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Volo's Guide has loads of cool Fey creatures - if you have it, you could use these, instead of the usual Humanoids as foes? e.g Boggle, Darkling, Meenlock, Quickling, Redcap, Yeth Hound. Because yes, I agree that there are way too many Goblins in almost every 'intro' adventure. Or at least...

Crikey, so many PC's dead from random encounters... I enjoy the occasional random encounter, and they don't have to all be pushovers, but your write-up makes the campaign seem... pretty random. I'm sure it's not, just the way it's presented. Most important question - are your players having...

Great idea, it's a cool lead-in adventure, and has a slightly different feel than the rest of the campaign, so using the house as the conduit for the PC's getting stuck in Barovia is a good one. Just two suggestions: 1. make sure your players know they are going to be playing Curse of Strahd...

As far as "Cannon" goes, everything in 4e did happen, and the only "reversal" via 5e was that the Second Sundering reversed a lot of the physical changes that the Spellplague inflicted upon Faerun etc. As noted earlier, 4e moved the time-line forward about 100 years to DR 1479; 5e has moved the...

In retrospect, I'd remove the the Icon of Ravenloft. It's not a 'prophesied' item, it's very powerful, it's easy to get hold of, and to be honest its placement in the Chapel makes no sense whatsoever, something I feel should have been changed when the Castle was updated to 5e. I never really...

Personally, I've been running an Eldritch Knight from level 1 to level 7 then multi-classed him, he's currently level 8 nearly level 9... and I've *never* used War Magic. In fact I have Booming Blade, and have only ever used that once, too. Mainly, because I'm a dual-wielder, my bonus action...

As long you everyone know they are playing Curse of Strahd, and have some vague idea of what that might entail, I'd just let the players be whatever they want to be. After all, they are going to be outsiders, drawn in, who have a chance of defeating Strahd - if they were all plain humans, they...

So 'realistically', Strahd should use the sword himself - there's an enhanced version of Strahd around somewhere, that upped his CR slightly and had him using a sword to good effect. That might be a bit too heavy-handed, but once the PC's Destroy the Heart, Strahd won't be able to wield it...

In my experience, if the DM tries to push the players into playing the game "their (DM) say", at some point the PC's will tune out and/or revolt - if not open revolt, passive aggressive will quickly set in and no-one is happy. I've personally played in a game where the DM did heaps of work...

or he could give it to Rahadin, his dusk-elf Chamberlain - as written, Rahadin is too easy for the PC's to be killed, so he needs all the help he can get... Remember - Strahd hates and fears the sword - I figured he doesn't really want to be touching it, in fact he'd like it destroyed (IIRC, he...

One could argue that if magic is common enough, you'd want to look at WW2 and beyond for your prevailing strategies, i.e. stagnant defenses might have their place, but mobile, decentralised units will, over time, overwhelm them if sufficient numbers and technologies are employed with good...

5e keeps things pretty simple, even artefacts, so Frostrazor should be in the same ball-park as Blackrazor, and also in line with how spells etc work in 5e. So with that in mind, I'd say your idea is close but too much - I don't know it needs extra cold damage or not, and a power should be once...

Too many NPC's? I'm totally with you - no-one wants a gang of NPC's over-shadowing the PC's, especially if there are sufficient player numbers at the table. Perfect excuse to go all out and kill some of the non-P's. Don't be overly fair about it, just gang up on one and make sure it dies (as...

I *could* tell you, but it would breach my NDA.

NB: as written (page 156), "Artus Cimber and the Ring of Winter have roles to play in another adventure." Specifically, they mean he will appear in a yet-to-be-confirmed-or-even-publicly-announced adventure that WotC are working on, so if that's of a concern to you and/or your players, take...

I've recently DM'd Curse of Strahd, and have read House on Gryphon Hill, in fact I read through it mid-campaign to see if any of it could be used to augment Curse of Strahd, or in fact mined for any kinds of ideas etc. What I thought was that the adventure is so different, and not really...

Storm Kings Thunder (and probably other 5e adventures) suffers from the same problem - a large set of seemingly random "quests" that the adventure wants you to hand out as soon as you talk to a certain person. I'm not sure exactly, but I think 4e started using this in adventures, and it seems...

I like how Chris Perkins handled this towards the end of the Curse of Strahd sessions in "Dice, Camera, Action". Basically, the were-wolf part(s) were handled "off camera", i.e. the PC's woke up after a long rest, and found various signs of werewolf activity including a missing (dead?) child...

Fighter (just) - every group I've played in, or DM'd, has had one or more Fighters, then around 4 other PC's. For example my two current games are: 1) Fighter(Champion, Greatweapon), Paladin(Vengance), Fighter(Eldritch Knight)/Mystic, Monk, Bard, Sorcerer(gone), Cleric (replaced Sorcerer). 2)...

In the groups I run and play in, I've seen at least one of every class played as a PC, with the sole exception of Ranger. One player was going to start off my new campaign with a Ranger, but decided on Sorcerer instead. I've considered swapping my dual-wielding Fighter(Eldritch Knight)/Mystic...