Vampires Can Do That - D&D Expertise Episode 9
Channel: DiceCold
Date: 2022-02-07

It turns out 5e vampires have some tricks that are way stronger that you might have thought. 

Music is "Invisible" by Ketsa courtesy of Freemusicarchive.org

The content of this video is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)



Video transcript:

Hi, I’m Casey Grey - still trapped in a pocket dimension - and this is D&D Expertise, Episode 9.

The Vox Machina show on Amazon is good. Really good. It almost makes up for the horrible exploitation of the working class perpetrated by Jeff Bezos as part of his path to world domination. On the heels of other shows like the Expanse and Invincible Amazon Prime is not just for two-day delivery anymore.

As I was discussing the first handful of episodes with my weaponsmith we both felt that there was only one thing we didn’t enjoy; it was super easy for the Briarthorns to mind-control the king in episode 3. Barely an inconvenience.

It’s been a while since he watched the original campaign, and I still have it on my to-do list. We both had to wonder a little at how contrived it felt. How would that play out mechanically? It feels like the Charm Person spell is the closest analogue, but the target knows they’ve been screwed with once it wears off. That’s a dead end for politics, and unless they have some metamagic for subtle casting I’d think using a spell would be noticeable if you’re surrounded by dinner guests and royal guards. 

Well turns out I don’t know shit vampires in D&D because they can do exactly that, rules-as-written. No verbal, somatic, or material components, just line of sight is enough for them to charm the hell out of you. Here’s what happens when you fail the fairly difficult Wisdom Save: 

“The Charmed target regards the vampire as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn't under the vampire's control, it takes the vampire's requests or Actions in the most favorable way it can, and it is a willing target for the vampire's bite Attack.”

Those rules are exactly what we saw play out in episode 3 of the series. No need to cut corners for an adaptation to make it fit another medium, it turns out that all they needed was the monster manual.

It’s not clear that an individual even knows they’ve been targeted if they pass the save, so Lord Briarthorn didn’t need to take any chances by paying the king a visit. Without the chaos of Vox Machina they’d have come and gone without a second glance, returning to Whitestone for a locally sourced diet of charm-to-table.