watery grave full of dominated thralls, the vampire faces the summer's sun after 120 years while the river's water flows over it suddenly. Around it there are 2 people holding garlic (in each river bank), a man holding a holy symbol and a man drippind water and with a bloody nose.
The vampire screams as hell let loose and spends the partial action to shut itself again in its watertight coffin.

- The chars merrily break the coffin from a distance. Once water starts getting in the coffin, the vampire (secretly admiting defeat) opens it and for the first time since 120 years jumps over running water (yes, I broke the rules) and lands 10' feet from the PCs (holy symbols, garlik etc).

And dies there. As the sun was scortching its flesh to ash it layed a simple curse (Damn you for eternity mortals!) and bye-bye!

In a few words:

The wizard scryed upon the vampire at morning, prepared himself, teleported in its lake, teleported the vampire with its coffin in a sunny river and destroyed the vampire using most of its known weaknesses. (Running water, garlic, sunlight, holly symbols).

One problem with this tactic is that the spell description for Teleport says:

This spell instantly transports you to a designated destination, which may be as distant as 100 miles per caster level. (...) You can bring along objects as long as their weight doesn’t exceed your maximum load. You may also bring one additional willing Medium or smaller creature (...) per three caster levels.

Emphasis mine. I hardly think the vampire was all that willing.

Indeed. . . But the coffin was. Aslo the vampire was sleeping at the time, so I considered it a corpse.

alhoon wrote:Indeed. . . But the coffin was. Aslo the vampire was sleeping at the time, so I considered it a corpse.

Fair enough, although I think I'd still have given it a Will save to avoid teleportation - it might set a risky precedent for later adventures. But kudos to your players, it was a very clever and effective tactic.

Agreed, kudos to your players!

This is a tricky tightrope, because on the one hand you want PC's to be clever and plan ahead, but on the other you don't want them to have it too easy. This was a good hunt. Next time throw a wrench in the works, especially if they stop thinking and just use the same tactic again.

Perhaps one of the thralls gets webbed with his or her head underwater, and the wizard has to either free the person or let an innocent person die.

Perhaps a torch from one of the thralls (or a wall sconce, etc) sets the web on fire, and the thralls are horribly burned.

Perhaps the creature retreated to another coffin when it realized that one was compromised.

Perhaps the creature flips the coffin over and floats downstream in it, protected from sunlight and from running water (the water in the coffin would be still).

Perhaps the creature has unknown allies. What a surprise when the PC's opent he coffin in the river and find and ancient dead, or a golem!

Just random thoughts. Try not to punish them too hard for being clever.

DeepShadow wrote: Perhaps one of the thralls gets webbed with his or her head underwater, and the wizard has to either free the person or let an innocent person die.

Perhaps a torch from one of the thralls (or a wall sconce, etc) sets the web on fire, and the thralls are horribly burned.

- Not all vampires have their coffins underwater. So of course this will not work all the time.

DeepShadow wrote: Perhaps the creature retreated to another coffin when it realized that one was compromised.

- The coffin was the spare one. I haven't put the whole story here. They have already scared the vamp out of the first one. It was a coffin made of iron, behind a 3' thick wall with a few cracks and without a door, so that the vamp could go in gaseous but nobody else could come in. However the vampire knew they had teleport/scry from a previous encounter. So that coffin was a suicide. The party could teleport in during the day. The vampire was a strong fighter but not that strong as a whole party prepared with spells like stoneskin, circle protection etc.

That's why he put the coffin in the water and had about 7 dominated thralls looking for a scry sensor. From the 1st confrontation until the second, it had just a day (with only 5 hours of night in between). So he placed the spare coffin in the pond, hoping the wizard didn't have water breathing. Just in case he put all his thralls around the pond.

In the 1st encounter he has planned on this tactic (scry/teleport). He was slowly drinking the blood of a paralyzed victim in a mausoleum, with his 2 vampire spawns hidden in adjustent rooms. The PCs scried upon the vamp and saw him killing someone perhaps turning him to another vampire or vampire spawn. Also the vampire saw the scrying sensor. The PCs had no option rather than teleport in instantly and fight the vampire along the vampire spawns without casting any spells (except the circle against evil). The Mausoleum's entrance was blocked by the bat swarms the vampire has summoned when he saw the sensor. That way even if it was dropped to 0 hp or less, it would have time to escape.

The vampire fought along with the vampire spawns the unprepared PCs and lost. He was an 8th level mature vampire fighter and they were an 8th - 9th level party. It was a good and dangerous fight, but I knew the PCs will win (the vampire wasn't sure, but devised the sceme just in case).

About the cleverness:
Of course I don't punish them for being clever! The vampire has already lured them to a fight. Why should I play the same fight again instead of enjoying a careful planning?
We had some fun with vampire trapped in the coffin in the shallow river that threatened and shouted to the PCs that he is invincible, that the sun isn't pure enough to harm him, that he is immortal, that he will be back etc.

To be honest, since I was playing the wizard, alhoon had helped with the plan. I had some ideas and he made them better, so he should get the most applauses!

However, we will not try to do the same tactic again because:

1)It won't be such fun

2)Some vampires (as Nosferatu) have no problem with running water and/or sun. Some vampires are wizards and they can teleport away. So since we will not be sure with what vampire we have to deal, we will not just go around and search with "locate creature" other vampires.

3)He threated me that he will roll a dice20 and that will be the vampire's level!

My mistake! I thought this was their original confrontation with the vampire! No, that sounds like an excellent follow-up combat!

Keep us posted on the rest! Do you have an ongoing journal?

DeepShadow wrote:Keep us posted on the rest! Do you have an ongoing journal?

Ehhh, Nope.
I don't know how to keep Journals, we play with my sister a few hours each day so it would be very difficult to keep a journal and the Campaign (while in Ravenloft) is quite out of the normal Ravenloft mood.