So I'm running Storm king's thunder campaign and in the book it mentions a Vampire staying at Bargewrigth in and causing trouble at Womford village near by. It doesn't go into too much detail.
I thought I would run a little encounter there, where the players would hear rumours about the vampire and hopefully want to help the villagers. Find the tomb where the vampire was hidden and battle would happen. I thought of running the little encounter as some of the players really like vampires/vampire lore so would find it fun. But now I'm worried it's going to be too hard an encounter.
There are 6 players who would be level 6 when they got there. A paladin, a fighter, a bard, a ranger, a monk and a druid.
Would this be too hard an encounter?
I was going to to throw in some vampire spawn too but I know that will make it very difficult.
The impression I got from storm kings thunder is that the vampire lives in the old inn and does jobs for the black network (Zhentarim). They attack people on the road in the form of a bat leading to the name Womford Bat and it's not clear if the locals even know there is a vampire. The vampires cover is that they are pretending to be on the run from water deep and the black network runs cover for them.
So I would have two encounters
Arik pretending to be a thief. He tries to negotiate with the party and avoids using super natural powers as much as possible unless he thinks the party is on to him. He may even fake dead if he thinks it will get the party to leave. If discovered as a vampire he unleash's his full abilities and summons swarms of bats to assist. If killed he turns to mist and retreats to a locked box guarded by Nalaskur who offers to pay them off and threatens them with the wrath of the black network if refused. This is primarily a role play encounter that can have combat. Killing Nalaskur or Arik here results in the party losing favor with the Black network and finding it much harder to get illicit goods and services.
Arik attacking as the Womford bat in bat form with 8 swarms of bats. He does this either on the road at random or if they annoy any one from the black network including by looking for a vampire. He hides among the bats and attacks by using charm to prevent players from attacking before using a vampire bite. He flees at half health, if the players disable his regeneration or all the swarms are killed as vampires are vulnerable away from home. This bumps the vampires challenge rating down to about a 6 because as a bat that flees they have half hit points and about a quarter of the damage. If that's too easy then have them have the bat drop a poison dust with the effects of confusion spell on the party first.
If you wanted you could also have encounters finding 3-4 corpses on the road that rise as vampire spawn or a bandit attack that consists of vampire spawn.
As it's a party of 6 access to radiant damage that is likely to do this encounter near full strength these encounters shouldn't be very difficult. The paladin alone can pump out 48 damage a round meaning that a vampire could easily be knocked down to half health at in one round if they make themselves too obvious as a target.
So I'm running Storm king's thunder campaign and in the book it mentions a Vampire staying at Bargewrigth in and causing trouble at Womford village near by. It doesn't go into too much detail.
I thought I would run a little encounter there, where the players would hear rumours about the vampire and hopefully want to help the villagers. Find the tomb where the vampire was hidden and battle would happen. I thought of running the little encounter as some of the players really like vampires/vampire lore so would find it fun. But now I'm worried it's going to be too hard an encounter.
There are 6 players who would be level 6 when they got there. A paladin, a fighter, a bard, a ranger, a monk and a druid.
Would this be too hard an encounter?
I was going to to throw in some vampire spawn too but I know that will make it very difficult.
The impression I got from storm kings thunder is that the vampire lives in the old inn and does jobs for the black network (Zhentarim). They attack people on the road in the form of a bat leading to the name Womford Bat and it's not clear if the locals even know there is a vampire. The vampires cover is that they are pretending to be on the run from water deep and the black network runs cover for them.
So I would have two encounters
If you wanted you could also have encounters finding 3-4 corpses on the road that rise as vampire spawn or a bandit attack that consists of vampire spawn.
As it's a party of 6 access to radiant damage that is likely to do this encounter near full strength these encounters shouldn't be very difficult. The paladin alone can pump out 48 damage a round meaning that a vampire could easily be knocked down to half health at in one round if they make themselves too obvious as a target.
Thanks that's some interesting information to think about.