I've been running two Curse of Strahd games concurrently since August. We only play 2-3 hours per week, and currently my parties are only at level 6. I gave one of them a Strahd encounter to shake them up a little bit, and I must have gone terribly wrong to let them "kill" him. I really felt like I threw the book at them: Legendary actions every turn, spellcasting, heart of sorrow, minions, regeneration... Can someone help talk me through this? I have my Roll20 chat log, but I don't know how useful (or fun) that would be to read through.
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D&D 5E DM HELP! My players killed Strahd too easily!
- Thread starter Sorin_777
- Start date
RangerWickett
Legend
I'm intrigued. Care to provide a synopsis, and maybe also the chat logs?
Mind you, some parties just can burst damage out the wazoo. If you've got a fighter with multiple attacks and action surge, baddies go down fast.
Mind you, some parties just can burst damage out the wazoo. If you've got a fighter with multiple attacks and action surge, baddies go down fast.
MonkeyWrench
Explorer
You said the party was 6th level, but what was the party composition? Do you use feats, multiclassing, and/or use magic items?
TL;DR - does the 20 hp regeneration apply to the heart of sorrow, and does spellcasting take one of his two attack actions?
My players are as follows, all level six: Cleric, Sorcerer, Wizard, Paladin, and Fighter
The Paladin nerfed two near-lethal unarmed strikes with necrotic damage by applying the "protection" fighting style (giving Strahd disadvantage)
The Strahd Zombies that arrived with Strahd were entertaining but fodder.
Round two he summoned five wolves. Seems way under powered for the supposed 9th level encounter, one Fireball blew up every wolf, I had them arriving in a pack intending to use their pack sense for advantage.
I failed to break the link with the heart of sorrow, something I had to do on Strahd's turn as a bonus action, it was here I think I knew I was in trouble.
I used the legendary actions mostly to first move out of an area affect, and second and third actions normally the unarmed attack, which I assume is one attack.
For spellcasting, I assumed one casting of a spell took up one of the two unarmed attacks, as it would a normal "action". Blight was near lethal.
I regenerated Strahd 20 points after every round, but did not regenerate the heart of sorrow. Is that right?
I had Strahd appear on a nightmare. I allowed the nightmare to travel with Strahd on his legendary action moves, basically conveying Strahd's action to his steed. In turn the horse had a hoof attack, as well as offering Strahd resistance to fire.
When retreating I surely erred, in that I used the steed's move speed instead of shifting to ethereal. Warlock got in one last eldritch blast I believe. But by this time, with the vampire already really low in health, I think something wasn't played right.
I'm not sure a good way to share the chat log, since the archive goes back to August. I reset the in game chat before game time, so that maybe more helpful, but the attacks might need some explaining. We are experiencing with video capture, and while that didn't go right, we may have a two hour long mp3. If someone had that kind of patience, we could correlate the mp3 with the chat log. Otherwise I think the above synopsis is a good start at least.
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My players are as follows, all level six: Cleric, Sorcerer, Wizard, Paladin, and Fighter
The Paladin nerfed two near-lethal unarmed strikes with necrotic damage by applying the "protection" fighting style (giving Strahd disadvantage)
The Strahd Zombies that arrived with Strahd were entertaining but fodder.
Round two he summoned five wolves. Seems way under powered for the supposed 9th level encounter, one Fireball blew up every wolf, I had them arriving in a pack intending to use their pack sense for advantage.
I failed to break the link with the heart of sorrow, something I had to do on Strahd's turn as a bonus action, it was here I think I knew I was in trouble.
I used the legendary actions mostly to first move out of an area affect, and second and third actions normally the unarmed attack, which I assume is one attack.
For spellcasting, I assumed one casting of a spell took up one of the two unarmed attacks, as it would a normal "action". Blight was near lethal.
I regenerated Strahd 20 points after every round, but did not regenerate the heart of sorrow. Is that right?
I had Strahd appear on a nightmare. I allowed the nightmare to travel with Strahd on his legendary action moves, basically conveying Strahd's action to his steed. In turn the horse had a hoof attack, as well as offering Strahd resistance to fire.
When retreating I surely erred, in that I used the steed's move speed instead of shifting to ethereal. Warlock got in one last eldritch blast I believe. But by this time, with the vampire already really low in health, I think something wasn't played right.
I'm not sure a good way to share the chat log, since the archive goes back to August. I reset the in game chat before game time, so that maybe more helpful, but the attacks might need some explaining. We are experiencing with video capture, and while that didn't go right, we may have a two hour long mp3. If someone had that kind of patience, we could correlate the mp3 with the chat log. Otherwise I think the above synopsis is a good start at least.
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JonnyP71
Explorer
As has been said, a fully rested level 6 party is capable of dealing out a lot of damage...
