D&D General Do I need an attitude adjustment? (They're gonna nova the BBEG)

[Eltab]

When the PCs look out of Leomund's Tiny Hut, they see a Bigby's Clenched Fist right outside drumming its fingers on the floor and occasionally rolling over so the PCs can see the face of the watch it is wearing. "Midnight" is when the Hut will expire.

Frostmaiden has a "Living spell: Bigby's Hand", in case the PCs disbelieve you.

 

[Helldritch]

So many people play Strahd as a static boss waiting to be stomped be the players... Strhad is not such a foe. He will seek out the players. He will dispel their hut (I know I did). He will throw anything at them to make them loose their precious resources. Be it spells, potions, scrolls, Strahd should ensure that these will be at an all time low.

Strahd is not above retreating to recover hp. He regenerate at 20hp/round. 7 rounds is all he needs to be at full capacity. Not even a whole minute. Not enough to be considered an end to a current combat.

Here is what you could do. On the first round your PCs have their nova, win the initiative and almost kill him. Strahd passes through a wall, takea time to regenerate and wait that the players buffs wear out. He comes back with minions. Fight a few rounds maybe even only two. Your players again expanded resources to boost themselves and right after that Strahd does it again... a retreat, a come back with again a few more minions.

With bat swarms, Strahd would take the form of a bat, manoeuver inside the swarm and take a few bites (pun intended) at either the healers or a weak con save character. Now that character has lowered Hp and is even more in danger. Any attempt to take a short rest will end up with a fireball and minions to attack. Strahd has any ressources you deem necessary. That is why there are the items that let the playersbhave an edge against him. That is why there is a room where Strahd will always be found.

If your players do not have these items, then Strahd should be toying with them. My groups killed Strahd alright but these were costly victories where only two or three charcacters survived (out of six PC and a two or three NPCs).

Strahd is not a brute. He is a hit and run, a tactical genious that will use everything at his disposal.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm in the process of wrapping up a campaign that has lasted all year, and I'm kind of dreading the last few sessions. I could use some outside perspective on what I need to do about that. I'm going to try to put this in general terms to start with, but I'm sure I'll leave out some important detail or other, so I'll add more detail if needed.

Note: I'm running a published adventure, so my options for reworking things are limited. But I'm not sure it matter much even if this were a homebrew, as we're at the stage where there isn't much for the PCs to learn; they just need to confront the BBEG.

My group is eight players--way too big, I know. I had my doubts about that from the start, but I thought I could stay on top of it by just making the fights tougher. That's had mixed success; but more importantly, I didn't anticipate the change in interpersonal dynamics the larger group would cause. About half the group used to game together decades ago, back in high school, and I feel like they're reverting to an immature mentality now that they're all together again. I've seen some of the original group change their playstyle with the return of these new people. They're much more prone to mouth off to the BBEG and generally act murderhoboish than they were when the group was smaller.

As of now, the PCs have entered the BBEG's domain, which is large. Their plan is to explore the place thoroughly and loot everything of value they can find, camping whenever they get low on resources (using Leomund's Tiny Hut). Then, when they feel like they've plundered all the good stuff, they'll take a long rest so they're fresh and then take on the big guy.

I had tried to set up a much more tense situation. I originally thought they would confront the BBEG sooner rather than later, and I'd envisioned a dramatic standoff with him that would bring in some character-specific plot threads that have been building for a while. I actually do think the players of the characters those threads would affect would enjoy having those threads become important, but they're caught up with the energy of these new folks and are now actively avoiding any situation that will make it easy for me to bring in these ideas. (For reasons that would take too long to explain, I can't make the BBEG come to them at this stage.)

Anyway, the main thing is that I feel like the players completely have the upper hand, and I'm not sure what is the best way to respond to that. How do I balance what's fun for my players with what's fun for me?

It's not that I want to kill PCs, but I'd like to make the climax of the campaign tense and memorable. I'd like the players to have to use abilities they don't usually have to pull out, and maybe be inventive sometimes. And yeah, I'd like for the bad guys to get some good hits in, to show off their own abilities and make the situation seem serious. But then on the other hand, it seems like players always remember combats as more tense than they look from my side of the screen, so maybe I'm overestimating the importance of that aspect.

