evilbob
Adventurer
There are two excellent play report write ups worth reading here (by GrandDM) and here (by MerricB). In that tradition I thought I'd share my own. The TL;DR version: they actually killed the thing in the basement, thanks to luck and extreme caution!
Us:
We started CoS with 3 players: a sort of Knowledge/Life cleric, a shadow sorcerer (from UA Underdark), and a Way of Shadow monk with 1 level of fighter. (Two quick asides: I give my group leeway in shuffling around things here or there, which is why we have a Knowledge/Life cleric, and if you ever want a wonderful straight-up Blade rip off: 1 Fighter / X Monk, give most dwarf racial bonuses and the TWF feat... I can expand on this later if anyone cares, but imagine "second wind" renamed "regeneration" and Ki powers being Half-Blood abilities...) The group has been playing together forever and this is our 3rd Ravenloft campaign. Also worth noting, the cleric has a passive perception of 21 - so they notice things. (18 Wis + trained + Observant feat)
Changes:
Due to the fact that we're at only 3 people and our group isn't a wall-to-wall combat group, I took advice from this forum about dumping most of the non-interesting fights: pre-basement was only the armor, and downstairs the grick and shadows were dumped. Also, the ghouls became skeletons and the ghasts became ghouls, and I allowed the party to shut the tomb door to avoid the centipede swarm (seemed like a totally reasonable response to me). I also did the whole rewrite outlined in this thread to change the children and the nanny.
Also, since they are only 3 (and because of the "degrees of success" idea from another thread), I house-ruled that overwhelmingly beating something's AC gives 1.5X damage, and just barely missing gives a couple of points of damage as well. This causes them to do a little more damage on average, but still less than 4 characters, in my opinion (and they're still losing action economy).
Pre-Death House: (this is all backstory so feel free to skip ahead)
All three characters had different motivations to seek out a Vistani camp on the edge of town: the cleric was part of a noble family who recently discovered her parents led strange rituals in the basement... In order to get some time away, she was sent on her parents' behalf to investigate kidnappings by a group of werewolves, which came from a place called Barovia. These travelers also claimed to be from Barovia, so she came to meet them. Meanwhile a half-blood, daywalking vampire hunter heard that there were some vampires in a place called Barovia, and came to meet these travelers as well. Finally, a brooding mage who also discovered his family was practicing dark arts and swore to hunt them all down was sent by a shadowy organization dedicated to destroying magical abuses to investigate tales of monstrous humanoids spread by some travelers claiming to be from Barovia...
After hearing the tale of a cursed prince and traveling with the Vistani into the mists, the party went through some giant gates and arrived just outside of a small town. There, the wagon threw a wheel and one of the Vistani was injured; after helping him the group was urged to go on ahead through the town and to find Madame Eva, who could tell them more. Meanwhile the Vistani stayed behind to repair the wagon. Entering the town, they heard a small child crying...
Death House first session:
My group being quite seasoned, they immediately suspected the children were part of an elaborate trap and quickly saw through the illusion. (Mentally insert the Mad Max gif of "That... is bait" here.
) They went into the house anyway (they're such good sports) but of course they laughed at the idea of using the front door and immediately went up to the balcony. I made a rookie DM mistake here and instead of the balcony leading them to the 3rd floor they went to the 4th (should have anticipated them better - still, it turned out more or less the same), where they found a dusty, long-abandoned house and quickly ran into the ghost of the nanny. Here, the majority of the backstory was quickly dumped on them and they also discovered the secret door to the basement, getting them to level 2. Being good sports, they still bothered to search the rest of the house. The entrance to the children's room was hidden from them by the house, and all the rest of the windows and doors similarly no longer existed (the house wanted them to stay). They easily noticed all the hidden motifs in the decorations, which I had also changed to be much more vine- and plant monster-centric, to foreshadow the final fight. The fought the armor easily (since they had already leveled up) and were spooked enough to break every other suit of armor they came across (mission accomplished ). They also cut up the tiger rug and poked everything with a stick - they were convinced the chest in the library was a mimic - hilariously a lesson they forgot next session. They importantly found all the good loot including the deeds and the letter from Strahd, which I had slightly modified, along with the family longsword. Overall, the house's first two floors being pristine didn't phase them since they'd already seen the attic, but they put together more or less what had been going on. (One thing that threw them for a long loop was the food in the larder - this really confused them.) But as others have suggested, the lower two floors are really overly detailed and especially since they already knew the story we went through them extremely quickly, skipping some areas entirely. They took a short rest in the attic to heal from the armor.
