Creative Ways to Fight Vampires

[watermark]

So I'm working on a MV game now where a coven of witches plus their human allies attempt to fight off a secret invasion of their town by vampires. There is of course something special about this town that makes it absolutely necessary for the vampires to dominate it. So I've been browsing some vampire movies, shows, and books like Buffy, Vampire Diaries, or Morganville vampires for ideas but there's just so much stuff. So I was hoping we have some vampire buffs here who can give me some creative ways to fight vampires outside of the traditional garlic and stake routine. Or if you can recommend any specific episodes I should watch to learn more about fighting vampires.

The game is set in present day. Some definitions of the parties involved:

WITCHES: good at magical rituals, with some witches specializing in certain special powers (telekinesis, prediction, healing, fire control, etc.)

HUMANS: normal humans with no special powers at all. Just average folks who happen to know about the secret war. They need to use their ingenuity to outsmart vampires.

YOUNGER VAMPIRES: superhuman strength and speed, strong regenerative powers, other traditional vampire powers.

ELDER VAMPIRES: pretty much invincible and god like. I'll prob make one the end boss, haven't thought it through yet.

WEREWOLVES: There are no werewolves in this game. It's just too complicated.

THE CHURCH: Haven't really thought of what kinda powers the holy men and women should have.

If your idea gets used you'll be credited! Thanks!

 

[Riyuist]

Have you tried "The Originals" (Vampire diaries spinoff)? It's a series about vampires too..

Things I've noticed when I used to watch it:

1. Blood sucking - off course! pfft!
2. Compel - like hypnosis!

3. That "Make them one of us" - but a little weaker!

4. Super speed! - more like teleportation IMHO
5. Super strength! - but not superman strength! jeez..

I cannot remember anything else tho. Hope this helps!

 

[LaFlibuste]

Have you ever read the Vampire the Masquerade table-top RPG rulebook? You'd find a lot of very interesting ideas in there.

As far as physical weaknesses go, there is of course the sun, but any fire source makes a good alternative as they are extremely flammable and don't regenerate burns as well as other wounds.

There is also the matter of feeding. Each of them consumes a sizeable amount of blood daily. Put hundreds of them together and you might need several thousand humans to sustain them for any appreciable period of time. So not only does this mean you could starve them, it also means numbers likely won't be on their side.

(To palliate this in a video game, remember to use thralls. Basically they are living human beings who are totally dominated and controlled by their vampire lords.)

And what you have to understand about vampires is that they ultimately are social creatures. There are always crazy political schemes going around, a lot of backstabbing and infighting but always undercover. Each and everyone of them aims for the top. It's a big house of cards, really.

So yeah, put a secret society of these in a big city and they might as well be unstoppable, but put the same society in the wild and their days are numbered.

 

[beenbaba]

One thing that I found whilst watching these (I have watched the vampire diaries and the originals and buffy ALOT...not even ashamed XD) is the ways the weaknesses were utilised, not just what they are. For example, all vampires are weakened by a plant called Vervane and werewolves against Wolfsbane. Now it's one thing to actually throw a load of vervane at a vampire or make them drink something with it in, but they actually started to mix the plant with water and create a home made explosive, effectively creating a home made Vervane grenade. One time they created a nail bomb where the nails were laced with vervane as well.

Another to consider would be wooden bullets. These are always effective and they did something interesting with these by coating them in vervane as well so that if the bullet missed the heart it would burn the vampire and they wouldn't be able to take it out themselves as they cant touch it, meaning they are weakened alot by having bullets in them they can't remove XD

UV bombs are a good one, or UV guns that fire UV rays or something, that's supposed to be the thing vampires are weak against the sun for, blade (1,2,3) had some cool stuff to hunt vampires with, that would probably worth checking out.

I guess, what I'm trying to get at is, think about new ways to utilise existing weaknesses. Vampire powers and weaknesses are fairly well drilled into most people by now, so finding interesting ways to change how these weaknesses are exploited and powers used would be cool I think. 

 

[watermark]

@Riyuist Oh yes, compel and hypnosis! Thanks for reminding me of that!

@LaFlibuste I've heard of Vampire the Masquerade but I've never dug deep into its rulebook. I should go hunt one down.

@beenbaba Your ideas are awesome! Thanks so much! Wooden bullets and UV bombs...hmm....

Thank you all for the ideas. They're really useful!

 

[162]

30 Days of Night came to mind and I remembered two awesome ways to dust vamps. One time, a vampire was burned using an indoor sunlamp (the kind you use to grow plants inside). It didn't kill her, but it burned her something fierce. Of course, there was also a similar part in Van Helsing when a whole manor of vampires got dusted by a sunlight grenade of sorts. Maybe you can have it wear grenades like that can kill a vampire or grievously wound them (depending on the strength of the grenade or how close they are to it.

Then there was this epic scene in 30 Days with a snowplow-tractor being used to take them out.

But in the original novel (I believe), decapitation was a way to kill a vampire.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I thought about writing a story about 1800s vampire hunter priests that were built like 1800s strong men with ridiculous handlebar mustaches that fought vampires by stripping down to their underwear, oiling up with blessed oils mixed with garlic. and then defeated vampires with the power of WWE style wrestling moves.

Also, in theme with professional wrestling, they would be as hammy as humanly possible and have ham to ham combat with the vampires.

 

[Riyuist]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vampire_traits_in_folklore_and_fiction

THIS! 

 

[Chrispy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vampire_traits_in_folklore_and_fiction


THIS! 

Just don't do every weakness or strength on that list at the same time. I mean, how scary would a vampire really be if it were weak to fire, water, wood, silver, bad smelling vegetables, and counting a bunch of pennies that were thrown at it?