I know that getting attached to the idea of specific scenes happening is always dangerous, but do I try to salvage any of the showdown I'd hoped for, or do I just let it go?

Do I try to make things harder for them? Try to bring back some of the roleplay? Or is that me trying to impose my will and take away their fun?

How do I psych myself up to run a BBEG who's going to go down like an absolute chump when confronted with eight fresh PCs? I'm actively hating the thought right now, but maybe I just need to get over myself and learn to like it. I remember someone saying that the goal of being a DM is not to win, but to lose with style. I'm just not sure even how to do that when I feel so completely outmatched.

Sorry for the long post. Any thoughts or advice will be carefully considered.

5e CoS doesn't make clear or even hint at just how screwed you are between the Dark Lords (ie strahd) & The Dark Powers (No... just no)if you enter ravenloft. You've seen reality shows where the producers do things to cause conflict & screw with participants, ravenloft is a world that does similar with the goal of causing negative emotions (ie despair, depression, etc) Strahd won't just wait around for the PC to gank him & the Dark Powers won't allow him that escape even if he wanted to commit suicide by adventurer to end his suffering because they screw with the dark lords just as much if not more than everyone else. Strahd would go full tuckers kobolds on the PCs, or maybe he will just teleport circle them elsewhere horrible in his domain (barovia).. what's that?... you thought that you were in a safe room with tiny hut to take a long rest because strahd isn't playing fair in his castle? about that... the whole freaking room just got teleported elsewhere & is falling out of the sky towards a bunch of awakened trees/ents/etc hungry for flesh or whatever.

The Dark powers? Imagine beings with wish granting level powers who don't need letter of a wish, the words "I wish", & most terrifying can break the fourth wall to listen to table talk and take any action they deem fit including answering questions. One of my players once said something like "It's too bad this (cursed item) bumps my dex instead of my strength", a second player heard a voice in his head about how there is a simple ritual that would grant his ally the strength he desires...> What's the cost? Nothing significant just a simple ritual to shift a few things around combined with details on the ritual that would result in 22 strength>ten minutes later bob is a werewolf who needs to stay above half health to remain in control.

The most terrifying thing about the Dark Lords & Dark Powers is the amount of power outside what is normally granted to NPCs. Ravenloft gives you as the gm unlimited power to twist the knife. I recommend reading or skimming the 2e ravenloft campaign setting for additional depth

 

[pming]

Hiya!

"Straight to the crypts to loot..."
..
...
....


PC's: "Ha! Prepare to die, Strahd!"
Strahd: "Really? So you can go spend all that loot you gathered from the crypts of my family? Huh. You honestly think we'd just let you walk out with it? ... ... Hmmm. Fascinating"
PC's: "Wait. What do you mean...'we'...?"
Strahd: "Oh, not me personally, I have everything I want now. But I'm pretty sure my dead relatives might have something to say about you looting their possessions..."
[....Ghosts of Strahds family start to phase into existence around the PC's.... one Ghost per room/crypt/sarcophagus/coffin they looted...]

(according to my original 1e Ravenloft...you're looking at about 40+ potential Ghosts; even a group of 8 PC's would be hard pressed to deal with that!...)

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Argyle King]

So many people play Strahd as a static boss waiting to be stomped be the players... Strhad is not such a foe. He will seek out the players. He will dispel their hut (I know I did). He will throw anything at them to make them loose their precious resources. Be it spells, potions, scrolls, Strahd should ensure that these will be at an all time low.

There is truth to this, even with other creatures in D&D.

I think part of why my usual group did so well is because most of us have played tactical/strategic games with each other. I found an old character notebook I had. Part of how we approached things was by taking over the windmill and establishing a base of operations (with countermeasures against Strahd). I don't recall how exactly we did everything, but it looks as though we gathered items from a church which Strahd couldn't enter (for reasons I don't remember) and moved them to the windmill (which we viewed as easier to strategically defend).