Death House second session:
Exploring the basement, they found the crypts (which they ignored at first) and the cultist rooms, and managed to completely avoid the floor trap by coincidence. They were super-freaked out by the statue and avoided that room, but came back later to shoot the crystal from afar, which they were convinced was evil somehow. I had a shadow partially form and dissolve just to validate their fears. I made the skeletons (previously ghouls) die instantly from a turn undead without rolling anything (boring conversation anyway). I gave TONS of hints about the mimic (I don't like unbeatable surprises) but this only made them wary; one character still tried to put a hair on the door so he could tell if it had been opened, which caused it to attack. The same character triggered the ghoul (formerly ghast) attack in the bedroom by touching the stuff in the chest - which made him even more wary. Interestingly they quickly discerned the identities of the ghouls (I had given the mistress of the house a distinctive necklace) and decided to bury their bodies in their crypt - something the adventure didn't account for, I think. I had it make the voices softer to let them know it had some effect (but nothing else). When they put the mother in her coffin the centipedes came out, but they quickly just shut the door back and ignored it - seemed fair!
Downstairs they spent a long time trying to decide if they should take the weird items, and then they worried they shouldn't take all of them. This group was so paranoid by this point they scared themselves much worse than anything I could do, which was perfect. They found the prison and the main chamber, and immediately keyed into the refuse pile, similarly quickly discovering it was a sleeping shambling mound. (They are EXTREMELY cautious and hard to fool.) At this point they realized it was the house trying to kill them - Shining-esque. (Up to this point they were not counting out the cult or some powerful necromancer.)
Here's where it got crazy: they then went into full-bore "how do we kill this thing" mode (instead of trying to escape) on the creature. They never even went to the dais and ignored it. They took the secret door off its hinges to make sure it couldn't close behind them and they had a secure escape route, and then attacked. (I had the cultist shadows appear at this point just to add some flavor; they were already ordering the thing to wake up.) The cleric emptied her entire magical ability into Guiding Bolt spells, which actually do decent damage and set up advantage to the sorcerer (great tactics since the monk could hit better without advantage). Her first attack was an auto-crit on the sleeping creature, which didn't hurt their chances, and the sorcerer (knowing from their roles that fire damage - his specialty - was poor against the thing) used the family longsword and also critted once, which also didn't hurt. Meanwhile the monk jumped in and used Ki powers (I let him have Ki powers at level 2 even though he was technically monk level 1 - in this case his fighter abilities did nothing anyway so he might as well have been a monk 2) to dodge while tanking. Considering it was asleep, besides the auto-crit I also gave them a surprise round on the thing. They did 60+ damage before it even acted.
Of course, then it started to kill them. The monk's dodge saved him entirely but then his points were spent and he took one hit to the face, with the second being a natural 1. (Thankfully.) Next round, he went down in one blow, and the second attack (thankfully) missed the sorc due to his shield spell, who would have gone down in one blow. By this point the cleric was down to Sacred Flames and the sorc was out of spells and just kept wailing with the sword, and they JUST BARELY killed it (took it to 0 HP exactly) before it would have attacked the sorc and downed him. The final hit was from the sorc with the family sword, which I had howl on its death. They quickly dragged the monk out of the water and the cultist shadows disappeared.
