Quote:


Here is the 1977 description from the AD&D monster manual,

"The most dreaded of the chaotic evil undead is the night prowling vampire. These creatures must rest in a coffin or similar receptacle during hours of sunlight unless far beneath the surface of the ground and in the latter case they must occasionally return to such rest for their power is restord by contact with soil from their grave."

Hope that helps
If your the DM whatever, if your not. MAKE THAT FUCKER GIVE YOU SOME DAMN RULES ON IT!

Personally I'd think the dirt is the important part.  It would be what regenerates them.  If the coffin is destroyed, they could move the dirt to a new coffin - but that would take time and effort and would have to be done at night before sun rise.  I mean, there's a reason vampires sleep in their coffins and not under a bed, sleeping in the dirt protects them from the effects of time.  Now, if the dirt on hand has been blessed, then they're probably screwed.  I don't think they'd die right away, they might even be able to survive a day sleeping in a broom closet away from the sun - but I think it would drain their power and make them progressively weaker until they could get a new coffin with replacement dirt from their grave.

I handled vampires as physical manifestations of their ego.  AKA, their bones/body were still in the coffin & grave.  To finish them off you had to find the grave and stake them/holy water them/consecrate the grave/etc during the day.  At night you had to do the above to the physical form to force them to grave till the next sunset. 

If you prevented them from returning to the grave with garlic, filling the coffin with holy water, etc then you'd get a severely weakened vampire to kick around and stake.  Think zombie difficult.

I also caught a vampire in a Magic Bottle that absorbed gases.  We had made one to fight a green dragon that we ended up disintegrating part of in the first round of combat.  I sold it as a genie in a bottle in Zhentil Keep.  Hi ho chaotic neutral.

Well, I guess I will just make it not so important. as the vampire would have reacted differently if the coffin was so important.
The module says more or less, that the vampire is in a hurry and doesn´t want to fight the PCs right now (what would lead to several dead PC´s, as they should be one or two lvl´s higher when they confront the vampire again).

Dracula 2000 had something with the coffin.  OH yeah, it was used as the prison for the vampire.  If locked inside he couldn't get out without destroying it, which he couldn't destroy it because he was bound to it....reciprocal logic prison schtick.

Skoodge wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2014 at 6:15pm:


Exactly. Also keep in mind: whatever you decide as a GM, you might have to come up with a plausible explanation in case you want to handle it differently at a later point in time.