This Sun! It Burns! [3.5]

[Mushroom Ninja]

The Monster Manuel says that direct sunlight can weaken or even destroy a vampire. Does it matter which sun's light is hitting the vampire?

More specifically, if a vampire were to be in light from the sun of some plane other than the prime material, would it still be affected?

[jiriku]

A sun is a sun, regardless of the plane. Which is why vampires are fond of planes like the astral plane, plane of shadow, and other planes where there explicitly is no sun.

[Mushroom Ninja]

A sun is a sun, regardless of the plane. Which is why vampires are fond of planes like the astral plane, plane of shadow, and other planes where there explicitly is no sun.

Excellent. Just as planned.

[Ernir]

It is not explained in the rules. Ask your DM.

(I'd say it doesn't matter.)

[Thurbane]

The Monster Manuel says that direct sunlight can weaken or even destroy a vampire. Does it matter which sun's light is hitting the vampire?

More specifically, if a vampire were to be in light from the sun of some plane other than the prime material, would it still be affected?

Question - was this prompted by an episode of Angel? Because in one story arc, he ends up on the home dimension of Lorne, and the sun there has no effect on him (except that his transformation goes a little screwy when he "hulks out").

I agree that it's probably a DM call, but I believe in absence of anything contradictory, RAW would say that a vamp is affected by the sun of any plane.

[Mushroom Ninja]

Question - was this prompted by an episode of Angel? Because in one story arc, he ends up on the home dimension of Lorne, and the sun there has no effect on him (except that his transformation goes a little screwy when he "hulks out").

Actually, I've never watched Angel.

The inspiration comes from a Strahd-Destruction plan I'm working up for the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft game I'm currently playing in. Lets just say our party uses... creative tactics.

[Optimystik]

Actually, I've never watched Angel.

The inspiration comes from a Strahd-Destruction plan I'm working up for the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft game I'm currently playing in. Lets just say our party uses... creative tactics.

If they're shifting him anywhere, the PEP is a prime choice.

[Thurbane]

Actually, I've never watched Angel.

The inspiration comes from a Strahd-Destruction plan I'm working up for the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft game I'm currently playing in. Lets just say our party uses... creative tactics.

Cool, I just started DMing that myself...

[Prime32]

This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun.

[Mushroom Ninja]

If they're shifting him anywhere, the PEP is a prime choice.

Well, actually, we're not shifting him. It's a long story (which I could explain if you'd like), but we're about to start negotiations with Strahd. Since we have the upper hand, we'll probably be picking the negotiation place.

[sofawall]

If they're shifting him anywhere, the PEP is a prime choice.

Amusing, the Positive Energy Plane does not harm undead. It actually is more beneficial for Undead than it is for living things.

[herrhauptmann]

Scry his coffin room.
Teleport in while he's sleeping.
Teleport Other (into the middle of the ocean). He's asleep so he gets a penalty to his will save.
OR: Teleport other into the middle of a grassy sunlit field surrounded by your melee characters.

[Mushroom Ninja]

Scry his coffin room.
Teleport in while he's sleeping.
Teleport Other (into the middle of the ocean). He's asleep so he gets a penalty to his will save.
OR: Teleport other into the middle of a grassy sunlit field surrounded by your melee characters.

Unfortunately, he is a wizard too. Quite possibly a wizard of higher level than me. Assuming I could get through his Private Sanctum, I'd trigger at least one contingency.

[TheMadLinguist]

Amusing, the Positive Energy Plane does not harm undead. It actually is more beneficial for Undead than it is for living things.

I think they're also immune to death by awesome, since objects don't get fast healing.

More proof for my positive energy is evil, negative energy is good theory.

[Gralamin]

Well, actually, we're not shifting him. It's a long story (which I could explain if you'd like), but we're about to start negotiations with Strahd. Since we have the upper hand, we'll probably be picking the negotiation place.

DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING IF YOU ARE PLAYING OR PLANNING ON PLAYING THIS MODULE:

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Hahahaha. Strahd is immune to Sunlight. GOOD LUCK.

[Mushroom Ninja]

SPOILERS!

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I haven't read what you have written, but I assume it has to do with the dayheart. Luckily for me, I have acquired this item(?). In fact it is a key part in the negotiations (and possible traps) which are about to be carried out.

[Gralamin]

SPOILERS!

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I haven't read what you have written, but I assume it has to do with the dayheart. Luckily for me, I have acquired this item(?). In fact it is a key part in the negotiations (and possible traps) which are about to be carried out.

It does indeed.

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The Dayheart is rather large... And required you to get through 90% of the castle already, unless you cheated, so I'm not quite sure how you managed to acquired it.

[Mushroom Ninja]

It does indeed.

