So my interpretation on this is that we have creatures who can move freely on walls and ceilings, on awkward surfaces - like roofs - and have their hands free to engage. The target also gains a climbing speed equal to its walking speed."
"Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch gains the ability to move up, down, and across vertical surfaces and upside down along ceilings, while leaving its hands free. This is a truncated version of the text from the spider climb spell. The vampire can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check." The ability is described in the stat block as follows: " Spider Climb.
It gives a huge amount of flexibility for a DM on how they can operate. This is driven by their innate Spider Climb ability.
They can also push frontage limits by attacking from above, hanging from the ceiling. If they strike and grapple, they have a chance to drain a target, regenerating more damage, and they also make it easier for their fellow spawn to hit the same targets. They also have an innate ability to climb on walls and roofs. I'd got a much better understanding of how the vampire spawn would operate at heart, they are ambush predators which can ignore physical threats to some extent (due to regeneration and damage resistance). There were some important differences in this encounter. The burning masked the fact that they had retreated from the fight, their lives in danger. They knew they had killed three, but although they claimed the deaths of all six from the fire they weren't certain. They claimed victory when they talked to the townsfolk afterwards, and burned down the building the spawn were in. Things rapidly escalated and the characters found themselves facing six vampire spawn at close quarters. They never considered that the minions may actually be there and the battle was soon joined. Our somewhat overconfident (and now fourth level) heroes went to intimidate the coffin-maker and carpenter Henrik van der Voort, who they knew had arranged for the theft of a relic which had protected the town from the minions of Strahd. The second encounter was brutally dangerous. Make the victories all the sweeter in the darkness that wraps Barovia in its folds. The aim wasn't to kill the characters but to stretch them. I also started digging into r/curseofstrahd and other resources on running the campaign for ideas. This led to me starting to reading 'The Monsters know what they're doing' and reading through the stat blocks in more detail. I needed to understand the tactical rules at the heart of D&D combat better, and I needed to represent the opposition better. The players - especially Alex and Tom - knew otherwise. They took out the ability of the spawn to regenerate with radiant attacks, and I made a rookie 5e GM mistake and messed up disengaging, taking some opportunity attacks.Īfter the spawn, Aco Koslov, was brutally exterminated, the characters - for a while - thought that they had faced a real vampire and 'they weren't that difficult'. Five characters (second level at the time) concentrating all their resources on a single target and prevailed very quickly. Their first encounter was a brutal fight where they destroyed the spawn absolutely with very little threat to themselves. The characters in our Curse of Strahd campaign are presently engaged in their third encounter with vampire spawn.