D&D 5E 5E - Curse of Strahd - It's a Meat Grinder for my group

[TheYeti1775]

Curse of Strahd has been a meat grinder on characters so far through 8 sessions of play.


6 Players (2 added later). (4 - 8 sessions, 1 - 2 Sessions(6&8), 1 - 1 Session(8))
None of the Original 4 PC's are left.

Six PC's dead. 1 PC/NPC she was being used by the PC's as a supplemental. 1 NPC lost.
Session 1 - 1 PC Death - Random Encounter Zombies
Session 2 - None
Session 3 - 1 PC Death (RP) - Death House Self Sacrifice
Session 4 - 1 PC Death - Random Encounter Dire Wolves & Wolves / 1 NPC Death - Random Encounter Dire Wolves
Session 5 - None
Session 6 - None
Session 7 - 1 PC Death Role-play of PC going Werewolf / 1 PCNPC Death Role-play of PC turned Evil / 1 PC turned to NPC Lost (RP-Lycanthropy) - actions of a PC lead to it all, I sat and watched it all and made the necessary rulings.
Session 8 - 1 PC Death - Random Encounter Ghost, random roll determined who got attacked PC was asleep at the time / 1 NPC Death Role-play Encounter with the PC that turned to Werewolf in Session 7, they killed her.


They've earned the wrath of Strahd through their actions so far and what all has happened. But that hasn't even come to fruition yet. It's been just under 24 hours since he was cattle prodded essentially by them.
Heck they aren't even a full week in Ravenloft yet.

Outside of Random Encounters what I've thrown in so far is primarily RP stuff, but my group does like seizing on the RP of little things.

Worst part about it all is the card readings didn't help their cause much.
Without spoilers here they are:
Book - Paladin
Symbol - Avenger
Sword - Warrior
Ally - Beast
Location - Executioner

The group is definitely having a butterfly effect across the module with what they have done so far. And they are just getting the tip of the iceberg in Vallaki so far.

Overall how are other people seeing it? Is it a meat grinder for you all?
In the past for like 3.5, we went nearly a year of weekly play without a PC death for one group, another in the same time frame only had two. Now our 1st edition campaigns, we don't even count them as true PC death till they start hitting around 5th, and then its usually an action of the player that causes the death after 5th.

 

[iserith]

I play in CoS and we're at the point where we're heading to Castle Ravenloft (this Sunday!). We've covered all the content so far as I can tell, plus had plenty of random encounters. We are basically unstoppable as a team. That may be because we sometimes have 5 or 6 PCs, plus feats are allowed. I'm not sure that is the expectation of the module. I also can't be sure if the DM is adjusting difficulty to compensate for that, but I suspect not.

We blight-slapped Strahd when he turned up to screw with us one time. Sent him packing like a fart in the wind. So I wonder how much of a challenge he'll pose us when we face him in the Castle.

In short, no PCs deaths in this campaign at all. I can't even remember the last time someone made a death save. I don't think my character has even lost so much as a hit point in weeks.

 

[Lancelot]

SPOILERS, obviously... although I've tried to obfuscate them a bit.

Yep, total meat grinder for my party. We "finished" the campaign some time back, with a TPK against Rahadin. By that time, however, they'd visited every major adventure site and most of Castle Ravenloft itself. The group had lost 17 characters:

1 was hung by the mayor of the central town (Vallaki?) for killing his bodyguard.

1 got surrounded by six vampire spawn (at 3rd level!) and reduced to -75 HP in a single round.

1 was killed by a fellow PC; he had been knocked unconscious in a desperate fight, but had stabilized through three successful death saves. His "friend" threw a javelin at his body to cause some damage, restarting the cycle of death saves (damage breaks stabilization). His "friend" was hoping that he would roll a natural 20 to kick up. He didn't, and bled out.

1 was killed by a tree. In a bit of karmic justice, this was the "friend" who tried to "awaken" his fallen buddy with a thrown javelin.

1 was killed by animated undead cats. Embarrassing for a 5th level character...

3 died in the abbey, after they decided to bully the abbot regarding his bridal plans. The party got *really* aggressive with him, expecting him to be a mid-level cleric. Ouch. A couple of guys survived, however, and the others reloaded with new PCs. They never went back to the abbey, though.

