D&D 5E Curse of Strahd (and limitations on 1st level play)

I dunno man, my group butchered him when they found out what he was up to. The game carried on just fine.
It's not a story thing. It was that the party was 3rd level when they encountered him. I don't think the game would've carried on just fine after a TPK. ;)

His stats were 136 HP (half damage if not magical weapons - and no one has magical weapons, so let's double those HP to 272), 17 AC, +7 to hit (x2/round), 25 damage.

The party's average stats (from memory) are AC 16, +5 to hit, something around 23 HP each on average. I don't think they would've held up well against him.
 

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Don’t you adjust the encounters on the fly? That keeps it challenging but not too close to an unwanted un dramatic death.
Nah. It seems too heavy-handed to just materialize new enemies out of thin air. I roll in the open (not behind the DM screen) and it would look odd to start doing otherwise. Or inflating/deflating enemy HP would seem dishonest.
And then what do I do? Just decide on my preference which characters get to live or die? At that point, are we even playing a game?
 

I'm looking at these encounters being suitable for five (or sometimes 6) 5th-level characters, keeping with the theme from Curse of Strahd. I will probably have to create some new dungeons and basically re-write the whole thing to make it fit with a level of challenge I like. But the following should barely cross over into the "Deadly" category without being ridiculous (but I really have no idea).

3 Vampire Spawn
3 Helmed Horrors, 1 Flame Skull
2 Wraiths, 7 Specters
3 Revenants
8 Mummies

I also looked at werewolves and flesh golems as potential opponents, but the party can’t damage them since they have no magic weapons. I could bring them in as threats that they have to run away from.
 

I'm looking at these encounters being suitable for five (or sometimes 6) 5th-level characters, keeping with the theme from Curse of Strahd. I will probably have to create some new dungeons and basically re-write the whole thing to make it fit with a level of challenge I like. But the following should barely cross over into the "Deadly" category without being ridiculous (but I really have no idea).

3 Vampire Spawn
3 Helmed Horrors, 1 Flame Skull
2 Wraiths, 7 Specters
3 Revenants
8 Mummies

I also looked at werewolves and flesh golems as potential opponents, but the party can’t damage them since they have no magic weapons. I could bring them in as threats that they have to run away from.
Use the Loup Garou from VRGtR for your werewolves. They replace the weapon immunity with regeneration. Of course you could do the same thing to regular werewolves (nice bonus is it has legendary actions, so you no it is going to get some attacks in):

1683678060751.png
 


Dang. Wouldn't that be OP for a 5th level party?
Putting aside the need for silver weapons to kill it, let's say it regenerates 3 times, for 200 hp.

That assumes that your PCs are dealing 50 hp damage to it per round, so it goes down in 4 rounds.

Assuming approximately 50% hit rates, that means 100 hp worth of attacks per round.

Assuming that, on average, one PC is down per round, that means each of 4 PCs is doing the equivalent of 25 hp worth of attacks per round.

Assuming 2 attacks per round (5th level PCs with Extra Attack or equivalent), that's 12 hp damage per attack: let's say 5 base weapon, +4 from stat, +3 from sundries (I don't know the full range of 5e sundries, but I know it has various sorts of buffs available).

In 4 rounds, the monster does 8 attacks with multi-attack, +12 swipes, for a total of 20 attacks. Assuming monstrous form (which seems more exciting), that's 4 bites and 16 claws. With +9 to hit, and advantage from blood frenzy, the to-hit rate is probably close to 90%.

Each claw attack is therefore an expected 9 or 10 damage, for (let's say) 150 expected damage all-up.

Each bite is an expected 20+ damage, for another 80 all-up.

Can your PCs soak 50-ish damage per character? That will depend on their healing abilities, I think.


Anyway, that's my take on the maths. I don't have any 5e intuitions to shed any more light on it, except that I would expect 5th level PCs might be able to buff themselves into a better than 50% hit rate vs AC 16.
 




Dang. Wouldn't that be OP for a 5th level party?
Yes, I wasn't suggesting it for your group right now. Need to look ahead and all that.

However, you could take a standard CR 3 werewolf and remove its nonmagic b,p,s immunity and replace it with the Loup's regeneration ability, since you wanted to avoid them because of not having magic items.
 

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