Sanity check on an improvement of the vampire

[daemonaetea]

So, for the campaign I'm currently running the big bad is a vampire who the players will eventually fight at around 12th level. Now, as is I'm having serious doubts about how the vampire will do against the players. The group just leveled up to 4th last session, and already they are able to bring some serious firepower to bear on their enemies. In the last session they fought a werewolf which I gave splint armor, a greataxe, rage, and reckless attack. In addition, he had two dire wolf minions. The players managed to down him on the third round, and while it was hairy there for a moment, overall they did so without too much of a problem.

I'm planning to use the martial variant for the vampire. Even so, although as written it's supposedly a CR 15 encounter, I'm very afraid it will be destroyed without too much fuss in an anticlimactic encounter. I'd like to make a minimal set of changes to up his deadliness and survivability against the party. From the playground I'd like to know if I missed something about the vampire that makes him deadlier than I'm seeing, if they think the proposed changes are enough, or if the changes are too much.

The party:
Halfling Fighter, Two Weapon Fighting, Battlemaster
Half Elf Cleric, Light Domain
Human Variant Ranger, Hand Crossbows, Colossus Hunter
Drow Rogue, Thief
Tiefling Paladin, Vow of Vengeance

The proposed vampire:
Before he changed, he was the head of a brutal and famous group of mercenaries. After changing, he lead his men in an assault upon a country, killed the king, and took over. As such, I'd like to give him a few things to represent that background.
Plate Mail +2, making his AC 20
Sword of Answering, Chaotic Evil, along with
Belt of Fire Giant Strength, along with
The Brute feature, making his sword attack be +15 for 2d8+10 damage, and letting him use his reaction for a retaliatory strike

Even with that, I'm worried that he simply won't be able to deal enough damage to the party to pose a real threat. That's an average of 38 damage a round, 57 with the retaliatory strike. I just don't think that's really enough to challenge a 12th level party - do the legendary actions help enough to balance that? - but since this is the first game I'm DMing for I would really appreciate some input here.

I'm planning to have the encounter happen with some of his minions present, but I want to make sure he's actually enough of a threat in and of himself to justify big bad status.

[Wolfsraine]

I've noticed that a single big bad guy usually doesn't stand a chance vs my group. Make sure you have plenty of minions and or traps throughout the fight. If they get a good initiative roll, it could spell disaster before your bad guy gets to do much of anything. Give him lair actions, etc, youre the DM, just wing it if they seem like theyre overpowering the fight.

[Flashy]

5e expects players to encounter high CR enemies way earlier than I think a lot of DMs realize. Taking this case as an example...

The guidelines in the DMG generate the following encounter values for a party of five 12th level PCs. Easy: 5,000 xp, Medium: 10,000 xp, Hard: 15,000 xp, Deadly: 22,500 xp. A lone CR 15 monster is worth 13,000 xp, or somewhere between a medium and a hard encounter. According to the DMG you should expect them to blow through about three vampires a short rest (assuming all lone encounters).

If you want it to be a hard/deadly encounter on its own the DMG would suggest you throw the vampire at them around 10th level (Hard: 9,500 xp, Deadly: 14,000 xp)


It's also worth pointing out that the DMG only sort of accounts for the way larger groups screw lone opponents with the action economy and just sort of generally overestimates encounter difficulty. Personally I'd guess they could take it starting somewhere around 8th level.


EDIT FOR THE PROPOSED CHANGES

So there are a couple of things with your proposed changes.

1. This is a huge pile of loot. 5e includes no magic item scaling at any level of character progression. Defeating this enemy will further imbalance your future encounters. The belt of fire giant's strength and +2 plate mail in particular. There isn't an enemy in the game based on the assumption that a PC with have more than 20 in a stat, or an AC of more than 21. This applies to the sword of answering too, since there's no expectation of enhancement bonus weapons, but since it's chaotic evil they're less likely to use it.

2. It doesn't actually really fix the problem. Sure he'll have a to hit modifier so high the monster creation guidelines don't go that far (the highest it goes is a recommended +14 for a CR 30 enemy) but it isn't going to change the fact that they can eat through his hit points pretty quickly. AC 20 is nice, but your PCs will probably still be hitting on 11s. Between all their burst options they're just going to eat his brains in the first couple rounds of a toe to toe slugfest.

