D&D 5E (2014) Enhancing "Curse of Strahd" (and DDAL adventures)
- Thread starter jayoungr
- Start date
evilbob
Adventurer
I'm pretty sure jayoungr caught it at some point in the thread (wow, is this thread 6 months old?) but here it is again if you'd like:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-structure-in-CoS-(spoilers-also-really-long)
Although I have to say again that I wish I could remember who actually came up with the idea originally - someone on this board - and all I did was expand it out a bit. Glad it's helpful!
Daern
Explorer
Great advice. That's basically what I've been doing. They fought spawn, then rested, explored a bit but were afraid to mess with anything. Then Rahadin came and demanded that they go with him to the guest quarters to await the "wedding". (Ireena is somewhere in the castle)
Their mission at the moment is to escape the castle with the silver dragon skull.
The group is very aware of their fragility and want to escape and get more help. On the other hand, I really want to wrap up the module!
Their mission at the moment is to escape the castle with the silver dragon skull.
The group is very aware of their fragility and want to escape and get more help. On the other hand, I really want to wrap up the module!
Daern
Explorer
Well, they escaped, then went right back in again.
The group got some intel from Ascher the bitter vampire spawn. They made it down to the cold fire room with all the colored gemstones. The poem had them convinced they could escape the castle but they needed the Dragon skull they'd left in the Ossuary. Climbing the stairs they encountered Rahadin the Chamberlain and his Shadow Demon minion. Rahadin tore them apart. Between his scimitar and his aura of horrid whispers the whole group turned tail and fled after I think two rounds, escaping the castle without their skull objective.
The next session to group deliberated with the Abbot a bit then traveled back across Barovia (meeting a revenant knight who gave them skeletal mounts). After finally finding the Tome at the crossroads, they discovered the village abandoned. They decided to try to find a secret entrance to the castle dungeons, which they did, using spiderclimb and fly to break the windows and sneak into the tomb of King Barov. They are 7th level, have all the relics, but no support from Argynvost. They know Strahd is marrying Ireena at midnight. They are very scared!
I had no idea it would go like that, but there you go!
The group got some intel from Ascher the bitter vampire spawn. They made it down to the cold fire room with all the colored gemstones. The poem had them convinced they could escape the castle but they needed the Dragon skull they'd left in the Ossuary. Climbing the stairs they encountered Rahadin the Chamberlain and his Shadow Demon minion. Rahadin tore them apart. Between his scimitar and his aura of horrid whispers the whole group turned tail and fled after I think two rounds, escaping the castle without their skull objective.
The next session to group deliberated with the Abbot a bit then traveled back across Barovia (meeting a revenant knight who gave them skeletal mounts). After finally finding the Tome at the crossroads, they discovered the village abandoned. They decided to try to find a secret entrance to the castle dungeons, which they did, using spiderclimb and fly to break the windows and sneak into the tomb of King Barov. They are 7th level, have all the relics, but no support from Argynvost. They know Strahd is marrying Ireena at midnight. They are very scared!
I had no idea it would go like that, but there you go!
Quick question for those who keep track of these things - there used to be a thread here called (I think) "CoS Tome of Strahd Additional Excerpts". I had copied some stuff from there awhile back, but my link to the thread doesn't seem to work anymore. Forum search doesn't seem to find it either. Any ideas if that thread is still around? The OP had some good ideas going... Thx!
MrHotter
Explorer
I had not seen that thread, but I like the sound of it.
I also wanted the tome to be more important than just having a page to read. I thought about randomizing some of the vampire powers and letting the tome tell you what vampire strengths/weaknesses Strahd has. If sunlight just made Strahd sparkle instead of burn it would be nice to know that before starting a fight with him.
I ended up just going with having the original architect's map fall out when the players pick up the tomb. That lets me just drop the poster map of the castle on the table when the players are ready to enter. I felt that letting the players know where the secret doors are would be a small price to pay for me not having to figure out how to map the place as the players explore it.
DrVillainous
First Post
After a homebrew conversion of the original Ravenloft resulted in a near-TPK that ended the game prematurely, I decided to DM Curse of Strahd and added occasional references to the previous PCs having come through a few decades ago and meeting their doom. I think that stuff like finding the overgrown remains of the house their previous characters burned down and stumbling across the reanimated skeleton of one of their old PCs has been their favorite part of the campaign.
