TaranTheWanderer
Legend
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D&D 5E Castlevania campaign log
J-H
Hero
5/28/20
5 party members – the Fighter/Arcane Trickster made it back for the first session in a while, the barbarian wasn’t there, and the new ranger character got re-done into a sword & board + archery gloom stalker.
The Arcane Trickster rolls a double 20 on his Helped check to use the controls to turn off the shadow generator. Total success vs a DC 25.
They looked out at the bridge towards the central keep and decided to go back down to explore the areas they didn’t go to before, so that they can kill every foul creature in the castle!
They go down the staircase to the water power area (an underground river with water wheels). The arcane trickster sends his bat out to investigate it (200’ upstream, dark), and the bat gets shot by a hidden fishman assassin. They decide not to mess with it, go up, and then go down to the lava/geothermal area.
They’re immediately attacked by three Stone Men (from way back when they were 5th level). A couple of the smaller Stone Men splits get shoved into the lava as they play around. They then move across a bridge to the main area, a large island of rock in the middle of a river of lava. The AT disguises himself as an Azer, but his Deception check isn’t so good, he’s speaking the wrong language, and they don’t recognize him. One of the Azer approaches, trying to touch him and clearly suspicious. They deal with the 3 Azer and the fire elemental that crawls out of the machine…but one of the Azers takes the Dodge action and runs, yelling across the river of lava to the Azer camp.
He’s dead before the forces over there come into action: 2 more Azer (who never amount to much), a ~level 10 equivalent battlerager with a +1 dwarfbane maul that never gets to hit a dwarf, and a spellcaster. The caster has two magma mephits, who end up spending most of the battle providing ¾ cover from the group Kensei, who takes up a position and lands at least one shot a round with his bow for an average of about 18-20 damage per hit (despite the disadvantage of shooting across the heat distortion of 60’ of lava). The caster does manage to get off a Vitriolic Sphere, a Fireball, and a Wall of Fire. The Kensei wears him down over 3 rounds, and of course I forgot to have him Quicken Blade Ward each round. HP damage is inflicted, but nobody is seriously inconvenienced. The caster had Disintegrate, but never got into range – plus I don’t want to kill a PC with a random mook at this point.
They shut down the Geothermal plant with a 31 on an Investigation check to figure out how to do so. That means they found the gearbox, disengaged the clutch, then smashed all the gears and control panels.
They ended up with the Rock-Smasher, a +1 Maul that does +1d8 thunder damage, and against dwarfkin does 2d6 bonus damage and a STR DC 15 or knock-back 10’… plus Boots of Cold Resistance and Gloves of Healing, which do Cure Wounds 1/day (no attunement needed for those two).
We stopped there after about a 3-3.5 hour session. A couple of my players are very slow at dice-rolling math, plus we had a side trip into two of them being attuned to the same shield due to absences. It’s a bit frustrating to repeatedly have to explain or go through the same class features repeatedly for the same people. I think the Arcane Trickster has changed spells known around three times, although he’s been gone for the last 3 levels – so he could have done a level-up swap-out anyway.
Still two sessions left as they side-trip for more killing and loot. PCs…gotta kill everything!
If they decide to pull another long-rest after getting right next to Dracula’s keep….something bad will happen to them. I’m not sure what yet. Maybe more minions sent by Death, or Dracula making a hit-and-run pass at killing them, or something. Maybe I’ll have an NPC send a Sending to one of the characters with a “we have 2 hours before Vienna falls and 300,000 people die” message? This is not the point in the game where it makes sense to sidequest.
5 party members – the Fighter/Arcane Trickster made it back for the first session in a while, the barbarian wasn’t there, and the new ranger character got re-done into a sword & board + archery gloom stalker.
The Arcane Trickster rolls a double 20 on his Helped check to use the controls to turn off the shadow generator. Total success vs a DC 25.
They looked out at the bridge towards the central keep and decided to go back down to explore the areas they didn’t go to before, so that they can kill every foul creature in the castle!
They go down the staircase to the water power area (an underground river with water wheels). The arcane trickster sends his bat out to investigate it (200’ upstream, dark), and the bat gets shot by a hidden fishman assassin. They decide not to mess with it, go up, and then go down to the lava/geothermal area.
They’re immediately attacked by three Stone Men (from way back when they were 5th level). A couple of the smaller Stone Men splits get shoved into the lava as they play around. They then move across a bridge to the main area, a large island of rock in the middle of a river of lava. The AT disguises himself as an Azer, but his Deception check isn’t so good, he’s speaking the wrong language, and they don’t recognize him. One of the Azer approaches, trying to touch him and clearly suspicious. They deal with the 3 Azer and the fire elemental that crawls out of the machine…but one of the Azers takes the Dodge action and runs, yelling across the river of lava to the Azer camp.
