Need help finding / tracking a vampire forced gaseous?


Advice


Our 7th level group has an arch nemesis vampire. We have turned him gaseous on several occasions but he always seems to slip away. He has a contingency that when he turns gaseous he also becomes invisible. He has a magic item that gives him permanent non-detection. He only attacks us when he has an escape route - cracks in floor, walls or ceilings that we cannot get through quick enough to follow him. We only have access to 4th level spells at this point in time plus we can't really afford to memorize spells designed specifically to get him as he appears rarely. We tried making scrolls of gaseous form, locate creature, see invisible, etc. to try and follow/find him, but between a round or two lead while we use the scrolls, the invisibility, and the non-detection we can't seem to stay with him. I suppose sooner or later locate creature will get past his magic item with the DC23 non-detection and he will fail his save against the locate creature, but we estimate each of these is about a 25% success for us so we are looking at about 1/16 chance of getting a locate to work.

Any thoughts?


AT your level, it sounds hard. Welcome to having an arch-nemesis. How many times did Batman defeat the Joker only to have him turn up again?

You might try antimagic. If you can't create it yourself, maybe you can find an area already created and lure the vampire there. He might still go gaseous, but not invisible or non-detectable.

You could try targetted dispel magic on his contingency spells or other defensive magics.

You could get steel collars and never worry about him again... ;)

************************************************************************

Many ages ago, when this ancient planet was not quite so ancient, I was a player in a high-level campaign. We were going after the 1st vampire, the one who spawned all the others. We had to fight him on his own turf because he wasn't stupid enough to come to ours. He had similar tricks; every wall in his lair was porous like a sponge and tricked up with all the defenses to block scrying and teleporting (etc.).

But we outsmarted him. We brought a portable-hole-in-a-glassteel-bottle with all the air sucked out of it. Basically, a magical vacuum cleaner. Once our friend went gaseous, our cleric (me) unstoppered the bottle and sucked him right in. We then put the stopper back in using sovereign glue. Then our wizard took the bottle into space (teleport) and threw it into the sun (basically can't miss; thank you gravity) and teleported (using a magic item) back home.

Even if that vampire gets out of his portable hole, the sun will fry him through the glassteel. If he tries to break it, well, he's gas and the bottle is as strong as steel. If he escapes the stoppered bottle, he's still drifting toward the sun with no shade in sight. If he can do all that and survive, he won't be able to fly (no air) or teleport (no verbal component when there is no air) back to our planet. So he'll just freeze and fry for ages until he is sucked into the sun's surface - probably just drifting ash long before that happens. Or he'll stay in his shady portable hole until that happens. Either way, problem solved.


Erm, Vampires don't need to breathe. But anyway.

Glitterdust is a good, versatile spell that you should prepare often in any case.

Likewise, See Invisibility is something most of my characters cast before entering ANY dungeon if they have it available.

Your problem really seems to be lack of preparation with basic precautions than anything else.


Rynjin wrote:

Erm, Vampires don't need to breathe. But anyway.

Glitterdust is a good, versatile spell that you should prepare often in any case.

Likewise, See Invisibility is something most of my characters cast before entering ANY dungeon if they have it available.

Your problem really seems to be lack of preparation with basic precautions than anything else.

Thanks for the suggestions, I guess.

See invisibility is a self range spell so of limited use. It also only lasts 70 minutes at this point so I really don't see how characters could use it as a always on "basic precaution" but that was not my question in any event.

Glitterdust only last 1 rd/ level, so it's also not real useful for trying to follow him for an hour or two.

The problem we run into is by the time see invisibility and gaseous form are cast on the hunter the vampire is 40' away and has passed through one or more cracks. Even if we were willing to send only our mage after him he quite likely has a guardian at each of his coffins. Plus once you cast gaseous form to get through the cracks your movement is fly 10 for 2min/Level. The vampire forced gaseous is flying at 20 for up to 2 hours and can pass through as many cracks as he wants the entire time. There just doesn't seem to be a way to catch him if he picks the spot of his attack based upon having a proper exit path for his gaseous form. He is also mobile and actually moves his coffins.


Rynjin wrote:
Erm, Vampires don't need to breathe. But anyway.

Who said anything about breathing?

Back on topic, how about a good old-fashioned foot-race? Or, whatever you have instead of feet when you're a cloud of gas...

Have someone in the party with See Invisible or True Sight or Arcane Sight or any other trick to see the invisible vampire gas, and that character ALSO turns into gas. The race is on!

Though, at the finish line, one of them is a 0 HP vampire ready to be staked like a Roman deserter, and the other one is the guy with the stake...


Big Blue 22 wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Erm, Vampires don't need to breathe. But anyway.

