Why don't 5e vampires kill plenty of commoners, raise an army of a gorillion vampire spawn under their loyal control...

>implying a vampire couldn't waylay a decent-sized caravan or even small hamlet with ease.
Let's look at the 5e vampire. I'm taking this from 5e d20 srd so this may be inaccurate. It has 16 AC, 144 hp, and attacks at +9 for 1d6+4 with its bite. This means it kills a commoner with an attack 95% of the time, assuming the 4 hp, 10 AC commoner in the book. Commoners attacking at +0 means they will his 25% of the time for 1d6 damage. So we'll round up and say for simplicity's sake he's taking 1 damage per commoner per round. Meaning killing him would require 16 commoners (the 16th triangular number is 153) mobbing him with attacks. Oh and they wouldn't all be able to attack him at once, so this is assuming shooting crossbows at him as well, which changes the damage. And this is assuming he's only using one attack. So he could easily get himself a dozen vampire spawn without much worry. Oh and I forgot about regeneration. Yeah... so it'd have to be like, 20 extra commoners. I could easily see a vampire walking into a hamlet of 30-50 people and killing them all. Especially since they wouldn't be ganging up on him. So yeah... that's 30 or so vampire spawn. In one night. If he wanted them.

I understand that the point here is that not having a limit on how many vampspawn a vampire can control, was an oversight by the 5e developers. Given that in 3.5 they were limited to 2x their hit dice in vampire spawn controlled. But, given the number of oversights by the developers in 3.5 (like allowing Locate City Bomb to exist), I think I'll let it go.

All those Vampire spawn then also have to eat, genius.

That's why you do 50/50 commoners and vampire spawn.

Probably the same reason modern countries don't harvest all their crops and turn it into ethanol to run vehicles

But the vampire has LEGENDARY ACTIONS, dumbass.

Yeah and they'll attack more villages in force, given the absolute shitload of hp they have, and feed. And more will be spawned. And more will have to eat. Sure not all of the victims will rise as spawn but some will. And yes, it's a ponzi scheme of sorts, and yes, it will collapse. But that might be the vampire's goal. I mean, if pretty much everyone is dead that would stand in his way, he can declare himself ruler and feed off of livestock or some shit.

So? That only makes him more effective. I'm not gonna calculate out how large a swarm of commoners needs to be to kill him. It's more than 50 or 60. Attacking him AT ONCE. Oh and he's also resistant to nonmagical attacks. LOL. Yeah he could solo a village of 100 people more than likely. It's a CR 13 monster. I mean, I know 5e is lower power than previous editions, but come on.

Absolutely nothing says vampire spawn (or vampires) need a shit ton of blood.

For all we know, they need only, like, a few sips each night.

True. I figured they needed a sip now and then. If that. I dunno about vampire spawn but they could prey on animals most likely. Point is, OP is right, a vampire could easily solo a village and have a huge number of spawn by the enxt morning. He just would need a cave to hide them all in.

>Ideally, Vampires practice a form of husbandry

50+ Dudes with spears and pitchforks could wrack it 30+ HP a turn, easy though. If they really went all-in a Vampire could get whittled down in like 30 turns, and that's assuming there aren't also people shooting at it with bows or throwing fire at it.

Because adventurers will appear and generally fuck shit up.

In my experience groups are actually pretty neutral towards vampires as long as they aren't going full human genocide and show at least a modicum of regret or consideration for humans.

God forbid it's a lady vampire.

So... Strahd's background basically. Become a vampire, kill your own army, raise the army back up as spawn and other undead, brutally control your domain, and have gypsies lure adventurers into the land to eat.

Right, so if they stick around to castles for spook-em-ups and not genocide nations they won't attract the attention of heroes.

>50+ Dudes with spears and pitchforks could wrack it 30+ HP a turn, easy though.
lol no. First of all they are commoners, so they are only hitting a 16 AC 25% of the time. Second of all, only 8 of them can attack him with those at once. Third of all it has resistance to non-magic shit which includes your rusty pitchfork. So 2 of those guys are hitting for half damage, so maybe 4 damage on average per turn. Oh wait, it's the vampire's turn? He just healed 20 hp. He's fine. And he can rekt 2 of those guys a round. They'd have to get a load of hits and crits to even bring him down appreciably. The vampire could basically "farm" commoners until some serious shit arrived to wreck him. Look at the fucking math I did up above, faggot. It's crude but it's not incorrect. Jesus Christ, I fucking hate when I put effort into a post, then some jack-ass not only doesn't read it (could be he just entered the thread and replies without seeing my post), but RESPONDS to it, contradicting what I said with no arguments, then I have to reply to explain it again. Pisses me off so much.

