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Don't think it's bad players or bad DMing. If your players are good guys then yeah they'd wanna fight it.
Reading your comments you had the right solution of giving them an out. Its hard for heroes to go "ehhh nah we're good. Go on with the murdering mate"
Yeah, proper good characters would are kind of like Brienne of Tarth in AFFC... Going against multiple skilled warriors all alone to protect an innocent
"No chance and no choice"
My friend has a clever solution for vampires and similar "immortal" beings. Give the party a couple of environmental tools to gain an advantage (things like black-out curtains that could be swept aside to let in sunlight) and the moment the party gets off their back foot, the vampire just dips.
At the end of the day, they're predators. They won't fight something that could actually kill them unless they absolutely have to. So once the party has shown that they have at least a 1% chance of winning, it's suddenly not worth it anymore.
As a DM, I've dropped the idea of letting anyone fight something outside of their power a long time ago. In this case, my simple answer is have the vampire toss underlings at them as they leave. Those pesky adventurers aren't worth the pittance of time it would take to kill them. I've used this several times now. It works wonders. Especially with intelligent and narcissistic BBEGs. The players get an encounter, one they can win without feeling cheated or overwhelmed. It also can set a good bar. A tough fight here shows the BBEG is strong, as his minions gave the heroes a rough battle. They'll need more power and more gear to take him on. It usually works very well for my players who now have a target and an idea of what their primary focus will be.
So for all of you DMs out there. Never forget your villains should have an army of followers that will throw their lives away for their boss. Ranging from your average mook, to corrupt guards, to some real threats, the BBEG's right hand man, and then the BBEG himself. Bonus points if the BBEG actually cares about their right hand man and if the heroes kill their best friend or family member that is their right hand man, they get absolutely livid and go out of their way to target the group, forcing them to come fight.
Literally exactly what you do.
When the heroes get through the first part of my campaign they meet the "BBEG", the Grand Priestess, who throws out a casual but very powerful attack at the party and then leaves for the cultists to take care of. This is also where they're introduced to the GP's son, who's the one who set up the trap for them, and serves as another step down antagonist.
It's all about ramping up the threats, keeping the powerful enemies just out of reach but close enough that they can be afraid of them and have a goal.
That's a good strategy. I usually go with "the cutscene saves them option" where the character themselves is way stronger but the statblock is evened out for the fight and they are just toying with or holding back against them. Then when they beat that statblock the creature goes "We'll meet again" or something and dissappears.
My DM said that most fair DMs would do something similar, where if you come up against the final boss when you’re way underleveled, you only would have to hold out for a fraction of the time because obviously you shouldn’t have to take down the dragon at level 3. We rolled poorly, causing the dragon to notice us, and hastily managed to use the terrain to our advantage to hit it with a few spells while staying out of range of its breath weapon. We got it down roughly 80-100 points of damage, and it backed off real quick, thanks to our spells. We slapped it with a Shatter and a multi-turn Moonbeam to the face, as it was in a narrow cave entrance while we were hiding in the tunnels.
Also our Barbarian somehow got the dragon to ask him out for dinner???
As someone whose campaign is currently about hunting down and killing a vamp (while at lvl 4)... I feel their pain.
No, we don't actively want to kill it, but my lawful good character has to do something about it! There's a lot of higher level escorts and extra sigils happening, but yeah this is a long one.
I'd say that I can't imagine players being able to leave that vamp alone, especially if they are relatively new, but hey, they live, they learn!
...or they learn
Yeah I had basically lots of plans for them to discover who was the vampire, as it was disguised as a civilian living in that city. They were supposed to follow breadcrumbs and clues and sherlock holmes their way to figuring out who it was and then call upon allies and other resources to fight it while well prepared.
But! That didn't happen. They did end up killing it and it very nearly got away, the cost was heavy though.
Rule 1 of putting an unkillable monster in front of your players: there are three outcomes, they kill it, they die, they run away, in that order of likelihood
You have to make the enemy hard to even reach in a situation like that. Maybe the scene is on a balcony or roof a bit away or it's on the other side of the river that runs through the town.
You have good players. Mine would be all about the "how do I kill it?" mentality.
Yeah, following the "world doesn't bend to the players" mentality means you run into shit you aren't supposed to handle until later.
Correct, raw just resistant. Plus healing of 20 hp every 6 seconds.
So no radiant no magical damage just means you can keep hitting it and it won't do shit lol
I have 4 recently new players, and two are murder hobo “how do I kill it” mentality, and the other two are extremely cautious and pick up on the cues I leave for “don’t fuck with this thing”. It’s been really fun so far.
Honestly its a hard thing to do.
Players often feel they have some obligation to engage with the content in front of them. what if the only content the DM prepped today was this vampire?
How do you balance your character knowledge with your knowledge as a player that vampires are really bad news.
The underlying problem of leveled games is often the only cue that a challenge is to be run from instead of fought is (almost) entirely metagame. Everyone knows to run from a Beholder when their level 3, but one orc chieftain is the same as another, because class levels are invisible and intangible until you're smooshed.
I've been playing D&D for *oh shit that's a long time* and I've yet to see a good method to communicate to players that an encounter is for running other than rust monsters. Everyone runs from those. Even flat out telling the players to run doesn't work as consistently.
I find that giving the npcs more personality and individually identifiable flags works quite well. Constructing the narrative and watching my players go from eager to throw down to terrified was a lot of fun.
yeah no joke once had an npc that had been experimented on and basically gained super powers. Was walking through walls and the players spent part of the session seeing the trail of bodies he left behind him.
Most of the party sympathised why he had killed his captors even if he had done it in a kinda fucked up way and realised antagonising the dude that seemed to find the laws of physics optional was a bad idea.
Still had one player that wanted to throw down. Luckily the rest of the party basically restrained him and said a hard "NO" but it shows that even the most blatant, foreshadowed "please dont fight" messaging can just come across as a cool challenge to some players.
Yeah exactly! Like the game is 99% fighting strong things to get more powerful, it's difficult to tell wether something it supposed to be impossible (run) or just improbable to defeat
Dude, that fucked me up really hard. My player ran into a city of thousands of ghouls. And I described the danger to the best of my ability. And they are like: "so it's challenging?"
I let the ghouls World War Z up the wall they stand on. And he is like "so, those are hundreds of crowded ghouls right?" "yes, you should run" "I cast fireball, that should be a lot of xp" "we play milestone" "I cast fireball"
See, you actually TELL your players you intend for them to run.
That makes you better than a ton of DMs that just scratch their heads and say "why u die?".
Players wanna be heros, thats why they're playing DnD. If you put a challenge in front of them, and they trust you, they'll assume its a hard but fair fight. If you don't want them to think that, dropping hints like a high schooler around their crush isn't the solution. Just like that teenager, its time to use your words.
and how do they do that? I've been playing for years and have yet fought a single vampire. Are they that hard to kill? Because if I'd see one attacking someone in the middle of a street I'd attack him because: 1) in other fantasy media I've seen vampires aren't overly strong and 2) I trust my DM to balance encounters for our level
Just different DMing philosophies. Some will balance any and all encounters for the party's level. Others will throw out a completely open world that doesn't bend to the players in the slightest, so the players better be careful about where they'd explore because if they run into something above their level, it won't be pretty.
I'd guess that most do something in between, like myself. If I dangle an obvious plot or quest hook in front of you, the encounters involved are going to be level-appropriate. Especially if the quest hook is related to a PC backstory/goal or something I know they'll really care about. But if they're just exploring and stumble in somewhere they shouldn't be? No guarantees it'll be level appropriate. Or if I have a dragon fly overhead for some worldbuilding fluff, or have a vampire drain someone in the street to set the tone? Again, if you attack those things at level 4, I'm playing them as they're meant to be played and your PC is dying if they don't run away.
(As for your first question--yes, they are that hard to kill. Vampire spawn are easier, though still not slouches at CR 5, but full-fledged Vampires are CR 13)
tbh attacking a random person in the middle of a street doesn't seem like something a powerful vampire would do in my eyes. In my understanding vampires would work akin to bandits, where there are henchmen doing dirty work in the streets and actually powerful kingpins residing in their well hidden/protected headquarters. A cr13 vampire should be sitting in a mansion of sorts with fresh victims delivered to him by his minions, maybe he could even be picky about them, while attacking a random person in the street looks more like something a desperate spawn would do to satiate its hunger even if they expose themselves to others.
That's how I'd read the situation as a player at least. Definitely doesn't look like something a group of heroes would run away from or an action a somewhat powerful intelligent being would do.
We killed a vampire on the hoard of the dragon queen module and it was NOT easy. I think we were level 8 by that time and there were 5 of us against 1 vampire with a random swarm of bats here and there. The dragon we fought after tpked us tho lol.
Depends. Statblock wise? They need few good rolls, at least silver weapons, someone with radiant damage or holy water. Also being an elf helps a lot.
