D&D 5E Advice for Extending or Expanding on Curse of Strahd

Howdy!

With autumn fast approaching, I'm about to run Curse of Strahd for the second time. The first time I ran it by the book and had a blast, though the PCs didn't explore about a third of the locations because of the Tarokka placements/the PCs being afraid of exploring off the beaten path.

This time I want to soup it up a bit. I've been reading through PowerScoreRPG's DMs Guild guide and Sly Flourish's various articles and grabbing as much inspirational art to show players as we play to help set the mood.

My question is this: what did you do or change when running Curse of Strahd? Did you make any new locations? Did you pull from older adventures? Did you have any new NPCs or creatures/monsters?

My current plan is to map out the Gates of Barovia as an adventure location itself based on the awesome Dark Souls-esque picture in the book, as well as to possibly use the Fanes of Barovia. Also I was thinking about having a skeletal giant come down from one of the mountains half way through the adventure to attack Vallaki at some point.

Any other sort of Castle Ravenloft apocrypha or ephemera is welcome as well. A cool piece of art that inspired you, creepy ideas you implemented or wanted to, music, etc all are welcome ideas.

Thanks in advance!

I've been wondering about establishing Barovia is located in a Limbo inbetween life and death where Strahd is trapped forced to depend on errant souls unable to pass over properly so they can die and be reborn stuck within Barovia until they succeed in defeating Strahd in some manner which allows them to either pass on peacefully or return to their own world.

The idea I'm tinkering with is that a nemesis deliberately suckers the PCs into using a teleport circle to travel from Baldur's Gate to the Icewind Dale but the arrival circle is damaged causing their trip to Barovia.

Strahd can possess anyone within Barovia who is a truly lost soul making any PC who dies and is reborn within Barovia in danger of being possessed.

However Strahd is far from omniscient, he can be outwitted and will only become the PCs nemesis when they start interfering in his attempts to escape his prison by accomplishing what he couldn't when alive.

So it's entirely possible for them to fight and seemingly kill Strahd several times but they need to discover how he can be defeated in a way that releases them which is far more difficult.

Has anyone tried running this anything like what I described above?

Literally finding their way back from literal certain death?

When I run it I plan to relocate it in Innistrad, the M:tG plane. That way the setting has a much larger scope (and the adventurers can be from locations there rather than teleported in). The associated art book has some fantastic illustrations if you looking for mood setting ideas.

I think your idea for expanding the Gates of Barovia is a great one.

You can check out my Beast of Graenseskov adventure (link in sig) which I wrote as an alternative introduction to the setting instead of Death House. There's a theme of ravens vs. wolves that underscores parts of CoS which I play on in my own adventure. It also sets up many other themes underlying CoS; one great example of the "Trickle Down Horror" Strahd oppresses the land with from my adventure is how the Boyar (Mayor) of Graenseskov had to sacrifice his son to Strahd as the price of attempting to cheat Strahd out of tax revenue. There's also a tie-in to Ismark the Lesser, who is to be wed to a daughter of the Graenseskov.

Read through the 3e Ravenloft supplement, which includes the barony of Barovia - not just the area around Stradh's castle. Give the PCs some actual out-of-the-way places to hide that Stradh can't search all of them at once.

You could also spend some time with the Vistani and their unique culture. Here are some folks you don't see just everywhere.
It's not their race that makes them unique (Thri-keen, Warforged are the counterpoints.)

Quickleaf said:

I think your idea for expanding the Gates of Barovia is a great one.

You can check out my Beast of Graenseskov adventure (link in sig) which I wrote as an alternative introduction to the setting instead of Death House. There's a theme of ravens vs. wolves that underscores parts of CoS which I play on in my own adventure. It also sets up many other themes underlying CoS; one great example of the "Trickle Down Horror" Strahd oppresses the land with from my adventure is how the Boyar (Mayor) of Graenseskov had to sacrifice his son to Strahd as the price of attempting to cheat Strahd out of tax revenue. There's also a tie-in to Ismark the Lesser, who is to be wed to a daughter of the Graenseskov.

Click to expand...

Awesome, I'll definitely check out that adventure

Off the top of my head...

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft gives Strahd some secondary goals that change the nature of the adventure. It also includes new NPCs to use and the "fane" subplot which can replace the Heart of Sorrow if you want them to wander around more.

There are the 10 Adventurer League modules form season 4, which include a new town, new NPCs, and its own subquests away from Strahd proper.

You can also search around the DM's Guild for some additional resources, like [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION] 's "Death in the Cornfield" sidequest.

Lastly, if I were to re-run it, I'd definitely stack the Tarroka deck a bit.

Good luck!

