DMs Guild Castlevania II in D&D 5th Edition!

[J-H]

This game is a classic for a lot of us, and a couple of years ago I was bit by the "Can I make this in D&D?" bug. The answer is "In a land over-run with monsters and minions of Dracula, every night is a horrible night to be under a curse."

Each wielding a powerful item to a family legacy, the players are a group of young adventurers who barely survive an attack on their order of vampire-hunters by agents of Dracula. After escaping, they discover Dracula has placed a curse upon the land which makes restful sleep difficult outside of hallowed areas. Dracula, "alive" on another plane but dead on this one, must be resurrected so they can kill him, end the curse, and avenge their dead.

To accomplish this goal, the player characters must journey through forest, marsh, hill, and underground paths to retrieve relics of Dracula's last life from keeps and fortresses overrun by monsters and the undead. If they can resurrect him, he will be weak and easy to kill... but the adventurers aren't the only ones who want Dracula on the Material Plane, and Dracula is not the only vampire in the world.

This adventure takes the players from 2nd through 9th or 10th level on a milestone basis as they choose where to travel in what order to retrieve what they need. Starting at a happy gathering at the Belmonte Order, which the characters are hereditary members of, the campaign kicks off with a bang as the group retrieves their chosen legacy items, salvages what other gear they can in a race against time and a growing number of foes, and then escapes to begin their quest.

In addition to the six main "dungeons," there are two optional regional lairs, traveling vampires, and many foes along the way. Most of the towns in the area have managed to survive, providing points of light at which the party may stop, long rest safely, acquire supplies, and socialize.

Travel is hazardous! 5e classes are balanced for resource management across a 5-8 encounter adventuring day. The campaign is designed to have a semi-variable flow of encounters as the party traels around the area. Encounters grow progressively more difficult as time passes and the party spends more time within a region. These are not random encounters rolled on a table, but encounters designed to be unique to each area's geography, combat terrain, and mix of foes. As the party spends more time in a region or revisits it, the encounter difficulty increases.

Dracula's curse requires a Constitution saving throw to successfully long rest outside of Hallowed areas (towns). The difficulty scales up over time, forcing the party to balance speed and safety as they try to accomplish their goals without pushing beyond the limits of what they can handle.

I am about 85% of the way through my playtest; the party is currently exploring an invisible arcane tower, and has only one relic left to find after that.

DM's guild link:
Dracula's Curse

 

[Reef]

Colour me intrigued! How many players is it designed for? And is there guidance for more or less characters?

 

[Zaukrie]

The previews of both your Castlevania campaigns look intriguing.

 

[J-H]

Colour me intrigued! How many players is it designed for? And is there guidance for more or less characters?

My playtest party is 5. I think anywhere in a range of 4-6 would be fine. The preview link includes the campaign log to date. My playtest is play-by-post, so it's been running for a bit over 2 years and we've had a couple of players swap out over that time.

tl;dr answer on party size, skip to bottom if you want
As a partial answer to handling this with more or fewer characters, here's my experience running Castle Dracula (the original) for my wife and two boys (9 & 11). I'm doing this right now, and it's letting me find and improve some areas since I originally wrote CD 5 years ago.

I let them start 2 levels higher (5 instead of 3) with max HP, get max healing when they roll hit dice, and start with some magic items left over from the arena fights they were doing first. I've also given them a couple of extra levelups upon killing vampires, and will give them one more after defeating Death, so they'll face Dracula just after hitting 17th level. The party:
-Dual-wielding Banneret (str, heavy armor master; my wife wanted a simple character with as few decision points as possible)
-Beastmaster Ranger (Dex/Wis; I houserule +Wis to damage vs. favored enemies so he's actually very consistent as long as he isn't getting hit)
-Dragonborn Evoker Wizard. He really likes Storm Sphere for some reason.

1. Letting someone start with Boots of Flying was possibly a mistake. My son's wizard has them. He's either staying out of reach of everything melee, or he's flying up and ahead by himself, finding ALL the ranged enemies, and getting nearly killed before anyone can help.

2. Max HP gives them more combat durability, which is fine right up until it isn't. Early on, they were safer from bosses and attrition, and did well. Damage output does not scale as well; a fighter at level 15 has roughly the same DPR as a level 11 fighter, the wizard only has a couple of big spells per day more, etc. The tougher enemies last several rounds longer, which lets them put out a lot more damage than the extra 3-4hp/level the party has can absorb... particularly since damage is not being shared equally between the archer-with-a-bear, the flying wizard, and the melee tank.

3. Despite point #2, I expect Dracula to be fairly easy because my son reads all the options and is planning to turn into an adult red dragon for the battle. With a +13 Con modifier, he's going to be pretty tough to knock OUT of dragon form, and a dragon is a gigantic pile of hit points and damage.

4. Bases are left un-covered. One melee tank, one archer, one blaster. Nobody good at finding secret doors or spotting things, nobody good at healing (the Ranger has Revivify and Cure Wounds), and nobody with any form of crowd control worth noting. This also makes actual teamwork pretty hard since there's no synergy in placement and goals (set up for sneak attack, Interception, paralyze so another player can crit, etc.). Some of this is due to player choices and tactical competency.

5. Fragility. If you hit 2/5 PCs with Hold Person for one round, everything's fine. If you hit 2/3 PCs with Hold Person for one round, someone's going to get critted down to 0 very quickly.

As the DM, it feels like it swings between "too easy" and "too hard" with a party of 3.

With my Baldur's Gate II campaign, the players got to bring along an NPC of their choice to round out the party, run by one of the players. That has worked out really well, and Korgan Bloodaxe (greedy dwarven mercenary) has been with the party since about level 7. He's a pretty quiet guy unless there are drow, alcohol, or money involved.

My wife's availability is spotty, so I'm using my boys to playtest another mini-campaign, and they're running 2 characters each. I don't feel like I have to walk on eggshells with 4 characters. The social aspect suffers, but neither of them is really into "playing a character" or putting themselves in someone else's head anyway.

the short answer
An NPC party member controlled by one of the players is my solution of choice for a party of 3 players.