Would a Hold Person affect a vampire? As far as I can tell from the SRD, it should, but maybe there’s something I missed. But even if it does, the difference in the levels of the two would come into play. No-name is clearly at a much higher level than Minrah.
Mental effect. Undead are immune.
Yes, I thought I’d forgotten something. So there’s no real explanation for an unconscious vampire other than “drama”.
My attempted point is that people forget stuff, so it isn’t unreasonable that the author could have a character forget something. Although the later point that mist form may be involuntary would contradict that.
I’ve said it before in this very thread, I’ll say it again : undead in general are the biggest (because the most ubiquitous) “you know what, FUCK YOU” in all of old school D&D. By which I mean there are even more annoying assholes out there for your DM to pick for his antag’s if they’re feeling particularly ornery ; but no matter the campaign they run there will be undead, and they will make you fucking miserable for no reason whatsoever.
They’re immune to crits and backstabbing, so right off the bat the Rogue is going to sulk in a corner (again). They’re immune to mental effects, cold, poison, fear, stat damage/drain, fatigue and have high saves of all 3 kinds (since they basically ignore Fort effects and have a large innate to Will, your average asshole DM is going to work on their Ref saves to make them all but immune to magic - oh, they have SR too at high level because of course they do). Hitting them with sticks ? Barring zombies and skellingtons most of those assholes are either natively incorporeal and laugh at your puny attacks (not that their own attacks are affected, because did I mention FUCK YOU ?) or can do it on a whim. And of course, if class levels weren’t enough, the Big Bad undead-types have a multitude of innate abilities they can cast all day long, Just Because.
I think Gygax’ original idea was that the mythological undead were sort of puzzle enemies that required something unique and specific to defeat, which is why you brought a cleric along to kill them that special way… except Turn Undead doesn’t work for shit, the cleric’s special anti-Undead spells are barely enough to clear skellingtons (nevermind anything really threatening because, as said earlier, beefy saves all around+sr) and even if they did it would be wholly unsatisfying to have the entire party being useless except for that one weird guy with all the crosses doing everything.
Undead are bad by design, and it only got worse the more splatbooks and weird undead (sans puzzle weaknesses) got written in.
In Pathfinder, Undead can certainly be crited and sneak attacked.
Even if it weren’t mind-affecting, Hold Person still wouldn’t work on undead, because it only works on humanoids. “Humanoid” is a term of art in D&D, referring to one specific creature type. “Undead” is a different creature type. In terms of the game rules, the vampires that just got illuminated are more akin to the Giant Death Worm outside than they are to living dwarves.
When the other vampire misted out, was that inside the innermost chamber? It’s possible that misting counts as an effect that would trigger the petrification. Depending on how quickly Minrah dealt with the vampire, it might not have had a chance, in the short window between the meeting being suspended and being thrown into the light.
It’s also possible (and I think more likely, given Minrah’s visible wounds) that it underestimated her (possibly due to knowing that her cleric level is low, without accounting for her previous levels as a guard), and thought that it could finish her off quickly by using its action(s) to attack her, instead of prudently escaping.
I know. Pathfinder made a *lot *of things less painful. They even realized rogues might could be allowed to do stuff !
Yes, it was in the Chamber, and we actually saw the mist. She did it when the rock hit the table. It was in the background, partially behind a speech bubble in the second page, first panel of strip 1173. And there was no petrification.
Rereading your comments, it’s not clear that you are aware that the one that misted was not the one that Minrah tossed into the sunlight. The one that misted was Curly (the one with the curly hair). The other one was Noname (which they call Sandy on the other forum) and we never saw her in the Chamber until the tossing.
Yeah, for all we know, she may have more levels as fighter or some similar class than she does as cleric.
I just haven’t been paying very close attention to the individual lesser vampires (I mostly remember that one misted out just because people online are talking about her being forgotten). But I do know that the one who misted out was different from the one that Minrah defeated.
Wrapping this battle up. Hel still has a vampire, but she’s the worst of the bunch.
Be nice if Hilgya swatted her to put an end to this.
Edit: I assume the implication is that she just passed over Hilgya, same as she left the Chamber and drifted past the Order but I’m ready to move on.
Adequacy achieved!
Digging the pace. Love the line Chronos mentioned. Kind of annoyed at how easy the LDW went down, despite the hatch marks on the Order, but Rich hasn’t been using the SRD rules as a guide for awhile now, so w/e.
Let’s wrap this up. I’m curious to see how Durkon will get unstoned and the Hilgya-Kudzu-Durkon mess gets untangled.
Dwarf Mage to teleport the gang near the Tomb?
How’re they going to convince RedCloak to play ball?
Burlew needs to finish the current book in time to get it published by November for the Christmas season. So he’s working all out (well, almost all out) on it and we’re getting updates about every 3 week days. Which is as fast as he can draw them unless he works weekends too.
Personally, I don’t expect they’ll convince him, although they’ll no doubt try. I expect a completely different solution to the Snarl problem.
Stone to Flesh is a Wizard spell so potentially V could just cast it (assuming V has it in the book). I’m unsure if Song of Freedom would work – it acts as a Break Enchantment and it sounds as though that originally allowed for reverting ‘stoned’ creatures but then it was removed from the spell description in a later edition or errata?
Break Enchantment (and hence Song of Freedom) works. In the book, it says that it even works on instantaneous effects such as Flesh to Stone. In the free SRD, which trims out a lot of details, it says that it even works on instantaneous effects. The loss of the “such as” doesn’t actually change the rules, and even if it did, what’s in the book is more official than what’s in the SRD.
Ah, thanks. Without the books or being involved in 3.5, it was hard to follow the chain of events with some random internet posts talking about how it should work, others talking about changes between 3 & 3.5e and the online spell descriptions being incomplete. I guess the internet debate was about it only working on instant effects up to 5th level and Flesh to Stone is a 6th level spell but it also explicitly calls/called out Flesh to Stone, yadda yadda.
Well, with several bards around who can do Song of Freedom, there’s no worry about Durkon staying as a pigeon perch.
Not to mention that if one of your security measures is turning people into stone, you’d probably want to have a couple of stone-to-flesh scrolls in the emergency first aid kit in case it goes off accidentally.
Also, Hel still has one what left?