How do Vampires travel???

[Matafuego]

That's the question I've been posing myself lately.
There's too few information on DnD on vampires besides their combat abilities. And they don't even state that a vampire needs blood to survive!
Am I right to assume that DnD vampires do not need blood?

And how do they travel?
Do they just carry their coffins around?

Is there any supplement I should refer to? (I have Van Richten's Guide somewhere but I haven't found it yet, plenty of boxes to search...)

Any help / advice / opinion would be greatly appreciated!

Lucas

 

[Umbran]

Am I right to assume that DnD vampires do not need blood?

By the standard rules, you are correct. The vampire can drain blood, but it does not need to do so. Note also that it does not create spawn through blood drain - the energy drain does that.

And how do they travel?
Do they just carry their coffins around?

Presumably, they travel at night, or during the day with very careful precautions against being placed in direct sunlight.

A vampire that gets beaten up can travel up to nine miles to reach its coffin. If it wants to go farther than that and have the coffin's protection against destruction, it would have to take the coffin with it. Note that it also needs the coffin to cross running water - so frequently enough, it would have to travel in the coffin, probably being moved by someone it has Dominated.

A vampire that has some confidence could easily travel farther from home. It would just need to run from any serious fight if it wanted to continue to exist.

 

[FnordBear]

In one campaign I was in a vampire had permanetly enchanted his coffin with Animate Object then equiped it with Wings of Flying.

This was an odd campaign come to think of it...

 

[Sound of Azure]

In one campaign I was in a vampire had permanetly enchanted his coffin with Animate Object then equiped it with Wings of Flying.

This was an odd campaign come to think of it...

Back in my original D&D group, we had a BBEG who had his coffin built into the bottom of an animated stagecoach

It was dubbed the "batmobile" by the group, much to the DM's annoyance.

Evntually, the batmobile was destroyed by the party, but the vamp was able to relocate his grave dirt into a spider-like golem eventually, which was kinda cool. It's kinda hard to stake the vampire when the coffin fights back.

 

[Klaus]

That's the question I've been posing myself lately.
There's too few information on DnD on vampires besides their combat abilities. And they don't even state that a vampire needs blood to survive!
Am I right to assume that DnD vampires do not need blood?

And how do they travel?
Do they just carry their coffins around?

Is there any supplement I should refer to? (I have Van Richten's Guide somewhere but I haven't found it yet, plenty of boxes to search...)

Any help / advice / opinion would be greatly appreciated!

Lucas

In baseline D&D (i.e., onlythe 3 core books), vampires don't NEED blood.

Libris Mortis, otoh, introduced the notion of Inescapable Craving (like an addiction), and vampires have inescapable craving for blood.

As for travel: a vampire would usually take his coffin filled with grave dirt with it on travels. Taking a page from "Dracula", a vampire might hire a merchant caravan to take a few boxes to a certain destination, and one of these boxes would contain the vampire's coffin.

In my last campaign, the vampire-mage Gulthias created a golem, and used it to carry the coffin on travels, sleeping inside it. Being a construct, the golem would walk 24 hours per day, in a mostly straight path, to its destination.

FnordBear -> Neat idea! I specially like that idea if the animated coffin looks a bit like an iron maiden or a sarcophagus.

 

[Drowbane]

Have coffin, will travel

By the standard rules, you are correct. The vampire can drain blood, but it does not need to do so. Note also that it does not create spawn through blood drain - the energy drain does that.

[nitpick]You are half correct there. Vampires can create Vampire Spawn through thier Energy Drain, or they can create Vampires (5HD or better) and/or Vampire Spawn (4HD or less) through thier Con (blood) Drain.[/nitpick]

The MM doesn't always specify things like feeding habits. No where does it say that vampires must drink blood or that ghouls must eat flesh... I suppose the designers figured that enough of the players would know enough of the legends to connect the dots.

I imagine that Vampires who need to travel long distances (for whatever reason) within thier homeland (think Dracula or Strahd) would do so via coach... riding in thier coffin during the day, thier coaches driven by dominated thralls.

<snip>As for travel...<snip>

Drat! Beaten to the punch!

 

[Bardsandsages]

We have a Folding Coffin in our Gods of the Dead PDF. I would think no self-respecting vampire would be without one! Who on earth would want to haul such an obvious thing as a around? Just as well paid a big target on your chest and carry a sign that says VAMPIRE.

Of course, if your thrall also happens to be a professional coffin maker, maybe nobody would notice.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Vampires would coexsit quite nicely as funeral directors. With all those coffins around, who would notice?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The supplement to read is Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula." Not any movies, sequels or reimaginings. How a vampire travels takes up a good portion of the book, and the log of the Demeter is one of the best horror tales in the English language, for my money.

 

[MarkB]

Of course, if you want to get all D&D about it, then extradimensional spaces make a decent travel arrangement. No big, obvious coffin - just a Bag of Holding or folded-up Portable Hole in a dominated minion's pocket, containing the vampire and plenty of grave dirt.