D&D 5E At what level have you fought Strahd, and how did the encounter end?

[TheSword]

Once you have the sunsword and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (I think that's what it's called), Strahd is a pushover.

Exactly this.

They were 10th level. Defeated easily. Disadvantage on all hits and a super weapon is a big deal.

However with the heart still in play he gets harder. I also think In hindsight, the castle should be seriously wearing the PCs down. With Strahd surprising them at several points in it. They shouldn’t be facing him at full strength which was my mistake.

 

[Stormonu]

Yeah, with the artifacts in hand, I think he is meant to be a pushover once cornered. The issue is cornering him or getting him to fight fair. Over the editions I've run encounters with him with most characters being 5th-8th level. Always using hit and run tactics. He's only been defeated twice, out of about eight different groups. First group was in 2E, a group of 7 being 10th level armed with the Sun Sword and eventually cornering him in his crypt during the day. Second group was in 3E, a group of 6 being 14th level and one of the PCs having been a werewolf to boot on top of his character levels.

So far, I haven't had a party defeat him in 5E, though I've only run it twice as a one-shot only using the original town of Barovia and the castle (but the 5E adventure). Both times, the party had badly injured him and were in pursuit, and he used the castle to lure them into traps before counterstriking, with deadly effect. I pulled no punches, used his abilities to full effect and doing my best to emulate his genius-level intellect with metaknowledge and his shapeshift ability to have already spied upon and size up the party.

In short, I don't fight fair with him, just shy of cheating, and treat him as I would if he were actually my character trying his damn best to wear down (mentally and physically) the PCs, and destroy them at his leisure. He's immortal with hundreds of years behind him and ahead of him - he can afford to be patient. He manipulates events to his advantage, not the other way around. If the deck is stacked against him, he gets out of Dodge, and simply waits until he has the upper hand to return.

 

[Velderan]

Exactly this.

They were 10th level. Defeated easily. Disadvantage on all hits and a super weapon is a big deal.

However with the heart still in play he gets harder. I also think In hindsight, the castle should be seriously wearing the PCs down. With Strahd surprising them at several points in it. They shouldn’t be facing him at full strength which was my mistake.

We were level 10 at the final battle. The DM that ran CoS for me had us pretty well worn down by the time we encountered him and immediately had minions target the wielder of the sunsword to disarm him. The fight as a result lasted like 8 rounds and it was actually pretty intense and memorable. He did say he buffed him a little, but didn’t say how.

We actually encountered him around level 3 for the first time. He was just there to taunt us, but one of the players invoked “it’s what my character would do” and shot him with his bow. A brief fight resulted with him killing the PC and the rest of us retreating, which helped make things personal really early in the campaign. The player of the killed PC was fine with rerolling, knowing what he was getting into when he shot him.

 

[DEFCON 1]

After running CoS with two groups and seeing how things went... the Sunsword and Holy Symbol of Ravenkind do make things a bit too easy for the party versus Strahd. And it made me conclude that if I ever run the campaign again... the one thing I'm going to do is hold off on directing the party to go right to Madam Eva to get their prophecy (and the knowledge of the artifacts.) By having that event occur right after their arrival in the Village of Barovia, it kind of sped up the timeline in making Strahd a known enemy of the group and give them the quest to go looking for the items.

I think a new playtrhough might be better if the party gets a chance to just "live" within Barovia proper, have some encounters with the Lord without them knowing straight away "He's the evil vampire, we've got to kill him!!!" and then at some point down the line let the party find out about Eva and her prophetic visions such that they decide on their own to go there for curiosities sake, rather than being told straight away when they arrive "Hey! You should go see Madam Eva!"

Because if nothing else... there might be a chance where the group never actually goes to see her and never learns about the artifacts, and thus try to face off against Strahd without them in hand... which would up the stakes and deadliness where I think a lot of us would like it to be.

 

[Larnievc]

Curse of Strahd is presented as an adventure for 4-6 characters of level 1-10. The BBEG is CR 15 and 13000 XP, making him a deadly encounter for 4 level 10 PCs, which sounds like a DM might want to discourage the PCs from going straight towards Castle Ravenloft too soon, but even at level 10 it will not be easy.

This is a question only for those who actually played Curse of Strahd until the end. What level were your PCs when you faced Strahd in the final encounter, and how did it end?

My table were five level nines. Strahd was packing two vampire spawn, Rahadin and a homebrew villain about the same strength as Rahadin. They had one death and one incap but they killed them all in about six rounds. They had already destroyed the heart and had the sun sword.

A tyrannosaur was also involved.

 

[ichabod]

Always using hit and run tactics.

This. When I ran him he used his lair action to move through floors and walls, and his legendary action to move after anyone's turn. Do some damage, melt into the floor, regenerate, pop back up and repeat. It helped that he had managed to get the sword away from them, but again, it was hit and run. They had it at the fight at the Gulthias tree, but the character wielding it went down. Strahd was seriously hurt at that point and I had planned for him to retreat on his next turn, but instead he ran in, grabbed the sword, and fled.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

We were level 9 or 10 and it came very close to defeating us. We skirmished with him several places in the castle and had managed to drive him off at the cost of a lot of resources, including a very memorable chase as his forces took the sunsword and led is in an extreme chase across a lot of the rest of the castle.
We finally defeated him in the crypt in a rather desperate scuffle involving a lot of grapple checks and counterspells.

 

[Li Shenron]

Level 10. He fireballed us and died round 2.

I ran him against a group of level 10s and TPKed them. They almost made it out, but it ended with a fireball in the courtyard.

Neither of you went through the details to explain the difference, but I couldn't help but laugh at how both had a 10th level party, both mentioned Strahd using Fireball, but one party was TPKed and the other won in just 2 rounds! Talking about unpredictability

 

[Li Shenron]

We were level 9 or 10 and it came very close to defeating us. We skirmished with him several places in the castle and had managed to drive him off at the cost of a lot of resources, including a very memorable chase as his forces took the sunsword and led is in an extreme chase across a lot of the rest of the castle.
We finally defeated him in the crypt in a rather desperate scuffle involving a lot of grapple checks and counterspells.

Aw that sounds fantastic...

 

[Zardnaar]

Neither of you went through the details to explain the difference, but I couldn't help but laugh at how both had a 10th level party, both mentioned Strahd using Fireball, but one party was TPKed and the other won in just 2 rounds! Talking about unpredictability

Yeah we weren't optimized that much and had killed a few of his mooks already on first visit and Rahadeen.

Rogue, order cleric, psi knight fighter w/Dunblane and a sorcerer iirc.

We thought about it level 7 but wanted to see ore of the adventure.