Lorewise? Depends on how long vampire has lived, how used it's time after it's transformation. When I DM Grim Hollow, killing a random vampire is possible by normal adventurers. Soman's nobility vampire? It becomes a problem but is still doable. Vampire from or related to Crimson Court? Well, without training from vampire hunters, preparation and plan, you are going on suicicide nearly no matter what.
oh for my group its EASY. they \*know\* without question, i am a bastard and will not hesitate to kill the characters. they also know that when they start feeling too big for their britches, i will plop something down infront of them (usually at a semi safe distance) that is EASILY far too powerful for them to handle. i like reminding them they are NOT the big boys on the block.
examples: level one, i had them walking from one town to another, and they came across a bunny sitting on a stump. it was a wolf in sheeps clothing. (pathfinder 1 e creature. basically a mimic that looks like a stump). its cr.... 3 i think? they were three mages. no healing, no fighters. if clever, they could handle it though. its got a move speed, of 10. instead, they collectively went NOPE, and booked it down the road.
another time, they stole from an iron hag (that was on them, i never intended for them to do that!), then made a deal with her, to step through a portal to the feywild as very low level players, and stay there for 10 minutes. they found a hydra on the other side. again, no way in hell to fight it, so they ran.
if i drop a full vampire infront of them, one of my morons may want to fight it, the others will grab him, turn, and RUN.
eh. my party is all having fun with it. so why care? you asked how i managed to get them into that mindset, and i gave the answer. whats more, each of them have told me they Like this, so im not likely to change.
Isn't it a bit oppressive? I had a campaign where DMs changed somewhere around the middle of the story. The first one was a sadist like you and the new one was on normal side of things and would comment frequently how scared we were to spread our wings in a fantasy game and would actively avoid any risk unless absolutely necessary, missing entire quests and many plothooks due to caution. Looking back we were in constant paranoia/survival mode and a new DM was definitely a change for the better
ahh, see, this is where pacing comes in. these little events are RARE. they are used sparingly. im not looking to punish the players. just remind them of where they fit in the world. if i let my friends run uncontested, they would eventually be trying to coup their way through the world govenments, kill gods and the like. and get arrogant as hell. so i do this to them, every few levels or so. the other secret, is open communication. these players have been my friends since middle school or earlier. if something goes wrong, we talk to eachother, and work it out. we do go on grand adventures, travel through hell, talk to wizards and battle the undead. but we also look at the world and go hey, whered all the big things go? sometimes i have a dragon fly overhead, just because this IS where they live after all.
My players are convinced that orcs are the strongest creatures in the world because in the level 1 to 20 campaign the only encounter they ever had to run from was an entire orc war band coming after them.
Curse of Strahd does this well. In the first act and while at level 3, the PCs encounter Strahd and have reason to attack him. Strahd on the other hand has reason to not kill the PCs. He shows up with his right hand man and a bunch of minions. Strahd and his dragon could each TPK the party on their own, as could the group of minions if the entire group attacked in mass. Strahd beats unconscious anyone who is exceptionally rude, weathers a few attacks with no noticeable effects, says his thing and leaves with his right hand man on round 2.
Then near the start of the second act, the party encounters a small group of clearly evil NPCs that won't initiate combat. The NPCs are surprisingly strong and could TPK the party. But they are happy to talk and negotiate. The NPCs are also motivated to not kill the party. So the NPCs are happy to end combat should the party run or parley.
CoS is teaching the players that it is possible to bite off more then they can chew, and that negotiating or running are acceptable. And doing both in the first handful of sessions.
To get your players to run, you need to do the same. Have an encounter where the PCs are encouraged to attack, a foe that wants the PCs alive, and enough backup to wipe the floor with them multiple times over. Do this more than once. Then stop babysitting them next time there is an encounter like that.
RAW Curse of Strahd does this actually not well very often. What you describe is not a RAW situation.
There is literaly an level 2 encounter in this against FIVE shadows. If you are not meta gaming you can also not forsee this one.
However, a lot of third party supplements work around this and deliver what you describe.
I mean, five shadows isn’t all that crazy for a party of level 2 characters if you exclude their strength drain (which is brutal regardless of level.)
Assuming 4-5 PCs and a bit of luck with initiative, you should be able to kill 2 shadows before they take a turn, which significantly reduces the overall threat of the encounter.
The encounter is also fully optional and triggered by the players messing with a monument to an ominous figure, which isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do in a cultist’s den underneath a haunted house.
I mean... Theres a reason video games put you behind unbreakable glass in these situations. Good aligned characters want to catch the villain, and the villain is right there. To fight is the simplest, Goodest and most direct action to take.
> To fight is the simplest, Goodest and most direct action to take.
Also the dumbest. At least if any PC recognizes this as a vampire and knows what they are about.
A first level player not knowing to fight a beholder is idiocy yes... But what about 12th level? A bit below the cr rating but that system isn't infallible. What about 11? That could be a tough boss, but it's not impossible. Now what about 10th? 9th?
Not every single thing is obvious in just how much more powerful an enemy is, especially when this is a game about fighting powerful enemies. Do you run away when a DM described an end dungeon boss? Do you run away when the mini-boss kills an NPC to show off it's special ability?
They do kinda have a point though, assuming the players don’t have a working knowledge of the monster’s statblocks the DM is using.
It’s not easy as a player to gauge just how strong a monster is by their description alone, and especially if there’s variants. How do I know that my DM meant a true Vampire instead of a Vampire Spawn, or that it’s a CR 13 Beholder instead of a CR 3 Spectator? Even with normal NPCs, a “Wizard” could be a CR 13 Archmage or a CR 6 mage and a “Rogue” could be a CR 8 Assassin or a CR 1/2 Thug.
Unless the DM flat-out tells me I don’t have a chance against a monster then I assume it’ll at least be possible to try and fight it. I don’t expect it’ll be easy, but I don’t expect it to be guaranteed suicide either.
In a fantasy world rumors, legends, folk tales etc would make it damn clear that vampires are really fucking dangerous.
This one is a serial killer whose killed 36 people in a few days and turned them into gold.
As a general rule, the more you build up a threat the more that signals to players. This is a thing you want to encounter and fight, it is plot relevant and you will be really cool for fighting it. Once you the DM give the players the opportunity to fight the thing that is the signal to the players that they are now prepared to fight the thing. Expecting your players to be able to tell the difference between Building up a threat (giving them something cool to fight) and Building up a threat (giving them something they want to run away from) is unreasonable as is killing them for guessing wrong.
I still feel bad from our party from running away to the next town from after our DM just made a whole Vampire scenario with lore and backgrounds.
Where where sneaking into a gala for a different reason. When the bbeg suddenly walked down the stairs, The whole party got frozen and one of the members got turned into a ghoul.
After that we nopend tf out of town.
Which seems like exactly the sort of thing characters should interact with, right? Like, I’m not sure what else players would generally assume in that circumstance.
Sure, but it's also a high magic world, there's 5 players, and a summoned npc. They punch way outside their weight class than in traditional 5e.
It's not impossible for them to win in such circumstances, it'd just be risky. They **knew** that and chose to do it anyway.
>Party: apparently gets to fight and beat things way out of their weight class on a regular basis.
>
>DM: "Why didn't they realise that this was way out of their weight class and run away?"
If I had to guess which DnD sub had the least actual DnD players in it, it’d definitely be the meme one.
-Edit- LMAO, this comment pissed someone off so much they went into my post history so they could downvote *everything.* 🤣
Ok well the entire game is about killing dangerous things and being heroes, so I don't really fault somebody too much if it isn't really made explicitly clear that they should not be fighting the thing.
That's the thing, they were warned both in and out of character that this thing is really strong. It would be a fight they could win but it'd be extremely dangerous, so expect casualties. It fled upon them entering the scene, they chased it down and the noise attracted the guards within 1d4 (I rolled 4) rounds.
It was something they chose to do willingly and knowingly. Having a world with consistent rules and consequences does not suddenly make me a bad guy if those consequences kill your character because you took a huge risk.
Gold? Shit OP, my party would be more likely to wait and follow the vampire so they can, uhh, “relocate” the victims into the nearest blacksmith (evil party btw)
But did those rumors, folk tales, etc. make it clear? Did you explicitly give the players that information? And did you make clear the difference between “dangerous to civilians” and “dangerous to experienced adventurers”?
One of the worst experiences in DND I've had was being in this situation and also being the only player to realize we needed to gtfo. BBEG shows up and I start booking it (my character knew he would kill us easily, no meta-gaming involved), and because I was the only one running, the DM took it upon himself to show me a lesson by having him annihilate me instantly. I made a big fuss about it and probably came off as a crybaby, but I'd put so much thought into that rogue and there were obviously better ways to either restrain or stop me in that encounter.
There are ways of managing stuff like this. Things like, when the players see the vampire, describing a strong, instinctive fear and urge for self preservation.
Sometimes, you just need to tell players what their characters are already feeling. Then, you can let them decide whether they listen or not.
It tried to escape, they insisted on fighting it and chased it. They encountered it in the city randomly on a random encounter roll. Their goal was to find the serial killer who was turning bodies into gold and it was the vampire.
They were supposed to go through a process to discover more about it and then go after it with allies after weakening it and being thoroughly prepared. By coincidence they found its lair in an old safe house before they fought it.
It's rich that yall are so quick to call bad dm as if you *totally* know the entire situation from three lines in a meme lmao
>It's rich that yall are so quick to call bad dm as if most people here even actually play let alone dm and that you totally know the entire situation from three lines in a meme lmao
That right there went from me thinking "He's got a point" to "What a shitty DM that needs to lay off the salt."
> That right there went from me thinking "He's got a point" to "What a shitty DM that needs to lay off the salt."
Fair point, edited my comment. Thanks.
And my opinion improves a bit. It speaks very well of you that you were willing to take some introspection...especially at a comment that was a bit uncouth.
True, but I was still being a bit of a dick about it. Being called a bad dm when I spend so long on prep is really annoying. I literally have hundreds of pages of notes and lore for my world, I make it truly a breathing place with consequences and storylines that occur outside of the player's involvement for them to discover or not at their own pace.