3. So don't make it a toe to toe slugfest! Make it a group fight, or if you really want to have it be climactic fight with a single opponent make him two vampires who share a body (http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/)! There are a lot of good options.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Add Legendary Actions to let the Vampire act more often so Action Economy doesn't screw him/her over.

[daemonaetea]

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

For the pile of loot problem - this will basically mark the end of the campaign, so I'm not as worried about that. Although it will be possible for the group to continue playing beyond that fight, I don't consider it likely. Our group makeup involves three of us that DM who basically take turns DMing. As such we usually focus on adventures of a discrete length so that once a plot is resolved the next person can take their turn. So this game will have been going for a few months by this time, which is a good stopping point to let the next guy take over.

Legendary Actions - the vampire actually has them, but none of them are that powerful. At least, they don't seem so by default, but I've got ideas.

Single big bad - yeah, I'm aware of the action economy. He's definitely going to have minions with him, but the problem is I know my group - they're gonna go all in on the vampire, immediately. The minions will help dish it, but won't do much to help take it. Unless I make some of them have the Protection fighting style...

HP problem - yeah, that's still the biggest worry. I can give him an item to boost his CON, but that's only a patch. Won't boost it that much. I could do something to give them disadvantage on attack rolls, but that's simply unfun for the players to do too much of. I can just arbitrarily set his HP higher, but I usually prefer not to do too much of that sort of thing.


What I think I'll do is this. First, I didn't mention before, but the vampire will be waiting for them at the heart of his stronghold, at the heart of the city he has enthralled to him. It'll be a slog just for the players to reach him. They'll have to balance the encounters they meet on the way with the knowledge that the vampire awaits them, and that they won't be able to rest once they enter his stronghold. They should be slightly down on resources by the time they reach him. In addition, I think I'll make his fight a multi-layer affair. First encounter in the throne room, with royal guards present. Once his health gets low he'll go mist form and descend through grates in the floor. The party will then deal with whatever guards are left. Next level down, the dungeons, same deal. A few undead are here along with the vampire, who again retreats when his health gets below half. Then the final encounter will be directly below, against the vampire and his most loyal servant, a necromancer, in his own crypt. She'll focus on keeping him safe and crowd control mostly, so the party can focus on bringing her down, giving him another round or two to attack. By retreating he can heal to full between battles, which should help keep his health up and allow him to be a force each time the party sees him,
resulting in an end boss who both dishes and takes a lot of damage, and who the party will be very glad to stake in his last chamber.

[Demonic Spoon]

So, for the campaign I'm currently running the big bad is a vampire who the players will eventually fight at around 12th level. Now, as is I'm having serious doubts about how the vampire will do against the players. The group just leveled up to 4th last session, and already they are able to bring some serious firepower to bear on their enemies. In the last session they fought a werewolf which I gave splint armor, a greataxe, rage, and reckless attack. In addition, he had two dire wolf minions. The players managed to down him on the third round, and while it was hairy there for a moment, overall they did so without too much of a problem.


I'm going to nitpick this, since it seems like this is where your fear about the encounter being easy comes from

One single CR3 creature is an Easy encounter for a group of 5 level 4 characters.

One CR3 + 2 CR 1s is 2200 XP by the book, which is only Hard for a group of 5 level 4 characters (even though your party is on the upper end of the limit and the encounter is on the lower end of the limit for XP budgeting, so realistically it should be lower).

Finally, did your players have silvered weapons? Being able to completely ignore the werewolf's damage immunity is by itself going to make the fight way easier.

The encounter you gave them wasn't ever going to be super difficult barring extremely bad luck for the players.


As far as design for your BBEG encounter goes: Aim for an XP budget on the low-mid range of Deadly, while keeping in mind any special advantages your players have (including magic items), and how resource-exhausted they are expected to be by the final battle (raise the budget if they're starting at full resources).

Use the XP budgeting rules to figure out roughly how powerful your vampire will be after all of your stat and equipment modifications.

[Fwiffo86]

Single big bad - yeah, I'm aware of the action economy. He's definitely going to have minions with him, but the problem is I know my group - they're gonna go all in on the vampire, immediately. The minions will help dish it, but won't do much to help take it. Unless I make some of them have the Protection fighting style...