It also appears (from the notes) that we viewed most (but not all) NPCs in the setting to be dbags who ranged from unhelpful to hostile. So, there was a sense of apathy toward helping most of the residents. Even for the few PCs we liked, their situations often seemed hopeless enough that "helping" amounted to a momentary delay in suffering. By the end, our goal was to simply killed Strahd and leave -without much care for if more of the townsfolk died.

It looks like we had a Cleric of Arcana (my character), a paladin, a ranged ranger, a wizard (w/ some ability to store d20 rolls for later... divination?,) and rogue/fighter (battlemaster) MC. It was an AL game; on the day of the final showdown, one of the players was missing, so we were down to 4 PCs.

Side note: At the time, I had pondered if I could use my Arcana Cleric abilities to trick the fog into allowing us to leave.
==========================

Back on topic:

I agree with others that a BBEG should have minions or some other mitigating factor, to counter the disadvantage of having only 1 turn to the PCs' multiple turns. D&D doesn't have active defenses, so solo creatures tend to do very poorly without some way of keeping players from surrounding them and beating on them.

Movement abilities help.

If it's a home game, you likely have more ability to tweak the encounter than we did as part of AL.

 

[Helldritch]

You're right. No mod in AL events. But then again, as soon as you go above 4 players in a party, the game breaks down a bit forcing a DM to adjust the difficulty simply because the game assumes a party of 4.

As is, with a party of four, Strahd should be almost unbeatable if played as the skirmisher that he is. Especially if the characters have none of the special items required to beat Strahd. As I said earlier, I reenacted the fight for group at our store that were complaining that Strahd was weak and I beat the crap out of them by playing Strahd as is. They were 11th or 12th level. A bit higher than expected. But even then, they were outmatched. And Strahd would have only played with them but they were very rude with him. And a gentleman will not accept rudeness.

 

[Weiley31]

But is it really the BBEG? -wink-

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Because the players have gained control.

If you feel that the players are in control to the extent that you are no longer enjoying being the DM, then don't. Tell them you are not enjoying it and you are stepping down, effective immediately.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

So I wrapped up a campaign not too long ago and had to end things somewhat abruptly since a player was falling asleep (not from boredom thankfully). This campaigns BBEG was a players old character who had cloned some older characters. My plan was to have the players deal with the clones before the BBEG came in and tried to mop up. Well that isn’t what happened. The players went nova on the clones and dealt with them rather easily (only one character was unconscious). That’s when I got hit with the, “Sorry, but I gotta go, I’m struggling to stay awake.” I realized that in order to save the ending of this campaign I had to do something quick. My plan changed from a struggle of good vs evil to how can I make this fun and dramatic? The BBEG was attuned to both the hand and eye of Vecna so cast the wish spell to destroy the sword of Kas, which was in the possession of the players. The sword passed its saving throw and so I decided that was enough and the paladin who had survived a casting of Finger of Death with 1 HP, killed the the BBEG. No attack roll or anything. And the players loved it.
I felt a little cheated as the DM. I had actually for once prepped for the session and was excited to play the BBEG. But none of that mattered as I heard the players telling me how awesome the session had been. I realized later that the players didn’t care about a long drawn out combat. They wanted to bust the BBEG’s skull and they didn’t care how. They wanted to feel powerful and heroic. I also figured almost 1.5 years of chasing this BBEG down they’d had enough and just wanted him dead.

So I guess what I’m saying is if they go nova and smash Strahd’s stupid face in 2 rounds, let them. They’ll feel like all the hard fought victories leading up to this were worth it.

 

[billd91]

Because the players have gained control.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but is it really a question of them taking control or them using what control they had to not take the hook you presented (and thus not coming to your big reveal and avoiding your control)? Are you sure you're more concerned about Strahd going down like a chump or that they've basically not showed up to what you think was a really cool story point?

Sometimes the players take the bait, sometimes they don't. If they don't, you let it go and adapt to what they choose to do.