He’s dead before the forces over there come into action: 2 more Azer (who never amount to much), a ~level 10 equivalent battlerager with a +1 dwarfbane maul that never gets to hit a dwarf, and a spellcaster. The caster has two magma mephits, who end up spending most of the battle providing ¾ cover from the group Kensei, who takes up a position and lands at least one shot a round with his bow for an average of about 18-20 damage per hit (despite the disadvantage of shooting across the heat distortion of 60’ of lava). The caster does manage to get off a Vitriolic Sphere, a Fireball, and a Wall of Fire. The Kensei wears him down over 3 rounds, and of course I forgot to have him Quicken Blade Ward each round. HP damage is inflicted, but nobody is seriously inconvenienced. The caster had Disintegrate, but never got into range – plus I don’t want to kill a PC with a random mook at this point.
They shut down the Geothermal plant with a 31 on an Investigation check to figure out how to do so. That means they found the gearbox, disengaged the clutch, then smashed all the gears and control panels.
They ended up with the Rock-Smasher, a +1 Maul that does +1d8 thunder damage, and against dwarfkin does 2d6 bonus damage and a STR DC 15 or knock-back 10’… plus Boots of Cold Resistance and Gloves of Healing, which do Cure Wounds 1/day (no attunement needed for those two).
We stopped there after about a 3-3.5 hour session. A couple of my players are very slow at dice-rolling math, plus we had a side trip into two of them being attuned to the same shield due to absences. It’s a bit frustrating to repeatedly have to explain or go through the same class features repeatedly for the same people. I think the Arcane Trickster has changed spells known around three times, although he’s been gone for the last 3 levels – so he could have done a level-up swap-out anyway.
Still two sessions left as they side-trip for more killing and loot. PCs…gotta kill everything!
If they decide to pull another long-rest after getting right next to Dracula’s keep….something bad will happen to them. I’m not sure what yet. Maybe more minions sent by Death, or Dracula making a hit-and-run pass at killing them, or something. Maybe I’ll have an NPC send a Sending to one of the characters with a “we have 2 hours before Vienna falls and 300,000 people die” message? This is not the point in the game where it makes sense to sidequest.
J-H
Hero
6/11/2020
Everyone was able to make it! We ran for about 3.5 hours.
I reminded them that they are not due for another long rest for a long time, and they decided not to pursue shutting down the last power source for the shadow generator. They went back up the clock tower, and then started crossing a 200’ long bridge. 8 ballistas opened fire with disadvantage, averaging about 1 hit (for 3d10) per round across 6 party members. The monk got to use his Deflect Arrows ability on a ballista bolt. Our spider-armor wearer crossed along the underside of the bridge.
As they got close, we went into initiative and they moved up to engage four Dullahan fencers backed up by a Dullahan caster. These are undead with a rapier, pack tactics, and a d12 superiority dice (once per round on offence, once per round reaction). The caster opened with Confusion, but everyone (3 in AOE) saved. The cleric lagged way behind on the bridge, and the paladin and ranger were also farther behind… one because he’s slower than the barbarian, monk, and rogue, and the other by choice.
The rogue (arcane trickster) popped up from beside the bridge, grappled one of the dullahans, won, pulled it into his space, and then dropped it. 60’ down to the bottom of the tower…. 5d6, 12 damage, ridiculous roll. Anyway, it was out of the fight. The next one he tried that on made the roll and was not grappled, and then almost made him drop his weapon while he was still over a 60’ drop.
Looking down, the trickster spotted a LOT of skeletons coming out of trap doors on the top of the castle and rushing towards the tower. I started running a ticker each round to keep track of when they would reach the party. This gave them a hard deadline.
The monk and barbarian did their thing (damage), and the caster dropped Stinking Cloud on the entire area. Everyone made their saves, and the Arcane Trickster used his Storm Shield to blow part of the Stinking Cloud away. Everyone made their saves against the Gust of Wind blowing them off the ledge, which would have been really bad and also fun. As casters do, the caster didn’t last very long, although an upcast magic missile did drain more party HP/resources. The cleric & ranger finally made it off the bridge and out of the line of fire, only taking a couple of ballista bolts in the meantime (when there are only 2 targets…). The ranger temporarily disabled two of the ballistas by shooting at their skeletal crew, reducing their rate of fire from once per round to once per two rounds…. At 250’ range.
With the skeletons getting closer, they run on up some stairs and to the room overhead. The monk stays behind to block the skeletal horde, using the 5’ wide stairway as a choke point. The ranger notices that there’s nothing architecturally holding the roof up, and decides to point that out to the party…. Just in time for the wooden roof to collapse, as three Dullahan fencers cut the ropes holding it up, and drop into the room, along with three Bone Golems. I kid you not, the barbarian one-shotted a 135hp bone golem and did damage to another, and averaged >100 damage/round for most of this fight. Reckless GWM action surge and bonus attack on kill with a magic maul = 5 attacks with advantage for something like 2d6b+16b+4r+1d6r+1d8t.