Simple answer, don't let them gang up on him. If he is the big bad guy, I would assume he is smart enough to bide his time and wear down his opponents with minions, denying them the opportunity to rest. If they result to magic to make a hidiehole so they can rest, he should have a nasty surprise waiting for their eventual return. Basically instead of a fight with a big bad and minions, I would recommend the following plan:

[Party rest period] -> [Monster wave 1] -> [Vampire attack and retreat] -> [Party attempt to rest] -> [Monster attack party while resting] - [Vampire attack and retreat 2] - [Monster wave 3] - [Final Battle]

Be sure the Vamp conserves his resources, even if he just darts in, takes a chunk out of someone and keeps going (mist/bat/wolf/bolt hole), its more resources used. Its about fighting smarter, not being more powerful. Our DM flatlined half our party with a method similar to this. Its extremely effective when the party doesn't get the chance to recoup their resources.

[daemonaetea]

I definitely need to take a better look at the encounter guidelines, yes.

For that battle - I significantly improved the werewolf, though I'm not sure exactly how that'd improve his CR. Let's go minimal and say 1 more, so CR 4, though I was actually aiming for a CR 5 creature. Him and the two dire wolves thus are worth 1500 xp. Since there's three enemies, double that for 3000 xp. The party was 3rd level when they fought it, so that works out to be a good deal above the Deadly threshold. The werewolf purposefully used sub-optimal tactics for personality reasons - splitting his attacks instead of focusing on a single character - but this only mattered for the second and third rounds of combat. After which he was dead. The party did have silver weapons, but since I gave him the benefit of rage he had basically double the HP from normal. For the silver, I didn't hand that out - the players specifically sought it out before they even knew there was a werewolf. They simply knew there's a ton of undead around, and that silver can be useful against a variety of evil-ish enemies.

I'm not actually complaining about that battle. It's simply that the party has a significantly higher burst capability than I realized, and now I'm trying to take that into consideration. Not because I am invested in my bad guys living, per se, but more that a battle in which the main bad guy goes down in a couple rounds is anticlimatic to the players. I want to create a final battle that is satisfying for them to win, and for that to happen there has to be at least some difficulty, which I'd like to make organically rather than by just giving the bad guy a couple hundred more HP. Which would work, but seems like the boring option to me.


For the "wave" strategy, that's basically what I'm considering now. Detailed out the exact plan in my last post. My main fear with that is I'm afraid of making it too much of a grind. Just would need to make sure each of the waves is interesting I suppose, though I'd still like the vampire to be the main attraction for each of them.


Long story (not really) short, I'm DMing for a group of experienced adventurers, so I'm looking to make a tough and fun challenge, but I think the unmodified vampire is simply too wimpy to be a credible threat to the players. After everything else they've fought, something that only hits for 2d6+4 damage simply isn't scary. That's about what the skeletal horse in the first session did. He has other abilities that can be used, but most of them have been replicated by things they've fought, or things they will yet fight. (Charm is a common enough thing, the life drain is shared by wights they've fought, etc.) I think the party could actually beat him right now, given a mild amount of luck. He's simply not very deadly. His most offensive ablities are his Charm, which is very good but the party will have a few ways to deal with by the time they reach him, and his ability to summon a large number of swarms. Other than that, his actual numbers are middling. Remove those, and my party could easily kill him (or at least reduce him to mist) right now. I want to emphasize physical power for him, given his background, and I plan to try to use additional enemies that play into his strengths, but I mostly wanted to see if any of the proposed changes I had for him could have unintended consequences I hadn't seen, or if there was a better way to accomplish my goals, or even advice on better ways to use the vampire's unique strengths in battle. Basically anything to make it stronger, and thus a more satisfying experience for my players to overcome.

[Fwiffo86]

His most offensive ablities are his Charm, which is very good but the party will have a few ways to deal with by the time they reach him, and his ability to summon a large number of swarms. Other than that, his actual numbers are middling.

An alternate route could be to have him "sneak charm" half the party. Have him in "magical" disguise interacting with the party by replacing NPCs, especially shopkeepers. That way, he gets a free charm when they interact with him. Have him sit on the charm until the party actually threatens him (big boss battle) and have the charmed members "switch sides" essentially.

Think like a villain, not like a dungeon stocker.