Jyger’s Journeys In Dungeons & Dragons – Don’t Hit Vampires With Blunt Objects (WARNING – SPOILERS FOR ADVENTURERS LEAGUE)

*plops down* Longest. Goddamn. Battle. EVER. But, before I get into that, appropriate music for story time.

…So, here’s a free tip for every new player in Dungeons & Dragons: Your weapons will not always do the same amount of damage to every kind of enemy out there. Also, for Paladins: When you are facing undead or fiends of some kind, use your fucking radiant attacks! Otherwise, you will be fighting these monsters for a looooooong time.

I suppose I should give some back-story. So, without going into too much of a tirade, I’ll just say that one of our party members got split from the party and lured to the top of a tower. And what had lured him up there, that we then found ourselves up against three of in that tower? Vampires. And if you don’t know why that presented a problem, lemme run it down in the following bulleted list:

• I currently have a hit point maximum of 64. While I didn’t find out how many they had exactly, I know it was more than that.
• Regenerating hit points. Again, don’t know what their maximum was, or how much they regenerated every turn, but it clearly kept them ‘alive’ in this fight for a long time.
• Resistant to most of our weapons. So, in a nutshell, hitting them over and over with MC Frakker (my hammer) didn’t do a heck of a lot to them.
• Can walk on walls. Made being able to hit them slightly more difficult than usual at times.
• The leader could summon bats and charm people. Somehow, I always guessed a vampire lady would be my doom. lol
• And naturally, being vampires, they want to suck our blood. And when a vampire bites you in D&D, you lose some of your maximum hit points until the next time you take a long rest. So, for example, my hit point maximum is usually 64, but right now, it’s actually 62. Not that bad, I suppose, but I got off lucky.

So, with all of that said, wanna know how long it took to beat them? THREE HOURS!!! However, there were two other things working against us…

• Our wizard and monk were late to the game. It happens, not everyone can make it exactly on time, and I totally understand it…Unlike the next bit that went wrong.
• Our paladin, Percival (we call him Percy) kinda sorta forgot to use his divine smite until the latter parts of the fight. Naturally, once he did, we started kicking ass, and Percy actually got some badass moves in, but we’d already lost our rogue by then. And by lost, I mean failed his death saves and was gone. Just, dead.

Anyway, by the end of it, we managed to kill the vampire lady’s husbands. Our wizard finally decided to erect a fire wall, and we just kept pushing them through it to eventually burn their health down to nothing. Unfortunately, as I said, our rogue died, and the vampire lady herself turned to vapor or whatever and got away. So, because my character’s bonds stated that I would not leave others to die, I decided to give him a proper burial out of guilt… … …kinda. See, here’s what happened: One of the two husbands tried escaping by climbing down the side of the tower. As such, our barbarian, Genji, who I swear is like medieval Beast for not only how strong he is but incredibly intelligent, leaped down after him. Unfortunately, he botched the roll to hit the guy and catch the wall, and thus hit the ground so hard that he left a hole in it. So, after he climbed out (and only Genji could, in this encounter, rage against the vampires for three hours, leap out of a tower, hit the ground hard enough to put a hole in it, and FUCKING LIVE!!! lol), I just put our rogue in the hole and put dirt over him. Oh, and for the record? Percy, who I’ve already referred to as kind of scatterbrained, and is in fact the one that got separated from the group and hauled to that tower, managed to pull off the insane-looking tactic right after Genji attempted it and made it look AMAZING. Like, think if Kain from Final Fantasy IV was a tiefling paladin, but still had the same skills.

So, in conclusion, don’t hit vampires with hammers, and don’t forget to use radiant damage on them if you can. Anything like this happen to you? Lemme know in the comments, and share in the embarrassing hilarity. Ja né!