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The Dayheart is rather large... And required you to get through 90% of the castle already, unless you cheated, so I'm not quite sure how you managed to acquired it.

Well, it's a longish story, since I think we've sort of messed up the plot a bit, but I'll do my best to explain below:

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When we first came to the castle, our party was level 9 and consisted of me (a human Wizard/Loremaster/Anima Mage), a Stonechild Fighter, and a Human Paladin.

We were coming to the castle to save Irena, some damsel who was being stalked (in the creepy way) by some vampire. Being genre savvy, (or so I thought), I suggested that we airdrop onto the roof of the tallest tower, bust our way in, and rescue the damsel (who was bound to be in the highest room of the tallest tower).

Instead of a damsel, we found a big, floating heart. And vampires. The battle was going sort of okay until the fighter got dominated (yes, we misread dominate person ), and killed the paladin. Then Strahd showed up. With an angry fighter charging me, and an evil vampire wizard backing her up, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to celerity-teleport out of there.

The place I 'ported back to was the Darkspire Academy, one of the organizations in the PHB2, which I had said I was a member of at character creation, but hadn't ever used before. There, I licked my wounds, pulled together two new party, and prepared for a second assault on Castle Ravenloft.

The two new partymembers were a gnome weretiger Cleric of Boccob (My character's roommate), and A Ranger/Consecrated Harrier (a local vampire slayer).

We teleported back to Barovia and found that the city had been razed by my two former party members (now vampires ). Moving the survivors to safety, I led my new party to the castle and we began a second assault -- this time from the underground.

Moving up through the cellars, we ran into a spider thing and some glass-like golem. I epically failed my knowledge checks, so I had no idea that the golem could dominate the people it grappled. It dominated the cleric, who killed the archer. As Strahd and some more vampires showed up to investigate all the ruckus, I celerity-teleported back to the academy again, narrowly missing a Dimentional Anchor.

Back at the academy, I once again licked my wounds and pulled together a party for a third assault on Castle Ravenloft. This time it consisted of a Gnome Sorcerer (the cleric's fiance) and Necropolitan Clericzilla (a local zombie-slayer with a surfer/stoner accent).

For the third assault, we came up through the basements again, this time finding ourselves in the crypts. All was going well until the cleric accidentally stepped on some sort of teleportation trap and found himself in a small room filled with wights. This was no problem for him (being undead himself), but as soon as he disappeared, Strahd et al. (et al. now consisting of the three vampire minions the book gives him as well as the now-vampiric weretiger, fighter, and paladin), showed up with the intention of making me and the sorceress very unhappy. Celerity teleport.

Regrouping at the academy with the necropolitan Cleric who had planeshifted for dear life (or unlife), we planned our next assault on the castle. This time we felt quite good as this was the first time none of us had been killed.

For our fourth assault, we first scried on Irena (the damsel in distress), and then, after buffing the bajeezus out of ourselves, 'ported in with the intention of doing a grab'n'go. Unfortunately, Strahd had noticed our scrying and replaced the damsel with a shapechanger (the spider thing). So we teleported into a room full of eight vampires, one fake damsel, and no damsel. Celerity Tele--. Unfortunately, Strahd had one of those annoying rings that counters a specific spell. His was set for Celerity. So they had one round to unload on us before the Cleric plane-shifted us out. The Sorcerer became ribbons very, very quickly.

Returning to the academy, the cleric and I recruited a new ally (a human paladin/hunter of the Dead) and made plans for a fifth assault on the castle. My plan this time was to return to the Dayheart room. I wasn't quite sure what the heart did yet, but I figured beating on it would attract vampires who we might be able to pick off one at a time.

We ported in next to the heart and started punching it. It took about a round for Strahd and a couple of ex-partymembers to 'port in and start threatening us (in the acid fog sort of way). So, I was about to 'port the party out as usual when someone suggested that we take the heart with us. It had appeared unmovable in the past, but the DM said teleporting would move it, so we returned to my room at the academy, heart in tow.

After some research, I figured out pretty much everything that it does. We were just trying to decide what to do with the darned thing when Strahd contacted us. After many sending spells, it was decided that we would meet somewhere of my choosing and discuss possible peace deals.

I assume he plans to turn these meetings into traps, so I plan to outtrap him. My current plan involves meeting him in one of the magic-less zones of the outlands, and keeping him busy while my allies break the heart. Not sure if it'll work or not, though.

[BobVosh]

It matters not where the sun is from, Pelor, the Burning Hate WILL destroy all!

[TheMadLinguist]

That's an absolutely hilarious story.

[imp_fireball]

The Monster Manuel says that direct sunlight can weaken or even destroy a vampire. Does it matter which sun's light is hitting the vampire?