Not him but fire.

Eat that regen right up.

??
Fire doesn't deal radiant damage.

>all undead party
>getting ready for a major ritual to revive their dead lord loved by all
>cursed with vampirism and slain by his ambitious neighbours
>party was raised by his Christmas cake daughter
>everything is ready but there isn't enough residual evil in the castle yet
>sends them off to offer local monsters jobs
>getting werewolves to be groundskeepers
>ghost maids and skeleton butlers
>have to put meat in the walls
>she says it will keep better and keep the zombies from eating it all
>makes no sense but alright
>everything is almost ready
>daughter asks them to inform the nearby normal folk to keep away for the night
>spot a guy with a whip run into the castle while coming back

Kind of want to spring that on my group one day.

Maybe they dont want to?

Because all it takes is one Belmont.

>have to put meat in the walls
>she says it will keep better and keep the zombies from eating it all
I'd leave that out because it's too much of a red flag.

I had a cleric and paladin go in and just near wipe them while the bard sang about it mid lair and wizard hoping to not die.

An army of vampires wouldn't do well in open warfare. They're powerful, but they also have some crippling weaknesses. Sunlight, rivers, and unwelcoming home owners can all stop them. Which would make it very difficult to win a war.

Vampires are much better suited to manipulating things from the shadows. Ideally no one outside their direct control ever learns what they are, and therefore can't exploit their weaknesses.

>amass a large enough number to get noticed by being a moron and just wiping out village after village
>or by picking off 5-10 people a year from neighboring towns/cities
>assuming you aren't found out by roaming asshat adventurers, the eventual pally/cleric patrol to check for this shit, or by your new-animalistic spawn fucking up everything and getting you found out
>eventually are met with a barrage of holy imbued weapons/magic straight to the cranium

It has obviously happened in scenario's and settings throughout multiple different mediums but I never see it explained convincingly enough to work. If it's a city/town you really only have the lower classes to prey on with maybe (and that's a really big fucking MAYBE) a higher up merchant/noble class family in your pocket. But in a setting with vampires there are those who hunt them and they are seemingly always forgotten in these scenarios.

Why wasn't this place visited for fucking years with a detect undead spell being used once? Why were skilled members of the fringe villages required for society to continue in the larger communes not investigated once they left? Because unless you're in fucking twilight or not!Bavaria setting sunlight is just a bit of an issue as well as most other major weaknesses so when Bob isn't tilling the field, or Paul has recently decided to smith at fucking night when everyone is trying to get some shut eye people WILL begin to ask at least some questions.

When these scenarios are brought up it's always in a matter-of-fact way as if the people/creatures in these settings are too stupid to have ever thought of that, but then when you take off your vampire loli-waifu goggles you start to see that "Oh, maybe they don't run the world for a reason."

And six months down the line a cadre of well established vampire lords and other monsters quietly dispose of him in the night and clear out his horde of idiot monsters.

no but it does deal fire damage, which in not physical b/p/s or necrotic damage.

it irritates the other more powerful monsters in the area.
vampire vs dragon, vamp vs god/avatar/, vamp vs powerful cleric/pally sent by high priest with divination,...
all end badly for a vampire.

>Dragons
>Caring about what glorified corpses do assuming they get their treasure
>Gods
>Directly intervening because of a glorified corpse

I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of "Care" a more powerful being has to have at what basically amounts to an inconsequential revolution in their eyes.

You make me want to come up with a way to make it work. Could think of it as, focus on a small area at a time and convert the village equivalent of a district/sector or collection of humans. Once taking over a corner through vigorous turning the humans yourself each night. Try to get your new slaves to outdo production quotas while having their families intermarry to assume more control within the village itself. Once control us established through the constant turning of humans surround the village, with your surplus of hopefully now made crude weapons and armors. Give the humans an ultimatum and slaughter the rest. Move on to the next village with half the slaves maybe 2/3rds and send the rest to another nearby and claim monster attack destroyed the village. Bring your goods to give a sense of value. Subvert and destroy the first fee villages as quick as possible. Feeding the armies can be done with giving them the humans who refuse the ultimatum. As the countryside goes dark, migrate more of the people en masse, many of these villages won't know all these people by their faces, those who're recognized can claim they survived. By now adventurer parties could be sweeping through for monsters, as long as you contstantly move location each night you should be able to avoid discovery.