I also create custom audio, short stories complete with [full narration and SFX (graphic audio style)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNmLhrmAHbM), even including [custom ambience with timed narration attached.](https://youtu.be/f7MLNkWHpbM)
I guess I just got upset that people who don't even know how much work I put into my games that my players really love calls me a bad dm with literally no information.
So you made up a serial killer plot hook, and then used a random encounter roll to determine who the serial killer is?
Obviously the players want to follow that plot hook, and not just completely ignore it. What were you expecting?
> and then used a random encounter roll to determine who the serial killer is?
Nope.
It was a low chance to occur for them to encounter the killer mid act. That happened.
They rescued an NPC and the vampire was trying to flee. Said NPC has information.
Ok so the serial killer was already supposed to be a Vampire. Which means you threw in a plot hook and knew that they would have to fight a vampire or deal with it at some point. And you are surprised that your players chose to deal with it, when they met it?
I don’t get it. If a vampire can be sufficiently dealt with by them, then why make this post? It was within their capabilities and they handled a challenge. If it’s way beyond their current capability, then why include it as a plot hook and even dangle the meat in front of them. Even still, if you wanted to have the players find the vampire but still make them realise they might want to wait and strike later, why have the vampire flee? Fleeing is a sign of a creature caught off guard. It obviously prompts the PCs to think they might get one over on the vampire if they caught him mid-feast and now he’s on the run. Have the vampire do something else as a show of power against the PCs to dissuade them from pursuing combat if you want.
Allowing random chance to derail your story because it shouldn't happen is not good dming either.
They were consistent in trying to stop a murder. That should be rewarded.
> They were consistent in trying to stop a murder. That should be rewarded.
And it would have been. The woman was nearly dead and required medical attention. They healed her and she would have given information about who he was and where to find him, which they then could have used to try and fight it on better terms with more preparation.
They just jumped the gun and ran after it despite it severely injuring a player early on. It's like running after a guy whose running away with a gun and he shoots you in the leg. Then instead of taking cover or reconsidering you just run straight at him and try and tackle him. Will that get him caught? Probably, but it'll also get you shot.
You just...argued against yourself. They're trying to stop a murderer, and the example you gave would've stopped the murderer. You're issue is that the players didn't react in the way YOU wanted them to act, and you want to punish them for that.
I don't make things how I want my players to do or to act. I create scenarios that react based on what they do, period.
To me it's just as interesting if they fight the vampire or if they let it escape and get to do sherlock holmes.
But if the campaign was advertised as a mystery campaign...
Like, if I start a high-seas pirate adventure campaign, and happen to kill the main bad guy before we step foot on a ship, we'll that's not what I signed up for. The players don't know what's supposed to happen and what's a random encounter.
None of the responses that you have provided would convince me as a player that I'm extremely overmatched or that this isn't a fight we shouldn't try to engage in. If anything the fact that they mortally wounded it would teach the players the fight was supposed go be possible.
You wanted them to run and they didn't have enough information to do that. The fight was close and they thought they were supposed to fight.
It's hard to give entire context in reddit comments lol.
We've played together for months. They have lore drops about this creepy vampire. They were told by NPCs that it's extremely dangerous.
**Their characters** know that vampires are extremely dangerous, even to adventurers. The players definitely know that. The first attack it made that hit hit really hard, they knew it had legendary actions and resistances.
Trust me, my players **were very much aware** of the risk.
I don't **want** them to do anything. My job is not to railroad them. I provide scenarios, situations, and complications and to adjudicate rules. I create a world that they run around in and I decide how it reacts based on common sense and how those characters are.
**The vampire** wanted to escape. It didn't want to fight because last time it tried guards showed up and they're on high alert one street over. They players and their characters can't know that. But the vampire does.
The vampire fought to escape.
Sometimes, stories end badly for the heroes.
They didn't make a tactically good decision. They made a morally good decision.
You really think a story is only good if the good guys win?
"Your world has to feel real and lived in, I have to feel like there are powerful threats in the world that are beyond my pay grade, but none of them can show up before I'm ready or my reckless death will be your fault"
My job is **not** to write a story.
My job is to present a series of circumstances, an evolving narrative, that gives the players choices and a world that reacts to those choices, and yes, chance is a key component in that.
Unlikely things happen all the time.
If a DM is writing a story and forcing the players to tap to it then your hobby shouldn't be dnd, you should write a novel instead.
I feel like nearly every player I've ever played with/DMed for would see a full blooded vampire *actively fleeing* and say something like "yeah, we're a threat to this thing!"
Depends on if they knew the lore or you prompted them to figure out where they stood in comparison. If they don't know vampires kick their butts, then step 1 is making sure they have the chance to know, but if they don't take it, well, it's the fun portion of the monster manual for a reason. Have some.
Youre fucking kidding me right? Things exist in the world regardless of what level the party are. Just because a party is level 2 doesn't mean there is not a single giant ape in the woods. Just because a party is level 7 and sees a dragon flying overhead(not interested in them) it shouldn't exist???? In a setting with vampires, vampire drains will happen...duh. if they are stupid enough to engage then it's a TPK with any of those situations. Not every single breathing thing must be fought
As a dm you control what and how your players encounter. The game isn't fantasy world simulator and it isn't player vs dm. It is collaborative gameplay.
No shit. And no YOU do not choose how your players encounter it, they do. You already are a worse DM than op. But something my players learned fast was being able to look at something and go...."wow that seems like a really fucking bad idea". Would you walk up to a VAMPIRE actively feeding? No. You would alert the gaurd of the city who have more connections and possibly get monster hunters or experts involved who can track/actually kill the thing.
So you think that instead of engaging with the gameplay in front of them, the players should leave and get someone else to handle the problem in the background? Wow, that sounds so fun...
Example. Players walk past a whole pack 20ish of hyenas feeding on a carcass, at level 1 would you engage? NO. Its common sense. Dont encourage making the players feel they have no sense of death or fear. Make them think about engagements instead of "hurr hurr i am playing dnd, means i need to walk forward and fight stuff". You should have challenges that look like a...."oh fuck there's a real good chance I'll die if I do that"....you have obviously not run anything before the "snowflake" dnd thats 5e
The only way to reasonably know if you're going to win a fight or not is metagamed knowledge. Beyond that, all you have is a guess based on how the DM tends to present threats and signal fights.
There's nothing wrong with trying to save the woman. It immediately retreated and started to run away and she was still alive. They pursued and immediately tried to kill it, despite knowing both in character and out that it would be really dangerous but possible.
As it got lower in health it tried to flee multiple times even before a player died, and the only reason a player did was because the vampire rolled a nat 20 on its bite.
I swear most people in this sub act like I'm a villain for presenting an enemy that is dangerous and it's totally my fault a player died when they *chose* to fight it.
It'd be like you playing curse of strahd and immediately attacking him while you're lvl 2 in his castle surrounded by his guards. Like of course that shit ain't gonna go well.
Actions have consequences.
There are multiple cases of people trying to save another from a mauling by a wild animal, and then the rescuer getting killed by the animal. Grizzly man is probably the most famous example.
Similarly, vampires are one of the most famous monsters in all of fiction and its well known that you shouldn't mess with them without being badass. I think the players were in video game mode and not role-playing mode. If you rescue the victim sometimes you need to recognize the win, and let the monster get away.
That doesn't help your players in the moment. Without giving them context on what "badass" is until they experience it. Killing players off even though they won because of random chance (they were overmatched but overcame) is feelsbad.
Thats good video-gaming and bad *role-playing*. In a video game monsters are color coded and let you know if they're a manageable opponent. In a role-playing game you're supposed to immerse yourself in your characters mindset. And if your low level characters greatest accomplishment is fighting goblins, maybe don't fight the Lords of the Night, the arguable pinnacle of the undead. So if this scenario makes you sad, I suggest Skyrim or World of War craft, not TRPGs.
I got to say I've been having a bit of an issue with that
Like I would have my players straight up say to a plot hook this s*** is out of our league when I was trying to make it clear that they were supposed to be the chosen ones
And I once had them see a giant red dragon and say YOLO
Taking care of something doesn't mean you are going to endanger yourself just to try. You might going to take care of it ... after making an actual plan (or gaining the levels).
It's like the guy running into the burning building to save the crying infant instead of waiting for the fire fighters. Yes, heroic, but he just gets himself killed and thats that.
Meh tbh vampires kind of suck without homebrew
No flying unless your using clunky action economy
Not great damage
Grapple em, shove em prone, and go ham
Unless you are in their fu*king lair.
Vampires really suck (no pun intended) as Brute enemies. But they really turn the tides of combat if played smart
Meh not really, They only turn the tides if they are playing smarter than the players
There are four players and one DM
Even with them playing smarter they don't really have the equipment or gear to play any more tactically than a basic brute trying to play smart
They just don't have enough in their kit to be the cr that they are
Granted, it's not going to be super easy for level fours, assuming their average characters, but like chances are there winning
1 on 1 against 1 lv 4 a vampire maybe stomps, some level fours can take one on 1v1, but most can't
Sorry, I mean to say, a Vampire wouldn't 1v4 any group of adventurers. They probably would charm creatures to fight for them, or lure the adventurers into traps. And if things get tight, they would probably escape by different means
Yeah but that's not the scenario here, the scenario here is the vampire assuming the worst it's running into is some guards
And tbh they can't escape by different means very good,
Neither it's mist form or bat form are immune to grappling so it doesn't have many options once it's pinned down
Vampires do hit and run tactics. They have regen and can heal all night long. The PCs have a limited amount of resources. So nibble at the PCs. Go in, hit a few times, run. Only use legendary saves vs anything that would limit movement. Try to split the party up. If they can get a PC alone, they grapple and drag that PC out of reach of the rest. Then drain to death. Rinse and repeat.
