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| A Vampire Spawn (D&D Beyond) |
The characters in our Curse of Strahd campaign are presently engaged in their third encounter with vampire spawn. Their first encounter was a brutal fight where they destroyed the spawn absolutely with very little threat to themselves. That encounter taught me a lot. Five characters (second level at the time) concentrating all their resources on a single target and prevailed very quickly. They took out the ability of the spawn to regenerate with radiant attacks, and I made a rookie 5e GM mistake and messed up disengaging, taking some opportunity attacks.
After the spawn, Aco Koslov, was brutally exterminated [1], the characters - for a while - thought that they had faced a real vampire and 'they weren't that difficult'. The players - especially Alex and Tom - knew otherwise. I learnt a lot from that fight. I needed to understand the tactical rules at the heart of D&D combat better, and I needed to represent the opposition better. This led to me starting to reading 'The Monsters know what they're doing' and reading through the stat blocks in more detail. I also started digging into r/curseofstrahd and other resources on running the campaign for ideas. The aim wasn't to kill the characters but to stretch them. Make the victories all the sweeter in the darkness that wraps Barovia in its folds.
The second encounter was brutally dangerous. Our somewhat overconfident (and now fourth level) heroes went to intimidate the coffin-maker and carpenter Henrik van der Voort, who they knew had arranged for the theft of a relic which had protected the town from the minions of Strahd. They never considered that the minions may actually be there and the battle was soon joined. Things rapidly escalated and the characters found themselves facing six vampire spawn at close quarters. They claimed victory when they talked to the townsfolk afterwards, and burned down the building the spawn were in. They knew they had killed three, but although they claimed the deaths of all six from the fire they weren't certain. The burning masked the fact that they had retreated from the fight, their lives in danger.
There were some important differences in this encounter. I'd got a much better understanding of how the vampire spawn would operate; at heart, they are ambush predators which can ignore physical threats to some extent (due to regeneration and damage resistance). They also have an innate ability to climb on walls and roofs. If they strike and grapple, they have a chance to drain a target, regenerating more damage, and they also make it easier for their fellow spawn to hit the same targets. They can also push frontage limits by attacking from above, hanging from the ceiling.
This is driven by their innate Spider Climb ability. It gives a huge amount of flexibility for a DM on how they can operate. The ability is described in the stat block as follows:
"Spider Climb. The vampire can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check."
This is a truncated version of the text from the spider climb spell.
"Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch gains the ability to move up, down, and across vertical surfaces and upside down along ceilings, while leaving its hands free. The target also gains a climbing speed equal to its walking speed."
So my interpretation on this is that we have creatures who can move freely on walls and ceilings, on awkward surfaces - like roofs - and have their hands free to engage. Looking at the picture of the spawn from the Monster Manual (and D&D Beyond), they aren't wearing anything on their feet, so this makes sense. So we now have a monster that can move with what is effectively a fully 3D parkour style. This means they can use the environment to their advantage. The confined space that the battle took place in added to the danger faced, especially when some of the spawn went over the roof to flank the party.
We're now in a third encounter. Three vampire spawn against a party strengthened with the return of one of their original group who has the advantage of having the ability to cast radiant bolts. The battle has escalated quickly, and now we have two party members (the fighters) on the roof with three vampire spawn, with the others firing spells off from below (or more precariously from a ladder).
It's deliciously balanced. Either side could win, or withdraw. The possibility of death exists for the characters and the vampire spawn know that they could also die. They've lost friends to the party; they want revenge, but they aren't going to risk futile destruction. We broke the game mid-fight due to time restrictions, and there's been a lot of discussion on what needs to be done to win by the players (across the WhatsApp group, the Discord channel and the Tavern). Both sides need to do the same things; make sure the battle is on terrain that favours them, focuses attacks and withdraw to safety if it looks like they can't prevail.
Another element that is worrying the players is that the vampire spawn were waiting in one of their rooms. There's a meta-gaming element that at least two of the players know the 5e vampire spawn stat block and the restrictions upon it. The characters have heard something similar from the Vistani. This leaves the question of how they got in there. The restriction as follows:
Forbiddance. The vampire can't enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.
This leaves the unpalatable thought that someone has invited them in; is there an agent of the darkness in the Blue Water Inn, or are there darker forces at play? Something to be followed up later.
Curse of Strahd is a sandbox; yes, there are plots built into each location, which the characters will stumble into, their actions causing consequences to cascade across Barovia affecting the whole campaign, but there is no over-arching meta-plot. The characters are trapped in a valley ruled by a dark lord, with dangers that they need to understand when to disengage from. The campaign is very OSR in the sense that it is not balanced; player's have agency and can put their characters in extreme danger. The creatures and non-player characters they meet will have their own agendas and won't pull punches. The positive side to this is that the victories will be all the sweeter when they arrive.
17 January 2021
[1] Some may describe Aco Koslov as having been murdered in cold blood.
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