D&D 5E when Strahd attacks (spoilers)

Strahd is supposed to attack the party early and often. He's the centerpiece of the adventure, and you want his presence to be felt as much as possible - but there's also the danger of seriously jumping the shark. "Attacking the party early and often" goes against millennia of established storytelling scripture. So how do you make his encounters interesting, dramatic, memorable, and yet still have even the slightest trace of mystery left? (Did I just describe a tinder dating problem or CoS?)

Let's come up with interesting, dramatic, memorable moments that still leave the party wondering. I like to think of scenes, so that's how I'll present mine. Then you show me yours! (Did I just-)

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"Donavich said he'll bury our father in the morning," Ismark sighs as he, Ireena, and the party make their way back down the hill toward town. "It's not really safe at the house anymore," adds Ireena. After a moment, "And I need a drink."

The group heads to Blood On the Vine. After arranging for rooms, they sit by the fire, silently nursing their respective poisons until the last few embers are left. Most of the patrons have stumbled home by this point, and one woman gets up to leave. She crosses to the bar, pays her tab, and then shifts slowly over to leave. Suddenly she slams the door and screams: "He's here! THE DEVIL IS HERE!"

That instant the room is filled with shattered glass as four wolves smash through the windows, followed by hundreds of bats that swarm the room, filling it with their screeching. The remaining patrons scream as the wolves tear into them, and the party jumps to its feet.
(battle starts)
(on Ireena's initiative)
Ireena meanwhile runs from wolf to wolf, each one backing away and engaging another target. "Fight me, damn you! Why won't you fight me!" she cries. Her sword bites into wolf flesh in frustration, but still the creature runs from her.

(when the door is opened, or the party wins)
You head to the door, and look out into the murky darkness to see a man - or rather, a man-shaped shadow, inky black against the dark night, standing perfectly still in the square. Before you can even act, Ireena is there: her bow drawn, she lets fly an angry arrow without hesitation. It pierces its mark in the middle of the head - but doesn't stop: there's a perfect, arrow-sized hole left in the figure as you hear the wooden shaft clank against the cobblestone a hundred feet away. For a moment, the figure is perfectly still... and then, as if it were a statue made of ash, it slowly blows away in the breeze, from head to toe. Ireena runs out into the street as the figure disintegrates, screaming into the night: "You monster! YOU MONSTER!" Her voice echoes down the street, to no answer.

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So you've got your major themes - he knows you're there, he knows she's with you, Ireena can't be hurt by him, she's also a bad ass - but nothing serious is revealed and it's still pretty dramatic (borderline daytime TV dramatic but hey, you do what you can). What else can you do that's so cool it couldn't possibly be a random encounter?

I do like the idea that Strahd has his minions attack while lurking out of sight. "You feel a presence watching you," that sort of thing.

Or, there's a pack of wolves lead by one large wolf with glowing eyes... and when it drops to 0 hit points it turns into mist and drifts away. Was it him???

Strahd likes to wear disguises. No reason he can't send the PCs on a dangerous quest or two, only for them to learn the truth later...

At low levels, anyone who is "on watch" may be susceptible to a one-shot knockout from Strahd. Bite marks on the neck upon waking are fun.

Basically, I'd blame anything bad on Strahd. Either townsfolk blame "the Devil Strahd," or clues abound that there's someone messing with the party. If the PCs are exploring a dark dungeon, a shadowy force extinguishes their torch. (It's Strahd!) If they're trying to sneak out of someplace quietly, villainous laughter tips off the the searching foes. (It's Strahd!) If they are in a hurry to get someplace to meet with someone... by the time they get there, the person is dead -- exsanguinated. (Oh that wacky Strahd!)

By the time the PCs finally engage him, they should be very, very worried. If you have the kind of players who read the book or the forums and think "oh Strahd's not that tough" just drop a few hints that you've altered his stats to make him harder. Play him for maximum hit-and-run: when he retreats, they don't know if he's coming back 2 rounds later, or a 2 days later.

Some great ideas here. Here's mine, where Strahd sets up an ambush, using a modified version of his Animate Objects spell to attempt to recreate his favorite scene from the movie Sinister.

As the party passes the River Ivlis Crossroads (F) for the nth time, they may notice that there are more nooses hanging from the gallows than they remember from the last time they passed here. One for each party member, in fact.

Suddenly, swarms of bats swoop down from the sky, attacking and distracting the party. Very observant characters may notice the ropes coming to life, and slithering across the ground like snakes. They attack the party with grapple attacks (-2 modifier), which if successful, result in the noose pulled tight around the character's neck. This cuts off their air supply (Suffocation rules PHB p183). The animated ropes then move lighter-weight grappled victims (push/drag/lift 180 lbs) back to the gallows, where they reattach to the gallows, leaving their victims swinging.

If Ireena is with the party, Strahd coalesces from mist form, and uses the distraction to attempt to charm her into leaving the party and making her way to his coach which waits nearby to take her to the castle. If they travel alone, he'll attempt to polymorph someone who looks like they have a low Wisdom save (big dumb fighter) into a harmless CR 0 beast (rat) before shapeshifting into a wolf, attempting to grapple the victim in his jaws, and run off with his prize.