Anyway, they mopped the room up in a few rounds, but took some hits in the process, and almost nobody had been healed yet. The monk took a crit for about 10 points of damage from one skeleton, and otherwise, just bottlenecked them. The group then ran upstairs into the next room, calling the monk up and slamming the door.
Suddenly, from nothing – something – a slightly translucent figure floats in the air before you, with glowing purple eyes under a tattered grey cloak, and bearing a massive scythe. The avatar of Death needs no introduction. “My friend is doing a great work, and even now directs the storming of the walls of Vienna from his throneroom. You shall not disturb him. It’s time for you to shuffle off this mortal coil.”
He has advantage on initiative rolls and goes second. “Dmitri [barbarian], what’s your HP?” “Uh, less than 100.” “DIE”. I wish I had logged what happened round by round, but I didn’t. I had the shade of the killed sorcerer show up, using the sorcerer’s signature spells. He jobbed it a bit by using the Wand of Lightning once and Scorching Ray once instead of just spamming Fireball for 8d6+3 AOE. Death’s flying sickles were unexpectedly potent, and his “start your turn next to him AOE” will be toned down. I skipped a couple of the legendary action options.
He spent two rounds flying and casting, and then went to the ground next to the monk, who’d taunted and shot him. When the rogue came over and sneak attacked with a magical chain whip, his response was to Finger of Death the rogue for using that kind of weapon here… how dare he! Anyway, one round on the ground was enough to take him from about 150hp of damage to about 320, and he decided to fly off at the end of his turn, which led to about 40 points of AOO damage (a crit and a sneak attack), which finished off his 350hp. The whole fight was either 4 or 5 rounds. Death cast only 3 spells – Power Work Kill, Circle of Death, and Finger of Death… plus he had AOE damage, the sickles, and a fairly dangerous scythe attack that still missed more than it landed despite advantage.
The barbarian went to 0hp 3 times, the monk once or twice, the ranger once or twice, the arcane trickster barely survived a Finger of Death, and the Paladin spent most of his time playing healbot with Revivify and Lay on Hands – I think his only offensive contribution was throwing a Javelin of Lightning. The cleric used an upcast 5th level Cure Wounds and a Heal. Discord chat was flying with memes about “How you feel when the DM asks for your exact HP,” “How many HP? Make a death save. No wait, don’t bother,” and the like. Two of the players were discussing what kind of character they’d make next.
With my on-the-fly modifications, which I’ll balance into the final module, I’d say the Death fight went very well…they really felt like their characters were going to die and that it could be a TPK – but that they managed to heroically and BARELY pull through. This is one of the battles I’ve been wanting to run since conceiving of the campaign, and using the “Room of Close Associates” soundtrack fit it very well. I’m overall very happy with it.
Loot: Death’s cloak, a legendary-grade item, plus a Ring of Protection +1 and Wand of Lightning from the sorcerer’s body.
After this they hear wheezing, and discover the last Belmont chained near a door to the outside. He’d been tortured and magically kept barely alive. They carry his body outside, and he thanks them and dies in the sunlight. They all get a supernatural blessing of an instant short rest and ½ their expended daily resources (spell slots, Lay on Hands, rage, etc.) restored. This was a nice short non-combat interlude, and gave me a chance to recap all that they’ve done to slow and stop Dracula already, although my Internet decided to drop out for 5 minutes right around this time, so it got cut a bit short.
Dracula is next!
I am getting frustrated by how many “minor” items (like boots of levitation, or Resist 1 thing armors) require attunement. I think I may try to increase attunement slots or say “no attunement required” for some items in my next game. Or maybe class items as Minor or Major, where minor items take half a slot? Not sure, but some of the fun utility items never saw use due to attunement issues.
Everyone was able to make it! We ran for about 3.5 hours.
I reminded them that they are not due for another long rest for a long time, and they decided not to pursue shutting down the last power source for the shadow generator. They went back up the clock tower, and then started crossing a 200’ long bridge. 8 ballistas opened fire with disadvantage, averaging about 1 hit (for 3d10) per round across 6 party members. The monk got to use his Deflect Arrows ability on a ballista bolt. Our spider-armor wearer crossed along the underside of the bridge.
As they got close, we went into initiative and they moved up to engage four Dullahan fencers backed up by a Dullahan caster. These are undead with a rapier, pack tactics, and a d12 superiority dice (once per round on offence, once per round reaction). The caster opened with Confusion, but everyone (3 in AOE) saved. The cleric lagged way behind on the bridge, and the paladin and ranger were also farther behind… one because he’s slower than the barbarian, monk, and rogue, and the other by choice.
