D&D 5E Running Death House one-shot

[DRF]

Hi everyone,

Next week I will run Death House as a one-shot for a group of experienced players. I'm running the one-shot mostly to test Death House, as I will be starting Curse of Strahd with my regular group soon and they are all new players. We are about to finish Lost Mines of Phandelver, and they liked the idea of CoS more than ToA.

Do you guys have any suggestions for running Death House for respectively a newbie group and an experienced group? I'm reading about Death House now, and it seems that it can quite easily kill groups. I really want to instill a sense of fear and dread in my players (especially my friends who are new) - I've been too kind in the past, I think, for the sake of fun and narrative progression.

Do I nerf encounters, give them extra items, or something else? For the one-shot I'm letting them start at level 2, but for the real campaign they'll have to start at lvl 1.

Thanks!

 

[Xaelvaen]

It's been a long while since I ran Death House, so the specifics to evade me a bit at the moment. As far as general advice, when I run for new players (or public play groups nearby), I typically don't pull any punches until after one incredibly hard/difficult situations. Two of the characters hit 0 and sit out a battle because one of them was the healer - that might be an example. After that, then I have a good gauge of what they can do and will nerf encounters appropriately.

The nerfing I use primarily (because it doesn't take preparation time) is to store back my critical hits for the monsters. I keep a tally of how many 20s I get, turn the attack into a normal hit, and then use the 20s later when the party is at better positions to handle them. I'll replace a hit (never a miss!) with one of those stored back 20s. I typically use them right at a start of battle to get that adrenaline going quickly. In this manner, I can 'challenge' my players with predictable accuracy (on my end), and never have some random roll kill new players.

Now, in my full-time campaign, may the 20s rain.

 

[Guest 6801328]

DH is milestone based, and the hardest stuff happens after the level 2 milestone, so starting at level 1 vs. level 2 shouldn't really be all that different.

Rather than nerf the adventure or buff the characters, I would find a way to coach the new players both on the mechanics of their characters and on dungeon-crawling basics, e.g. "Don't split the party" and "Don't be in a rush". Will this be their very first D&D ever, or are they just relatively inexperienced?

EDIT: re-read the OP and now I understand; they've done (at least) LMoP so they know the basics. That's good.

 

[iserith]

I find D&D too silly to go for fear and dread. You might find it better to think of it in terms of a B-horror movie.

When I ran it, I had the players create people from the 1980s that were transported from the real world to Ravenloft. It was hilarious. They started at 1st level, but they did have guns.

 

[pukunui]

I ran Death House as an April Fool's Day one-shot. I came up with a bunch of 2nd level pregens (most of which were based on draft versions of the monstrous races from Volo's). The players had heaps of fun with it, even though only one PC actually made it out of the house alive.

 

[DRF]

The players had heaps of fun with it, even though only one PC actually made it out of the house alive.

This is what I am going for!

 

[pukunui]

This is what I am going for!

Admittedly, the players didn't care as much about the PCs, since they were pregens, otherwise they might have tried harder to keep them alive. One player had his PC voluntarily go back up to the attic to live out the rest of their days with the ghostly children. We figured the PC would eventually starve and join the kids in undeath.

FWIW: I made the rug in the master bedroom a rug of smothering. It caused the first PC death. (I had made more pregens than there were players, so it was all right.) I also replaced the shambling mound at the end with a vampire spawn.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Don't let the bard's silence ruin your epic flight from the shambling mound... if he or she uses silence to make the ritual stop, let it go on in their minds.

Ok. That was how I should have ruled maybe.

On a more serious note: Start level 1 or 2. Maybe habe backup characters ready.
Be sure to make it clear that anything can be deadly, but for a one shot, maybe start with a few potions of healing in the inventory. That should help the characters going on and allows them to recover once from a bad decision.

Maybe also allow a short rest and maybe even allow a long rest as an additional benefit for leveling up. Maybe its a blessing. Maybe the ghosts who strengthen them.
Don't pull punches though. Even a TPK might not be the end.
You can just have them start in the house at the beginning again, because their souls are trapped and they need to get out.
There is a DM sheet for AL that attaches dark gifts for those resurrected in that way and also additional dark gifts on DMs guild.
So while they restart over and over, their characters will become more and more scary themselves.

 

[alienux]

I wouldn't change the difficulty up, but you are right that it can be deadly in some areas. I normally only DM, but my 11 year old son wanted to try to DM, so he ran Death House, and he did a great job. However, after killing some nasty monsters, my character was beat to death by an animated broom (took me to 0, and then I failed 3 death saves).

 

[hastur_nz]

I ran it, and my players (all quite experienced, but all quite different in play style) pretty much completed it all in a single 3.5 hour session, with 4 PC's starting at 1st level. They succeeded mainly because they were thinking players, and avoided all the classic tropes that get PC's killed, like wandering around randomly in search of stuff to kill and loot; instead, they actually listened to the plot hooks and focused on the most likely path to success, ignoring potential side-treks (which is where a lot of the danger lies). I didn't change a thing, I ran it as best I could as written (it needs a bit of a decent pre-read, and even then I wasn't 100% clean on a couple of plot points that came up in play). We didn't have a lot of combat, and in general the level of experience of my players wasn't the mechanical aspects, it was simply their approach to exploration and problem solving aspects.

I don't think the deadliness depends too much on the level of experience of your players - if they get themselves in trouble, most likely death(s) can occur. It really depends on how much your group behaves like it's a Dungeon Crawl, or a Scooby Doo episode, vs Exploring a Death House.

If they know it's a one-shot, and it's called Death House, I think you've provided them an appropriate heaps-up. If they proceed with though and caution, they should have a good chance at success and/or fun in trying.

Have fun, we all did.