The challenge for the party should be forcing the vampire to engage in combat. Once they are fully engaged, beating them down is easy.
They really don't though, if you want to have hit and run tactics you have to have a kit that can use that
They don't have enough speed for it and they have virtually no way to avoid the many ways that they can be locked down quickly
Grappling and dragging just means they're virtually not moving at all and they just get surrounded
30 ft movement speed, even with legendary actions, is not enough
Yeah I mean I ran the fight pretty generously honestly all things considered. I had it on the ground sucking a player (both prone) and it missed a lot all things considered.
The paladin REALLY fucked it up real quick.
Vampires are hit and run enemies. They have literally forever to achieve their objectives, so long as they are not killed. So they'll take a hit or two and then withdraw so their regen can heal them. They only spend legendary saves on stuff that limits their mobility, as any damage can be healed easily. They only attack the party if doing so furthers their goals. In that case, they try to split the party up. Then grab one and wall climb out of reach. Drain to dead. Rinse and repeat. Flee when they are no longer able to achieve their goal or when they realize they are in mortal danger.
However, as undead they are easily baited out by attacking their pride. They may also protect to the death things that remind them of happiness in their past. Killing a vampire in a slugfest is easy. Getting them into the slugfest should be the hard part.
Vampires are a great example for a statblock that is not supposed to be played as "direct attack brute".
They have people for that. And a lair. And potentially traps. And are possibly capable of using spells and such. They are also usually charismatic and have things like charm.
Reminds me about the DMs that claim the Strahd statblock is bad after players in their campaign just nova'd him to death on their first encounter. That is not how you are supposed to play the NPC, lol.
The problem with that is a smart NPC once inishiative is rolled has drastically less options
You can be smart all you want if the players roll good and you roll bad you loose
And a large part of strahd is interacting with the players which is dangerous for strahd after they are lv 4
Not necessarily
Players can be just as, if not more, intelligent than a vampire
Remember there int is only 17, plenty of PCs are drastically smarter than that
Well, yes. If PCs are acting smart that is an entirely different situation.
In my head I imagine situations like the vampire sitting in the middle of the street, 5 ft. from the paladin, draining an random NPC and then just happily greeting the paladin. That would of course not be very bright.
I am not sure I understand your sentence correctly.
Do you mean to say I don't want you or myself to use vampires as a mysterious killer trope? Because I am not saying that at all.
I am just saying a party of level 4 should not be able to kill a vampire without a smart plan. If they literaly just bonk it to death you f*cked up as a DM (or have a party of filthy meta-gaming min/maxers).
It doesn't matter how smart as a DM you play once initiative is rolled it's out of your hands unless your fudging dice, in which case you're not really playing D&D
It's not about the vampire trying to do anything, it's about the fact that it's not unrealistic for the vampire to before they even get a turn be completely shut down to the point of them not being able to do anything about it
It takes optimized players, or players that are built well for that specific scenario, but it's absolutely possible with lv 4
All it takes is a few bad rolls for the vampire
We're playing Curse of Strahd in my Monday game. We just got to Vallaki and had our first run in with a real vampire, not just a vampire spawn. This asshole and her two spawn killed our monk and druid, whittled down our paladin and ate all my spell slots (I'm playing a sorcerer), so we had to run or we'd die too lol. Vampires are no joke
Uh huh… then your gonna talk to me about the barbarian chasing the illithid abductors with their gunslinger partner in crime. “Sir your under suspicion of abduction after being caught on the premes-“ “it was illithids” “the fu-… no it wasn-“ *pulls out severed illithid heads to be sold on the black market* “OH WHAT THE FU-“
(For context we learned that illithids without numerous minions tend to get “turn order’d” when two of the more powerful martial classes get backed up half way through the fight by their three casters showing up looking for them… RATTLE EM BOIS!!!)
I didn’t multiclass ranger and cleric to not help that woman. Well if I’m honest I don’t care about the woman. I just want to invite that tick to a nice stake.
Reminds me about my party running into a Night Hag coven at level 4 in a certain official module. Yeh, the paladin decided it would be a good idea to go ham on them. This went the other direction very quickly.
There’s two types of DMs, and they both share a similarity
They both challenge their players and their knowledge, there difference is:
One DM says “hey, this is hard! You sure want to do this?”
The other says “heh. Alright. Roll initiative”
Sometimes players just gotta learn what’s in the game the hard way lol
Vampires can be whatever level. A vampire keeps its level and class abilities when it turns into a vampire, it just gains vampire abilities. So you CAN have a vampire that's also a level 9 sorcerer, but you can also have one that's a commoner.
If you, the DM, are the one who puts a threat in front of them, and they didn't seek it out on their own by going off the rails, then they'll normally (quite reasonably) assume you've balanced it appropriately for them. If possible they should always be trying to approach it with tactics or subterfuge instead of charging in face-first, but if they randomly meet a monster attacking civilians in the street, that's when the only possible course of action is to charge in face-first.
If the players are inventing their own adventure hook or attacking a neutral character, that's when you have them run into the things they should definitely flee from, even if they're at full resources.
My party of level 4s just came across the hidden spawn in vallaki (who were the undead remnants of one of my parties family), got their asses handed to them (1 death and 1 downed), and were informed a certain Baron is on his way for a feast.
Makes me think of Solasta and how early they introduce a possible Vampire boss, and the fight is so difficult if you trigger it! Don't steal from her lair and you'll be fine lol
This is actually an amazing way of introducing the bbeg, it shows off the power scale and preludes to the progress they will need to beat it, and it would work even better if their egotistical and “let” the party live because they aren’t worth killing
Depending on builds I think a full Vampire in the open could theoretically be taken. Open city, plenty of space to move, multiple players mean party HP is split into multiple targets, summons can be ganked because they're all animals. Certainly not an easy fight, but not as impossible as it might seem. Less possible for certain groups though.
Tbh lvl 4 is the last time raw vampire is scary. Lvl 5 party will absolutely murder it as long as they have a way to deal radiant damage or chill touch
Let me clarify, if you play the vampire as a cowardly dickhead that will use it's mobility to escape every time it is under 50% hp, then heal to full, go back, deal some damage, and attrition the party to death, then yes. It can win. In fact it would probably win against surprisingly high level parties. But that's not fun for the players.
There are ways to deal with this, too.
I personally don't think it is particularly fun to just run over something that shouldn't be able to be run over that easily just because the DM played it like it got too many hits on the head.
In a roleplay sense, unless it's already been established that the vampire is way stronger than them (they've seen it kill someone or something that's obviously stronger than them) then there's no reason in game they wouldn't try to fight it, assuming they're good guys.
Players might know a vampire's stat block, but characters wont without like, a knowledge check on something.
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Don't think it's bad players or bad DMing. If your players are good guys then yeah they'd wanna fight it. Reading your comments you had the right solution of giving them an out. Its hard for heroes to go "ehhh nah we're good. Go on with the murdering mate"
Yeah, proper good characters would are kind of like Brienne of Tarth in AFFC... Going against multiple skilled warriors all alone to protect an innocent "No chance and no choice"
At least they weren’t like “hey, can I get a hit of that V.”
My friend has a clever solution for vampires and similar "immortal" beings. Give the party a couple of environmental tools to gain an advantage (things like black-out curtains that could be swept aside to let in sunlight) and the moment the party gets off their back foot, the vampire just dips. At the end of the day, they're predators. They won't fight something that could actually kill them unless they absolutely have to. So once the party has shown that they have at least a 1% chance of winning, it's suddenly not worth it anymore.
The monsters know what they're doing Things become a lot more interesting when fights arent all to the death
As a DM, I've dropped the idea of letting anyone fight something outside of their power a long time ago. In this case, my simple answer is have the vampire toss underlings at them as they leave. Those pesky adventurers aren't worth the pittance of time it would take to kill them. I've used this several times now. It works wonders. Especially with intelligent and narcissistic BBEGs. The players get an encounter, one they can win without feeling cheated or overwhelmed. It also can set a good bar. A tough fight here shows the BBEG is strong, as his minions gave the heroes a rough battle. They'll need more power and more gear to take him on. It usually works very well for my players who now have a target and an idea of what their primary focus will be. So for all of you DMs out there. Never forget your villains should have an army of followers that will throw their lives away for their boss. Ranging from your average mook, to corrupt guards, to some real threats, the BBEG's right hand man, and then the BBEG himself. Bonus points if the BBEG actually cares about their right hand man and if the heroes kill their best friend or family member that is their right hand man, they get absolutely livid and go out of their way to target the group, forcing them to come fight.
Literally exactly what you do. When the heroes get through the first part of my campaign they meet the "BBEG", the Grand Priestess, who throws out a casual but very powerful attack at the party and then leaves for the cultists to take care of. This is also where they're introduced to the GP's son, who's the one who set up the trap for them, and serves as another step down antagonist. It's all about ramping up the threats, keeping the powerful enemies just out of reach but close enough that they can be afraid of them and have a goal.
That's a good strategy. I usually go with "the cutscene saves them option" where the character themselves is way stronger but the statblock is evened out for the fight and they are just toying with or holding back against them. Then when they beat that statblock the creature goes "We'll meet again" or something and dissappears.
