D&D 5E Curse of Strahd help

[pukunui]

... and instead of the hag Baba Zelenna, the villain there became a banshee witch named Patrina Velikovna). And then Chris Perkins took the stuff both Expedition and Fair Barovia and reincorporated it again-- for instance taking the name Lysaga and creating Baba Lysaga from it, and taking Patrina and her brother Kasimir's story from Fair Barovia! (which matches the story in CoS of he and the elves stoning his sister so that Strahd couldn't have her and it turning her into a banshee) but moving her from the hill to Strahd's crypt instead ...

Actually, Patrina comes from the original I6 module:

"Patrina was a gypsy elf maiden who, having learned in early life a great deal of the black arts, was nearly a match for Strahd's powers. She felt a great bond with Strahd and desired to become one of his wives. Strahd, ever willing, agreed, but before the final draining of spirit from her soul could take place, her own people stoned her to death in mercy. Strahd demanded, and got, the body. She then became the banshee spirit found here."

It looks like Chris just expanded on her backstory a bit.

 

[pukunui]

New question from me: A returning player is bringing in a new PC, and I'm trying to figure out how best to introduce him to the campaign. He's a life cleric, since that's what everyone else wanted, and he's got a bit of a "reluctant servant" vibe going on, so I'm thinking, if he's gonna be like Jonah, then Barovia can be his whale.

At the same time, he's got the "sucker for a pretty face" flaw, which is just begging for a run-in with a beautiful vampiress ... maybe one of Strahd's (former) brides.

I'm also thinking, since the other PCs are currently in Vallaki, that I'll have the mists bring him in to the middle of Barovia, just outside the town gates, rather than forcing him to trek, on his own, all the way from either end of the valley into the middle.

Anyone got any good ideas to build on that?

 

[Wepwawet]

He's a life cleric, since that's what everyone else wanted,

Is "everyone else" going to play this character?

No one should be forced into playing anything. They should always play whatever they feel like. 5E is built in a way that any party composition works. Cleric is no longer an essential class that one poor player has to suffer.

If they're worried about the lack of radiant damage or healing or something like that, have them pick Feats or give them options to cover those bits by themselves instead of making someone else cover up for it.

and he's got a bit of a "reluctant servant" vibe going on

I'd be as well...


EDIT: Just to add that my group went through the same thing, we needed a new player and the two veteran players were insisting the new one should be a cleric. I old the new player about the usefulness of being a Cleric or Paladin, and I told the players about the myriad of options they could take to cover up for any perceived fault.
The new one had never played before and chose an assassin, which fit perfectly the moment they were in (hired by Lady Wachter to kill Izek), and the party is doing really well.

EDIT 2: At the very least allow him to choose which kind of Cleric he will play, or even Paladin. Life Clerics are the epitome of dullness.
In fact in my first CoS session I had one, the player said that he loves playing them, which I thought was very odd. For one reason or another he couldn't come back and in the end dropped off entirely, his reason was that he prefers 2nd ed. (which I understood as him needing his character to be essential in the party) but also he's more of a dungeon crawler than roleplayer.

About your original question: the new character can be a Barovian priest of the Morninglord or Mother night, he may know some extra bits of info, but in general your players should already know the same as him about the world.

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=56398]Wepwawet[/MENTION]: Perhaps that was a poor choice of words on my part. Don't read so much into it. The player in question created her character without any input from the other players. They were just hoping for a cleric so that they might finally get to see the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind in action. (And so the mystic can stop using most of his psi points on healing and start using them on his other psychic abilities.) The holy symbol was the first relic they found, and yet they haven't been able to use it yet. One player did replace his druid with a paladin, but he ended up only getting to play him for one session before work commitments called him away. He may not make it back before the end of the campaign.

The new PC is technically a fighter 1 / cleric 5, and his player is the sort who really gets into the feel of a character. She loves fleshing her PCs out, making them feel like real people. She came up with the idea that he's lazy and reluctant to obey his deity's wishes on her own, which put me in mind of the story of Jonah and the whale. She hasn't said who his deity is yet, so I don't know if it'll be Lathander / the Morninglord or someone else. But I figure maybe his deity is sending him to Barovia as "punishment" or as a test.

Anyway, I'm not all that keen on making the new PC a local. It begs the questions of where they have been and what they have been doing all this time. Barovia is such a small place. Besides, I told the player that her PC was part of another adventuring party, and as they've been traveling, they've become separated. I figure this gives me an opening for any other new PCs I might need to introduce to the campaign. Namely, they can just be other members of this lost adventuring party who've been scattered around Barovia by the mists as needed. (I figure maybe the mists can distort time as well, so while they all got separated at the same time, they don't all show up in Barovia at the same time.)