Yeah, I'd say definitely stack the Tarroka deck, to make sure you hit the bits that were missed before, assuming you like those areas (personally I was happy to leave Argynvostholt untouched, in fact I removed the reference to it that occurs around Baba Lasagna). I think it's a pretty huge adventure, I'd be wary of testing your players patience if you tried to play out every piece and/or expanded it too much.

Even the idea of exploring the Castle, leaving and doing some other stuff, then returning to finally finish off Strahd - it might fly with some players, but some will assume that it's a "one chance" trip, put it off until they feel prepared, then treat the castle as a "do or die" mission. So I think it's imperative to be aware of what your players are expecting and what will be fun - you might get buy-in for a longer campaign, but eventually they will want to "cut to the chase", and kill Strahd or die trying.

Personally, I combed the AD&D sequel as well as the 3.5 Expedition book, and didn't find anything else I especially liked to add to what's in the CoS book.

I just finished running Curse of Strahd, and below are the things I changed about the module that worked out really well, and things I would do differently if I ever ran it again--

THINGS THAT WORKED:

Fanes. If you want to leave mysterious why Strahd can do all sorts of things that most vampires cannot, that's fine, but I worked into the game the concept that there are Fanes; magical places of power that if a powerful spellcaster takes control of (which requires a Ritual with a 1 year casting time), they gain special powers. There are a number of such Fanes around Ravenloft, and Strahd controls all of them. They are well defended.

The neat thing about this is you can make Strahd even more super-powerful at the beginning, but the PCs have a strategy for cutting him down to size. Take out the Fanes and he loses his special abilities like controlling the weather or seeing through the eyes of beasts.

Dusk Elves. I personally thought it made no sense that the setting history had Strahd murdering tons of dusk elves when he conquered the valley, but then when the PCs encounter them they are allies of the Vistani. I created a ruined elven city just south of the Vallaki Vistani encampment, and the few remaining dusk elves live among the ruins.

Raven Secret Agents. I liked the were-ravens that operated in Barovia, but thought they needed to be a little more grim-dark. I asked myself "What kind of people could survive for centuries as a secret society under Strahd's very nose?" My personal answer was "Only some very calculating, ruthless spies." I bumped up the head of their order to a high-level Druid and for some time the PCs only knew of him by the name the children of Barovia had given to the rumors of his existence - the Raven King.

For at least the first 2/3rds of the campaign the PCs seriously hated the Raven King, because he never revealed himself, but did leave them clues and provided aid when it suited him. Often they didn't know it was him until long after. My players understood that they were pawns in a twilight struggle between Strahd and the Raven King, and that the Raven King would sacrifice them as instantly as a Chess Grandmaster would sacrifice any piece on the board if it got him closer to defeating Strahd. This situation continued until the PCs were about 8th level, when the started becoming too powerful for either side to challenge directly.

New Locations. I made two entirely new locations.

There was a castle at the bottom of Lake Zarovich, which was completely flooded except for a single tower that stuck out of the middle of the lake. The Lake was dark as night and the castle was guarded by a bunch of Rusalka that Strahd had created by drowning pregnant Barovian peasant girls. They were reskinned Wights for stat block purposes, but with a good swim speed and a preference for grappling and drowning people.

There was also a temple at the top of Mt Baratok. It was one of the Fanes of Barovia; the one that allowed Strahd to control the weather. Control of that Fane was why Mordekainen had come to Barovia in the first place, and once the PCs helped cure his madness he helped them clear the temple. It had a Greek theme and was defended by Medusa, Gorgons, and number of powerful skeleton warriors. The hard part was ascending the vertical cliff face while being buffeted by Air Elementals, especially since many of the paths up the mountain had drops of over 1000' hidden by illusion spells.

THINGS I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY:

Gimp the Sunsword. Honestly, once the Sunsword was in the game, Strahd really wasn't that hard to beat. He could be killed anywhere, had Disadvantage on all his attacks and Saves, couldn't turn into mist to escape, and didn't regenerate. My vengeance Paladin killed him in single combat. (I'm not kidding; his only buff from another member of the party was a Haste spell, but otherwise he was on his own) A vampire like Strahd should need to be killed in his own coffin, and Disadvantage on all rolls was too much.

Make the Heart of Sorrow more powerful. A 50 HP buffer really isn't that much. My PCs could chew through that very quickly by the time they were 5-6th level. I would make the Heart of Sorrow give him 50 HP/turn regeneration.

Make the woods/night scarier. The Svalich Woods should be a house of horror for anyone that isn't Vistani. There's already an aggressive random encounter table for the woods at night, but I'd make the mists swirl so enemies always have advantage on stealth and surprise, and the PCs have a real chance of getting lost. More will-o-wisps. More witches.

Witches of Mother Night. I would build this up more. Make the witches of Mother Night a type of Warlock (with a new Mother Night patron), and have more of them. The Hags all through Barovia can be a big part of this organization, but I'd allow the witches to operate independently too.