Isn't that the point, though? You shouldn't need or want to play him like Strahd, if playing him like Strahd means that he slinks around in the shadows and only attacks when you're trying to sleep. Because an enemy who does that is lame, and not awesome, and we want Strahd to appear awesome.
Strahd has already done the awesome "I'm going to face you down, toy with you and laugh off your puny attempts" earlier in the adventure. Generally by the time of the final confrontation, the party will have discovered his secrets, hold weapons that are a very real threat to him, and be a high enough level to take him on.
That's the point where Strahd stops toying with the party and starts
hunting them. The point at which the party experiences the leader who has held his nation in thrall for centuries and the general who led armies to victory. To just have him stand in a room next to the guy emitting
sunlight and soak up radiant-damage attacks while punching people would, to my mind, deprive the players of an integral part of the module. The cat-and-snake game as the party searches the castle trying to confront Strahd and destroy him for good while he whittles them down with his minions, trying to take the sword away from them, prevents them from resting etc.
Do you regard vampires as dark and terrible predators of the night; cunning and vicious with weaknesses that must be exploited to destroy them? Or as nigh-indestructible thugmonsters?
Strahd is the former. If you wanted an adventure with a BBEG who was the latter, CoS isn't it.
Its like complaining that the MM Ogre statblock doesn't bear out their role as rooftop burglary and infiltration experts.
I recall this same conversation going on, with dragons, a while back - how a big red dragon can't even burn down a small city, because the archers will kill it before it can even kill a hundred peasants, with the counter being that the dragon is way too smart to ever attack a city head-on.
Possibly. I'm not sure how many archers a small city could field, how many of them would be in range to attack the dragon at any one time, or the flammability of the city.
This still does not change the basic fact that a regular party (not superminmaxed but not carebear either) absolutely demolishes Strahd as written, and how disappoint this is.
I'm going to have to say that you're incorrect there, unless you're making some major assumptions about state of said party. Particularly their remaining resources, whether they had to fight their way through the castle to find him, and how many of Stradh's minions they are having to fight as well as him.
You can argue "play Strahd like Strahd" however long you wish. This still does not change that a monster needs to be judged on what is in the statblock.
Statblocks aren't just AC and HP. Statblocks include Int and Wis scores, Legendary and Lair actions.
A DM should not need to burn braincells just to keep the BBEG alive long enough for a climactic end battle.
Burn? no.
Use?
Yes.
I'm convinced you're simply making stuff up in order to avoid having to concede the Strahd statblock was way too weak)
That is a rather unpleasant accusation. Care to back it up with how
my experience of fighting Strahd in his castle indicated that his statblock was too weak?
Which gets us to the bottom line. Why not simply accept that the stat block isn't good enough?
Because my experience and evaluation does not bear that conclusion out.
I'm quite willing to accept that you personally believe that Strahd's statblock isn't good enough, and that there are several others who think the same. They're entitled to their opinions.
Whether you compensate by laborious tactics or by changed stats isn't the most important issue. You compensate. Which is less good than not having to compensate. Where running devious tactics is a luxury you can afford to spice up your game instead of *having* to do it. Where you don't *have* to change the stat block... unless you want to make the fight even more tricky.
Where is the line between 'playing Strahd as he is written in the adventure' and 'laborious tactics', 'compensation' etc.
Running devious tactics isn't a luxury, its Strahd's baseline of how the book seems to suggest he is played.
Its assumed that a DM will have and apply a level of gamesmastery roughly equivalent to that of their players I think. That's probably a good guideline. If there is a large disparity either way, then some adjustment isn't unreasonable I believe.
Let's first agree SOMETHING needs to be done about how the WotC designers seemingly fail to take regular parties into account, like they wrote the adventure using playtest rules or something.
No, I do not think that we can agree on that. I can accept that you have an opinion that differs from mine, and that you have anecdotal experiences that are the reason that you have those opinions. However my evaluations and experience do not support your base assumption and thus I do not agree with your proposal to correct it.