 

[Wepwawet]

Glad to hear that

Actually being a local Barovian Cleric works perfectly for her, lazy because the gods don't really show themselves in here, reluctant because with all this misery the god(dess) doesn't intervene, and the Fighter level because of fighting wolves and undead to keep herself alive. Anyway, just an idea.

 

[pukunui]

Actually being a local Barovian Cleric works perfectly for her, lazy because the gods don't really show themselves in here, reluctant because with all this misery the god(dess) doesn't intervene, and the Fighter level because of fighting wolves and undead to keep herself alive. Anyway, just an idea.

But where would this character have been hiding? And how would they have gained 5 levels of cleric? The group has been just about everywhere already. They've visited all the churches and the monastery. I feel like it wouldn't make sense to have a mid-level cleric just suddenly pop up out of nowhere, not having been even glimpsed at any of the most logical sites to encounter him.

I mean, OK, maybe he's just been wallowing in self-pity somewhere out of sight and only recent events have brought him out of hiding, but I dunno ... personally, I think the story works better when the PCs are outsiders. I don't really like the idea of having one of them be a Barovian. I think it would detract from the strangeness and mystery of the setting and even of Strahd.

 

[Wepwawet]

They've been fighting all kinds of monsters in Barovia, of which there are plenty. Rictavio and Ezmeralda are also pretty high level...

I mean, OK, maybe he's just been wallowing in self-pity somewhere out of sight and only recent events have brought him out of hiding, but I dunno ... personally, I think the story works better when the PCs are outsiders. I don't really like the idea of having one of them be a Barovian. I think it would detract from the strangeness and mystery of the setting and even of Strahd.

I think that at 5th level the strangeness is no longer new... But you already told them that they came from outside, I think it works well having a lost group of adventurers.

I had a player join the party at 4th level. She created a half elf and said that she'd been imprisoned, her parents killed in front of her so that she wouldn't have anything to live for, and experimented upon. That's really what she decided, so obviously i made her the child of a dusk elf and a barovian woman, whom Strahd kills when he finds out that one had reproduced. Being locked away was perfect because she wouldn't know much about this land. She knows that she escaped by throwing a green rock into a flame that turned green and then she appeared somewhere else.

 

[pukunui]

They've been fighting all kinds of monsters in Barovia, of which there are plenty. Rictavio and Ezmeralda are also pretty high level...

Yeah, but they've only recently come to Barovia themselves. Neither of them is a native either.

I think that at 5th level the strangeness is no longer new...

A lot of it, maybe. But they haven't learned everything there is to learn.

I had a player join the party at 4th level. She created a half elf and said that she'd been imprisoned, her parents killed in front of her so that she wouldn't have anything to live for, and experimented upon. That's really what she decided, so obviously i made her the child of a dusk elf and a barovian woman, whom Strahd kills when he finds out that one had reproduced. Being locked away was perfect because she wouldn't know much about this land. She knows that she escaped by throwing a green rock into a flame that turned green and then she appeared somewhere else.

That sounds like a cool intro.

 

[texastoast]

About the lost gem from the vineyard: What are you all planning on doing with it? Who has it and where?

I've seen it suggested elsewhere that the lost gem is in the Abbott's flesh golem bride. I like that idea and I'm leaning toward running with it. I don't know exactly what it's doing in there; maybe its magic makes her more believably human in some way than a regular flesh golem. (I actually don't know much about flesh golems at all yet.) I don't know how to hint at that fact, or how it might be rediscovered. The PCs aren't likely to fight the bride are they?

I'm not in love with the gem powering Strahd's Heart of Sorrow; wouldn't it be much older than the 10 years the gem has been missing? Plus I love the art in the book showing the spiral staircase with the heart at the top; that thing looks way too big and impressive to be powered by a magic pinecone.

I do like the idea that it's at Old Bonegrinder. Sounds like you're doing a Fewer Dead Children variant where the pastries are made from fruit not children's teeth? (In which case why is it called Old Bonegrinder?) I think that's an elegant solution to a couple of problems. In my case we whizzed past the windmill trying to get to Vallaki before dark, and we never encountered Morgantha in Barovia in the first place, so we will probably never even visit the windmill. I doubt they'll ever be east of the Castle again.

 

[pukunui]

I like that not every mystery can be solved, so I'm not putting the third gem anywhere in the adventure for my campaign. It's lost forever.