They didn't wait long - once the monk was conscious he 2nd winded and they went out of the basement. At this point, the house was hiding nothing from them - and they saw how decrepit and nasty it was, full of smoke and bugs and scythes and stuff, and everything looked like it had probably been burnt down before. They snatched up the kids and smashed their way out of the attic, climbing down from the balcony. I had the cat (see that other thread) knock over an oil lamp on their way out, and it burned the house to the ground again; they wanted to do more for the nanny but she let them know they already had. After stumbling away and catching their breath, they looked back out of the town - no Vistani wagons. And they turned back to the house: it looked like it had burned down decades ago.
Battle Analysis:
So why did a level 2 party manage to beat a level 5 brute? Like I said in this thread, the shambling mound is a TPK in a straight fight unless the party has "spectacular luck/tactics or the GM [cheats] in their favor somehow" - which basically all three of those things happened. I cheated in that they got damage boosts when they rolled a total attack roll of 21+ (which happened a lot) - although I still maintain a 4th party member would have done even more (also I just now realized the sorc wasn't proficient with that longsword - eh, whatever); they had pretty good tactics (as an experienced group this is fairly reflexive); but mostly they won because literally everything went right for them. They got two crits and the only missed 4 times the entire fight - but more importantly their heaviest attack (Guiding Bolt) never missed. Meanwhile the mound only got 3 turns and missed 4 out of 6 attacks: two from Dodge, one Shield, and one natural 1. That gave the party 4 rounds (including the surprise round) to nova the crap out of it, and they succeeded by the skin of their teeth. The cleric probably would have gotten 1 or probably 2 more rounds (the sorc would have gone down - I rolled just to see) but that's it - meanwhile both the others were face down in 2' of water! I had the Death in Barovia side bar ready, just in case...
Anyway, the whole thing ended up being very effective and everyone enjoyed it. As someone else summarized it: the first half of the house is scary due to the creepy nature of it all, and unraveling the cult: the second half is scary because it's ridiculously deadly. This group didn't have trouble with the other battles because I toned them down, but that just made the final one even scarier.
Us:
We started CoS with 3 players: a sort of Knowledge/Life cleric, a shadow sorcerer (from UA Underdark), and a Way of Shadow monk with 1 level of fighter. (Two quick asides: I give my group leeway in shuffling around things here or there, which is why we have a Knowledge/Life cleric, and if you ever want a wonderful straight-up Blade rip off: 1 Fighter / X Monk, give most dwarf racial bonuses and the TWF feat... I can expand on this later if anyone cares, but imagine "second wind" renamed "regeneration" and Ki powers being Half-Blood abilities...) The group has been playing together forever and this is our 3rd Ravenloft campaign. Also worth noting, the cleric has a passive perception of 21 - so they notice things. (18 Wis + trained + Observant feat)
Changes:
Due to the fact that we're at only 3 people and our group isn't a wall-to-wall combat group, I took advice from this forum about dumping most of the non-interesting fights: pre-basement was only the armor, and downstairs the grick and shadows were dumped. Also, the ghouls became skeletons and the ghasts became ghouls, and I allowed the party to shut the tomb door to avoid the centipede swarm (seemed like a totally reasonable response to me). I also did the whole rewrite outlined in this thread to change the children and the nanny.
Also, since they are only 3 (and because of the "degrees of success" idea from another thread), I house-ruled that overwhelmingly beating something's AC gives 1.5X damage, and just barely missing gives a couple of points of damage as well. This causes them to do a little more damage on average, but still less than 4 characters, in my opinion (and they're still losing action economy).
