Hello my name is Drakthars

[Zlorf]

My players met Drakthar the other night. He sent in a few bats swarms and then hid until a fighter came close enough to dominate. He failed with the first but managed to dominate the parties Goliath Barbarian who loves to trip. I forgot about the second will save if Drakthar asks the dominated person something that the PC wouldn't do, ie kill your friends. Anyways the Barbarian attacked the rest of the party and was going to go close to dying because of the loss of hitpoint when his rage wore off, before that happened, i checked the domination spell again and saw the part about the second roll. We did the second roll which he made, so Drakthar ended the domination, he had enough fun, so he turned gaseous and took off. (btw he was twice webbed and also made deaf by a thunder stone, so things didnt really go 100% his way.)

Re: Drakthars tactics: Devour the Soul (p93 SCAP-HC)I like the tactic, but like dont like Drakthar being in a grapple with someone while 4 other PC's try to smash him. If they all have magic or silvered weapons it wouldn't take long to take him down.

A interesting question came up, it some had a Arrow of slaying vampires, would it kill them outright if the vampire failed its save or would they just become gaseous?

Zlorf

[christian mazel]

The arrow of slaying will slay him, right in the heart.
No gaseous form here, there is no hp loss.

[DMFTodd]

>> Re: Drakthars tactics: Devour the Soul (p93 SCAP-HC)I like the tactic, but like dont like Drakthar being in a grapple with someone while 4 other PC's try to smash him

Let Drakthar find a loan PC to try that on. In area 19, there's a big attack on multiple levels. Have Draktahr hide behind the goblin archers up on the landing. Once a PC comes up there (probably alone), have Drakthar pounce.

[Solomani]

Zlorf wrote:

Re: Drakthars tactics: Devour the Soul (p93 SCAP-HC)I like the tactic, but like dont like Drakthar being in a grapple with someone while 4 other PC's try to smash him. If they all have magic or silvered weapons it wouldn't take long to take him down.

Zlorf, don’t short change Drakthar, its magic AND silver. That makes it a lot tougher. My party had to retreat, get all their weapons treated with alchemical silver (so -1 dmg) and spend a chunk of money of oil of bless weapon before they had any chance of taking him out.

I also had one scene where he attacked in wolf form in one of the rooms with a pool of water. He was beating them down when I dropped a hint that the pool was more like a river with the water trickling from east to west (so Drak couldn’t enter it).

They jumped into the water but the dwarf priest was too slow and Drak managed to trip him at the waters edge into the pool. He then jumped on him and started draining his blood. Took the whole party working together in a combined grapple to fling him off the dwarf. He then retreated no worse for wear.

Make sure you have a lot of fun with Drak. A vampire at this level for the party is really psychologically challenging.