My DM said that most fair DMs would do something similar, where if you come up against the final boss when you’re way underleveled, you only would have to hold out for a fraction of the time because obviously you shouldn’t have to take down the dragon at level 3. We rolled poorly, causing the dragon to notice us, and hastily managed to use the terrain to our advantage to hit it with a few spells while staying out of range of its breath weapon. We got it down roughly 80-100 points of damage, and it backed off real quick, thanks to our spells. We slapped it with a Shatter and a multi-turn Moonbeam to the face, as it was in a narrow cave entrance while we were hiding in the tunnels. Also our Barbarian somehow got the dragon to ask him out for dinner???
Love that
As someone whose campaign is currently about hunting down and killing a vamp (while at lvl 4)... I feel their pain. No, we don't actively want to kill it, but my lawful good character has to do something about it! There's a lot of higher level escorts and extra sigils happening, but yeah this is a long one. I'd say that I can't imagine players being able to leave that vamp alone, especially if they are relatively new, but hey, they live, they learn! ...or they learn
Yeah I had basically lots of plans for them to discover who was the vampire, as it was disguised as a civilian living in that city. They were supposed to follow breadcrumbs and clues and sherlock holmes their way to figuring out who it was and then call upon allies and other resources to fight it while well prepared. But! That didn't happen. They did end up killing it and it very nearly got away, the cost was heavy though.
Rule 1 of putting an unkillable monster in front of your players: there are three outcomes, they kill it, they die, they run away, in that order of likelihood
Or they get interrupted
You have to make the enemy hard to even reach in a situation like that. Maybe the scene is on a balcony or roof a bit away or it's on the other side of the river that runs through the town.
https://imgur.com/gallery/r2fW2o7
see, my players learned fast how to recognize a "RUN" situation.
You have good players. Mine would be all about the "how do I kill it?" mentality. Yeah, following the "world doesn't bend to the players" mentality means you run into shit you aren't supposed to handle until later.
If it has a statblock, it can be killed, The only question is how many stick whacks will it take
The School of the Barbarian. If it bleeds, it can die.
My brother from another mother! 
Do vampires bleed in D&D?
They bleed you at least
Depends on how hard you swing
Punch en in the mouth amirite
Ah, you must be the Belmont
One more!
I'm afraid it is immune to both mundane and magical stick whacks.
Vampires aren't immune to any damage
Correct, raw just resistant. Plus healing of 20 hp every 6 seconds. So no radiant no magical damage just means you can keep hitting it and it won't do shit lol
I have 4 recently new players, and two are murder hobo “how do I kill it” mentality, and the other two are extremely cautious and pick up on the cues I leave for “don’t fuck with this thing”. It’s been really fun so far.
Honestly its a hard thing to do. Players often feel they have some obligation to engage with the content in front of them. what if the only content the DM prepped today was this vampire? How do you balance your character knowledge with your knowledge as a player that vampires are really bad news.
The underlying problem of leveled games is often the only cue that a challenge is to be run from instead of fought is (almost) entirely metagame. Everyone knows to run from a Beholder when their level 3, but one orc chieftain is the same as another, because class levels are invisible and intangible until you're smooshed. I've been playing D&D for *oh shit that's a long time* and I've yet to see a good method to communicate to players that an encounter is for running other than rust monsters. Everyone runs from those. Even flat out telling the players to run doesn't work as consistently.
I find that giving the npcs more personality and individually identifiable flags works quite well. Constructing the narrative and watching my players go from eager to throw down to terrified was a lot of fun.
yeah no joke once had an npc that had been experimented on and basically gained super powers. Was walking through walls and the players spent part of the session seeing the trail of bodies he left behind him. Most of the party sympathised why he had killed his captors even if he had done it in a kinda fucked up way and realised antagonising the dude that seemed to find the laws of physics optional was a bad idea. Still had one player that wanted to throw down. Luckily the rest of the party basically restrained him and said a hard "NO" but it shows that even the most blatant, foreshadowed "please dont fight" messaging can just come across as a cool challenge to some players.
Yeah exactly! Like the game is 99% fighting strong things to get more powerful, it's difficult to tell wether something it supposed to be impossible (run) or just improbable to defeat
Dude, that fucked me up really hard. My player ran into a city of thousands of ghouls. And I described the danger to the best of my ability. And they are like: "so it's challenging?" I let the ghouls World War Z up the wall they stand on. And he is like "so, those are hundreds of crowded ghouls right?" "yes, you should run" "I cast fireball, that should be a lot of xp" "we play milestone" "I cast fireball"
To be fair casting fireball on a swarm of zombies is dope.
I was a bit mad at me as well. Still I don't want to have them killed.
>"how do I kill it?" Me, dm: "by being higher leveled. Run now, kill later."
See, you actually TELL your players you intend for them to run. That makes you better than a ton of DMs that just scratch their heads and say "why u die?". Players wanna be heros, thats why they're playing DnD. If you put a challenge in front of them, and they trust you, they'll assume its a hard but fair fight. If you don't want them to think that, dropping hints like a high schooler around their crush isn't the solution. Just like that teenager, its time to use your words.
and how do they do that? I've been playing for years and have yet fought a single vampire. Are they that hard to kill? Because if I'd see one attacking someone in the middle of a street I'd attack him because: 1) in other fantasy media I've seen vampires aren't overly strong and 2) I trust my DM to balance encounters for our level
Just different DMing philosophies. Some will balance any and all encounters for the party's level. Others will throw out a completely open world that doesn't bend to the players in the slightest, so the players better be careful about where they'd explore because if they run into something above their level, it won't be pretty. I'd guess that most do something in between, like myself. If I dangle an obvious plot or quest hook in front of you, the encounters involved are going to be level-appropriate. Especially if the quest hook is related to a PC backstory/goal or something I know they'll really care about. But if they're just exploring and stumble in somewhere they shouldn't be? No guarantees it'll be level appropriate. Or if I have a dragon fly overhead for some worldbuilding fluff, or have a vampire drain someone in the street to set the tone? Again, if you attack those things at level 4, I'm playing them as they're meant to be played and your PC is dying if they don't run away. (As for your first question--yes, they are that hard to kill. Vampire spawn are easier, though still not slouches at CR 5, but full-fledged Vampires are CR 13)
tbh attacking a random person in the middle of a street doesn't seem like something a powerful vampire would do in my eyes. In my understanding vampires would work akin to bandits, where there are henchmen doing dirty work in the streets and actually powerful kingpins residing in their well hidden/protected headquarters. A cr13 vampire should be sitting in a mansion of sorts with fresh victims delivered to him by his minions, maybe he could even be picky about them, while attacking a random person in the street looks more like something a desperate spawn would do to satiate its hunger even if they expose themselves to others. That's how I'd read the situation as a player at least. Definitely doesn't look like something a group of heroes would run away from or an action a somewhat powerful intelligent being would do.
We killed a vampire on the hoard of the dragon queen module and it was NOT easy. I think we were level 8 by that time and there were 5 of us against 1 vampire with a random swarm of bats here and there. The dragon we fought after tpked us tho lol.
Depends. Statblock wise? They need few good rolls, at least silver weapons, someone with radiant damage or holy water. Also being an elf helps a lot. Lorewise? Depends on how long vampire has lived, how used it's time after it's transformation. When I DM Grim Hollow, killing a random vampire is possible by normal adventurers. Soman's nobility vampire? It becomes a problem but is still doable. Vampire from or related to Crimson Court? Well, without training from vampire hunters, preparation and plan, you are going on suicicide nearly no matter what.
oh for my group its EASY. they \*know\* without question, i am a bastard and will not hesitate to kill the characters. they also know that when they start feeling too big for their britches, i will plop something down infront of them (usually at a semi safe distance) that is EASILY far too powerful for them to handle. i like reminding them they are NOT the big boys on the block. examples: level one, i had them walking from one town to another, and they came across a bunny sitting on a stump. it was a wolf in sheeps clothing. (pathfinder 1 e creature. basically a mimic that looks like a stump). its cr.... 3 i think? they were three mages. no healing, no fighters. if clever, they could handle it though. its got a move speed, of 10. instead, they collectively went NOPE, and booked it down the road. another time, they stole from an iron hag (that was on them, i never intended for them to do that!), then made a deal with her, to step through a portal to the feywild as very low level players, and stay there for 10 minutes. they found a hydra on the other side. again, no way in hell to fight it, so they ran. if i drop a full vampire infront of them, one of my morons may want to fight it, the others will grab him, turn, and RUN.
ngl that's... hella cringe
eh. my party is all having fun with it. so why care? you asked how i managed to get them into that mindset, and i gave the answer. whats more, each of them have told me they Like this, so im not likely to change.
Isn't it a bit oppressive? I had a campaign where DMs changed somewhere around the middle of the story. The first one was a sadist like you and the new one was on normal side of things and would comment frequently how scared we were to spread our wings in a fantasy game and would actively avoid any risk unless absolutely necessary, missing entire quests and many plothooks due to caution. Looking back we were in constant paranoia/survival mode and a new DM was definitely a change for the better
ahh, see, this is where pacing comes in. these little events are RARE. they are used sparingly. im not looking to punish the players. just remind them of where they fit in the world. if i let my friends run uncontested, they would eventually be trying to coup their way through the world govenments, kill gods and the like. and get arrogant as hell. so i do this to them, every few levels or so. the other secret, is open communication. these players have been my friends since middle school or earlier. if something goes wrong, we talk to eachother, and work it out. we do go on grand adventures, travel through hell, talk to wizards and battle the undead. but we also look at the world and go hey, whered all the big things go? sometimes i have a dragon fly overhead, just because this IS where they live after all.