More specifically, if a vampire were to be in light from the sun of some plane other than the prime material, would it still be affected?

There's no rules in the SRD for how things could possibly change in alternate planes from the material. The rules assume the characters live on a planet very close in resemblance to earth (hilariously close).

Hence the planes are exactly like earth. The fire plane is earth, but with more fire, while the plane of shadow is probably earth but probably constantly dark and gloomy and full of shadow like beings (although there's gotta at least be some sunlight otherwise how can you see and how would creatures living on the plane of shadow contemplate the existence of light if there was no light?), for example. Some planes are a little more unique and more fleshed out than others.

The best way to go by is ask the DM - if you're the DM, then apply fluff as necessary. Usually in the movies, vampires aren't vulnerable to artificial light but are vulnerable to sunlight because sunlight emits UV rays. You could always have a star that doesn't emit UV rays, but you'll have brush up on your physics to explain the realism.

Or you could be lazy and go with complete fantasy genre like 99% of people do.

I think they're also immune to death by awesome, since objects don't get fast healing.

More proof for my positive energy is evil, negative energy is good theory.

I think it'd make more sense to say that good and evil are defined by deities, mortals worshiping deities simply because mortals are inclined to faith in a terrible world ripe with blood, lust and war, and that positive and negative energy are just mystical forms of energy not necessarily fundamental to the prime material universe but perpetuating in their given planes and via magic seeping into the material, etc., etc. Hence, not defined by good or evil but by how you use it. Undead are evil because people are generally disgusted by smelly corpses that can move and positive energy usually heals because the good gods willed it that way (positive is either the energy of creation with negative being decay and something like hellfire being destruction or some unqualifiable, unquantifiable source). This doesn't mean that undead can't be created by positive energy or that you can't have an evil paladin that can smite evil (delusional templar trope) - simply that the prevalent gods don't make it that way and that it'd take mortal tampering (ie. PRCs, house ruled fluff, cursed items, etc.).

But that's all in how you want fluff to go.

[imp_fireball]

Unfortunately, he is a wizard too. Quite possibly a wizard of higher level than me. Assuming I could get through his Private Sanctum, I'd trigger at least one contingency.

Is it possible to have a floating contingency that follows you, set to cast some kind of random counterspell (in the hopes you get it right? )?

But seriously, that'd be funny.

Player: I teleport into vampire's coven.
DM: You triggered like three contingencies. The vampire is now awake, floating out of range of your spells and you're trapped in a force cage.
Player: That's why I brought along multiple solars to counter cast all three of those with a readied action.
DM: But what are the odds that they'd know what each contingency was?
Player: Wait, I don't think I thought this completely through!
*DM rolls d100 3 times*
DM: Holy son of a gun. It worked.
Player: Wait... what?
*hilarity ensues*
-----

This means that Jozan can not be good-aligned, since he can casts evil spells. Nor Pelor can be , because he can grant evil aligned spells, that can only come from a non-good deity. So, Pelor can not be good-aligned.

Yah, I don't know where it says evil spells can only come from a non-good deity. Logically, their could be some domain spells with the evil descriptor out there.

If Jozan is evil, then he's probably worshiping some cult that likens itself to an image of Pelor - the religion itself is evil but the god might be good. Religion can do that. I don't know if there's any rules for how clerics can follow an evil religion with a twisted idea of a good god, and if there isn't then there should be, since it'd definitely help for games where there is only one deity (most likely true neutral) ruling the universe as well.

[TheMadLinguist]

According to the rules,
Channeling positive energy is an inherently good act.
Channeling negative energy is an inherently evil act.

It's pretty dumb.

[Mushroom Ninja]

That's an absolutely hilarious story.

Yeah, I'm the only person in the party who hasn't lost at least 2 characters in the castle.

[BobVosh]

This might be a pathfinder change, but a ring of counterspells wouldn't counter celerity. It requires the spell to be cast upon the wearer to counter it. Other than that, you guys need to invest in protection from evil to stop these dominates.

[Mushroom Ninja]

This might be a pathfinder change, but a ring of counterspells wouldn't counter celerity. It requires the spell to be cast upon the wearer to counter it. Other than that, you guys need to invest in protection from evil to stop these dominates.

I think it was called a "ring of spellbattle" or something like that. As for Protection from Evil -- We started using that heavily from the 3rd assault onward. We had it prepared in the 2nd, but were planning on using it when the vampires showed up. Unfortunately, my knowledge check was low enough that I didn't know the golem thing could dominate.

[Arakune]

This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun. This sun.

??? What's that?

[RagnaroksChosen]

Well, it's a longish story, since I think we've sort of messed up the plot a bit, but I'll do my best to explain below:

Spoiler

Show

When we first came to the castle, our party was level 9 and consisted of me (a human Wizard/Loremaster/Anima Mage), a Stonechild Fighter, and a Human Paladin.

