D&D 5E Curse of Strahd (and limitations on 1st level play)

[Retreater]

I think you mentioned there's at least one other old timer in your group.

The problem is that he was a "Forever DM" for years until he joined this game less than a year ago.
We will be losing a couple players to college this fall, so I think the group will condense to a more manageable size for me. That would probably be a good time to see if we could get some boardgames playing, try out a new system, etc.

Interesting. I think 5e is default heroic action and you actively have to work to make it something else.

For whatever reason, when I run it (whether with a group of 7 or 4), around 5th level it turns into "superheroic" action. I just can't seem to figure out how to challenge those characters.
When you're dropping some of the highest level opponents the game has to offer at a 7th level party to make it a tense fight, where do you go from there?

Also, I really started to enjoy DMing more when I started to prepare less. I know this isn't your typical style (and it wasn't mine), but I suggest you try to embrace improvisation more. It can be hard, it was for me, if you are not used to it. But it is incredibly liberating when you embrace it. I don't really need to prepare monsters and encounters anymore - I can run them on the fly with my DM cheat sheet / screen, which, with the exception of our house rules, is RAW from the DMG.

That requires a very delicate balance. And apparently there's a "magic formula" WotC is keeping secret for encounter design - which is frustrating.
But I suspect if I just pulled out monsters I thought "looked cool" it would be a jumbled mess of simple fights and an unexpected TPK here and there. And without planning and strategizing, I wouldn't be using any of the monsters to their fullest potential.
And I'm sure story, setting, and all those other intangibles would suffer. I would forget to give treasure - or give too much, which was the disaster of my previous game.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And apparently there's a "magic formula" WotC is keeping secret for encounter design

There definitely isn't that!

But I suspect if I just pulled out monsters I thought "looked cool" it would be a jumbled mess of simple fights and an unexpected TPK here and there.

Pretty much what I do, it works well!

 

[Retreater]

There definitely isn't that!

WotC has admitted to it - that the design team and adventure writers use their own in-house encounter creation system that's never been released to DMs.
Kyle Brink mentioned running Curse of Strahd, levelled up to 20th level, and keeping it scary for his players.
If there's some magic juice that the design team has, they really should share it.

 

[Parmandur]

WotC has admitted to it - that the design team and adventure writers use their own in-house encounter creation system that's never been released to DMs.
Kyle Brink mentioned running Curse of Strahd, levelled up to 20th level, and keeping it scary for his players.
If there's some magic juice that the design team has, they really should share it.

The problem is that what they use internally is a multiple tab Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of interlinked formulas, apparently, which doesn't work in book form. The printed 2014 guidelines provided a shortcut form that gives the same answer most of the time, but not always. WotC says the 2024 book has a better formula, but we'll see.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If there's some magic juice that the design team has, they really should share it.

There is nothing "magic" about it, since the results are considerably worse than I can achieve by guesswork.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

WotC has admitted to it - that the design team and adventure writers use their own in-house encounter creation system that's never been released to DMs.
Kyle Brink mentioned running Curse of Strahd, levelled up to 20th level, and keeping it scary for his players.
If there's some magic juice that the design team has, they really should share it.

They mentioned the CR spreadsheet they use isn’t the same as the DMG and that is being updated in 2024z it was not a different encounter builder. Though they may have that too. Of course the already revised it in Xanthar’s

 

[dave2008]

For whatever reason, when I run it (whether with a group of 7 or 4), around 5th level it turns into "superheroic" action. I just can't seem to figure out how to challenge those characters.
When you're dropping some of the highest level opponents the game has to offer at a 7th level party to make it a tense fight, where do you go from there?

As I have said before, not my experience. Not sure what the problem is, but sorry you're having trouble.

That requires a very delicate balance. And apparently there's a "magic formula" WotC is keeping secret for encounter design - which is frustrating.

No, they said their formula of calculating CR was more involved than what is in the DMG. The DMG was an attempt to "reverse engineer" their spreadsheet, but it wasn't 100% accurate. They plan to improve that for 2024.

But I suspect if I just pulled out monsters I thought "looked cool" it would be a jumbled mess of simple fights and an unexpected TPK here and there. And without planning and strategizing, I wouldn't be using any of the monsters to their fullest potential.

And I'm sure story, setting, and all those other intangibles would suffer. I would forget to give treasure - or give too much, which was the disaster of my previous game.

IMO, there are two mistakes in your line of thought here. And the 3rd is strongly recommend.