Glitterdust is a good, versatile spell that you should prepare often in any case.

Likewise, See Invisibility is something most of my characters cast before entering ANY dungeon if they have it available.

Your problem really seems to be lack of preparation with basic precautions than anything else.

Thanks for the suggestions, I guess.

See invisibility is a self range spell so of limited use. It also only lasts 70 minutes at this point so I really don't see how characters could use it as a always on "basic precaution" but that was not my question in any event.

70 minutes is over an hour. Plenty of time to sweep a dungeon. Especially if you Extend it. 3k a pop for a Rod of Extend.

One guy in the party who can, for a good deal of time per casting, go "There's an Invisible Stalker!" or what have you is invaluable.

Big Blue 22 wrote:
Glitterdust only lasts 1 rd/level, so it's also not real useful for trying to follow him for an hour or two.

You don't need to follow him for an hour or two. You need to whack him with Glitterdust and gank his ass because at the slowest you move 1.5x his speed, and he's already used a Standard to cast Gaseous Form. 20 ft of movement vs 60 feet of movement in the first round.

You have access to magic. Things like Expeditious Retreat as an easy example.

You have 4th level spells. Dimension Door the party to the opposite side of whatever wall he slips through.

If you have an Alchemist, beat him at his own game with Fluid Form.

Ready a Dispel Magic at him. Or hell, Counterspell him since he's super predictable apparently and uses Invisibility EVERY TIME he goes Gaseous.

Your Hunter can cast Faerie Fire (from another scroll if necessary) as another anti-invisibility measure. Tag him with it on combat start.

What is your EXACT class make-up?


Use some divination magic -- yes, vampires have high Will saves, but sooner or later he's going to fail one. Scrying and divination are quite within the competence of a party that can cast 4th level spells, and you may be able to consult a local priest or wizard who can cast commune or contact other plane, or perhaps legend lore.


Elemental Body. Earth will give you Earth Glide. Air - you might be able to catch him in your whirlwind.

Wind Wall - prevent him from crossing/escaping.


DM_Blake wrote:
Rynjin wrote:
Erm, Vampires don't need to breathe. But anyway.

Who said anything about breathing?

Back on topic, how about a good old-fashioned foot-race? Or, whatever you have instead of feet when you're a cloud of gas...

Have someone in the party with See Invisible or True Sight or Arcane Sight or any other trick to see the invisible vampire gas, and that character ALSO turns into gas. The race is on!

Though, at the finish line, one of them is a 0 HP vampire ready to be staked like a Roman deserter, and the other one is the guy with the stake...

Vampire forced gaseous has a 20 fly speed. Character under gaseous form has a 10 fly speed, so not much of a race there. We tried that once.


Otherwhere wrote:

Elemental Body. Earth will give you Earth Glide. Air - you might be able to catch him in your whirlwind.

Wind Wall - prevent him from crossing/escaping.

We tried a wind wall too, worked for a while, but we still run into duration limits. He has 2 hours to get to his coffin.

Elemental Body I is one we have not tried and has some potential, still only 1 min/L though.


Haste will bump that to 40 BTW.

Big Blue 22 wrote:
Otherwhere wrote:

Elemental Body. Earth will give you Earth Glide. Air - you might be able to catch him in your whirlwind.

Wind Wall - prevent him from crossing/escaping.

We tried a wind wall too, worked for a while, but we still run into duration limits. He has 2 hours to get to his coffin.

Elemental Body I is one we have not tried and has some potential, still only 1 min/L though.

Here's another one for you: Locate Object on his coffin. Smash it while you have him trapped somewhere.


tonyz wrote:
Use some divination magic -- yes, vampires have high Will saves, but sooner or later he's going to fail one. Scrying and divination are quite within the competence of a party that can cast 4th level spells, and you may be able to consult a local priest or wizard who can cast commune or contact other plane, or perhaps legend lore.

This is basically our conclusion too. He will fail a save sooner or later. Our wizard makes a Locate Creature scroll every day and last time just rattled off 6 of them, but no luck getting through. We could add having the cleric firing off divination spells as well.


So it's the: "Additional damage dealt to a vampire forced into gaseous form has no effect" that's the problem, then, isn't it? Merely trapping him for 10 minutes doesn't help because you can't harm him.

Like Rynjin suggested, then. Tag him with Faerie Fire and Glitterdust.

Sunder/dispel/steal the item granting him non-detection before you cause him to go gaseous.


I'm doubtful he needs an item to cast Nondetection since he can cast Contingency.

I'm a bit baffled as to why this guy's such a wimp if he can cast 6th level spells.


Rynjin wrote:

Haste will bump that to 40 BTW.