Ruin nearby villages and cities with a growing mass of refugees who only add to the horde.

If you want to take over a nation with an army you've got to march places, and if you try that with an army of vampires I imagine there's a significant risk of sunburns in the process.

Okay, seriously. We need to talk.

Use your enter key.

This is a goddamn block of text, and I ain't reading that shit.

Wouldn't it only take like 10 strong guys with stakes dog piling him to ruin his day though? I think assuming everyone in a village is a commoner is stretching it a little. There's bound to be some watchmen or travelers mixed in.

>focus on a small area at a time and convert the village equivalent of a district/sector
Most cities do not have a single church, there were multiple temples all over the place and (depending on the god) should be more than capable of having magical items in them that would detect the undead.

>Once taking over a corner through vigorous turning the humans yourself each night.
And no one is going to question their neighbors never leaving during the daytime? No one? Really?

>new slaves to outdo production quotas while having their families intermarry
Assuming you're talking about your thralls the whole cold to the touch skin, no reflection, inability to produce sperm/child, a deathly reaction to garlic (a very popular and easily produced crop), and (once again) a almost vampire-like hatred of the sun would be major obstacles that you could not avoid.

>Give the humans an ultimatum and slaughter the rest.
Assuming you even got this far.

>Move on to the next village with half the slaves maybe 2/3rds and send the rest to another nearby and claim monster attack destroyed the village.
An investigation force would go as well to see what happened. You don't simply walk to the police station and say "My wife was killed by a pack of wolves, don't worry about it though" and seriously expect them to NOT at least do something about said monster attack to stop it from happening in neighboring areas.

>Subvert and destroy the first fee villages as quick as possible.
Villages have caravans that move through. Word would go around that the village seems mostly uninhabited during the day. Some may talk of a plague as the few they saw seemed pale, maybe of some sort of cult as the non-pale people are deathly silent/easily argued as to why the majority are not out.

cont.

Replace "meat in the walls" with "seal live animals in tiny alcoves so their suffering attracts ghosts and wraiths".

>As the countryside goes dark
Which wouldn't happen at this point. An attempt to silence patrols into the area would eventually bring full squads of trained professionals to deal with what it could be. Be it plague, cult behavior, vampire activity, lycanthorp activity, etc. the most you can hope for is to only get a FEW clerics/paladins in that group that would be fucking idiots and not detect undead/disease/magic/whatever else they need to know what is going on.

>as long as you constantly move location each night you should be able to avoid discovery.
Until a pattern is noticed and the villages/towns/cities are put on alert and mobilized to deal with these intruders/attackers. Internet isn't a thing, but when you have magical enclaves in pretty much every city, flying mounts, and just the overall use of more than a handful of magical spells at your disposal you can easily justify that word can travel fast enough that you'd be facing armed opposition within a few weeks at the slowest. And by that time it could easily be assumed what the threat is, narrowed down, and specialists sent to deal with it.

>Ruin nearby villages and cities with a growing mass of refugees who only add to the horde.

Who arrive at night I assume? Who pass inspection when they need to enter after this few week period is up and the purge has already begun inside the populated centers and about to be outside as well?

Depend on setting, like everything else.

Maybe the vampires self-restrain to a degree. Arm enough of a ruckus, and the ancient vampire lords will come out of their ennui to smack you silly for your audacity.

Maybe the vampire-hunters are a real risk. Come out in the open, and you are toast with garlic.

Maybe the vampires are not comparatively as powerful as the people they prey on, and getting their castles set aflame during the day is as much of a death sentence as a stake in the chest.

Maybe they do, but thralls and vampire-spawn dry the resources of the land too fast, are too dim-witted to expand and eventually they and their lord wither away without being able to migrate fast enough.

Or maybe, just maybe they can't sire anything but other vampires. If the vampire lord were to create a vampire army, it could find that the loyalties of its children are fickle, and fresh inmortals actually like the land they lived in.

Or just have them make zombie traps, by letting hams and goat legs to attract them to specific places.

Were you too busy legalizing gay marriage?

