Monster Group: Vampire Spawn & Minions

A vampire don't always travels alone. Keeping some help around can prevent easily getting a stake through the heart while they rest. Vampires are versatile monsters, and can be found in many different situations. Here I outline a group that a vampire might use as they travel, or flee for their life after a setback.

Composition

4 Bandits using short swords, and crossbows

1 Carriage with 2 horses

1 Vampire Spawn

* Find stats for the Vampire Spawn (page 354) and Bandits (page 396) here.

Tactics

The vampire will typically either use it's minions that it travels with as a source of blood to stay alive, or use them to aid in staging attacks. The chosen strategy depends on the disposition of the vampire in question, with those with poorer self control and those enjoying the hunt praying on innocence instead of their minions. A vampire that can subsist on its minions will typically develop schemes to hide its tracks and goals that reach beyond their basic needs.

Using the carriage and its minions, the vampire will either set up a base and use the carriage as a quick escape if things get too suspicious, or travel over a large area to spread out the attacks. The minions watch over their master's hide out, spacing out their rest to ensure there is always at least one lookout. The presence of minions means that even during the daytime, the vampire can be moved.

Due to a vampire's forbiddance, and the legends that people at large are often aware of, it's not uncommon for villagers to stay indoors at night once a vampire is suspected. For a vampire who enjoys the hunt, they need some creativeness to overcome the issue. The most common of which is to change hunting grounds, to have spies operating in the area who gain the trust of locals and invite the vampire in, having their minions use force to break into a house containing potential victims and then inviting the vampire in, forcing occupants out of a building and attacking them when they leave, or for the vampire to invite people over to their home for parties in the attempt to elicit an invitation (it's not good form to kill people in your own house unless you can get away without being suspected).

Size

Different vampires will have different numbers of minions. In this group I've set up a small group that transport the vampire. However, it can have more minions planted in the village or city. It can also have the addition of an honour guard if need be. It could also be moving between areas of large influence. Depending on its goal and situation, the behaviour can change greatly.

Relationships

A vampire could spend a great deal of time working its way into the good books of local nobles and influential people. They could even play the part of commoner to ensure no-one with power looks at them twice. This means that finding out who the vampire is could be just the beginning. The players may need to deal with innocent guards doing their job, characters who simply don't believe their wild accusations, and many different forms of backup the vampire can raise.

Things Not Going as Planned

A vampire spawn knows that it can die, and will try to preserve itself if in distress. However, it also knows that it has tremendous regeneration abilities and may come back minutes later, ready for more while its targets are low on resources. Regardless, it will try its best to preserve itself and the location of its resting place, fearing the possibility of being staked.

Monster Ideas: Bandits

I'd be very surprised if someone went their role-playing career without encountering a bandit. These guys are everywhere. And not only are they an easy source of low level baddies in campaigns, they say something about the location they are found in. From brazen daylight robberies or late night pick-pocketing, there are a lot of schemes these guys can be used for. And it is in the hopes of arriving at more ideas to use these baddies that we'll explore them today.

Scheme

A group of bandits should have some sort of money making scheme. Pick-pocketing the rich, attacking caravans, and extorting high ranked people for favours are all examples of things that they can be trying to do. However, this element is very important for your group of bandits as it will determine their motivations and often their skill level. A group of assassins in a big city will not be comparable to a bunch of highway robbers far from civilization. It will also affect how exactly the party will be hindered by them and in what manner. Change the scheme, and you change the entire situation with these guys.

Organization

A few thoughts about the organization of the bandits is a good idea. Is it a centralized structure with some outside groups responding and doing as they are told? Is this a small operation so there is only one level of management close to where the action is? Or is it a large, decentralized organization that occasionally gets some orders but has a lot of leeway as well. What this does, besides helping us understand how the group might act and whether they can get help from another office, is let us think about the heads. How many levels of organization are there? Is there the regular bandits at the bottom and one level 2 leader above them? Or is there an evil level 18 wizard leading a level of level 10 enforcers who have another 3 levels below them? With that kind of organization, they could get into conspiracy theory territory.

Good Henchmen

Of course, bandits could be convenient henchmen for something bigger. They could be a front set up by a noble to take care of business that can't be dealt with legally. The operation could've been taken over by mindflayers or vampires. Do they know? Maybe yes, maybe no. Regardless there is a layering of threats in this case. Making sure these layers make sense together is important. Also, the bandits could eventually become the henchmen of your characters. Perhaps they are competing with your players to steal something.