Big Blue 22 wrote:
Otherwhere wrote:

Elemental Body. Earth will give you Earth Glide. Air - you might be able to catch him in your whirlwind.

Wind Wall - prevent him from crossing/escaping.

We tried a wind wall too, worked for a while, but we still run into duration limits. He has 2 hours to get to his coffin.

Elemental Body I is one we have not tried and has some potential, still only 1 min/L though.

Here's another one for you: Locate Object on his coffin. Smash it while you have him trapped somewhere.

We tried haste as well, duration too short to keep up the chase. Please remember we have forced him gaseous already by this time so he has 2 hours in gaseous form to get where he wants. We can't damage him anymore so we need to figure out a way to either 1) trap him for two hours or 2) trap him long enough to expose him to running water or light or 3) follow him to the unknown location of one of his coffins defeat, his likely guardian, and then stake him.

We tried overland flight once as well, but he just flew through cracks into areas we could not follow.

He never attacks us anywhere near running water or dawn.

We have never seen any of his coffins. he has followed us for a considerable distance so he apparently has a means to relatively easily move his coffins. We have tried locate object general coffin a few times, but the range is only 680 feet at our level. We did find a nice graveyard once with this, but otherwise have come up empty.

You mention smash it while we have him trapped. This is precisely what we are asking, how would you suggest we trap him somewhere?


Rynjin wrote:

I'm doubtful he needs an item to cast Nondetection since he can cast Contingency.

I'm a bit baffled as to why this guy's such a wimp if he can cast 6th level spells.

I don't think he is casting the contingency himself. He is a minion of our employer's arch nemesis sent to deal with us. The invisibility isn't really as big of an issue as trying to keep up with him or contain him after we force him gaseous.


And what is your party's composition?

What resources do you have?


Grappling is a classic. Gaseous Form doesn't make him immune.

Get him Pinned and you can go all night.

Shoving him into a Bag of Holding or something can work.

Command Undead is a thing.


Rynjin wrote:

Grappling is a classic. Gaseous Form doesn't make him immune.

Get him Pinned and you can go all night.

Shoving him into a Bag of Holding or something can work.

Command Undead is a thing.

My understanding is you can't grapple a creature in gaseous form, at least according to one of Pathfinder's designers.
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
You can't grapple a gaseous creature, that's obvious and we shouldn't need to state that in the rules. If a gaseous creature can slip through any crack because it's gaseous, it can easily slip through the gaps between your fingers or arms.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kc70?Grappling-VS-Gaseous-Form#1

I think it would be the same for bullrush to push him into anything.

Command undead has some potential depending on whether asking him to stand still for 2 hours would fall under "An intelligent commanded undead never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, ...." It would likely also be a fairly easy save for him, but worth a try.

Liberty's Edge

4th level spells, Wall of Ice can trap him for a little while if you have a Wizard, 1 minute per level. At 7th level you can create a 10ft Radius Hemisphere which should be able to trap it. But you also have stoneshape which can easily seal up those porous stone walls. Have your Cleric/Druid/Wizard concentrate on sealing the room while your other combatants hold it off.

This could be done on scrolls then you just wait it out … the only downside being if you completely seal a room you might have trouble breathing yourself if you seal every crack…

So you could trap it in ice while you seal the room; or you can just seal the room.

A Decanter of Endless water is a good purchase for any party at 9k. I’m sure a clever wizard could fashion a lovely stream with his ice sculptures if needed.

Carry wooden stakes, Simple weapon called shot for the heart Have a range of 10ft if you don’t want to get that close … Instantly immobilized and dead till removed. High penalties to this but a crossbow bolt or arrow may do the trick too. Hitting a creature in the heart is Challenging and as such would be at -10 or -12 it you are throwing your stake or using ranged. The Vampire still needs to fail a Fortitude save for the heart to be impaled.

If I was a vampire and each party member facing you pulled out wooden stakes I would be tempted to run away though …

Regards

Sic


Big Blue 22 wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Grappling is a classic. Gaseous Form doesn't make him immune.

Get him Pinned and you can go all night.

Shoving him into a Bag of Holding or something can work.

Command Undead is a thing.

My understanding is you can't grapple a creature in gaseous form, at least according to one of Pathfinder's designers.
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
You can't grapple a gaseous creature, that's obvious and we shouldn't need to state that in the rules. If a gaseous creature can slip through any crack because it's gaseous, it can easily slip through the gaps between your fingers or arms.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kc70?Grappling-VS-Gaseous-Form#1

Unless it's a FAQ, it's not rules, and SKR has said plenty of questionable things in the past.

