[3.5] Vampires, and how to kill them?

[SecretlyaFish]

I am playing a vampire PC for the first time, and although they are very powerful, I still need to play carefully. However, they leave a lot open to your imagination I guess.

First of all, undead are immune to anything that requires a fortitude save, and immune to critical hits. So things like a coup de grace, Vorpal weapons, etc, don't work on them. Even if somehow a Vorpal weapon were to behead a vampire, would it not just revert to gaseous form, since being beheaded effectively kills anything that does not have regeneration, in effect reducing hp to zero.

So, what happens when a vampire is beheaded, either in combat, or when its inside its coffin. Lets say they find a vampire in its coffin, behead it, stake the body, but don't fill the head with holy waffers, instead throwing the vampires head into a river, leaving the body behind. A vampires hidden servant comes and takes the stake out of the body. Is the vampire destroyed? What happens to its head?

In another scenerio, 3 versions, Vampire is simply beheaded, they don't stake the body and leave the head where it lays. What happens? 2nd version, same thing except the mouth is filled with holy waffers. The other is they behead the vampire, don't stake it, but take the body, leaving the head behind, and throw the body in a river.

So, is the only way to truly kill a vampire is either sunlight, spells that specify complete destruction of the creature, staking the creature, beheading it, and fill the mouth with holy waffers, or a cleric with sufficient power to destroy it through turning? Of course being forced into gaseous form and not getting to its coffin in time kills it, and being fully immersed in running water.

[defiantdan]

The problem with the vampire is it introduces several rules on how to kill it without any kind of RAW as how to perform it with the normal combat maneuvers. So here is how I would propose killing a vampire or you.

-firstly you are immune to fort save effects unless they also affect objects. Disintegrate works just fine.

-Force Cage can trap you and keep you from gassing away from sunlight effects.

-Undeath to Death would kill you.

-Anger of the Noon day sun

-plane Shift you to the positive plane

-Spark of life will jam up your day

-Wish

Just to name a few.

[frogglesmash]

Dumping them in a river also works pretty well, or using telekinesis to launch 15 stakes at them every round, one is bound to crit at that rate.

[Inevitability]

Vorpal weapons explicitly work on vampires.

[MightBeABook]

Also, Turning and sunlight are really, really easy to use. Even if you're only active in the night, the Light of Xymor spell (Dragons of Faerun) is a 5th level cleric spell (and what cleric fighting Vampires isn't at least level 9?) which counts as natural sunlight against undead, which will weaken you to the point of uselessness and then kill you. A well-prepared Cleric, of course, has boosted his Turning level to at least 1.5x ECL (this is actually reasonably cheap), and can either render you useless (normal) or instagib you (Sun Domain). Light of Xymor is not the only spell that will destroy Vampires really well, but it's cheap enough on a scroll, and a Paladin could make a Wand of it (it's 4th for them). Undead are largely screwed against undead hunters without serious optimization or overwhelming power, and Vampires have it worse than most.

[Telonius]

If you're going to be playing the character for a while, and the DM is on board with it, I'd suggest you take a look at the Vampire Lord (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20021018a) template. At higher levels, it removes a lot of the weaknesses most Vampires are subject to. (Note that some of the bonuses are from 3.0, like DR 10/+3; should be mostly compatible though).

[Karl Aegis]

Summon a giant crocodile (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/crocodileGiant.htm), have it bite the vampire and drag the vampire into a river. Using a supernatural ability doesn't seem to be on the whitelist for things you can do in a grapple, so your croc should be safe from anything the vampire could do while it drags them to a watery grave.