The rogue (arcane trickster) popped up from beside the bridge, grappled one of the dullahans, won, pulled it into his space, and then dropped it. 60’ down to the bottom of the tower…. 5d6, 12 damage, ridiculous roll. Anyway, it was out of the fight. The next one he tried that on made the roll and was not grappled, and then almost made him drop his weapon while he was still over a 60’ drop.
Looking down, the trickster spotted a LOT of skeletons coming out of trap doors on the top of the castle and rushing towards the tower. I started running a ticker each round to keep track of when they would reach the party. This gave them a hard deadline.
The monk and barbarian did their thing (damage), and the caster dropped Stinking Cloud on the entire area. Everyone made their saves, and the Arcane Trickster used his Storm Shield to blow part of the Stinking Cloud away. Everyone made their saves against the Gust of Wind blowing them off the ledge, which would have been really bad and also fun. As casters do, the caster didn’t last very long, although an upcast magic missile did drain more party HP/resources. The cleric & ranger finally made it off the bridge and out of the line of fire, only taking a couple of ballista bolts in the meantime (when there are only 2 targets…). The ranger temporarily disabled two of the ballistas by shooting at their skeletal crew, reducing their rate of fire from once per round to once per two rounds…. At 250’ range.
With the skeletons getting closer, they run on up some stairs and to the room overhead. The monk stays behind to block the skeletal horde, using the 5’ wide stairway as a choke point. The ranger notices that there’s nothing architecturally holding the roof up, and decides to point that out to the party…. Just in time for the wooden roof to collapse, as three Dullahan fencers cut the ropes holding it up, and drop into the room, along with three Bone Golems. I kid you not, the barbarian one-shotted a 135hp bone golem and did damage to another, and averaged >100 damage/round for most of this fight. Reckless GWM action surge and bonus attack on kill with a magic maul = 5 attacks with advantage for something like 2d6b+16b+4r+1d6r+1d8t.
Anyway, they mopped the room up in a few rounds, but took some hits in the process, and almost nobody had been healed yet. The monk took a crit for about 10 points of damage from one skeleton, and otherwise, just bottlenecked them. The group then ran upstairs into the next room, calling the monk up and slamming the door.
Suddenly, from nothing – something – a slightly translucent figure floats in the air before you, with glowing purple eyes under a tattered grey cloak, and bearing a massive scythe. The avatar of Death needs no introduction. “My friend is doing a great work, and even now directs the storming of the walls of Vienna from his throneroom. You shall not disturb him. It’s time for you to shuffle off this mortal coil.”
He has advantage on initiative rolls and goes second. “Dmitri [barbarian], what’s your HP?” “Uh, less than 100.” “DIE”. I wish I had logged what happened round by round, but I didn’t. I had the shade of the killed sorcerer show up, using the sorcerer’s signature spells. He jobbed it a bit by using the Wand of Lightning once and Scorching Ray once instead of just spamming Fireball for 8d6+3 AOE. Death’s flying sickles were unexpectedly potent, and his “start your turn next to him AOE” will be toned down. I skipped a couple of the legendary action options.
He spent two rounds flying and casting, and then went to the ground next to the monk, who’d taunted and shot him. When the rogue came over and sneak attacked with a magical chain whip, his response was to Finger of Death the rogue for using that kind of weapon here… how dare he! Anyway, one round on the ground was enough to take him from about 150hp of damage to about 320, and he decided to fly off at the end of his turn, which led to about 40 points of AOO damage (a crit and a sneak attack), which finished off his 350hp. The whole fight was either 4 or 5 rounds. Death cast only 3 spells – Power Work Kill, Circle of Death, and Finger of Death… plus he had AOE damage, the sickles, and a fairly dangerous scythe attack that still missed more than it landed despite advantage.
The barbarian went to 0hp 3 times, the monk once or twice, the ranger once or twice, the arcane trickster barely survived a Finger of Death, and the Paladin spent most of his time playing healbot with Revivify and Lay on Hands – I think his only offensive contribution was throwing a Javelin of Lightning. The cleric used an upcast 5th level Cure Wounds and a Heal. Discord chat was flying with memes about “How you feel when the DM asks for your exact HP,” “How many HP? Make a death save. No wait, don’t bother,” and the like. Two of the players were discussing what kind of character they’d make next.
With my on-the-fly modifications, which I’ll balance into the final module, I’d say the Death fight went very well…they really felt like their characters were going to die and that it could be a TPK – but that they managed to heroically and BARELY pull through. This is one of the battles I’ve been wanting to run since conceiving of the campaign, and using the “Room of Close Associates” soundtrack fit it very well. I’m overall very happy with it.
Loot: Death’s cloak, a legendary-grade item, plus a Ring of Protection +1 and Wand of Lightning from the sorcerer’s body.
