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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HawaiiSteveO" data-source="post: 6939319" data-attributes="member: 6801401">I was worried about this the whole time I was running CoS. As it turned out my concerns were accurate, although the fight was . . . ok. It had to more with story elements than mechanics, although I did decide to use Sly Flourish's Ancient One rather than Strahd as presented in the book. I'm glad I did.<a href="http://slyflourish.com/sly_flourishs_vampires.html" target="_blank">http://slyflourish.com/sly_flourishs_vampires.html</a>First off, I was hoping to have the finale with Strahd be in a complete uninterrupted session and despite my best efforts it just didn't work out that way. We had to stop more than 1/2 way through due to time constraints. We lost some of the momentum & excitement and the game suffered. 5 PC 8th level party was/is pretty hardcore and had the sun blade and holy symbol, although the PC's wielding these didn't last long as Strahd took them out first. It was a great strategic move for Strahd and made perfect sense game wise, although 2 players missed a good part of the fight as their PC's were dead.Strahd can't regenerate the round after being exposed to sunlight and I felt having him leave the battle for 2-3 rounds was boring, and kind of turned the fight into a grind. Strahd leaves, comes back, leaves, comes back . . . In the end the remaining PC's wore Strahd down to 0 HP with a few lucky lighting bolts and a fluke monk stunning strike. He turned to mist and escaped, and permitted the surviving PCs to leave his domain.Part of it was DM fatigue on my part as we've been playing (almost) weekly session for the last 6 months. In any case, overall we had a blast although I'm glad it's over.  Boss fights are tough as there is so much to consider, not just stats of boss. Players cooperate with each other, and sometimes the DM is out in the tall weeds . . .</blockquote>

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