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So in a recent campaign the players fought a Vampire (the one from the bestiary). Due to strange twist of fate the players managed to destroy the Vampire's coffin while it was out looking for them. Then the players fought the vampire and its guards and managed to bring the vampire to 0 hp. This brings us to an interesting question.
As stated in the vampire defensive abilities: "It must reach its coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed. (It can normally travel up to 9 miles in 2 hours.)"
Since the coffin did not exist, the vampire could not reach the coffin in 2 hours. So it was utterly destroyed. The question is what happened to his equipment? Does the vampire materialize and then turn to dust?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
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the vampire could have a second coffin and got away. That what I would do good chance for reoccurring villain especially since they think they destroyed the coffin.
That would be cool, but they followed the vampire. The party had a summoner with a flying eidolon and a hunter with a flying companion. They were hoping to stake him at his coffin, but there was no coffin. The game was ended there for the night as the gaseous form floated confused, reason for the ending was due to time(it was late).
I would have had the vampire run to and materialize in its back-up coffin home (or the destroyed coffin WAS the back-up/decoy).
Failing that, since the effect says the vampire is "utterly destroyed" but does not say the vampire AND its equipment, I suppose at the end of 2 hours the vampire is "utterly destroyed" and at the expiration of the gaseous form (end of its duration) or at the moment the vampire is destroyed (whichever is longer), the equipment reverts from its current misty state to its normal solid state and falls to the ground.
the vampire could have a second coffin and got away. That what I would do good chance for reoccurring villain especially since they think they destroyed the coffin.That would be cool, but they followed the vampire. The party had a summoner with a flying eidolon and a hunter with a flying companion. They were hoping to stake him at his coffin, but there was no coffin. The game was ended there for the night as the gaseous form floated confused, reason for the ending was due to time(it was late).
Poor vampire. Bonuses on INT and WIS and it had all the time in the world to prepare for this, but it STILL couldn't figure out to put a backup lair far underground, using its mist form to follow tiny gopher holes or even seep through sandy soil. A few hundred feet beneath the floorboards of its normal coffin room should have done it.
I guess those INT/WIS modifiers aren't all they're cracked up to be...
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Vampire returns to solid form and crumbles to dust, leaving its loot behind.
Well, if the players are clever / lucky enough to destroy the coffin before the vampire, why not reward them with a victory.
If that's not satisfying enough, let it reform after a while, but crumble more and more every round. It could try to kill the one who destroyed the coffin, perhaps that makes another exciting battle - time is running out for the vampire, but it might be able to catch them off-guard...
If it's about the loot: The crumbling vampire could swallow it and challenge the party to get it...
Eh, I would treat 'utterly destroyed' as exactly that.
It doesn't specify gear destruction when you fall into lava either.
Go with the Hollywood trope:
Crumbling to dust affects even the clothes, because... reasons.
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Thanks. These are all good ideas. I was reading up on Disintegrate and the spell doesn't affect equipment either so it makes sense that the equipment materialize after his untimely end.
As for reason why vampire was not expecting this was that the heroes had barely been there for less than 1 day. The vampire had moved in recently.
I'd give the players their Win. They got him on his wrong foot. let them enjoy it.
To the issue of "utterly destroyed" - It doesnt say "and all of its possesions". --> he becomes corporeal again, but as he has no coffin in which to start regenerating, crumbles to dust.
Even the Desintegrate-Spell leaves gear intact.
The lava-analogy is not fitting to this case, as lava is a continous damage effect.
The only effect in which a one-time effect also destroys the equipment is of a Ancient red Wyrm's Incinerating Blast. in which it is explicitly stated that the gear gets destroyed if the burned character dies.
First, Go party for getting to the coffin! That's like getting a lich's phylactery; it's a big morale boost.
Unless the vampire has some sort of artifact that the party shouldn't get, he should rematerialize, make sage comments about their luck/wisdom, become dust and leave his gear.
If you want to spice it up, have him control a bunch of local wargs before he dissolves, giving a nice combat at the loot site.
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if you don't want the vampire to die, an easy solution is to have a small hole in the wall or floor that they didn't notice before. They can watch the cloud squeeze through the hole into another chamber that has no door, the backup coffin would be completely surrounded by rock, except for the small tubes/holes that go to the surface for when it needs to leave.
Of course, if it just arrived, that would not be possible since it would have required quite a bit of construction.
Though the best is just to let them win. If you had further plans then make a new boss of the vampire that is the REAL villain.
Watch out for Adamantine Daggers though, some people think they cut through rock like warm butter!