The Holmes vampire

[paleologos]

I just had a blast running Chapel of Silence for my group - a fantastic adventure. I've posted our experiences over on Dragonsfoot here and here.

It was my first opportunity to run a Holmes vampire, and it presented a few problems I was hoping to get some feedback on:

1) how far would you knock down a player who gets hit with an energy drain? Halfway between levels? A third level fighter got hit, and I think losing all of the xp accumulated at third level thus far as well as second level, placing him 1 xp shy of second level would be reasonable. Takes a bit of the sting out.

2) the description in Holmes says nothing about coffins! I found it unusual that no coffin was mentioned in the adventure, so I added one in, but now I'm not so sure that it was necessary. (Who's to say that a vampire can't sleep in a bed?)

3) 10 to 100 rats is a total creepfest. I rolled 35 rats, and used the monster description from Moldvay, which totally incapacitated 4 of the 8 party members, and killed a fifth! Basically, 1-10 rats peel off and swarm individual characters, who need to save vs. Death Ray or be knocked down and unable to fight. I allowed repeat saves vs. Death Ray on successive rounds to allow them to get to their feet, and did not make them save each round if they were successful the first round, but holy moly they are the vampire's secret weapon!

An elf in the party heard the horde approaching and cast sleep, knocking them down to 29, before 8 jumped on him. He then required 8 successful hits to rid himself of the ones crawling all over him, and only killed 3 before the first battle with the vampire was over (so was out of the picture for the whole combat). Another 8 jumped on the party cleric, 8 more on the other elf, and 5 on the dwarf - leaving only the two fighting men and the two thieves to deal with the vampire.

One of the thieves was hit and killed by the vampire, and one of the fighting-men was drained of 2 levels before they were able to bring their opponent down to single digit hit points (difficult when he's regenerating 3 hp/round) and he went gaseous and withdrew. In the meantime, 2 of the rats jumped on one of the two thieves and actually killed him (1d6 points of damage, although he only had 5 hp).

Is anyone aware of any other rules for normal rats? They're not listed in the AD&D Monster Manual.

4) finally, Holmes is lacking stats on normal wolves and giant bats, as well, so one would need some stats prior to running a vampire.

[Alex]

Overall, Holmes is a great introduction game, but I am really miffed at the monster selection. It is not very useful, missing a lot of simple stuff and wasting space on monsters no 1st-3rd level party will encounter (or if they do, they have no business fighting since there is nearly no chance of victory).

Monsters I'm doubtful I'd put in Basic: Basilisk, Cockatrice, Djinni, Hell Hound (unless using AD&D breath damage), Wereboar, Weretiger, Mummy
Monsters I definitely wouldn't have put in Basic: Black Pudding, Chimera, Brass Dragon (and limit others to small size), Giant, Griffon, Purple Worm, Spectre, Troll, Vampire
Monsters from U&WA that I would have included in Basic: Merman, Giant Leech, Crocodile, Giant Octopus, Giant Squid, Giant Crab
I also would have included dragon spellcasting, for without it there are no real spell casting monsters except NPCs, and at least the reference on small and large animals from M&T if not a few examples like wolves.

[Zenopus]

Aug 10, 2012 9:39:45 GMT -6 Alex said:

Overall, Holmes is a great introduction game, but I am really miffed at the monster selection. It is not very useful, missing a lot of simple stuff and wasting space on monsters no 1st-3rd level party will encounter (or if they do, they have no business fighting since there is nearly no chance of victory).

It's a feature, not a bug.

Remember that Holmes had to make choices on what to include in an introductory set for the first time - nobody had done this before. In Dragon #52 he reviewed the new Moldvay Basic Set and wrote:

"I struggled very hard to make all these things [inc monster descriptions] clear to the readers of the first Basic Rules and yet retain the flavor and excitement of the original rules."

and

"Monsters: There is a much more extensive monster list in this second edition, including many not in the AD&D Monster Manual. This gives the beginning DM plenty to work with. I’m glad to see Moldvay included the dragons just as I did in the first edition. It seems almost silly to describe dragons in a book intended only for player characters up to the third level. On the other hand, think how disappointed you would be if you were an inexperienced player who bought a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game and found nothing about dragons inside!".

My impression is that Holmes considered leaving out the higher level monsters, but decided to preserve the flavor of the original rules by including exciting and powerful monsters like Giants, Dragons, Purple Worms and Black Puddings. He also didn't add any new monsters himself, other than in the Sample Dungeon which provides short simple stats for Giant Snake, Giant Crab and Giant Octopus (thus showing the DM how easy it is to create new monsters).

He also acknowledged in the rule book that:
"There is endless opportunity for inventiveness in the game, however, and if a high hit dice monster is desired, ways can be invented to scale it down so that a low level party can have a chance of defeating it. If one wanted to use a chimera, for instance, in a campaign with low level characters, the creature could be scaled down. Maybe it ran into a high level magic-user and was partially shrunk by a magic spell, reducing its hit points. Or there might be a special magic sword, effective only against this chimera, hidden in the dungeon, and the adventurers given a hint or a legend that might lead them to it. In the interest of maintaining the balance of the game, however, a small or weak monster must not have a treasure anything like the hoard of a normal monster."

Holmes also provided an example on page 9 (in the section on Movement) of a Purple Worm sneaking up on a party, and says "Let us hope the party remembered to have somebody watch the rear!". In this case the appropriate response is to run away.

Also remember that low level parties could possibly handle a single powerful monster given sufficient numbers (inc hirelings) and magic items (e.g. a Wand of Fireballs). In paleologos' account above, his 3rd level party eventually defeated a vampire.

[paleologos]

Aug 12, 2012 9:24:00 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Also remember that low level parties could possibly handle a single powerful monster given sufficient numbers (inc hirelings) and magic items (e.g. a Wand of Fireballs). In paleologos' account above, his 3rd level party eventually defeated a vampire.

And a cockatrice as well as a wight, before that. It's part of what makes a game both memorable and exciting, even though two characters died. Having a wide spectrum of monsters to choose from makes the gameworld more balanced - which means adventuring for low level characters is more deadly.

The other aspect of Holmes that works well for this is that character creation is so incredibly fast. It's easier for your character to face extremely dangerous situations if you haven't spent an hour creating him or her. Just a different style of play.