Expedition to Castle Ravenloft - CR Question (SPOILER)

[Nargrakhan]

I need serious help understanding something about the vampires in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5 naturally).

EDIT: Careful... I kinda spoil with the NPC's. Don't look if you're going to be a PC...

Spoiler

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Count Strahd is a vampire necromancer 10... however his CR rating is a "mere" 15. According to the SRD, adding the vampire template to a character results in a +8 CR. Thus doesn't Nec10 + Vampire = CR 18?

The confusion hits me harder with the other vampires: crazy "kill-kill-kill" Barbarian 5 vampire and hot chickie Sorcerer 5 vampire are both CR7. Shouldn't they both be CR13?

I was thinking, well maybe this is a case of Nonassociated Class Levels... yet the vampire template meshes with just about anything.

What gives? I'm pretty good with the d20/OGL stuff... but I'm totally lost on how this works. What am I missing? Please help...

[PurinaDragonCho]

IIRC - the thing is this: CR does not necessarily equal effective character level. If a PC became a vampire, it would increase his or her ECL by 8. But the vampire template only increases the challenge rating by two.

Also, I think Strahd's CR is raised 1 by each of the 3 fanes.

[shaddy_24]

I need serious help understanding something about the vampires in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5 naturally).

Count Strahd is a vampire necromancer 10... however his CR rating is a "mere" 15. According to the SRD, adding the vampire template to a character results in a +8 CR. Thus doesn't Nec10 + Vampire = CR 18?

The confusion hits me harder with the other vampires: crazy "kill-kill-kill" Barbarian 5 vampire and hot chickie Sorcerer 5 vampire are both CR7. Shouldn't they both be CR13?

I was thinking, well maybe this is a case of Nonassociated Class Levels... yet the vampire template meshes with just about anything.

What gives? I'm pretty good with the d20/OGL stuff... but I'm totally lost on how this works. What am I missing? Please help...

I can see your confusion. Determining CR can be confusing, and you've made a minor mix-up in the bonus the vampire template provides.

It is +2 CR. The +8 you're looking at is Level Adjustment, or LA. This is the bonus you add if you're making a vampire character. The idea of LA is that some creatures (such as vampires) provide more bonuses to a player than a monster. At-will dominate person? Fast healing, damage reduction, their ability to change to gasious form and return to their coffin instead of dying? Each of those provides a huge bonus to players that would unbalance the game. A level 10 vampire wizard is much, much stronger than a level 10 human wizard. To a NPC, that is expressed with the +2 CR, making them a level 12 challange. To a player, it comes out to +8, making them an 18th level character overall.

Spoiler

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Strahd is CR 15: 10 from wizard levels, 2 from being a vampire, and +1 for each of the fanes, which are explained in his stat block. The other two vampires are both 5th level, with the +2 CR provided by the vampire template.

Does that help? You may want to announce spoilers in the thread title, or spoiler any information that people playing through shouldn't know.

[Nargrakhan]

Ah... thank you! It makes sense to me now.

All this LA, ECL, CR, NCL stuff was driving me crazy. It's so much clear to me now. Thanks again. Saved me from going insane!


***EDIT***
Oh! There is one more thing that I want to ask. Generally speaking, ECL still count for NPC's? To clarify: let's say I decide to generate a 2nd level rogue succubus as a key encounter. Would she get "NPC wealth by level" as an 8th level character or 2nd level character to be a CR9 encounter (if I were following the suggestions of the DMG at least).

[Tsotha-lanti]

I can never remember if NPCs get WBL by ECL or character level - it's not stated anywhere, and you basically have to deduce it from example PCs. I'm inclined to say it's based on ECL for NPCs and PCs both. Be warned, though: this will mess up your treasure-per-encounter even worse than NPCs without ECL (since they, at least, have CL equal to CR, rather than up to 6 higher).

[Blood_Lord]

NO, NPCs always use CR. They are given Wealth by CR, and they are counted by CR not ECL.

A Succubus Rogue 3 is CR 9, not 12 or 18 or anything.

It has the WBL of a CR 9 encounter.