>or by your new-animalistic spawn fucking up everything and getting you found out

Vampire spawn aren't animalistic.

They're SMARTER than commoners and town guards.

Checkmate.

>Depend on setting

And, you know, the fucking rules.

Go look at the rules for 5e vampires and how they make spawn. Try again, Jim.

Fuck.

Off.

Reddit.

because he gets staked dead while he is asleep if he doesnt practice subtlety

or he gets whipped to death

Who is Jim?

The corpses have to be buried afterwards, and the vampire can't enter homes without permission. Vampires are also super easy to wreck in daylight, so all that means is the entire town piles into the church before sunset and doesn't let anyone in because vampires can change shape. This might net the vampire a few spawn, but it's the sort of thing that'll basically just lead to the town being under a vampire siege and in need of some adventurers.

>Vampire spawn aren't animalistic.

Depends on the setting.

Wrong.

astranauta.github.io/bestiary.html#vampire spawn
>Int 11
>Wis 10
>Cha 12

Mental scores don't change when turned into a vampire spawn. They would be just as dumb in unlife as in death, but with ravenous hunger for blood and the vampire's complete control.

>tfw no vampire husband
Why live?

Only for PCs.

By that token, a Vampire Spawn is just an example of a vampire spawn, not the only statistical loadout they'll always have.

And commoners have Int 10/Wis 10/Cha 10.

Your point?

u smug bug

I wish there were a good vampire PnP system.

Or rather, I wish VtM and VtR weren't written by absolute human garbage and that it were possible to be anything besides an abject monster whose only moral choice that isn't explicitly blocked by some rule is to fucking ventilate themself.

Gods gain power from worship, so they would definitely care if a large amount of their followers were killed

Because then that one asshole on Smackjeeves would have nothing actually mechanical to complain about in their Tim Buckley copy paste tier comic.

Is your problem with the ethics of eating people or something else?

VtM/R are good vampire systems because playing an irredeemably awful monster is supposed to not be enjoyable.

doesn't make them fun, though. i'm just saying they're providing a proper service.

Could be as simple as - eating vampires is delicious but forbidden, except if they have been discovered by humans.

he's probably talking out of his ass about the masquerade rules (which barely exist in V20 because they realized it was shit) in general and how moral dilemma as a central point of gameplay wasn't fun for him

Yeah, that's a big one honestly.
The whole "feeding off people gives them mental illness" no matter how little you take.
So you can't be the clever little shit who feeds off 10 people a night for insignificant amounts of blood because that would be too noblebright.

>playing an irredeemably awful monster is supposed to not be enjoyable
Well they succeeded perfectly
Besides, who the fuck says vampires need to be irredeemably awful monsters? Certainly not the literature and pop culture these settings are based on.
You can get fucking vampire married in VtR by blood-bonding two vampires together, which the sourcebook describes as being about as close to being happy you can be as a vampire.
Naturally this is seen as abomination by all upstanding vampires and you will be blood hunted.

Moral dilemma is perfectly fun; you just literally cannot have one in which all of your options are explicitly "Nope we thought of that first, haha" 'd by the authors.

It's heavily implied one of the vampire spawn in CoS hasn't fed for over a year.

>Why doesn't the species that can't survive half of the day conquer the world

Why do you think?

Personally, I set those 50+ dudes as ten swarms of 5 using the swarm rules. My murderhobo PCs thought they could just murder the whole village, but when I did the swarm rules, it was a very close battle instead.

I fuckin love you

Cuss Bulettes

Should vampires be:

1. People who like blood and live forever

or

2. Horrible undead abominations, monsters infesting the corpse of a human being?

Doesn't sound viable in the long term.

Vampires need humans to live. Creating a giant swarm of dudes who are vastly weaker than you but also require sustenance from the same source and have the same weaknesses can only go wrong after the initial success.

Why do that when they could just dominate the king and rule the nation covertly with a lot less risk?

Unless your entire goal is to just throw a country into chaos and vanish into the literal wind.

Depending on how you became a vampire, that might well be it, too.

Vampires have different power levels, user.

Dracula is usually the apex of master vampire in fiction (usually the progenerator of the whole race).

Most vampires get gibbed by a couple of assholes with a wooden stick.