After this they hear wheezing, and discover the last Belmont chained near a door to the outside. He’d been tortured and magically kept barely alive. They carry his body outside, and he thanks them and dies in the sunlight. They all get a supernatural blessing of an instant short rest and ½ their expended daily resources (spell slots, Lay on Hands, rage, etc.) restored. This was a nice short non-combat interlude, and gave me a chance to recap all that they’ve done to slow and stop Dracula already, although my Internet decided to drop out for 5 minutes right around this time, so it got cut a bit short.
Dracula is next!
I am getting frustrated by how many “minor” items (like boots of levitation, or Resist 1 thing armors) require attunement. I think I may try to increase attunement slots or say “no attunement required” for some items in my next game. Or maybe class items as Minor or Major, where minor items take half a slot? Not sure, but some of the fun utility items never saw use due to attunement issues.
J-H
Hero
6/25/20 - This is it!
Between sessions, I let the arcane trickster know that since his whip has traveled through the whole castle, has been used successfully against the Avatar of Death, and the party just got blessed from freeing the last Belmont, the whip is now a +2, and deals 1d6 fire damage versus undead and evil creatures.
Our Gloomstalker had to stay home to watch his kids and attended via Discord on speakerphone. One of the other players had it pulled up on his laptop, and would take photos of the battlemat and post them in Discord for the remote player to see. It worked pretty well.
After a short hurrah re-cap, the party heads up into the throneroom. The doors slam shut behind them with a boom, and Dracula gives a short monologue, then we roll initiative. Nobody chose to interrupt or yell back at Dracula. The throneroom is 120' x 90', with 5' marble pillars 15' off the wall at 15' intervals. There are blacked-out windows between each pillar, with curtains over them. The windows were there to provide the party with an option to cut the curtain and smash a window to let some sunlight into the room, which would create some no-go areas for Dracula. I even marked North on the map so they'd know which side to smash...nobody went for it.
Both forms of Dracula has 408hp as written, but I bumped them both to 510hp. Even so, the combat lasted 3 or 4 rounds for Dracula's first form and 2.5 rounds for his Vampire Dragon form. He regenerates 30hp per round, but there was so much radiant damage that he almost never got to use this. I had no resistances on him, and no vulnerabilities. I thought about radiant vulnerability, but one reason to skip it was simple bookkeeping...plus, you know, Lord of Shadow and Darkness and stuff.
In his first form, he got two turns per round. During both turns, he can teleport anywhere in the room as a bonus action.
In one turn, he would act as a warrior, either doing a typical claw/bite, with the bite's necrotic damage being 6d6, or he'd use his Shadow Blade for 5d8+7 damage. His to-hit bonuses were in the +13 to +14 range, so he hit with almost every attack made the whole battle.
In the other turn, he acts as a caster, and I roll off a 3-option table to see if he fires 8 Melf's Meteors, uses Charm (15' cube), or uses Fireball (8d6, leaves a Fire Elemental behind).
Warrior Dracula was super unimpressive. The party Barbarian has a helmet that grants immunity to psychic damage, so the Shadow Blade flat out did nothing on hit. Dracula tried to grapple the barbarian a couple of times to bite him, but failed. He then teleported across the room and Shadow Bladed the Paladin, but was Smote in return. Warrior Dracula ended up successfully grabbing and biting the Gloomstalker, but this was near the end of the fight.
Casting Dracula fired off two fireballs - I forgot the fire elemental for one. The fire elemental tied up the paladin for 2-3 rounds working through its 102hp. He used Charm once, hitting only the monk, who failed his save...but then used Still Mind on his next turn to negate it. He used the meteors once, splitting the damage across 3 targets and doing some damage.
Lair actions turned the room shadowy & short-ranged, which didn't imact much, summoned bats twice through the battle, said bats landing a total of about 20 points of damage over 4 rounds because a swarm with +4 to hit for 2d4 is nearly irrelevant at level 12, and then did a minor (18 point?) heal on him by draining a bit of life from everyone around him.
Everyone except the cleric (Bless, Guiding Bolt on Dracula, healing) & paladin end up contributing large amounts of damage to the Transylvanian Anti-Vampire fund, and Dracula soon is down to 0, at which point darkness swirls around him. I play an evil devil laugh that gets really deep on my phone, followed immediately in the playlist by a dragon roar, and it's now Vampire Dragon time. The barbarian eats a full attack including a claw crit and a bite (which reduces max HP & heals Dracula some) and is brought below half, but thanks to resistances, is still standing. The monk runs over and does damage, while the gloomstalker backs off and does archery, and the Paladin finishes off the fire elemental. The arcane trickster moves closer and has his familiar use Dragon Breath (cast earlier) to do like 18 points of fire damage.
Dragon Dracula uses his legendary wing attack to fly over to the door right before his turn (knocking two characters prone for minor damage), and then fires off his breath attack, hitting 4/6 party members and the familiar. 18d6, 66 necrotic damage, Con DC 21 half. Two party members go down at 0hp, but the cleric's Channel Divinity brings them right back up. The cleric also threw a Heal in there at the barbarian for 77hp of healing somewhere in there, which must have been before the breath weapon. Everyone piles onto Dracula, taking tail attacks in retaliation (legendary actions), but ultimately killing him before he can take another turn. The Gloomstalker gets in the final hit, and he dies in a burst of shadow.