1 Lawful Good paladin died after attempting to make a pact with the Dark Powers.

1 was killed by a wraith in the Castle catacombs.

2 were killed by Strahd himself in a running battle (the PCs were running; Strahd was battling) through the halls of the Castle.

...and finally, 5 were killed by Rahadin in three separate encounters. They were weakened and split up at the time, but they thought they could take him. So wrong.

Despite the carnage, it was an incredibly fun campaign... probably our favorite so far of the 5e WotC adventure paths.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Hasn't been a meat grinder for my two groups yet, but that's mainly because neither have done anything stupid and they'be been seen by Strahd thus far as merely playthings and not threats. They've had a lot of crap thrown at them (a lot of RP-based curses, diseases, and madness and such) but none have died yet. Which is fine by me... it's much more fun to play with their emotions and then make them keep going back to see Offalia Wormwiggle at Old Bonegrinder to negotiate for restorations and major healing than it is to just kill them.

One group did just recently destroy Strahd's physical form when he came to confront them at the windmill though, so now he has a legitimate reason to treat them as a threat. So there's a better chance someone bites it going forward.

 

[pukunui]

I played in CoS and am currently running it. I was expecting it to be a meat grinder but it hasn't turned out that way in either game. I think we had only one PC death in the game I played in and we whooped Strahd prettily handily. In the game I'm running, the guys are doing really well at surviving. First PC death was last session, which I think was session #7. He died at the hands of the revenants in Argynvostholt.

 

[jasper]

Yes kill the pcs. Make the players cry. CoS should be a meat grinder. With a warning upfront to the players that it is a meat grinder.

 

[pukunui]

1 was killed by a fellow PC; he had been knocked unconscious in a desperate fight, but had stabilized through three successful death saves. His "friend" threw a javelin at his body to cause some damage, restarting the cycle of death saves (damage breaks stabilization). His "friend" was hoping that he would roll a natural 20 to kick up. He didn't, and bled out.

Wow. Talk about metagaming!

1 was killed by a tree. In a bit of karmic justice, this was the "friend" who tried to "awaken" his fallen buddy with a thrown javelin.

Here's an instance where I know I went a bit soft with the group I'm DMing for. That same tree dropped two PCs to 0 hp but for some reason I had it discard them rather than continue to crush them, so they were saved by their fellows. The PCs also had Ezmerelda with them, and she saved the day by blasting the tree with lightning bolts.

1 was killed by animated undead cats. Embarrassing for a 5th level character...

That's almost as embarrassing as being killed by a door. [It happened to another player's character in a sci-fi game I was playing in; his droid PC got squashed in a powered door.]

Despite the carnage, it was an incredibly fun campaign... probably our favorite so far of the 5e WotC adventure paths.

My group is having a lot of fun with it, too, as am I.

 

[ad_hoc]

Playing CoS right now and the group is on pace to face Strahd in the next 3-4 sessions.

Only Death House has been very deadly. My group likes to be cautious, talk to people, investigate, etc. There are some potentially very dangerous random encounters. They faced 4 dire wolves fairly early on and Ireena was killed in that battle.

I am interested to see how the final confrontation with Strahd will go. I would guess it's about a 50/50 for either side.

 

[Tony Vargas]

::Bella Lugosi voice::

"...oh, how unfortunate, meat-grinders waste so much ... bluhd..."

 

[Lancelot]

...The PCs also had Ezmerelda with them, and she saved the day by blasting the tree with lightning bolts.

My party met Ezmeralda briefly in an encounter that I had set up to foreshadow that she could be an important ally. A few sessions later, they accepted Strahd's initial dinner invitation... which I played out as a courteous-but-ominous event, rather than a trap. They loudly proclaimed their desire to be on Strahd's good side, so he decided to set a test of loyalty: capture Ezmeralda and bring her to the castle in chains.

One of the players convinced the others of the benefits of the "long con", so the group decided to actually do this. They tracked down Ezmeralda, laid an ambush for her, knocked her out in a fight, blew up her vardo, and returned her to Strahd in chains. This gave them the opportunity to explore some of his castle with his blessing, but they later felt bad about what they had done.

Especially once Ezmeralda the Vampire Bride showed up for vengeance. That almost cost them another couple of characters...