1. You shouldn't grab monsters that "looked cool." You should specifically grab monsters that fit the story, setting, and other intangibles. So those don't suffer at all. Either the encounter is to easy, just right, or to hard. 5e PCs can handle all of those, and with the improvisor mindset you can adjust the encounter as needed on the fly.
2. You don't have to use the MM at all. You can completely improvise a monster / NPC with the tables in the DMG. The only limit is your imagination. If you don't want to go that far, use a monster from the MM and then improv some of its attacks with the DMG.
3. As an improvisor you can't be beholden to what is in the stat block. The monster can do what makes sense for the setting, story, genre, etc. You just improvise those effects with the DMG tables.

Improvising takes work. I didn't do it well at first and it took some time to get the hang of it. It was rough sometimes. However, in the end it was well worth the effort. I am a much better DM now and I am less stress too.

 

[Retreater]

Last night we had the follow up to the Winery session. After the party trounced the druids and blights inside during the previous session, I wanted to elevate the challenge. They had avoided the 30 needle blights in the vineyard on the approach, but now the party had to face them. They were approaching in two waves toward the loading dock. The party had a round of missile fire to kill off 4 of the opponents before the first wave got within range to start launching needle barrages.
The second wave came in through the side door the next round. The third round revealed a massive tree blight that began ripping apart the roof to get inside.
The fight was thrilling, but they survived with no casualties.
Then later in the session, the party decided to go to Berez to track down Baba Lysaga. They got in way over their heads. After the witch commanded her hut to start attacking the party (because they were harassing and insulting her), half of the group tried to direct the hut while the rest of the party rushed inside, climbing up the animated roots. The rogue, cleric, and paladin faced off against the witch, but the paladin's smites knocked her down in a couple turns. With that, I had the hut cease its attack (and honestly, I was cutting down the number of attacks against the two party members outside - didn't want to do 60 points of damage a round to them - 30 was enough.)
The party was very convinced that they were going to have a TPK, but got very excited by their surprising victory.
Perhaps last night didn't fit how I wanted to run Ravenloft, but they had a good time being heroes in a gothic horror themed fantasy world.

 

[dave2008]

Last night we had the follow up to the Winery session. After the party trounced the druids and blights inside during the previous session, I wanted to elevate the challenge. They had avoided the 30 needle blights in the vineyard on the approach, but now the party had to face them. They were approaching in two waves toward the loading dock. The party had a round of missile fire to kill off 4 of the opponents before the first wave got within range to start launching needle barrages.
The second wave came in through the side door the next round. The third round revealed a massive tree blight that began ripping apart the roof to get inside.
The fight was thrilling, but they survived with no casualties.
Then later in the session, the party decided to go to Berez to track down Baba Lysaga. They got in way over their heads. After the witch commanded her hut to start attacking the party (because they were harassing and insulting her), half of the group tried to direct the hut while the rest of the party rushed inside, climbing up the animated roots. The rogue, cleric, and paladin faced off against the witch, but the paladin's smites knocked her down in a couple turns. With that, I had the hut cease its attack (and honestly, I was cutting down the number of attacks against the two party members outside - didn't want to do 60 points of damage a round to them - 30 was enough.)
The party was very convinced that they were going to have a TPK, but got very excited by their surprising victory.
Perhaps last night didn't fit how I wanted to run Ravenloft, but they had a good time being heroes in a gothic horror themed fantasy world.

Thank you for the follow up! It sounds like you are starting to find your groove with this group and adventure. Good luck!

PS - I imagine you will want to beef up Strahd with this group when you get to him. I have a CR 17 version and CR 19 elite (aka mythic) version if you need them. There are also quite a few others out there if you look

 

[BookTenTiger]

Last night we had the follow up to the Winery session. After the party trounced the druids and blights inside during the previous session, I wanted to elevate the challenge. They had avoided the 30 needle blights in the vineyard on the approach, but now the party had to face them. They were approaching in two waves toward the loading dock. The party had a round of missile fire to kill off 4 of the opponents before the first wave got within range to start launching needle barrages.
The second wave came in through the side door the next round. The third round revealed a massive tree blight that began ripping apart the roof to get inside.
The fight was thrilling, but they survived with no casualties.
Then later in the session, the party decided to go to Berez to track down Baba Lysaga. They got in way over their heads. After the witch commanded her hut to start attacking the party (because they were harassing and insulting her), half of the group tried to direct the hut while the rest of the party rushed inside, climbing up the animated roots. The rogue, cleric, and paladin faced off against the witch, but the paladin's smites knocked her down in a couple turns. With that, I had the hut cease its attack (and honestly, I was cutting down the number of attacks against the two party members outside - didn't want to do 60 points of damage a round to them - 30 was enough.)
The party was very convinced that they were going to have a TPK, but got very excited by their surprising victory.
Perhaps last night didn't fit how I wanted to run Ravenloft, but they had a good time being heroes in a gothic horror themed fantasy world.

Sounds like fun!

I think having waves and other interesting things to do in combat (directing the hut, climbing the roots) can make things a lot more dynamic and nail-biting.