Overall, Dracula was less threatening in terms of player kills & TPKs than Death was, but he was still no pushover, and lasted for about 6 rounds. I'm pretty happy with how it went, although I may give him a better choice of Legendary Actions, as "move around the room or make a melee attack" options were not useful when nobody was next to him and he didn't want to be next to anyone. He didn't have to be a super-death-hard battle, as long as he was a good tough fight that FELT like a tough Dracula fight... and I think it did.
The party quickly loots the Crystal Ball of Truesight (next to throne), the +2 Breastplate, and the Ring of Fire Elemental Control, and then the castle starts shaking under them before the AT can get very far with ritually casting Identify. They are 150' up in the central keep and need to get down. The solutions are:
-AT Spider-Climbs with the Gloomstalker on his back
-Cleric Feather-falls (thanks to shield) with the Paladin holding on
-Monk Slow-falls
-Barbarian jumps out the window and rages before hitting the ground; Arcane Trickster casts Web to cushion the landing.
Then they run 300' across the roof. I make some rolls for "castle disappearing under you as it phases into the Plane of Shadow", but all that happens is the monk (fastest party member) has a stone disappear under his foot, then phase back in, dealing 5 force damage. They then have to go 100' down again to get down the castle wall. Same solutions as before, except the Barbarian climbs. The wall briefly disappears under him, and he falls the last 20'.
The party then walks down the road away from the disappearing castle, enjoying the sunshine and seeing things return to normal.
What do they do next?
Everyone hits level 13. They are all fabulously wealthy, about 8 levels higher than almost anyone else in Europe, and being super-famous as the people who killed Dracula.
They decide to form "The Belmont Order" in honor of the vampire-hunting family, and build a manor, village, and training academy right where Dracula's castle was. They will train monster hunters and become a regional military power, as well as building a temple (cleric) and will help to restabilize and repopulate the devastated countryside. This will include a large library, alchemist's lab, and fortified underground areas.
Dmitri the Barbarian will go home...he rolled for "this is your life" in Xanathar's during the session, and decided that he'd been exiled from his dwarfhold for 100 years, so he went back to see his family that he hadn't seen in 100 years. It's pretty vague, but returning as famous, wealthy, and super-powerful generally grants success in resolving old issues like that. He takes the scenic route across eastern Europe with his wife and adult children, doing some adventuring on the way back to the Belmont Order, returning after about a year to live there.
Reybella the Cleric will help heal the area, build the temple, and adventure with Ratel (their characters aren't married, but the players are).
Ratel the Monk will finish reading his Stat tome, do some adventuring to clean out the monsters in the region, and will learn how to ride and handle horses. He will also take on some monk apprentices later.
Malcolm the Ranger will oversee construction of the Belmont Order facilities and training grounds. He will also help find the captives that the party freed, and see if some of them will come back to settle around the new Order.
Adrian the Arcane Trickster will run the Belmont Order, and will study alchemy & monsters. He wants to upgrade his chain whip with holy water, and he wants to redecorate his obviously-drow Spider Armor to be less drow-like.
Teador the Paladin will go home and break the news to his brother's wife & kids that Adrian the Sorcerer is dead. He will give them his brother's Wand of Lightning, and will later return to the Order. He will work with whichever military he was with to build an organized military force around the Belmont Order to give is some organized punch.
And that's what everyone does for the next 5+ years. I have copies of everyone's level 13 character sheets, and we may see a sequel campaign in a year or two real-time.....
Between sessions, I let the arcane trickster know that since his whip has traveled through the whole castle, has been used successfully against the Avatar of Death, and the party just got blessed from freeing the last Belmont, the whip is now a +2, and deals 1d6 fire damage versus undead and evil creatures.
Our Gloomstalker had to stay home to watch his kids and attended via Discord on speakerphone. One of the other players had it pulled up on his laptop, and would take photos of the battlemat and post them in Discord for the remote player to see. It worked pretty well.
After a short hurrah re-cap, the party heads up into the throneroom. The doors slam shut behind them with a boom, and Dracula gives a short monologue, then we roll initiative. Nobody chose to interrupt or yell back at Dracula. The throneroom is 120' x 90', with 5' marble pillars 15' off the wall at 15' intervals. There are blacked-out windows between each pillar, with curtains over them. The windows were there to provide the party with an option to cut the curtain and smash a window to let some sunlight into the room, which would create some no-go areas for Dracula. I even marked North on the map so they'd know which side to smash...nobody went for it.