The ropes are small animated objects, so are not likely to be very successful, but the tactic should cause confusion and present the illusion of mortal peril, especially if the characters aren't sure of the mechanics behind the encounter. If you want to be evil, you can give them advantage on opposed rolls made to maintain the grapple as it's pretty hard to loosen a noose being pulled tight around a neck.

**edit** just noticed these were meant to leave the party "wondering"...in that case, Strahd never makes an appearance (utilizing greater invisibility when ordering the objects to attack). Or, you can use this a bit later in the campaign when Strahd has taken the gloves off, in which case he concentrates on taking out a party member while the others are distracted by the ropes.

77IM said:

At low levels, anyone who is "on watch" may be susceptible to a one-shot knockout from Strahd. Bite marks on the neck upon waking are fun.

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Like that idea It is suggested that Strahd torments the characters to lower their moral during their stay in Barovia.
My thoughts are:
Waking up with a mangled corpse of a young NPC in their midst, left by Strahd to see how they will react.
When a character looks into a window, it sees Strahd looking back! Only for a fraction of a second...
It only takes a minor illusion to make Strahd appear on a tree trunk or on a muddle of mud. Let the characters know he is always a threat.
When combat arives, some characters find that their swords are coated with bright red blood. During nighttime Strahd, or one of his minions, has put blood in their sheaths.

Suffocation rules are absurd in 5th. Going way off topic, but a basic character can hold his/her breath for anywhere between 1 and 5 minutes, or 10 to 50 (!!!) combat rounds.

I am not going to have Strahd actully start combating the party until after he gives his invite to Castle Ravenloft. Which should happen around level 4 I thin.

77IM said:

Or, there's a pack of wolves lead by one large wolf with glowing eyes... and when it drops to 0 hit points it turns into mist and drifts away. Was it him???

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I think that's more along the lines of what the module was suggesting, yeah. I've run it that way before as well, and it works.

77IM said:

Strahd likes to wear disguises. No reason he can't send the PCs on a dangerous quest or two, only for them to learn the truth later...

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Good point - the character that Strahd dresses up as to fool the angel is one that's been used in other media about Strahd. Maybe that character approaches the party for a morally ambiguous quest or two. I do think while the 3.5 version of Ravenloft seemed to be predicated on the idea that the party wouldn't exactly know who Strahd really was, unless your group is young I'm betting these days few groups haven't at least heard that Strahd is a vampire, and probably the main bad guy. In this adventure even the village of Barovia gives out that information.

77IM said:

Basically, I'd blame anything bad on Strahd. Either townsfolk blame "the Devil Strahd," or clues abound that there's someone messing with the party. If the PCs are exploring a dark dungeon, a shadowy force extinguishes their torch. (It's Strahd!) If they're trying to sneak out of someplace quietly, villainous laughter tips off the the searching foes. (It's Strahd!) If they are in a hurry to get someplace to meet with someone... by the time they get there, the person is dead -- exsanguinated. (Oh that wacky Strahd!)

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This is sort of the thing I would avoid, actually - getting dangerously close to overplaying your hand. Tension is an extremely hard thing to balance in a tabletop RPG campaign, which you can read about first hand in the stories posted online of people running CoS: it's easy to build up in one session, but by the next it's completely gone, and it's hard to get it back while keeping the game fresh. Plus, if Strahd appears too many times, the players no longer feel much agency - everything is just a trap set by Strahd, so why bother? And you need the game to stay fun above all else.

The animated objects idea is a good one, too. Even if it's just an easy encounter, it could be spooky.

C-F-K said:

My thoughts are:
Waking up with a mangled corpse of a young NPC in their midst, left by Strahd to see how they will react.
When a character looks into a window, it sees Strahd looking back! Only for a fraction of a second...
It only takes a minor illusion to make Strahd appear on a tree trunk or on a muddle of mud. Let the characters know he is always a threat.
When combat arives, some characters find that their swords are coated with bright red blood.

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There are several suggestions in the book of this sort of thing - mostly the characters seeing one of themselves dead (like one of them hanging from the gallows mentioned above, for example), but these are good additions!

MonsterEnvy said:

I am not going to have Strahd actully start combating the party until after he gives his invite to Castle Ravenloft. Which should happen around level 4 I thin.

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I think at level 4 they'll get torn up in the castle. Level 4 is the suggested level for the villages, just fyi.

great thread evil bob, taking some of these ideas for when I run this.

I like these ideas. I think the early encounters with Strahd should be less about combat and more about making the characters afraid to peek around a corner or open their eyes in the morning. I want the players to be afraid to attack Strahd early on and if they do attack I want the defeat to end with the players wishing Strahd would just kill them instead of letting them live to suffer another day.

I'm still reading the adventure and my players have not even made characters yet, but here are some things I want to do to make sure the players always have Strahd in the back of their mind.

I want to have at least one encounter early on where Strahd is trying to get invited inside by someone in the party without using charm.

