Include this in 5e or I will FUCK YOUR FACE

[Avoraciopoctules]

Remote detonated exploding runes aren't really that great of an attack anyways. They are loud. They are obvious. If you are going to come up with an elaborate set up to throw them at castle walls from far away, then you are giving the vampire huge amounts of time to rally the enemies you would have fought as individual dungeon bosses inside and scrying so that they'll be forewarned about some PC abilities when they all attack at once.

[DSMatticus]

I think the point that tussock was trying to make was along the lines of "if you're gonna try to do some cheesy-ass bullshit like telescope-detonated ER, then fuck your couch".

Yes, and I get that, but ER cheesiness isn't the point of the post. Lowish mid-to-mid-level D&D characters have plenty of ways to completely obsolete physical obstacles, up to and including demolishing structures without ER cheesiness. D&D is notoriously not good at the type of story Tussock described.

[Username17]

Yeah, D&D parties would respond to a vampire holding up in his compound the way Seal Team 6 responded to Osama holding up in his.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

So they aren't going to pound the bunker with bombs until it collapses? They're going to storm the place and start shooting at people at some point?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011 ... t_schmidle
Works for me.

Sneaking into the vampire count's territory on a magic carpet. Everything's invisible. Dodging away from vampire bats so you don't show up on sonar. Flashing back to when you died from the blast of your own explosive-rune grenade when you fell into an ambush on a prior training op.

Multiple parties of Imperial Knights on standby in case things go sour. 2 Dragon Knights recalled so you know you'll have the fire support to fight your way out if you are detected too early. Imperial spies have acquired blood samples from NotDracula's mortal children and concocted a potion to protect you from some of his magic.

Risk of catastrophic political consequences if a dragon or strike team is brought down and captured in the Darklands. Entry to the castle via a casting of passwall, after which some (PC) deniable assets with experience dealing with vampire rappel down through the opened ceiling. Eventually, even the magically silent stake launchers fail and the fancy holy water bombs keep spawn busy long enough to finish the job.

Vampire Osama is an interesting mental image as a D&D antagonist.

[OgreBattle]

More like goblin bin laden. The goodguys have overwhelming magical supremacy with scry-teleport killteams vs some goblins with shortbows. It's only out of a sense of mercy that they didn't just locate city-nuke the place.

The actual combat itself involve shooting magic missiles at 1HD goblins. Real life for America is pretty much "Wizard PR & Damage control" and making sure nobody else can cast high level magic.

[tussock]

My point was mostly if you nuke everything from orbit with some cheesy stack of cheap effects for easy kills, well, yeh, it's true, there's only that one story being told any more, the one where you nuke everything from orbit.

Until the DM goes insane and uses the RFED, just like it says on the t-shirt.

I'd also link to that nuclear weapons article on WotC, but it's late, and I forgot how to use google.


Fake apologies for the low level plot, was thinking of a single Vampire with a couple spawn, some wolves, and stuff like bats being a challenge in the first place. Meh.

[Prak]

Well, and it could be a serious challenge for a group of level 4 pcs, but at that point, the boss fight is almost twice their level.