Both forms of Dracula has 408hp as written, but I bumped them both to 510hp. Even so, the combat lasted 3 or 4 rounds for Dracula's first form and 2.5 rounds for his Vampire Dragon form. He regenerates 30hp per round, but there was so much radiant damage that he almost never got to use this. I had no resistances on him, and no vulnerabilities. I thought about radiant vulnerability, but one reason to skip it was simple bookkeeping...plus, you know, Lord of Shadow and Darkness and stuff.
In his first form, he got two turns per round. During both turns, he can teleport anywhere in the room as a bonus action.
In one turn, he would act as a warrior, either doing a typical claw/bite, with the bite's necrotic damage being 6d6, or he'd use his Shadow Blade for 5d8+7 damage. His to-hit bonuses were in the +13 to +14 range, so he hit with almost every attack made the whole battle.
In the other turn, he acts as a caster, and I roll off a 3-option table to see if he fires 8 Melf's Meteors, uses Charm (15' cube), or uses Fireball (8d6, leaves a Fire Elemental behind).
Warrior Dracula was super unimpressive. The party Barbarian has a helmet that grants immunity to psychic damage, so the Shadow Blade flat out did nothing on hit. Dracula tried to grapple the barbarian a couple of times to bite him, but failed. He then teleported across the room and Shadow Bladed the Paladin, but was Smote in return. Warrior Dracula ended up successfully grabbing and biting the Gloomstalker, but this was near the end of the fight.
Casting Dracula fired off two fireballs - I forgot the fire elemental for one. The fire elemental tied up the paladin for 2-3 rounds working through its 102hp. He used Charm once, hitting only the monk, who failed his save...but then used Still Mind on his next turn to negate it. He used the meteors once, splitting the damage across 3 targets and doing some damage.
Lair actions turned the room shadowy & short-ranged, which didn't imact much, summoned bats twice through the battle, said bats landing a total of about 20 points of damage over 4 rounds because a swarm with +4 to hit for 2d4 is nearly irrelevant at level 12, and then did a minor (18 point?) heal on him by draining a bit of life from everyone around him.
Everyone except the cleric (Bless, Guiding Bolt on Dracula, healing) & paladin end up contributing large amounts of damage to the Transylvanian Anti-Vampire fund, and Dracula soon is down to 0, at which point darkness swirls around him. I play an evil devil laugh that gets really deep on my phone, followed immediately in the playlist by a dragon roar, and it's now Vampire Dragon time. The barbarian eats a full attack including a claw crit and a bite (which reduces max HP & heals Dracula some) and is brought below half, but thanks to resistances, is still standing. The monk runs over and does damage, while the gloomstalker backs off and does archery, and the Paladin finishes off the fire elemental. The arcane trickster moves closer and has his familiar use Dragon Breath (cast earlier) to do like 18 points of fire damage.
Dragon Dracula uses his legendary wing attack to fly over to the door right before his turn (knocking two characters prone for minor damage), and then fires off his breath attack, hitting 4/6 party members and the familiar. 18d6, 66 necrotic damage, Con DC 21 half. Two party members go down at 0hp, but the cleric's Channel Divinity brings them right back up. The cleric also threw a Heal in there at the barbarian for 77hp of healing somewhere in there, which must have been before the breath weapon. Everyone piles onto Dracula, taking tail attacks in retaliation (legendary actions), but ultimately killing him before he can take another turn. The Gloomstalker gets in the final hit, and he dies in a burst of shadow.
Overall, Dracula was less threatening in terms of player kills & TPKs than Death was, but he was still no pushover, and lasted for about 6 rounds. I'm pretty happy with how it went, although I may give him a better choice of Legendary Actions, as "move around the room or make a melee attack" options were not useful when nobody was next to him and he didn't want to be next to anyone. He didn't have to be a super-death-hard battle, as long as he was a good tough fight that FELT like a tough Dracula fight... and I think it did.
The party quickly loots the Crystal Ball of Truesight (next to throne), the +2 Breastplate, and the Ring of Fire Elemental Control, and then the castle starts shaking under them before the AT can get very far with ritually casting Identify. They are 150' up in the central keep and need to get down. The solutions are:
-AT Spider-Climbs with the Gloomstalker on his back
-Cleric Feather-falls (thanks to shield) with the Paladin holding on
-Monk Slow-falls
-Barbarian jumps out the window and rages before hitting the ground; Arcane Trickster casts Web to cushion the landing.
Then they run 300' across the roof. I make some rolls for "castle disappearing under you as it phases into the Plane of Shadow", but all that happens is the monk (fastest party member) has a stone disappear under his foot, then phase back in, dealing 5 force damage. They then have to go 100' down again to get down the castle wall. Same solutions as before, except the Barbarian climbs. The wall briefly disappears under him, and he falls the last 20'.
The party then walks down the road away from the disappearing castle, enjoying the sunshine and seeing things return to normal.
What do they do next?