So without seeing the chat log, my quick suggestion would be to not let them meet him while they are at full strength. I haven't DMed the 5E version of the adventure, just the 1E original (as a Hallowe'en 1 shot adventure), and in that it makes clear that Strahd is supremely intelligent and knows what is going in his realm - he will choose the time to attack which best suits him. My party were separated by a trap, which split one of them from the other 4, moving him to another floor in the house - that is when he chose to strike the 1st time - easily dealing with the lone member. I then had him polymorph into the missing party member, and meet the party a few hours later (and told that player he was now playing as Strahd, and would choose the best moment to reveal his identity and kill the party).
Soon afterwards, down in the crypts, they were getting scattered by the teleports (the section with the Wights). At this moment he struck, he charmed the party Wizard, and told him to Fireball the others. The only party member who survived fled the castle, right into the waiting dragon statues which animated and fried her.
Add spooky music, costumes, bottles of wine, and a takeaway curry, and it made for a great Hallowe'en party!
So without seeing the chat log, my quick suggestion would be to not let them meet him while they are at full strength. I haven't DMed the 5E version of the adventure, just the 1E original (as a Hallowe'en 1 shot adventure), and in that it makes clear that Strahd is supremely intelligent and knows what is going in his realm - he will choose the time to attack which best suits him. My party were separated by a trap, which split one of them from the other 4, moving him to another floor in the house - that is when he chose to strike the 1st time - easily dealing with the lone member. I then had him polymorph into the missing party member, and meet the party a few hours later (and told that player he was now playing as Strahd, and would choose the best moment to reveal his identity and kill the party).
Soon afterwards, down in the crypts, they were getting scattered by the teleports (the section with the Wights). At this moment he struck, he charmed the party Wizard, and told him to Fireball the others. The only party member who survived fled the castle, right into the waiting dragon statues which animated and fried her.
Add spooky music, costumes, bottles of wine, and a takeaway curry, and it made for a great Hallowe'en party!
Li Shenron
Legend
Well, as soon as you give something some stats, of course the PCs are going to kill it 
I don't know how to help you here... I could suggest you to simply decide that Strahd faked his own death, perhaps using a sort of illusion or doppleganger, but I know that this sounds like the DM is "cheating". The problem is that IMHO it's not really your fault if Strahd is killable, even in the case you might have played his combat capabilities badly, the fault is just intrinsic in the fact that the game wants to make everything killable by combat, only to regret when it happens too soon or easily (but that's the inevitable swinginess of dice).
Personally I have only recently understood that a "horror" campaign simply shouldn't allow combat to be a reliable method of story resolution, but I think the vast majority of gamers still expect every D&D game to be combat-solvable, including Curse of Strahd.
I don't know how to help you here... I could suggest you to simply decide that Strahd faked his own death, perhaps using a sort of illusion or doppleganger, but I know that this sounds like the DM is "cheating". The problem is that IMHO it's not really your fault if Strahd is killable, even in the case you might have played his combat capabilities badly, the fault is just intrinsic in the fact that the game wants to make everything killable by combat, only to regret when it happens too soon or easily (but that's the inevitable swinginess of dice).
Personally I have only recently understood that a "horror" campaign simply shouldn't allow combat to be a reliable method of story resolution, but I think the vast majority of gamers still expect every D&D game to be combat-solvable, including Curse of Strahd.
Lucas Blackstone
Explorer
I thought Strahd's most potent ability was to go insubstantial in regards to the floor and/or walls when he moved. Hit and run, make them use readied actions to hit him. Retreat and fully heal as needed is extra cheesy but there is no reason why he wouldn't do it.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
It sounds like the Paladin may have been doing this wrong. You only get to use it once per round, and it costs your reaction, and you have to do it before Strahd rolls his attack. You can't wait to see if Strahd hits or misses--you have to choose to do it right away, and since Strahd is making three or four unarmed strikes per round, and only one of them will be at disadvantage, it should have minimal impact.
Best used as a distraction to pull the PCs out of position while Strahd (under Greater Invisibility) slips behind the back lines to mug the wizards and clerics.
Waste of an action. He should have summoned them before combat, or after leaving combat but before returning with a second wave of wolves. Summoning wolves in combat is way too late. BTW, 5 wolves is a really low roll for 3d6, so partly the PCs just got lucky. (They also got lucky that the wolves arrived in Fireball formation.)
If Strahd thinks he is at all in trouble, you can use Legendary Actions to move away from the party, then Hide on Strahd's turn (with his +Enormous stealth modifier) and regenerate/summon reinforcements, then come back under Greater Invisibility.
Spellcasting takes up his whole action, i.e. he gets no unarmed attacks that turn. But he does still get Legendary Actions.
Blight is a complete waste of a turn. He probably does more damage than that with his unarmed attacks.
Yes, that's right. But Regeneration is at its best when you're using it to hit-and-run.
Still, you can explain Strahd's suboptimal tactics by just saying, "He was arrogant and got careless." So the PCs killed a vampire and good triumphed happily ever after. The End*. Nothing wrong with that.
* Except that in Ravenloft, happily ever after is never The End. But the players don't necessarily need to ever find out about that.
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