Pre-Death House: (this is all backstory so feel free to skip ahead)
All three characters had different motivations to seek out a Vistani camp on the edge of town: the cleric was part of a noble family who recently discovered her parents led strange rituals in the basement... In order to get some time away, she was sent on her parents' behalf to investigate kidnappings by a group of werewolves, which came from a place called Barovia. These travelers also claimed to be from Barovia, so she came to meet them. Meanwhile a half-blood, daywalking vampire hunter heard that there were some vampires in a place called Barovia, and came to meet these travelers as well. Finally, a brooding mage who also discovered his family was practicing dark arts and swore to hunt them all down was sent by a shadowy organization dedicated to destroying magical abuses to investigate tales of monstrous humanoids spread by some travelers claiming to be from Barovia...
After hearing the tale of a cursed prince and traveling with the Vistani into the mists, the party went through some giant gates and arrived just outside of a small town. There, the wagon threw a wheel and one of the Vistani was injured; after helping him the group was urged to go on ahead through the town and to find Madame Eva, who could tell them more. Meanwhile the Vistani stayed behind to repair the wagon. Entering the town, they heard a small child crying...
Death House first session:
My group being quite seasoned, they immediately suspected the children were part of an elaborate trap and quickly saw through the illusion. (Mentally insert the Mad Max gif of "That... is bait" here.
) They went into the house anyway (they're such good sports) but of course they laughed at the idea of using the front door and immediately went up to the balcony. I made a rookie DM mistake here and instead of the balcony leading them to the 3rd floor they went to the 4th (should have anticipated them better - still, it turned out more or less the same), where they found a dusty, long-abandoned house and quickly ran into the ghost of the nanny. Here, the majority of the backstory was quickly dumped on them and they also discovered the secret door to the basement, getting them to level 2. Being good sports, they still bothered to search the rest of the house. The entrance to the children's room was hidden from them by the house, and all the rest of the windows and doors similarly no longer existed (the house wanted them to stay). They easily noticed all the hidden motifs in the decorations, which I had also changed to be much more vine- and plant monster-centric, to foreshadow the final fight. The fought the armor easily (since they had already leveled up) and were spooked enough to break every other suit of armor they came across (mission accomplished ). They also cut up the tiger rug and poked everything with a stick - they were convinced the chest in the library was a mimic - hilariously a lesson they forgot next session. They importantly found all the good loot including the deeds and the letter from Strahd, which I had slightly modified, along with the family longsword. Overall, the house's first two floors being pristine didn't phase them since they'd already seen the attic, but they put together more or less what had been going on. (One thing that threw them for a long loop was the food in the larder - this really confused them.) But as others have suggested, the lower two floors are really overly detailed and especially since they already knew the story we went through them extremely quickly, skipping some areas entirely. They took a short rest in the attic to heal from the armor.Death House second session:
Exploring the basement, they found the crypts (which they ignored at first) and the cultist rooms, and managed to completely avoid the floor trap by coincidence. They were super-freaked out by the statue and avoided that room, but came back later to shoot the crystal from afar, which they were convinced was evil somehow. I had a shadow partially form and dissolve just to validate their fears.
I made the skeletons (previously ghouls) die instantly from a turn undead without rolling anything (boring conversation anyway). I gave TONS of hints about the mimic (I don't like unbeatable surprises) but this only made them wary; one character still tried to put a hair on the door so he could tell if it had been opened, which caused it to attack. The same character triggered the ghoul (formerly ghast) attack in the bedroom by touching the stuff in the chest - which made him even more wary. Interestingly they quickly discerned the identities of the ghouls (I had given the mistress of the house a distinctive necklace) and decided to bury their bodies in their crypt - something the adventure didn't account for, I think. I had it make the voices softer to let them know it had some effect (but nothing else). When they put the mother in her coffin the centipedes came out, but they quickly just shut the door back and ignored it - seemed fair!Downstairs they spent a long time trying to decide if they should take the weird items, and then they worried they shouldn't take all of them. This group was so paranoid by this point they scared themselves much worse than anything I could do, which was perfect.