Everyone hits level 13. They are all fabulously wealthy, about 8 levels higher than almost anyone else in Europe, and being super-famous as the people who killed Dracula.
They decide to form "The Belmont Order" in honor of the vampire-hunting family, and build a manor, village, and training academy right where Dracula's castle was. They will train monster hunters and become a regional military power, as well as building a temple (cleric) and will help to restabilize and repopulate the devastated countryside. This will include a large library, alchemist's lab, and fortified underground areas.
Dmitri the Barbarian will go home...he rolled for "this is your life" in Xanathar's during the session, and decided that he'd been exiled from his dwarfhold for 100 years, so he went back to see his family that he hadn't seen in 100 years. It's pretty vague, but returning as famous, wealthy, and super-powerful generally grants success in resolving old issues like that. He takes the scenic route across eastern Europe with his wife and adult children, doing some adventuring on the way back to the Belmont Order, returning after about a year to live there.
Reybella the Cleric will help heal the area, build the temple, and adventure with Ratel (their characters aren't married, but the players are).
Ratel the Monk will finish reading his Stat tome, do some adventuring to clean out the monsters in the region, and will learn how to ride and handle horses. He will also take on some monk apprentices later.
Malcolm the Ranger will oversee construction of the Belmont Order facilities and training grounds. He will also help find the captives that the party freed, and see if some of them will come back to settle around the new Order.
Adrian the Arcane Trickster will run the Belmont Order, and will study alchemy & monsters. He wants to upgrade his chain whip with holy water, and he wants to redecorate his obviously-drow Spider Armor to be less drow-like.
Teador the Paladin will go home and break the news to his brother's wife & kids that Adrian the Sorcerer is dead. He will give them his brother's Wand of Lightning, and will later return to the Order. He will work with whichever military he was with to build an organized military force around the Belmont Order to give is some organized punch.
And that's what everyone does for the next 5+ years. I have copies of everyone's level 13 character sheets, and we may see a sequel campaign in a year or two real-time.....
J-H
Hero
Can I get feedback on how this looks as a blurb for the for-sale product on DMG?
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Dracula, the Lord of Shadow and Darkness, has covered the land in shadow and dispatched armies of monsters and undead from his magical castle. His armies threaten to overrun major cities and plunge the world into a literal Dark Age. The last of the vampire-hunting clan that traditionally opposed him has disappeared, and still the armies advance. He must be stopped. If that's not enough motivation, it is well-known that his castle is full of magical items and great riches... but also great danger.
If you've ever wanted D&D and Castlevania to meet, look no further. This adventure is exactly what you wanted. Every area of the castle poses different and unique challenges to keep the party engaged and on their toes.
Written for the DM as a ready-to-run adventure, it is designed for four to six characters. The adventure starts at level 3 at the outer defenses of the castle, and ends with the party advancing to level 13 after defeating Dracula in an epic battle.
The adventure includes documentation to help even a new DM succed, including suggestions for how to run each of the area "boss" monsters in combat. There are approximately 50 new enemies and over 3 dozen new magical items. It also comes with a list of suggested music for many areas of the castle, and a 25-page campaign log recounting an actual tabletop play-through of this adventure from the DM's perspective.
----
Dracula, the Lord of Shadow and Darkness, has covered the land in shadow and dispatched armies of monsters and undead from his magical castle. His armies threaten to overrun major cities and plunge the world into a literal Dark Age. The last of the vampire-hunting clan that traditionally opposed him has disappeared, and still the armies advance. He must be stopped. If that's not enough motivation, it is well-known that his castle is full of magical items and great riches... but also great danger.
If you've ever wanted D&D and Castlevania to meet, look no further. This adventure is exactly what you wanted. Every area of the castle poses different and unique challenges to keep the party engaged and on their toes.
Written for the DM as a ready-to-run adventure, it is designed for four to six characters. The adventure starts at level 3 at the outer defenses of the castle, and ends with the party advancing to level 13 after defeating Dracula in an epic battle.
The adventure includes documentation to help even a new DM succed, including suggestions for how to run each of the area "boss" monsters in combat. There are approximately 50 new enemies and over 3 dozen new magical items. It also comes with a list of suggested music for many areas of the castle, and a 25-page campaign log recounting an actual tabletop play-through of this adventure from the DM's perspective.
J-H
Hero
It's posted for sale!
www.dmsguild.com
Castle Dracula - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild
Castle Dracula - Dracula, the Lord of Shadow and Darkness, has covered the land in shadow and dispatched armies of monsters and undead fr
timbarber142
Villager
I'm about to run CoS and can't stop thinking about CV references as I go along - this is a masterful, awesome adaptation. I've literally never posted anything before, but this is awesome.
timbarber142
Villager
I'm about to run CoS and can't stop thinking about CV references as I go along - this is a masterful, awesome adaptation. I've literally never posted anything before, but this is awesome.
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