Facade

Oh, it turns out they aren't bandits. They are an invading army looting or something. Kind of a copout? Yeah, but it can work. The important part here is that banditry is an occupation, and people can use it as a front for something else.

Fighting Style

How do these bandits fight? By the D&D 5^th edition book, they'll have a scimitar and a crossbow. However, we can play with this a lot and in fact likely will need to. If this is all in a city, you wouldn't expect your bandits to walk past guards wearing weapons in a slum. Instead they might be wearing concealed knives. Likewise, they don't all have to be the same bandits. One might use a whip and short sword, one might hand back with a bow and help their wizard, and another two might try to hold the enemy in a desirable location with shields and swords. Perhaps they don't actually fight. Instead they lay quick ambushes, attack, and then disappear. Or maybe they are experienced and rely on a combination of martial prowess and magic. Not every group in the bandit organization needs to have the same outfit either. In general, I'd recommend treating the entries in the Monster Manual for bandits as a starting point.

Monster Ideas: Humanoids

Most NPCs in a campaign tend to be some kind of humanoid. Whether human, elf, drwarf, or any other humanoid, they are used to help flesh out the world. The problem though is that they are incredibly versatile. A human can be anything. In contrast wights, vampires and liches have their own applications that make them special. These imply and inspire stories due to their uniqueness. Humanoids are more difficult in this way precisely because they can be anything. And it is for that reason that I hope to explore this topic. I also know they aren't very monstrous, but hey, we Dungeon Masters throw them at our players so why not?

Look Somewhere Else

The first way to address this situation is to not rely on the humanoid background for your story. Instead, it needs to come about through other means. If you run enough liches, you'll run into a situation where you don't know what else you can do with a lich. However, that doesn't mean you will never run a lich again. Instead the focus turns to the character of the individual lich in question. What are they after? Who do they hate? Why are they doing what they are doing? Here the difference is between what you can do with just any lich, and what a particular lich might do. Simply put, you need to come from the character first. I find myself in this situation very quickly when needing to make humanoids.

Be Distinct

Elves, drwarves, humans and other humanoids tend to have something that makes them distinct from each other. Further, even in the core rules, there are further divisions in terms of different types of dwarves and elves. This is immensely helpful for me. Instead of thinking of a human, think about what a resident of Baldur's Gate would do or say. If the type you've chosen is too general, go more specific.

Let's Change Things Up

If the nature isn't inspiring, you can change the nature. Perhaps your humanoid baddies are the reject descendants of gods trying to prevent your players from achieving divinity. The key here is to go more specific. Human might be very general, but godkind may not be. In the core books there are many kinds of humans and likewise you can do the same. It's not just a war between humans on one side and humans on the other. It's two distinct cultures with their own values. As a result, they are no longer just humans. What we are doing is making the type of humanoid new by changing them. Of course, the extent we'll need to do this to help inspire ourselves will vary depending on the Dungeon Master in question. This is a bit different from the above option but very similar. There, we went more specific to find something to inspire us. Here, we make up something new. It will be more specific, but it doesn't exist yet. Often this takes the form of a subversion. Good orcs, good succubi, etc.

Social Structure

One humanoid baddie by themselves often isn't enough to challenge a party. Instead you throw 4, 10, or 40 at them. And when you have that many humanoids, they'll have a social structure of some kind. These interactions and structures are some of what makes humanoids so fun. They aren't undead skeletons who are probably the world's worst standup comedians. You also don't want them to be the same as undead skeletons. Naturally personal motivations also come along with social stuctures. Thinking about both social structures and character motivations is a path to many an interesting adventure. Even a necromancer might have apprentices with their own relationships with each others and others outside the organization.

Monster Ideas: Vampire

In the big book of things we can throw at our players, vampires come up fairly often. They are iconic, they are deadly, they have been imagined in many different ways, and they tend to come with specific rules. As a result they make good choices for big bads but also for one-off encounters. Of course, there is quite a lot we can do with these badies and I hope trying to put it to text helps someone out there. Of course I also hope it'll help me think of a new way to throw one of these at my players.