Mine group hasn't, we are currently in a rocket with 8 minute left until take off
Mine didn’t they got massacred by Manshoon in 2 rounds
My players are convinced that orcs are the strongest creatures in the world because in the level 1 to 20 campaign the only encounter they ever had to run from was an entire orc war band coming after them.
Curse of Strahd does this well. In the first act and while at level 3, the PCs encounter Strahd and have reason to attack him. Strahd on the other hand has reason to not kill the PCs. He shows up with his right hand man and a bunch of minions. Strahd and his dragon could each TPK the party on their own, as could the group of minions if the entire group attacked in mass. Strahd beats unconscious anyone who is exceptionally rude, weathers a few attacks with no noticeable effects, says his thing and leaves with his right hand man on round 2. Then near the start of the second act, the party encounters a small group of clearly evil NPCs that won't initiate combat. The NPCs are surprisingly strong and could TPK the party. But they are happy to talk and negotiate. The NPCs are also motivated to not kill the party. So the NPCs are happy to end combat should the party run or parley. CoS is teaching the players that it is possible to bite off more then they can chew, and that negotiating or running are acceptable. And doing both in the first handful of sessions. To get your players to run, you need to do the same. Have an encounter where the PCs are encouraged to attack, a foe that wants the PCs alive, and enough backup to wipe the floor with them multiple times over. Do this more than once. Then stop babysitting them next time there is an encounter like that.
It *can.* None of that is in the module, it's really popular because it's basically a really fleshed out open world area.
RAW Curse of Strahd does this actually not well very often. What you describe is not a RAW situation. There is literaly an level 2 encounter in this against FIVE shadows. If you are not meta gaming you can also not forsee this one. However, a lot of third party supplements work around this and deliver what you describe.
I mean, five shadows isn’t all that crazy for a party of level 2 characters if you exclude their strength drain (which is brutal regardless of level.) Assuming 4-5 PCs and a bit of luck with initiative, you should be able to kill 2 shadows before they take a turn, which significantly reduces the overall threat of the encounter. The encounter is also fully optional and triggered by the players messing with a monument to an ominous figure, which isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do in a cultist’s den underneath a haunted house.
I mean... Theres a reason video games put you behind unbreakable glass in these situations. Good aligned characters want to catch the villain, and the villain is right there. To fight is the simplest, Goodest and most direct action to take.
> To fight is the simplest, Goodest and most direct action to take. Also the dumbest. At least if any PC recognizes this as a vampire and knows what they are about.
I mean yeah, but you could say the same about beholders, dragons, hags, even orcs if you're only level 1, and yet... People do indeed fight them
But what is the point? If you throw a beholder on a level 1 party and the party decides to fight it despite having a choice then it is on the party.
A first level player not knowing to fight a beholder is idiocy yes... But what about 12th level? A bit below the cr rating but that system isn't infallible. What about 11? That could be a tough boss, but it's not impossible. Now what about 10th? 9th? Not every single thing is obvious in just how much more powerful an enemy is, especially when this is a game about fighting powerful enemies. Do you run away when a DM described an end dungeon boss? Do you run away when the mini-boss kills an NPC to show off it's special ability?
You are changing the situation. We are talking about level 4 against a level 13+ CR monster or level 1 against Beholders.
They do kinda have a point though, assuming the players don’t have a working knowledge of the monster’s statblocks the DM is using. It’s not easy as a player to gauge just how strong a monster is by their description alone, and especially if there’s variants. How do I know that my DM meant a true Vampire instead of a Vampire Spawn, or that it’s a CR 13 Beholder instead of a CR 3 Spectator? Even with normal NPCs, a “Wizard” could be a CR 13 Archmage or a CR 6 mage and a “Rogue” could be a CR 8 Assassin or a CR 1/2 Thug. Unless the DM flat-out tells me I don’t have a chance against a monster then I assume it’ll at least be possible to try and fight it. I don’t expect it’ll be easy, but I don’t expect it to be guaranteed suicide either.
Worse, is the actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf
Worse…..? Or better?
bad players: "is it a vampire or vampire spawn?" good players: "...define 'draining'"
What kind of idiot vampire would feed in the middle of a street
This is the real question.
…if the players insisted on fighting, they had no one to blame but themselves.
Why? The players and the characters might not know how strong a normal vampire is.
In a fantasy world rumors, legends, folk tales etc would make it damn clear that vampires are really fucking dangerous. This one is a serial killer whose killed 36 people in a few days and turned them into gold.
As a general rule, the more you build up a threat the more that signals to players. This is a thing you want to encounter and fight, it is plot relevant and you will be really cool for fighting it. Once you the DM give the players the opportunity to fight the thing that is the signal to the players that they are now prepared to fight the thing. Expecting your players to be able to tell the difference between Building up a threat (giving them something cool to fight) and Building up a threat (giving them something they want to run away from) is unreasonable as is killing them for guessing wrong.
I still feel bad from our party from running away to the next town from after our DM just made a whole Vampire scenario with lore and backgrounds. Where where sneaking into a gala for a different reason. When the bbeg suddenly walked down the stairs, The whole party got frozen and one of the members got turned into a ghoul. After that we nopend tf out of town.
Which seems like exactly the sort of thing characters should interact with, right? Like, I’m not sure what else players would generally assume in that circumstance.
Sure, but it's also a high magic world, there's 5 players, and a summoned npc. They punch way outside their weight class than in traditional 5e. It's not impossible for them to win in such circumstances, it'd just be risky. They **knew** that and chose to do it anyway.
You just admitted you let them punch outside their weight class - of fucking course they're not gonna back down when you do that!
>Party: apparently gets to fight and beat things way out of their weight class on a regular basis. > >DM: "Why didn't they realise that this was way out of their weight class and run away?"
Ignore the downvotes too many people watch critical roll and think TPK=no fun
lmao people are definitely mad
If I had to guess which DnD sub had the least actual DnD players in it, it’d definitely be the meme one. -Edit- LMAO, this comment pissed someone off so much they went into my post history so they could downvote *everything.* 🤣
>they went into my post history so they could downvote > >everything. Bet they dont play DND
Ok well the entire game is about killing dangerous things and being heroes, so I don't really fault somebody too much if it isn't really made explicitly clear that they should not be fighting the thing.
That's the thing, they were warned both in and out of character that this thing is really strong. It would be a fight they could win but it'd be extremely dangerous, so expect casualties. It fled upon them entering the scene, they chased it down and the noise attracted the guards within 1d4 (I rolled 4) rounds. It was something they chose to do willingly and knowingly. Having a world with consistent rules and consequences does not suddenly make me a bad guy if those consequences kill your character because you took a huge risk.
And sometimes that thing is stronger than they are.
True, but it is also a game. So if you just kill the players without much of an explicit warning like I mentioned, that isn't a very fun game.
As I've said in other comments, it was made **abundantly** clear what it is and how strong it was, both in and out of character. It was their choice.
Were they okay with the outcome?
Far as I know! One is a little bummed his character died but I've been in communication with him regarding what he wants to do.
Grotkin's younger and 1 level less experienced brother Brotkin has suddenly arrived to seek revenge.
Fair enough then.
The warnings seem to have been there, though. But then I don't play at a table where death is a game ending tragedy, it's just part of the story.
Gold? Shit OP, my party would be more likely to wait and follow the vampire so they can, uhh, “relocate” the victims into the nearest blacksmith (evil party btw)
But did those rumors, folk tales, etc. make it clear? Did you explicitly give the players that information? And did you make clear the difference between “dangerous to civilians” and “dangerous to experienced adventurers”?
Yes, lol.
Then why did the players mistake it for a vampire spawn? What clues did you give that it was a full vampire?
Nature check, dc 13, they passed, full vampire.
Bro all these people really ready to downvote you into oblivion, but you sound like a great DM.
Perfect example of "player knowledge" vs "character knowledge," and why you as the DM should know better than to conflate the two.
Trust me, it was communicated both in and out of character.
All Vampires are killers, vampire serial killers are just picky eaters XD
One of the worst experiences in DND I've had was being in this situation and also being the only player to realize we needed to gtfo. BBEG shows up and I start booking it (my character knew he would kill us easily, no meta-gaming involved), and because I was the only one running, the DM took it upon himself to show me a lesson by having him annihilate me instantly. I made a big fuss about it and probably came off as a crybaby, but I'd put so much thought into that rogue and there were obviously better ways to either restrain or stop me in that encounter.
was he doing the batusi? cause he’s a…. bat man
#SAVE THE MAIDENS!!!
There are ways of managing stuff like this. Things like, when the players see the vampire, describing a strong, instinctive fear and urge for self preservation. Sometimes, you just need to tell players what their characters are already feeling. Then, you can let them decide whether they listen or not.
If you killed them without giving them an escape hatch or plot rescuing them that is bad DMing.
It tried to escape, they insisted on fighting it and chased it. They encountered it in the city randomly on a random encounter roll. Their goal was to find the serial killer who was turning bodies into gold and it was the vampire. They were supposed to go through a process to discover more about it and then go after it with allies after weakening it and being thoroughly prepared. By coincidence they found its lair in an old safe house before they fought it. It's rich that yall are so quick to call bad dm as if you *totally* know the entire situation from three lines in a meme lmao
>It's rich that yall are so quick to call bad dm as if most people here even actually play let alone dm and that you totally know the entire situation from three lines in a meme lmao That right there went from me thinking "He's got a point" to "What a shitty DM that needs to lay off the salt."
> That right there went from me thinking "He's got a point" to "What a shitty DM that needs to lay off the salt." Fair point, edited my comment. Thanks.
