GM Advice on Palm-Held Sun and Vampires

Because in some conversations its come up that this [ https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2782 ] can absolutely decimate almost every vampire statblock as a rank 2 spell, I'd like to offer a little advice as a GM that is easy enough to implement to save your vampires without just invalidating palm held sun. Given that this spell is common, its likely to be sort of retroactively introduced and thus a trick vampires know about and prepare against.

1. Give important vampires darkness trait spells or abilities how you do this isnt too important as long as they could manage popping it off as 2 actions and cant spam it every round (save that for only THE most important vamps). Penumbral shroud [ https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2360 ] is a good low rank option broadly available. Id personally give this as a 1/day innate on non-spawn vampires. This is because you can use darkness trait spells to target light effects to try and counteract them instead of the normal spell effect. One could also argue penumbral shroud would protect a vamp from sunlight for its duration, which is how I adjudicate it (as it becomes 'filtered' instead of direct IMO) but you may not agree for your table and that is fair. Higher level vampires (or better, their minions) could cast actual darkness spells [ https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1480&Redirected=1 ] as these will suppress light effects of their rank or lower automatically. Both ideas in this are good reasons for your players and NPC hunters to heighten palm held sun spells to lower chances of counteract or suppression. I also suggest, if you use this strategy, give your players at least one or two times with weaker vamps where they can just overcome darkness or themat it needs a crit to counteract them.

2. Have vampires act intelligently, they are likely used to avoiding sunlight unless they're new. Ranging from riskier strtegies like using parasols (or similar) or tower shields to block light portably (disarmable, destroyable) to not moving more than their speed away from potential cover if they know it's something your party may have access to. Also this is a good reason for vampires to have non-vampiric minions to distract and assail any would-be sun-wielders. Not to mention the moment a PC or NPC pops this spell they likely become the hard target and will need defending.

3. This one may be flimsier depending on your read of what "direct" sunlight is, but mist and smoke, like clouds may disperse the sunlight enough to prevent the worst effects allowing a vampire to escape or wait out the light. Personally I still adjudicate if the source of light is adjascent an insubstantial medium like this, it works still, but thats my way of handling that idea.

Theres probably nore but I've run out of time for posting.

I hope you find this insightful, neat, or perhaps even obvious.