Rules

The vampire, as presented in D&D 5^th edition and other places, tends to come with a set of rules. They take damage from running water, sunlight, holy water, die from stakes to the heart, and whatever else you want to give them. Don't want to let them enter a residence without invitation? Also good. What's nice about this kind of thing is that can result in different approaches, and player hitting above their level by exploiting the weaknesses of the creature. They don't need to kill the vampire. They just need to survive until morning, for example. Not every vision of vampires has the same weaknesses and rules they need to follow, but thinking about these can lead to very interesting situations. A classic one is where the party is trapped in a building besieged by vampires who are trying to charm someone into inviting them in.

Magic Items

Of course, magic items are a great way to exploit weaknesses. With something similar to a sun blade a level 1 party has a chance against a vampire spawn. Now, the magnitude may vary depending on the rule system, but it will still help (it still won't be a good chance in D&D 5^th edition). You can also easily come up with other anti-vampire magic items. All they need to do is give off sunlight. I fondly remember a lantern that gave off sunlight in one of our campaigns.These may be too powerful, so you may want to make holy water easily available so that they can test for vampires. Alternately, a magic lantern can reveal the true appearance of these baddies.

Long Running Campaigns

These kinds of rules and constraints can be very helpful, especially when making a long running campaign. Going from thralls to weaker vampires to vampire leaders presents a natural evolution over the course of a campaign. The same can be said about going from trying to exploit the weaknesses of vampires to outright head on assaults against their headquarters. That they are presentable, social, and manipulative is also something that is easy to exploit for a campaign. Such an adversary lends them to have long running schemes like a lich, but also able to easily be in the forefront of their plots. Their ability to easily make new spawn also makes them a consistent threat, as well as a reason to fear death at the hands of one.

Other Vampires

There are quite a few different variations of vampires out there that we could use. A large swarm of vargouilles can be an interesting situations for lower level characters to fight against. I always considered them to be rather vampiric in nature. Of course, mythology is full of many vampiric variants. Perhaps a sorcerer who had a taste for blood became a vampire in your campaign? Would they have an immunity to sunlight if they did? All good questions that can lead to interesting campaigns. Technically this also wouldn't be a monster like the vampire in the manuals. However, it is still vampiric in nature and could help create a new interesting villain. I recall one game where a creature was attacking people and draining their health through their dreams. The solution involved a dream battle where belief rolls were used to allow players to do impossible things, such as spider climb without casting the spell, and killing it in their dreams. The great thing about these creatures is that playing around with the concept can lead to a new adventure idea. It also makes sense that a vampire would look for ways to mitigate their weaknesses.

Relationships

Since vampires tend to be smart, charming, and long lives, they present interesting relationship structures. You could easily have a city full of vampire spawn that keep wreaking havoc, but no sign of the vampire that leads them. They could work alone and have everyone working for them without their knowledge. They could also have goals unrelated with domination, such as a hedonistic delight in taking blood. There was one campaign I played in where the vampire was living on the street as a pickpocket and a rogue. It would take out easy targets in order to remain less noticeable, but was acting purely for its own enjoyment.Vampires are intelligent as well so complicated vampire societies with civil wars while being under attack by non-vampires could lead to interesting situations as well. However, the relationship between the vampire(s) and their world tends to be important.

Vampire Spawn

As written, vampire spawn can be freed when their master dies in D&D 5th edition. This makes for an interesting low level badie, but it also has a major different from their master variant. These vampires cannot escape as mist back to their coffins. They have one chance at life and as such, you'd expect them to be more cautious and probably use henchmen. Or maybe they are more animalistic. Regardless, you probably wouldn't expect to see this type of vampire act the same way.

Vampire Hunt Adventure Idea

A vampire is terrorizing the village at night, but the people don't know where the vampire hides during the day. At night they may be under siege and find a house to hold down in while blocking all the windows. Investigate, fighting off the vampire's henchmen, and try to stake the vampire (probably best to go with a vampire spawn here). Could end with a combat encounter in a room with windows, allowing the players to hide in the light to keep the vampire away or drag it into sunlight. Also could end with them staking the vampire in their coffin. If these aids are given, being a level or two below the recommendation is probably a good idea or it may be too easy. Alternatively, fighting the vampire in a head on fight before it tries to leave the town and set up somewhere else could also work.