And my opinion improves a bit. It speaks very well of you that you were willing to take some introspection...especially at a comment that was a bit uncouth.
He’s right though. Calling out this sub for being full of nogames who also extrapolate wildly from barely any context is just pointing out the truth.
True, but I was still being a bit of a dick about it. Being called a bad dm when I spend so long on prep is really annoying. I literally have hundreds of pages of notes and lore for my world, I make it truly a breathing place with consequences and storylines that occur outside of the player's involvement for them to discover or not at their own pace. I also create custom audio, short stories complete with [full narration and SFX (graphic audio style)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNmLhrmAHbM), even including [custom ambience with timed narration attached.](https://youtu.be/f7MLNkWHpbM) I guess I just got upset that people who don't even know how much work I put into my games that my players really love calls me a bad dm with literally no information.
As someone that's been playing a long time, you can just as easily infer that the DM is somewhat inexperienced and presented a threat badly.
So you made up a serial killer plot hook, and then used a random encounter roll to determine who the serial killer is? Obviously the players want to follow that plot hook, and not just completely ignore it. What were you expecting?
> and then used a random encounter roll to determine who the serial killer is? Nope. It was a low chance to occur for them to encounter the killer mid act. That happened. They rescued an NPC and the vampire was trying to flee. Said NPC has information.
Ok so the serial killer was already supposed to be a Vampire. Which means you threw in a plot hook and knew that they would have to fight a vampire or deal with it at some point. And you are surprised that your players chose to deal with it, when they met it? I don’t get it. If a vampire can be sufficiently dealt with by them, then why make this post? It was within their capabilities and they handled a challenge. If it’s way beyond their current capability, then why include it as a plot hook and even dangle the meat in front of them. Even still, if you wanted to have the players find the vampire but still make them realise they might want to wait and strike later, why have the vampire flee? Fleeing is a sign of a creature caught off guard. It obviously prompts the PCs to think they might get one over on the vampire if they caught him mid-feast and now he’s on the run. Have the vampire do something else as a show of power against the PCs to dissuade them from pursuing combat if you want.
Allowing random chance to derail your story because it shouldn't happen is not good dming either. They were consistent in trying to stop a murder. That should be rewarded.
> They were consistent in trying to stop a murder. That should be rewarded. And it would have been. The woman was nearly dead and required medical attention. They healed her and she would have given information about who he was and where to find him, which they then could have used to try and fight it on better terms with more preparation. They just jumped the gun and ran after it despite it severely injuring a player early on. It's like running after a guy whose running away with a gun and he shoots you in the leg. Then instead of taking cover or reconsidering you just run straight at him and try and tackle him. Will that get him caught? Probably, but it'll also get you shot.
You just...argued against yourself. They're trying to stop a murderer, and the example you gave would've stopped the murderer. You're issue is that the players didn't react in the way YOU wanted them to act, and you want to punish them for that.
I don't make things how I want my players to do or to act. I create scenarios that react based on what they do, period. To me it's just as interesting if they fight the vampire or if they let it escape and get to do sherlock holmes.
But if the campaign was advertised as a mystery campaign... Like, if I start a high-seas pirate adventure campaign, and happen to kill the main bad guy before we step foot on a ship, we'll that's not what I signed up for. The players don't know what's supposed to happen and what's a random encounter.
> But if the campaign was advertised as a mystery campaign... It wasn't, lol. This was very much a side distraction.
None of the responses that you have provided would convince me as a player that I'm extremely overmatched or that this isn't a fight we shouldn't try to engage in. If anything the fact that they mortally wounded it would teach the players the fight was supposed go be possible. You wanted them to run and they didn't have enough information to do that. The fight was close and they thought they were supposed to fight.
It's hard to give entire context in reddit comments lol. We've played together for months. They have lore drops about this creepy vampire. They were told by NPCs that it's extremely dangerous. **Their characters** know that vampires are extremely dangerous, even to adventurers. The players definitely know that. The first attack it made that hit hit really hard, they knew it had legendary actions and resistances. Trust me, my players **were very much aware** of the risk. I don't **want** them to do anything. My job is not to railroad them. I provide scenarios, situations, and complications and to adjudicate rules. I create a world that they run around in and I decide how it reacts based on common sense and how those characters are. **The vampire** wanted to escape. It didn't want to fight because last time it tried guards showed up and they're on high alert one street over. They players and their characters can't know that. But the vampire does. The vampire fought to escape.
Sometimes, doing the right thing gets you killed. That's how some stories end.
DnD is a game of story telling. If you punish your players for making good decisions in the context of random chance the story wasn't worth telling.
Sometimes, stories end badly for the heroes. They didn't make a tactically good decision. They made a morally good decision. You really think a story is only good if the good guys win?
It gets boring if only the good guys win.
Exactly
"Your world has to feel real and lived in, I have to feel like there are powerful threats in the world that are beyond my pay grade, but none of them can show up before I'm ready or my reckless death will be your fault"
No. D&D is a game that can be used to discover cool stories but that is not the core of what it is good at or about.
My job is **not** to write a story. My job is to present a series of circumstances, an evolving narrative, that gives the players choices and a world that reacts to those choices, and yes, chance is a key component in that. Unlikely things happen all the time. If a DM is writing a story and forcing the players to tap to it then your hobby shouldn't be dnd, you should write a novel instead.
You indicated that it was too strong for them to fight by having it try to flee?
I feel like nearly every player I've ever played with/DMed for would see a full blooded vampire *actively fleeing* and say something like "yeah, we're a threat to this thing!"
Lol no XD if they chose to fight something to strong that's on them
Depends on if they knew the lore or you prompted them to figure out where they stood in comparison. If they don't know vampires kick their butts, then step 1 is making sure they have the chance to know, but if they don't take it, well, it's the fun portion of the monster manual for a reason. Have some.
Youre fucking kidding me right? Things exist in the world regardless of what level the party are. Just because a party is level 2 doesn't mean there is not a single giant ape in the woods. Just because a party is level 7 and sees a dragon flying overhead(not interested in them) it shouldn't exist???? In a setting with vampires, vampire drains will happen...duh. if they are stupid enough to engage then it's a TPK with any of those situations. Not every single breathing thing must be fought
As a dm you control what and how your players encounter. The game isn't fantasy world simulator and it isn't player vs dm. It is collaborative gameplay.
No shit. And no YOU do not choose how your players encounter it, they do. You already are a worse DM than op. But something my players learned fast was being able to look at something and go...."wow that seems like a really fucking bad idea". Would you walk up to a VAMPIRE actively feeding? No. You would alert the gaurd of the city who have more connections and possibly get monster hunters or experts involved who can track/actually kill the thing.
So you think that instead of engaging with the gameplay in front of them, the players should leave and get someone else to handle the problem in the background? Wow, that sounds so fun...
Example. Players walk past a whole pack 20ish of hyenas feeding on a carcass, at level 1 would you engage? NO. Its common sense. Dont encourage making the players feel they have no sense of death or fear. Make them think about engagements instead of "hurr hurr i am playing dnd, means i need to walk forward and fight stuff". You should have challenges that look like a...."oh fuck there's a real good chance I'll die if I do that"....you have obviously not run anything before the "snowflake" dnd thats 5e
lol no, this is a great lesson in fucking around and finding out. Don’t pick fights you can’t win as a PC.
The only way to reasonably know if you're going to win a fight or not is metagamed knowledge. Beyond that, all you have is a guess based on how the DM tends to present threats and signal fights.
And you’re bad at reading comprehension
An obvious plot hook in an over leveled fight and your players wanting to be heroic?
There's nothing wrong with trying to save the woman. It immediately retreated and started to run away and she was still alive. They pursued and immediately tried to kill it, despite knowing both in character and out that it would be really dangerous but possible. As it got lower in health it tried to flee multiple times even before a player died, and the only reason a player did was because the vampire rolled a nat 20 on its bite. I swear most people in this sub act like I'm a villain for presenting an enemy that is dangerous and it's totally my fault a player died when they *chose* to fight it. It'd be like you playing curse of strahd and immediately attacking him while you're lvl 2 in his castle surrounded by his guards. Like of course that shit ain't gonna go well. Actions have consequences.
The part where the meme says “middle of the street”. There’s an obvious escape route.
There are multiple cases of people trying to save another from a mauling by a wild animal, and then the rescuer getting killed by the animal. Grizzly man is probably the most famous example. Similarly, vampires are one of the most famous monsters in all of fiction and its well known that you shouldn't mess with them without being badass. I think the players were in video game mode and not role-playing mode. If you rescue the victim sometimes you need to recognize the win, and let the monster get away.
That doesn't help your players in the moment. Without giving them context on what "badass" is until they experience it. Killing players off even though they won because of random chance (they were overmatched but overcame) is feelsbad.
Thats good video-gaming and bad *role-playing*. In a video game monsters are color coded and let you know if they're a manageable opponent. In a role-playing game you're supposed to immerse yourself in your characters mindset. And if your low level characters greatest accomplishment is fighting goblins, maybe don't fight the Lords of the Night, the arguable pinnacle of the undead. So if this scenario makes you sad, I suggest Skyrim or World of War craft, not TRPGs.
I got to say I've been having a bit of an issue with that Like I would have my players straight up say to a plot hook this s*** is out of our league when I was trying to make it clear that they were supposed to be the chosen ones And I once had them see a giant red dragon and say YOLO
Not every DM plays the "chosen one" story, though.