Considering what kind of shit D&D magic is capable of pulling - daytime is not a problem at all?

don't know about 5e

but vampires are suppose to be backstabbing assholes, they keep themselves in line

People who end up in awful and incredibly violent situations where their only option is to die, and on the verge of complete despair, the blood calls out to their will to survive regardless of the cost. They get given a choice to damn themselves, live by devouring the lives of others, and be scorned by the sun and all things holy for all time. To completely lose their humanity. In exchange, they get to live, and take vengeance upon those who forced the choice upon them.

So I guess sort of a halfway point.

youtube.com/watch?v=d_7bqhshyEg

In most settings I feel like the fact that most vampires hate vampires more then they hate everything else does this plan in.

>Vampires have different power levels, user.
Not in 5e, which stupidly got rid of monster templates even though those were a really good idea.

I mean, all they really did was save time, and there's no real reason you can't just re-implement them in the exact same style they were originally done.

Nothing in ANY rule set or even the legend suggests they can even starve. At best, it's just a blood lust designed to make them attack and kill humans and/or reproduce.

You can probably imagine a vampire taking blood and making a spawn roughly the same as sex.

>unwelcoming home owners

THEY CAN'T UNWELCOME YOU INSIDE IF YOU SET THEIR HOUSE ON FIRE.

YOU GONNA HIDE IN THERE WHILE IT BURNS DOWN, PEASANT?

I did something like this as well, but gave swarms of commoners the ability to form lines with spears and likes. Essentially I gave them parts of the sentinel and PAM feats and then a solid multi attack, if the PCs approached them from the front. It was sure hillarious to watch a murderhobo barbarian try to run into two rows of "swarms" who kept shutting down his movement before he could attack them.

A CR 13 vampire is the template you mong. The MM even gives you a spellcaster and warrior variation.

It's more that templates are a really shitty way to implement an idea versus making a monster (like a vampire or zombie) and then making their traits consistent and easy to adjust.

Locate City Bomb is an extreme and ridiculous extrapolation of bloat circumstances that any DM so presented with it would look at the math, reference the books, look back up at the player, and slap them with the DMG.

This. Though if you go into a game knowing about it ahead of time, you can create interesting scenarios
>Live stock is going missing
>Villagers point to a castle nearby where the lord left and the lady has never set foot outside
>The party went to check it out
>Standing in an old, beaten down entry way with a stone overhang, they knock on the door
>Polite woman steps out and asks what they want
>Players look at each other, confused, as they were sure she was a vampire
>One of them actually mentions that
>Lady steps out into the entryway and waves her hand under a sunbeam and nothing happens
>Party goes back to village to investigate some more
>Night time
>Players see an attack
>They can see a large bat shaped creature flying back to the castle
>They run over it
>When they get to the overhang, they realize the "hold" in the ceiling producing a sunbeam is still there
>Well after sundown
>They burst in
>Undead fucking EVERYWHERE
>Fight their way through until they run into the vampire lady
>Turns out the vampire lady was completely clueless that her home had become infested with "those nasty squatters"
>She shoos them out
>The bat? Oh that was her pet fluffies.
>The party all laugh and eat the vampire queens cookies.

That's a horrible idea

One vampire uprising and you awaken all the wizard sleeper agents. That's not to mention all the clerics and paladins that would pull themselves outta the wouldwork.

Nigger, you're cursed, it's the point of the setting.
Sounds like you'd rather play Mutants and Masterminds Goth Edition.

Animals.
Tigers aren't evil for eating your stupid face. Tigers with superpowers shouldn't be considered evil for eating your stupid face and those of lesser big cats either.

>Be Vampire
>Have hundreds of years of experiencing shit
>Live near small town
>Use Vampire knowledge to prove your worth to the local leaders and gain a small position of power in the town's governance
>Many years pass, small town becomes a large city, your small position now becomes an entrenched and essential office that you've held for decades
>Everyone is pretty certain you're a vampire at this point, but you're so essential to local governance and commerce by this point more people (particularly your fellow nobles) would consider it more trouble to get rid of you than to keep you
>Plus you helped to pass a law legalizing vampirism years ago, so any attempts on your life on grounds of being a vampire puts the law in your favor

Because conquering people politically is easier than conquering people physically.

And then wizards come

I swear to god, every one of these "5e doesn't do X" posts are made by people who haven't read the goddamn DMG.

Which is why you invest in magic schools early on, and publicly advocate for magical education. Now you have a group of local wizards that owe you their gratitude for allowing them to seek higher education.

it doesn't have factotum's