Daern
Explorer
Finished the campaign last night!! Huzzah! Such an accomplishment having a stable dedicated group, wow!
They heroes had been in and out of the Castle for awhile, having collected all the artifacts, but they did not at all feel confident of tackling Strahd himself. For a couple sessions I had them running scared through the castle, harassed by the vampire and his minions. Last night they were shown to the Chapel, where the Lord himself was speaking to a zombified Ireena (she killed herself AGAIN rather than marry the monster).
Final battle was pretty quick. Multiple uses of Counterspell, Daylight and Protection against Evil nullified most of Strahd's threat. The Sunsword struck him down and his mist form drifted through the floor. They group went down into the crypts, found the coffin, opened it and staked his heart! (I improved a little thing hiding behind a door, so when they opened it I was in vampire coffin pose. I opened my eyes dramatically and a player jumped in with the stake. Epic. No rolls needed.)
I told them the that the stake in the coffin pinned Strahd in, though he could still be seen he could not be touched. This disturbed the group as they realized that it was not possible to destroy Strahd, and that a miscreant merely needed to remove the stake to bring him back. After much discussion they decided to bring the coffin to Argynvostholt where they had established the silver beacon, and where they had been attempting to foster a community of good. They helped to rebuild the fortress. Izek (who was the Ally but had sort of disappeared into the castle) reappeared and offered to guard Strahd's prison. He asked for his devil arm to be severed, which the fighter did, then gave the sunsword to the grim defender.
The druid reincarnated Irena as a half-elf. The Abbot of Kresk came to pay his respects and tell them he was leaving to. Then the roc (which they had battled a few sessions earlier) landed and bore the team off over the mountains and through the mists.
I believe they want to go to Waterdeep, keeping mostly the same characters.
On the Strahd fight: I thought about having him retreat earlier, but finally had him dive into melee and his doom (he had been casting fireballs from the ceiling of the chapel). He was really depressed and I was kinda over it. Honestly, the campaign has been really satisfying, so no one was killed and the final battle was a bit underwhelming, but on the whole the end of the campaign was awesome.
Best campaign I've ever run, for sure.
They heroes had been in and out of the Castle for awhile, having collected all the artifacts, but they did not at all feel confident of tackling Strahd himself. For a couple sessions I had them running scared through the castle, harassed by the vampire and his minions. Last night they were shown to the Chapel, where the Lord himself was speaking to a zombified Ireena (she killed herself AGAIN rather than marry the monster).
Final battle was pretty quick. Multiple uses of Counterspell, Daylight and Protection against Evil nullified most of Strahd's threat. The Sunsword struck him down and his mist form drifted through the floor. They group went down into the crypts, found the coffin, opened it and staked his heart! (I improved a little thing hiding behind a door, so when they opened it I was in vampire coffin pose. I opened my eyes dramatically and a player jumped in with the stake. Epic. No rolls needed.)
I told them the that the stake in the coffin pinned Strahd in, though he could still be seen he could not be touched. This disturbed the group as they realized that it was not possible to destroy Strahd, and that a miscreant merely needed to remove the stake to bring him back. After much discussion they decided to bring the coffin to Argynvostholt where they had established the silver beacon, and where they had been attempting to foster a community of good. They helped to rebuild the fortress. Izek (who was the Ally but had sort of disappeared into the castle) reappeared and offered to guard Strahd's prison. He asked for his devil arm to be severed, which the fighter did, then gave the sunsword to the grim defender.
The druid reincarnated Irena as a half-elf. The Abbot of Kresk came to pay his respects and tell them he was leaving to. Then the roc (which they had battled a few sessions earlier) landed and bore the team off over the mountains and through the mists.
I believe they want to go to Waterdeep, keeping mostly the same characters.
On the Strahd fight: I thought about having him retreat earlier, but finally had him dive into melee and his doom (he had been casting fireballs from the ceiling of the chapel). He was really depressed and I was kinda over it. Honestly, the campaign has been really satisfying, so no one was killed and the final battle was a bit underwhelming, but on the whole the end of the campaign was awesome.
Best campaign I've ever run, for sure.
evilbob
Adventurer
There was a huge server crash where something like 3 or 6 months or something's worth of threads got lost. It's possible that was in there.
Sounds awesome!
I love how if you have 100,000 groups running this game you're going to get 100,000 different endings. And grats on actually finishing! Our group is still just level 5... /sighSimilar Threads
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