Pathfinder: Vampire Coffins

[Theonlyjanitor]

I've been running the Way of the Wicked campaign for my players, two of them have decided to become vampires (WotW has vampirism as a 5 feat tree with prerequisites of being bitten by a vampire, so they don't outshine the other players too much.)

Balance isn't much of an issue, until the player told me his brilliant plan on dealing with his need to sleep in a coffin weakness. He is going to glue his coffin to an Immovable rod, placed roughly 2 miles directly up in the air and locked in place. In doing so, whenever he is reduced to 0hp he will turn into Gaseous form and fly at maximum speed straight up to his coffin. He can remain in gaseous form for up to 2 hours to reach his coffin, and in gaseous form he has a fly speed of 20ft perfect. Thats 12,000ft an hour, assuming 1/2 speed directly up, he can fly over a mile an hour straight up. He could easily fly 2 miles into the air and get into his coffin, likely where it would be incredibly difficult to spot or get to, especially by clerics and paladins who never get fly or overland flight. I can't think of anything someone without flight could do about it, even if they did see it, I don't think any spell or weapon has that kind of range.

So, what you you guys think? Should my player enjoy his evil brilliance or can you think of any way that his plan isn't infallible?

Relevant links:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rods/immovable-rod
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/vampire

[Absol197]

The obvious point is that if he's more that a couple hundred feet away from his coffin laterally, then he's just barely able to make it there in time. It severely restricts the area of land that he can stay in and still be in range in case of an emergency. Basically, you have to do some triangluation, with each vertical foot traveled counting as 2 feet. He could put it lower in the sky, of course, but then it could potentially be reachable by others. And of course, he's assuming no headwind of any kind that might slow him down.

The other problem is that if he ever gets attacked during the day, or within an hour or so of sunrise, then he's screwed, because once he hits sunlight, his supernatural abilities go away. Meaning no more gaseous form. And the higher you get from the ground, the further away the horizon gets, and the sooner the sun rises.

Food for thought.


~Phoenix~

[Theonlyjanitor]

Hmm, good point, if it take him two hours of nonstop flight to get to his coffin, then it would cut down a lot of his activity during the night if he wanted to be particularly safe. And fighting in the early morning could end up killing him if the sun rises while he's en-route to his coffin.

He should probably keep a spare.

Maybe if the divine casters who are after the group locate his coffin (say after seeing him turn into smoke and fly into the air) they could hire some people/creatures who can reach it to deal with the coffin, or summon an outsider or something.

In this campaign, permanent death for undead isn't the end of the world, as there is a cleric in the group with a campaign specific spell to resurrect undead creatures while keeping them in their undead state.