Vampire Ship Adventure Idea

A vampire is moving from city to city in a boat, claiming a few victims, and then moving on to a different port. The players need to investigate the cause, track it down to it's old hideout, which heavily suggests it's a vampire (probably a vampire spawn if you want to run this at a low level), and then try to hunt it down out in the world before it changes locations again. This will probably be more episodic in nature and have a few false leads.

Monster Ideas: Lich

From high level to low level, there are many different creatures you can throw at a party and many different ways to do so. For a while now I've wanted to go through a few different monsters and throw around some ideas for their use. It's an exercise that has helped me before in the past and I hope that people who find this get some use out of it as well. And given my long standing tradition of sending hordes of undead for my players to kill, where better to start than with the evil old lich?

Why Lich?

These guys are amazingly versatile. From big bads, to interesting enemies in a dungeon to a cool thing for a low level party (this is atypical but I'll get back to this), there is a lot you can do with these guys. They also hit on a few themes that I for one find cool. Life, death, undeath, all the cool stuff. The phylactery is a quest just waiting to happen as well. Since just killing them isn't enough either, and liches typically don't carry their insurance policy on them, chances are high that players will meet the same one more than once before finally putting an end to them.

Playing With Alignment

These guys are evil. Right? Well, playing around with their alignments and goals can yield a lot of interesting situations. One of the first campaigns I played in had a lich that had been transformed against their will and tried whatever they could do to regain control of their own unlife. They couldn't escape undeath as long as their phylactery was held captive and they couldn't rebel without consequences either.

While these creatures tend to be portrayed as evil, all of the other alignments present opportunities for something new. It largely goes back to what your world thinks about trying to dodge the regular flow of life, but I've seen interpretations before where they were the main ally for the players. Now, of course, they had their own interests and their undead nature fed into their character and how they saw the world. However, they did try to help the party as well and wanted to leave the world in a better state. One I remember very fondly, though I don't recall if I've mentioned him before in my writing, was a brilliant inventor and mage that would massage events in order to have his inventions fall into the right hands to spread and improve the world. The only issue is that things rarely go as planned, and the inventions would often cause much destruction as well.

Liches For Low Level Players

Low level players also want cool things to fight and situations to encounter. Whether you are level 1 or 20, undead can still be cool and tough. For level 20, the classic lich is perfectly fine. For low level players, a rotting, falling apart lich who stays undead through pure sheer of will after being starved without their phylactery is a lot of fun. Now, I'd be careful about throwing one of these at your players without them knowing what happened here. Otherwise the next time they meet a lich, it will be an absolute disaster.

Big Bads

They tend to have tons of undead minions, and possibly cults working in their name. They spin plans that span hundreds of years thanks to their lack of permanent death. They are one of the first things that comes to my mind when someone says “big bad”. That said, we can have a little more fun with these guys than that. Since anything can die and become undead, we can have a lot of fun with undead armies. Undead minotaurs, skeletons, ogres, and dragons all rolling in and attacking a city. Being that they are spellcasters as well, you can do amazing things by just tweaking their spell lists. Having them as combat challenges for lower level ranges can also work, but you'll need some justification for it. The methods that come to mind are having their spellbook destroyed, reducing their spell list, a curse preventing or injury preventing them from regaining spell slots, or simply never being strong enough to complete the process themselves and instead having been turned by their more gifted master (their magic skills reflect this).

What Happens After?

D&D and the campaigns I've been involved in often have legends of liches that became for greater than mere liches. From gods to forces of nature that project their strength from the negative energy plane, the goals of a lich and what they achieve can be vast. Don't feel you need to stop at just a lich.

Spell List

Since we are dealing with a spellcaster, remember that playing with the spell list can greatly change everything. You can make a defense minded lich, a pyromancer, a seer that manipulates events for centuries, and many others. It should, of course, reflect their character but this versatility helps keep them from becoming boring.

Lich Battles

Another one of my fond memories was a conflict hundreds of years long between two liches. They bested each other and destroyed their bodies time and time again, savagely unravel each-other's plans both for reasons of gain and spite, but had never been able to find each-other's phylactery to finally end it. It's was an entertaining thing to witness and also has a lot of potential as the setup for a campaign. It lends itself quite well to games of intrigue as well.