They found the prison and the main chamber, and immediately keyed into the refuse pile, similarly quickly discovering it was a sleeping shambling mound. (They are EXTREMELY cautious and hard to fool.) At this point they realized it was the house trying to kill them - Shining-esque. (Up to this point they were not counting out the cult or some powerful necromancer.)Here's where it got crazy: they then went into full-bore "how do we kill this thing" mode (instead of trying to escape) on the creature. They never even went to the dais and ignored it. They took the secret door off its hinges to make sure it couldn't close behind them and they had a secure escape route, and then attacked. (I had the cultist shadows appear at this point just to add some flavor; they were already ordering the thing to wake up.) The cleric emptied her entire magical ability into Guiding Bolt spells, which actually do decent damage and set up advantage to the sorcerer (great tactics since the monk could hit better without advantage). Her first attack was an auto-crit on the sleeping creature, which didn't hurt their chances, and the sorcerer (knowing from their roles that fire damage - his specialty - was poor against the thing) used the family longsword and also critted once, which also didn't hurt. Meanwhile the monk jumped in and used Ki powers (I let him have Ki powers at level 2 even though he was technically monk level 1 - in this case his fighter abilities did nothing anyway so he might as well have been a monk 2) to dodge while tanking. Considering it was asleep, besides the auto-crit I also gave them a surprise round on the thing. They did 60+ damage before it even acted.
Of course, then it started to kill them.
The monk's dodge saved him entirely but then his points were spent and he took one hit to the face, with the second being a natural 1. (Thankfully.) Next round, he went down in one blow, and the second attack (thankfully) missed the sorc due to his shield spell, who would have gone down in one blow. By this point the cleric was down to Sacred Flames and the sorc was out of spells and just kept wailing with the sword, and they JUST BARELY killed it (took it to 0 HP exactly) before it would have attacked the sorc and downed him. The final hit was from the sorc with the family sword, which I had howl on its death. They quickly dragged the monk out of the water and the cultist shadows disappeared.They didn't wait long - once the monk was conscious he 2nd winded and they went out of the basement. At this point, the house was hiding nothing from them - and they saw how decrepit and nasty it was, full of smoke and bugs and scythes and stuff, and everything looked like it had probably been burnt down before. They snatched up the kids and smashed their way out of the attic, climbing down from the balcony. I had the cat (see that other thread) knock over an oil lamp on their way out, and it burned the house to the ground again; they wanted to do more for the nanny but she let them know they already had. After stumbling away and catching their breath, they looked back out of the town - no Vistani wagons. And they turned back to the house: it looked like it had burned down decades ago.
Battle Analysis:
So why did a level 2 party manage to beat a level 5 brute? Like I said in this thread, the shambling mound is a TPK in a straight fight unless the party has "spectacular luck/tactics or the GM [cheats] in their favor somehow" - which basically all three of those things happened.
I cheated in that they got damage boosts when they rolled a total attack roll of 21+ (which happened a lot) - although I still maintain a 4th party member would have done even more (also I just now realized the sorc wasn't proficient with that longsword - eh, whatever); they had pretty good tactics (as an experienced group this is fairly reflexive); but mostly they won because literally everything went right for them. They got two crits and the only missed 4 times the entire fight - but more importantly their heaviest attack (Guiding Bolt) never missed. Meanwhile the mound only got 3 turns and missed 4 out of 6 attacks: two from Dodge, one Shield, and one natural 1. That gave the party 4 rounds (including the surprise round) to nova the crap out of it, and they succeeded by the skin of their teeth. The cleric probably would have gotten 1 or probably 2 more rounds (the sorc would have gone down - I rolled just to see) but that's it - meanwhile both the others were face down in 2' of water! I had the Death in Barovia side bar ready, just in case...Anyway, the whole thing ended up being very effective and everyone enjoyed it. As someone else summarized it: the first half of the house is scary due to the creepy nature of it all, and unraveling the cult: the second half is scary because it's ridiculously deadly. This group didn't have trouble with the other battles because I toned them down, but that just made the final one even scarier.