We were coming to the castle to save Irena, some damsel who was being stalked (in the creepy way) by some vampire. Being genre savvy, (or so I thought), I suggested that we airdrop onto the roof of the tallest tower, bust our way in, and rescue the damsel (who was bound to be in the highest room of the tallest tower).

Instead of a damsel, we found a big, floating heart. And vampires. The battle was going sort of okay until the fighter got dominated (yes, we misread dominate person ), and killed the paladin. Then Strahd showed up. With an angry fighter charging me, and an evil vampire wizard backing her up, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to celerity-teleport out of there.

The place I 'ported back to was the Darkspire Academy, one of the organizations in the PHB2, which I had said I was a member of at character creation, but hadn't ever used before. There, I licked my wounds, pulled together two new party, and prepared for a second assault on Castle Ravenloft.

The two new partymembers were a gnome weretiger Cleric of Boccob (My character's roommate), and A Ranger/Consecrated Harrier (a local vampire slayer).

We teleported back to Barovia and found that the city had been razed by my two former party members (now vampires ). Moving the survivors to safety, I led my new party to the castle and we began a second assault -- this time from the underground.

Moving up through the cellars, we ran into a spider thing and some glass-like golem. I epically failed my knowledge checks, so I had no idea that the golem could dominate the people it grappled. It dominated the cleric, who killed the archer. As Strahd and some more vampires showed up to investigate all the ruckus, I celerity-teleported back to the academy again, narrowly missing a Dimentional Anchor.

Back at the academy, I once again licked my wounds and pulled together a party for a third assault on Castle Ravenloft. This time it consisted of a Gnome Sorcerer (the cleric's fiance) and Necropolitan Clericzilla (a local zombie-slayer with a surfer/stoner accent).

For the third assault, we came up through the basements again, this time finding ourselves in the crypts. All was going well until the cleric accidentally stepped on some sort of teleportation trap and found himself in a small room filled with wights. This was no problem for him (being undead himself), but as soon as he disappeared, Strahd et al. (et al. now consisting of the three vampire minions the book gives him as well as the now-vampiric weretiger, fighter, and paladin), showed up with the intention of making me and the sorceress very unhappy. Celerity teleport.

Regrouping at the academy with the necropolitan Cleric who had planeshifted for dear life (or unlife), we planned our next assault on the castle. This time we felt quite good as this was the first time none of us had been killed.

For our fourth assault, we first scried on Irena (the damsel in distress), and then, after buffing the bajeezus out of ourselves, 'ported in with the intention of doing a grab'n'go. Unfortunately, Strahd had noticed our scrying and replaced the damsel with a shapechanger (the spider thing). So we teleported into a room full of eight vampires, one fake damsel, and no damsel. Celerity Tele--. Unfortunately, Strahd had one of those annoying rings that counters a specific spell. His was set for Celerity. So they had one round to unload on us before the Cleric plane-shifted us out. The Sorcerer became ribbons very, very quickly.

Returning to the academy, the cleric and I recruited a new ally (a human paladin/hunter of the Dead) and made plans for a fifth assault on the castle. My plan this time was to return to the Dayheart room. I wasn't quite sure what the heart did yet, but I figured beating on it would attract vampires who we might be able to pick off one at a time.

We ported in next to the heart and started punching it. It took about a round for Strahd and a couple of ex-partymembers to 'port in and start threatening us (in the acid fog sort of way). So, I was about to 'port the party out as usual when someone suggested that we take the heart with us. It had appeared unmovable in the past, but the DM said teleporting would move it, so we returned to my room at the academy, heart in tow.

After some research, I figured out pretty much everything that it does. We were just trying to decide what to do with the darned thing when Strahd contacted us. After many sending spells, it was decided that we would meet somewhere of my choosing and discuss possible peace deals.

I assume he plans to turn these meetings into traps, so I plan to outtrap him. My current plan involves meeting him in one of the magic-less zones of the outlands, and keeping him busy while my allies break the heart. Not sure if it'll work or not, though.

That is/was epic.

[Eldariel]

I think it was called a "ring of spellbattle" or something like that. As for Protection from Evil -- We started using that heavily from the 3rd assault onward. We had it prepared in the 2nd, but were planning on using it when the vampires showed up. Unfortunately, my knowledge check was low enough that I didn't know the golem thing could dominate.

It's a Magic Item Compendium-item. Very, very useful. Every caster wants one.

[Mushroom Ninja]

It's a Magic Item Compendium-item. Very, very useful. Every caster wants one.

Yeah, that's the one. I need to get one of those as soon as I get the money (unfortunately, fleeing from Castle Ravenloft is not a high-paying job ).