Also, Dracula and other vampire lords are overpowered. Like, every version of Dracula and every vampire lord is Op. I think Bram Stoker knew what that term meant and refused to nerf the character when he wrote Dracula. Unless its an end-boss, please don't make a Dracula type of vampire.

 

[Sated]

I thought about writing a story about 1800s vampire hunter priests that were built like 1800s strong men with ridiculous handlebar mustaches that fought vampires by stripping down to their underwear, oiling up with blessed oils mixed with garlic. and then defeated vampires with the power of WWE style wrestling moves.


Also, in theme with professional wrestling, they would be as hammy as humanly possible and have ham to ham combat with the vampires.

WWE kinda beat you to it with the whole Gangrel/Brood characters 


On topic: You really need to choose which vampire lore you're going to follow and then stick to it. Like with zombies and werewolves, there are lots of different styles of vampire, lots of different weaknesses, and even then the weaknesses have varying effects. The vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are very different to Dracula, and Dracula is very different to the vampires in Vampire: The Masquerade and the vampires in VtM are very different to the "vampires" in Twilight and so on and so on.

 

[M.I.A.]

One creative way to exploit a weakness would be to create a toxin that is safe for humans to consume, but if a vamp feeds on them while they have this toxin in their blood stream, then the vamp can be harmed or killed. Kinda like a "Bad Blood", or Hep V from True Blood.





-Mia


** My apologies for tehe Over 9000 Necropost. I am sleepy, saw "January" and didn't think anything of it. Sorry!!

 

[Pierman Walter]

Psychological warfare.


Step 1: Slowly turn the secret war into a common knowledge war, first by informing the local population that vampires are real, printing out hundreds and thousands of pamphlets detailing methods of identifying vampires and ways to avoid them, set up a police broadcast that informs listeners of the location and activities of known vampires, then petitioning the government to mass produce blessed silver jewelry issued to everyone. 


Step 2: Don't let any vampires know what is going on by setting up a network of false information and impostor vampires so that the real vampires aren't aware of how weak their organization is growing. Fill the news with false stories of homeless people, children on field trips, and warehouse parties being murdered and blood-drained by what is suspected to be a gang of human organ smugglers, even though none of this happened. This keeps the vampires overconfident. Hire a bunch of mercenaries and indentity theives to pretend to be dead or new vampires, making them even more overconfident in their numbers.


Step 3: Slowly move innocent civilians out of the city to a safer place, and replace them with people with vampire-fighting capabilities, all of them with their own lives and side jobs to preserve the illusion of an ignorant town. The fat old man running the pie stand is actually an excorcism-performing priest. The rich lady buying out the entire stock of a jewelry store is actually an assassin who can put a bullet in a spine from two miles away. The two giggling fifth grade girls playing with a stray cat during recess are actually mind- reading witches. The bored pharmacy cashier is actually an alchemist who is distilling a thousand different magical plants into vampire super-poison. Do this until the entire city is solely populated by secret vampire hunters.


Step 4: By this point, all the vampires in the city are already dead or escaped. Advertise whatever the vampires are after in the most attention-seeking, yet totally oblivious way possible. For example, get an article on national news about a new museum display of the jewels and paintings of a Renaissance Italian Baroness, with gorgeous full color images. Vampires across the globe will recognize these items for their true power and flock the town, trying to set up their own power bases under the assumption that this is a regular town, and get completely massacred by what is essentially a vampire bug-zapper.

 

[watermark]

@Pierman Walter @M.I.A. yeah guys, this game idea is currently on hold now. But thanks for the ideas anyway! I will put them in the ideas portfolio if ever this game gets restarted again.

 

[TakaDynasty]

I'm not a big fan of White Wolf these days, but they did one thing right: Vampire politics. I was always fascinated by the concept of unconventional warfare against vampires. Don't attack the vampires themselves; instead attack their holdings and institutions. The trappings of their little empire. Vampires are ancient, often arrogant beings who have centuries to plot revenge and get ahead of their rivals.


It may be that most of them, particularly the elders, are so caught up in their little schemes and squabbles that they don't bother doing grunt work. Perhaps they have mortal thralls gathering their blood or tending to their feeding grounds. In such a case, it'd be easier (especially for humans) to attack the thralls and slow a vampire's infrastructure. If their institutions aren't operating, their sway within the society of the night starts to dwindle, and it weakens them just as much as any string of garlic. (Of course, this isn't to say your vampires operate this way. Just a fascinating concept to me.)

On a similar note, perhaps vampires' own codes are wielded against them. A human who knows what the top dog vampires demand of their younger vassals can manipulate events to force a vampire to either violate that code and risk the wrath of his elders, or play into the human's hands. And of course, in either of my thoughts, it's not only humans that can "fight" this way. Pretty much anyone could play these advantages.

 

[BrandedTales]

Might not be a fight, but traditionally (before they became popular) vampires had the weakness of not being able to cross running water.


You could have a scene where the main characters are trying to escape and need to reach the river before the pack gets them.

 

[Harosata]

When I was going to list a whole bunch of vampire media, Akiba's Trip stands out for their unique approach to defeating vampire expies.  Since I don't want to see Count Dracula in his undies, I'll only list exposing sunwalkers to more sun as an option.


---


If it's a present day vampire RPG, I'm pretty certain that some people like me only have some understanding of Vampire cliches, so the first weapon is probably garlic or a wooden stick.  But more seriously, a better weapon would go the Hellsing route and try to look for big guns.  Some vampires have very high regeneration, but they don't grow back arms and bullets tend to remove them.  I'm guessing if a big gun is used, it either negates their regeneration or lowers their max HP.