I want the players (or one player) to enter a room that should be safe and have Strahd sitting in front of the fire with a glass of blood for himself and a glass of wine for the player sitting by the chair across from him. If the player sits and talks to him it will end without combat.

I want a player to wake up in the morning with a gift from Strahd in their bed. It will be a single rose and either something they wanted or information they needed. If the player wakes with a perception roll then he/she sees Strahd at the window (or at the edge of camp) before he/she notices the rose.

I'd start with a hidden mentor type situation, and slowly ramp up over time to deadlier encounters, representing the way his predatory urges have warped his noble ambitions. So instead of encountering Strahd, they encounter a helpful "Von Holtz" who pleads with them for aid on the road. Should they help him, they encounter a band of vampire spawn too difficult for them to handle just before sunrise. As the party loses, the vampire spawn withdraw to 'avoid the sun'. Strahd leaves a reward for them with a charmed human who delivers it on his behalf. Should they refuse, they find a mutilated corpse wearing similar, but different clothing to Von Holtz, possibly with a negative message left behind. "A noble man knows when to help others" or something along those lines.

Over time, the messages become less positive and more pessimistic of them and their endeavors. For instance, he might set up a situation at an inn where he has switched out the normal food stock with human flesh that has been covered with an illusion to make it appear as pork. So they enjoy a night of feasting only to find in the morning they have partaken in cannibalism, the innkeeper tied up in the attic. All of this punctuated by a carefully scribed letter chastising their lack of awareness.

I'm not going to give away the rest of my strategies or I'll run out of good surprises, but the key here is to make sure Strahd starts subtle only to build up into increasingly psychopathic tests to show them their supposed inferiority. He is confident and composed in his assertions, viewing the PCs as curiosities without threat.

Perhaps a Strahd encounter that never even looked like a Strahd encounter?

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(when the party has an encounter at night traveling on the road)

Even by the pale half-light of the moon, your group notices a small trail of smoke ahead. Approaching carefully, you see a peculiar campfire scene: a woman sits near a dying fire, whittling a stake out of wood, while the gruesome remains of a horse lie nearby. She is dirty and injured, and despite your efforts to stay quiet she calls out to you: "You had best keep moving, as those devil spawn will likely be back before dawn."

Cover blown and curious, as you approach you can see she is wearing fine adventuring clothes but also decked out in all manner of vampire-hunting gear: wooden stakes line her belt, while bottles of what look to be holy water are tied to a bandolier across her chest. She has a crossbow across her back, a garlic necklace with various holy symbols hanging from it, and several daggers that you can see - likely more you cannot. Her horse was literally clawed to pieces, and she is bleeding from her leg as well.

(if party offers aid) She waves off your request to help. "I don't like to be indebted to anyone," she says, before downing a small vial of liquid. Her bleeding stops immediately. (if the party doesn't offer aid, she still drink the vial to stop the bleeding before the fight)

(if party asks who she is or otherwise engages) Her style is no-nonsense and direct. "Name's Elsa von Holtz, vampire hunter. Unfortunately I've gotten in a bit over my head, it seems. I was ambushed by three of them, and while I managed to drive them off, they got my horse and I suspect they'll be back before dawn, which should be any minute now. Sorry I will likely be the last person you ever meet."

(before the party can really investigate or ask how she drove them off) Moments later, she looks up. "They're back," she states grimly. She pulls a wooden stake from her belt.
(roll to see three approaching vampire spawn; party gets advantage thanks to the tip)
(battle starts)
(on Elsa's initiative) Elsa runs with surprising speed right up to one of the vampire spawn and slams its arm with her fist. Caught off-guard, the creature is quickly grappled as she pulls its arm around behind it and somehow restrains it with one hand. She brandishes her stake in the other, and then drives it into the creature's heart from behind. You see a momentary look of surprise as the creature looks down at the front of the stake poking from its chest, then relief as the vile minion turns to dust in her arms. Without a pause she turns her glance to the next prey, blood still dripping from the stake.

(after the party wins / the others are driven off) Elsa dusts herself off and slides her stake back into her belt. "Not bad. You may survive here yet," she smiles. All further inquiries and offers of help are politely refused. "I'll make my own way," she says, then gathers her pack and heads back down the road toward Vallaki.

(the encounter is over and unless investigated, nothing else come up; however, investigating the camp ground carefully shows little other than the dead horse and the tiny potion vial; if the party specifically examines the vial closely, they can find no potion residue - only blood)

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So Strahd is: in disguise (alter self - the disguise can't be disbelieved) and checking out the party's strengths against vampires; mentally commanding the spawn to do as he desires, including dying for him (the relief is real of course - the spawn is glad to be free of the curse); cut himself and then chooses not to regenerate until he drinks the "potion;" wearing the collected gear of probably half a dozen unfortunate vampire hunters he's killed over the centuries. The only hint that can be found that there is even something weird going on is the discarded potion vial; he needed it to "sell" the healing (which he needed to sell the wounds) but the only thing he could even pretend to drink was blood. Hopefully the whole encounter is just weird enough that the party will know something is odd, but still too believable to really think it was Strahd in disguise. Still, even if they get it, it still works. He's watching you. He could be anyone. Trust no one.