As-is Gaseous is not the same thing as Incorporeal. Normal, non-magical weapons can hurt him. If he's solid enough for an Unarmed Strike to hit, he's solid enough to get grabbed.

Note: Your GM may disagree, but the RAW doesn't make him immune. Ask about it.

Big Blue 22 wrote:
I think it would be the same for bullrush to push him into anything.

While I could understand disallowing the grapple, I would call shenanigans if he can't be Bull Rushed.

Big Blue 22 wrote:
Command undead has some potential depending on whether asking him to stand still for 2 hours would fall under "An intelligent commanded undead never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, ...." It would likely also be a fairly easy save for him, but worth a try.

You don't need to tell him to stand still for 2 hours. Tell him to, on foot, lead you to his coffin. Or hell: Tell you the location.


Otherwhere wrote:

And what is your party's composition?

What resources do you have?

We have a paladin, shaman, wizard(evocation), rogue, & fighter. all 7th level. We are generally geared to inflict maximum damage as fast as possible. We typically will turn him gaseous either late in the first round or early in the second round of combat.

We have some access to higher level items through our employer who has an incentive to thwart the vampire assassin. For instance we recently got an experimental magical vacuum bottle that when opened will suck in all the air/gas in a 10'r and then cap itself automatically. We are going to try next time around.


Gas-trap cylinder

Rather expensive, but designed for specifically gaseous creatures.


Otherwhere wrote:

Gas-trap cylinder

Rather expensive, but designed for specifically gaseous creatures.

There we go, that's what I'm talking about!


Big Blue 22 wrote:
We have some access to higher level items through our employer who has an incentive to thwart the vampire assassin. For instance we recently got an experimental magical vacuum bottle that when opened will suck in all the air/gas in a 10'r and then cap itself automatically. We are going to try next time around.

"Why didn't you list that among our assets in the first place?" Wesley, The Princess Bride

Sounds like the GM was giving you something like the gas trap anyway.

Yeah - they made the whole "immune to damage when gaseous" a bit tough to deal with, especially with any GM who will justify: "Oh - there's always a crack in the wall/floor/ceiling he can escape through!"

Good luck!


Otherwhere wrote:
Big Blue 22 wrote:
We have some access to higher level items through our employer who has an incentive to thwart the vampire assassin. For instance we recently got an experimental magical vacuum bottle that when opened will suck in all the air/gas in a 10'r and then cap itself automatically. We are going to try next time around.

"Why didn't you list that among our assets in the first place?" Wesley, The Princess Bride

Sounds like the GM was giving you something like the gas trap anyway.

Yeah - they made the whole "immune to damage when gaseous" a bit tough to deal with, especially with any GM who will justify: "Oh - there's always a crack in the wall/floor/ceiling he can escape through!"

Good luck!

Using experimental items is always a last resort. We asked them to make the item, but experimental items from our employer have about a 50% chance of functioning properly, a 25% chance of exploding and likely killing half the group and a 25% chance of doing absolutely nothing. An actual item with a description is much better for us.

Do you think the gaseous creature has to save every round in the area of the trap or just once?


Are you sure your GM WANTS you to kill this guy?

He seems to be going way out of his way to make sure you have no viable options for dealing with him long term.


Rynjin wrote:

Are you sure your GM WANTS you to kill this guy?

He seems to be going way out of his way to make sure you have no viable options for dealing with him long term.

Yeah, the assassin has been hired specifically to kill us, so we have to deal with him.


meh, wall of force scroll for 1,125gp around the vamp to keep him from escaping topped off with a few sunburst scrolls. Admittedly they're 3,000 gp each and off the druid list, but someone should have a decent enough UMD to have good chance to roll a DC 35 check, and if they fail just use another scroll (there's also dust of emulation). 3 should be enough. If you're using a patron's resources there is little reason not to bring out the big guns.

If high level scrolls are off the table, use a scroll of resilient sphere(level 4 wizard spell, is he more than 7' tall?) to contain the vampire for 7 minutes. During those 7 minutes you can use the scrolls of gaseous form and trace and such to prepare to follow the vamp to his coffin, being ready to go when the wall of ice wears off and perhaps crush some garlic to give you one round of free action while he recoils from the garlic. If you're like me however, you use those 7 minutes to use a scroll of stoneshape (level 4 wizard spell) to enclose the vamp in a resilient sphere in an outer airtight stone sphere. 2 hours latter when the vamp cannot return to his coffin he is dead instead of undead.


Forcecage not Wall of Force. The wall only makes a flat plane...wall.

Or, don't force him into gaseous form. Grapple, pin, stake. While having Death Ward up.


Just came across this the other day: Force Net

Cheaper and less weight than the Gas-trap cylinder.

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