Has it been established that Durkula is a typical vampire? For all we know most vampires might be what they appear to be - the undead version of their original selves. Durkon might be unique in having had his vampire body hijacked by an outside spirit.
Word of Giant is that it’s the standard way vampires work in OotSverse. link to comments
That’s the big difference, as far as I’m concerned. Durkon is a good guy, so the evil spirit’s way of thinking and acting is alien to his soul and they’re in conflict. A bad guy’s soul would probably just ask for popcorn and enjoy the ride, maybe give helpful pointers and be thrilled that the vampiric spirit is doing everything he/she/it/ftaghn never dared before or has the added oomph necessary to make old fantasies come true. Hell, for all we know Malak deliberately sought ways to get his fangs.
13th level. Remember the Mass Enlarge Person spell V cast on the soldiers? He specifically cast it on 13 of them. I looked up the spell and it works on 1 person/caster level.
Yes, but he’s in a hurry to get it done before the HPs of the demigods vote. The animals will go where he wants immediately. The HPs may not move so quickly.
Elsewhere, someone suggested that the Bag of Tricks animals are summoned, so are actually outsiders. In which case, using them in this way would not work. They’d be able to penetrate the Shell on their own and would not force the shell to collapse. However, Roy’s Bag of Tricks doesn’t work quite the same way that 3.5 BoT’s do, so they may be different in this manner as well.
Not that I know of. From the color, I’d guess a winged heart?
From memory, someone (probably from the GitP forums) blew it up and cleaned up the image somewhat and it appears to say ‘I <3 gold.’ (I + heart + a gold piece)
Thanks much.
It’s a heart with an arrow through it. Much clearer in the print version, apparently.
Dang it. I just checked my copy of War and XPs and you’re right. It’s a heart with an arrow through it. However, I am amused by the idea of I <3 gold, so I choose to continue to believe that, despite the evidence.
DAMMIT! WHY CAN’T I find these books at Barnes and Noble?
Wasn’t that supposed to be the whole point of that kickstarter?
Okay, that’s clear then.
It seems a little surprising to me that this wouldn’t be general knowledge in the OOTS world (and Burlew explicitly says it isn’t). When Durkon became a vampire, the group immediately began planning on getting him resurrected back to his living form. And Durkon also suggested this regarding Malack. So they seem to feel that vampirism was something that could be “cured”.
Now we know that, regardless of what they may say, vampires are not the original beings and don’t really want to be resurrected. Because if there was a successful resurrection, the now restored living victim would be able to reveal the secret of vampiric possession. Because this hasn’t happened, we can assume the gods are able prevent these resurrections. But you’d think this would be known and people would be generally aware that vampires can’t be resurrected, even if they aren’t aware of the reason.
It could also simply be that Resurrection itself is pretty rare (even among adventurers, a Raise Dead is usually enough) and Resurrection of vampires is even rarer. For most, a vampire is just something to be destroyed, not restored and the vampire itself isn’t really going to help with either option. I don’t think that it’s entirely “unknown” (that one gnome cleric knew) but rather that it’s the sort of thing you need a specialized field of study to be aware of and most people just aren’t concerned about the metaphysical biology of vampires.
It’s known that you can destroy vampires. It’s known that you can raise the dead with the appropriate spells. Both of those are common knowledge.
Less common knowledge, but probably known to typical adventurers of the Order’s level, is that being turned into an undead prevents the functioning of Raise Dead, but that the higher-level Resurrection can still work, provided you destroy the undead first.
But that’s something about Resurrection and undead in general, not specific to vampires. Vampires are a relatively uncommon form of undead (the vast majority are zombies or skeletons), so most people (adventurers included) probably don’t know of any specific examples of a person-turned-vampire-turned-corpse being resurrected. It’s still happened occasionally, and someone who studies such things might have heard of it (i.e., happened to roll well on the Knowledge roll with a few ranks invested, like the gnome acolyte), but it’s far from common knowledge.
Vel wasn’t certain. It may be that it has never happened in the history of OOTS world.
It’s probably rare in a general sense but it’s not uncommon in a gaming sense. 7th level clerics aren’t all that rare among adventuring groups. And vampires aren’t an exotic type of undead like a devourer or a mohrg. There must have been enough attempts made to resurrect a vampire for it to be fairly common knowledge that it doesn’t work.
Resurrection is a 7th level spell but you don’t get access to it until 13th level. Part of D&D’s overuse of the word “level”.
13+ level clerics are fairly thin on the ground and ones who have had reason to Resurrect a destroyed vampire that much more so. Or ones who did so, found out some piece of esoteric vampire lore and then went around telling everyone.
Also, obligatory “level” strip before someone else links to it 
lol, I didn’t remember that one.
This is one of the reasons I stuck with GURPS.
Seems like it would be easy to fix in subsequent editions. Just refer to any new spell level as the level it is when you get it. So you’d have two level 1 spells at level 2, but two level 1 spells plus a level 3 spell at level 3. Level 2 spells just wouldn’t exist.
Hence, Resurrection would be a level 13 spell.