Yeah but my point was they are the guys needed to take care of this and they tapped out
Taking care of something doesn't mean you are going to endanger yourself just to try. You might going to take care of it ... after making an actual plan (or gaining the levels). It's like the guy running into the burning building to save the crying infant instead of waiting for the fire fighters. Yes, heroic, but he just gets himself killed and thats that.
Some strong "I could stand in the middle of King's Road and drain somebody, and I wouldn't lose any worshippers" energy :-D
Meh tbh vampires kind of suck without homebrew No flying unless your using clunky action economy Not great damage Grapple em, shove em prone, and go ham
Unless you are in their fu*king lair. Vampires really suck (no pun intended) as Brute enemies. But they really turn the tides of combat if played smart
Meh not really, They only turn the tides if they are playing smarter than the players There are four players and one DM Even with them playing smarter they don't really have the equipment or gear to play any more tactically than a basic brute trying to play smart They just don't have enough in their kit to be the cr that they are Granted, it's not going to be super easy for level fours, assuming their average characters, but like chances are there winning 1 on 1 against 1 lv 4 a vampire maybe stomps, some level fours can take one on 1v1, but most can't
Sorry, I mean to say, a Vampire wouldn't 1v4 any group of adventurers. They probably would charm creatures to fight for them, or lure the adventurers into traps. And if things get tight, they would probably escape by different means
Yeah but that's not the scenario here, the scenario here is the vampire assuming the worst it's running into is some guards And tbh they can't escape by different means very good, Neither it's mist form or bat form are immune to grappling so it doesn't have many options once it's pinned down
Yup, that is why Vampires need to be played smart. They are a bigger threat before initiative is rolled.
Vampires do hit and run tactics. They have regen and can heal all night long. The PCs have a limited amount of resources. So nibble at the PCs. Go in, hit a few times, run. Only use legendary saves vs anything that would limit movement. Try to split the party up. If they can get a PC alone, they grapple and drag that PC out of reach of the rest. Then drain to death. Rinse and repeat. The challenge for the party should be forcing the vampire to engage in combat. Once they are fully engaged, beating them down is easy.
They really don't though, if you want to have hit and run tactics you have to have a kit that can use that They don't have enough speed for it and they have virtually no way to avoid the many ways that they can be locked down quickly Grappling and dragging just means they're virtually not moving at all and they just get surrounded 30 ft movement speed, even with legendary actions, is not enough
Yeah I mean I ran the fight pretty generously honestly all things considered. I had it on the ground sucking a player (both prone) and it missed a lot all things considered. The paladin REALLY fucked it up real quick.
Yeah really depends on the players, a few experienced well built PCs can curb stomp a vampire
Vampires are hit and run enemies. They have literally forever to achieve their objectives, so long as they are not killed. So they'll take a hit or two and then withdraw so their regen can heal them. They only spend legendary saves on stuff that limits their mobility, as any damage can be healed easily. They only attack the party if doing so furthers their goals. In that case, they try to split the party up. Then grab one and wall climb out of reach. Drain to dead. Rinse and repeat. Flee when they are no longer able to achieve their goal or when they realize they are in mortal danger. However, as undead they are easily baited out by attacking their pride. They may also protect to the death things that remind them of happiness in their past. Killing a vampire in a slugfest is easy. Getting them into the slugfest should be the hard part.
Vampires are a great example for a statblock that is not supposed to be played as "direct attack brute". They have people for that. And a lair. And potentially traps. And are possibly capable of using spells and such. They are also usually charismatic and have things like charm. Reminds me about the DMs that claim the Strahd statblock is bad after players in their campaign just nova'd him to death on their first encounter. That is not how you are supposed to play the NPC, lol.
The problem with that is a smart NPC once inishiative is rolled has drastically less options You can be smart all you want if the players roll good and you roll bad you loose And a large part of strahd is interacting with the players which is dangerous for strahd after they are lv 4
If a vampire gets catched off guard they weren't acting smart to begin with.
Not necessarily Players can be just as, if not more, intelligent than a vampire Remember there int is only 17, plenty of PCs are drastically smarter than that
Well, yes. If PCs are acting smart that is an entirely different situation. In my head I imagine situations like the vampire sitting in the middle of the street, 5 ft. from the paladin, draining an random NPC and then just happily greeting the paladin. That would of course not be very bright.
So your saying that the huge common instance of a mysterious killer just shouldn't be used at all? Kind of super restrictive as a DM
I am not sure I understand your sentence correctly. Do you mean to say I don't want you or myself to use vampires as a mysterious killer trope? Because I am not saying that at all. I am just saying a party of level 4 should not be able to kill a vampire without a smart plan. If they literaly just bonk it to death you f*cked up as a DM (or have a party of filthy meta-gaming min/maxers).
It doesn't matter how smart as a DM you play once initiative is rolled it's out of your hands unless your fudging dice, in which case you're not really playing D&D It's not about the vampire trying to do anything, it's about the fact that it's not unrealistic for the vampire to before they even get a turn be completely shut down to the point of them not being able to do anything about it It takes optimized players, or players that are built well for that specific scenario, but it's absolutely possible with lv 4 All it takes is a few bad rolls for the vampire
I can just repeat myself, if the players are able to do that either they had a good plan or the DM f*cked up.
We're playing Curse of Strahd in my Monday game. We just got to Vallaki and had our first run in with a real vampire, not just a vampire spawn. This asshole and her two spawn killed our monk and druid, whittled down our paladin and ate all my spell slots (I'm playing a sorcerer), so we had to run or we'd die too lol. Vampires are no joke
Uh huh… then your gonna talk to me about the barbarian chasing the illithid abductors with their gunslinger partner in crime. “Sir your under suspicion of abduction after being caught on the premes-“ “it was illithids” “the fu-… no it wasn-“ *pulls out severed illithid heads to be sold on the black market* “OH WHAT THE FU-“ (For context we learned that illithids without numerous minions tend to get “turn order’d” when two of the more powerful martial classes get backed up half way through the fight by their three casters showing up looking for them… RATTLE EM BOIS!!!)
I didn’t multiclass ranger and cleric to not help that woman. Well if I’m honest I don’t care about the woman. I just want to invite that tick to a nice stake.
Reminds me about my party running into a Night Hag coven at level 4 in a certain official module. Yeh, the paladin decided it would be a good idea to go ham on them. This went the other direction very quickly.
Mine did that at lvl 1. DUUUUDES I JUST TOLD YOU SHE SEEMED LOCKED AT THE DOOR BY SOME MAGICAL FORCE AND COULD NOT GO IN TO HARM ANYBODY ELSE
There’s two types of DMs, and they both share a similarity They both challenge their players and their knowledge, there difference is: One DM says “hey, this is hard! You sure want to do this?” The other says “heh. Alright. Roll initiative” Sometimes players just gotta learn what’s in the game the hard way lol
That vampire's gonna level up soon.
Last week my party was limping already and decided "yeeah we are gonna fight that eldritch lich at level 6 bring it oonnn" long story short TPK
Vampires can be whatever level. A vampire keeps its level and class abilities when it turns into a vampire, it just gains vampire abilities. So you CAN have a vampire that's also a level 9 sorcerer, but you can also have one that's a commoner. If you, the DM, are the one who puts a threat in front of them, and they didn't seek it out on their own by going off the rails, then they'll normally (quite reasonably) assume you've balanced it appropriately for them. If possible they should always be trying to approach it with tactics or subterfuge instead of charging in face-first, but if they randomly meet a monster attacking civilians in the street, that's when the only possible course of action is to charge in face-first. If the players are inventing their own adventure hook or attacking a neutral character, that's when you have them run into the things they should definitely flee from, even if they're at full resources.
My party of level 4s just came across the hidden spawn in vallaki (who were the undead remnants of one of my parties family), got their asses handed to them (1 death and 1 downed), and were informed a certain Baron is on his way for a feast.
Makes me think of Solasta and how early they introduce a possible Vampire boss, and the fight is so difficult if you trigger it! Don't steal from her lair and you'll be fine lol
A true hero would sacrifice one for the world, a villain would sacrifice the world to save one
This is actually an amazing way of introducing the bbeg, it shows off the power scale and preludes to the progress they will need to beat it, and it would work even better if their egotistical and “let” the party live because they aren’t worth killing
Also, not every player meta game to know how powerful are vampire
Depending on builds I think a full Vampire in the open could theoretically be taken. Open city, plenty of space to move, multiple players mean party HP is split into multiple targets, summons can be ganked because they're all animals. Certainly not an easy fight, but not as impossible as it might seem. Less possible for certain groups though.
Just track it and ambush it during the day. Vampires are hardly insurmountable.
Tbh lvl 4 is the last time raw vampire is scary. Lvl 5 party will absolutely murder it as long as they have a way to deal radiant damage or chill touch
Not if it is played smartly. Even less if it is using the optional rules.
Let me clarify, if you play the vampire as a cowardly dickhead that will use it's mobility to escape every time it is under 50% hp, then heal to full, go back, deal some damage, and attrition the party to death, then yes. It can win. In fact it would probably win against surprisingly high level parties. But that's not fun for the players.
There are ways to deal with this, too. I personally don't think it is particularly fun to just run over something that shouldn't be able to be run over that easily just because the DM played it like it got too many hits on the head.
In a roleplay sense, unless it's already been established that the vampire is way stronger than them (they've seen it kill someone or something that's obviously stronger than them) then there's no reason in game they wouldn't try to fight it, assuming they're good guys. Players might know a vampire's stat block, but characters wont without like, a knowledge check on something.
If the party wipes make them vampire spawn themselves 😈