D&D 5E Help Running Amber Temple CoS (Spoilers)

[maceochaid]

My characters have entered the Amber Temple. Their loving the sarcophagi, but I'm starting to get a little concerned about how much power they are drawing from them. I've limited the sarcophagi to only giving their gift to one party member, but do the sarcophagi power them up too much? If people say they've done it and it was fine I'll let them keep going for it, but if someone found it completely unbalancing I will strip the power away from them.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

The thing to keep in mind is that their power comes at dark costs. First, accepting gifts have the chance of making your character outright evil (which may not fly with some classes like Paladin and Cleric), and they each come with drawbacks, some of which are debilitating. If you feel each individual drawback is not bad enough vs the boons they grant, you are well within your rights to make them more severe. Likewise if they try to take on multiple gifts. Do NOT sugarcoat the drawbacks. Enforce them ruthlessly. Curse of Strahd is intended to be a horror tale. The players may not win the campaign at all, or even if they do, they may end up horribly scarred from their time in Barovia. Corrupting goodness is kind of the Dark Powers' thing.

 

[CydKnight]

The thing to keep in mind is that their power comes at dark costs. First, accepting gifts have the chance of making your character outright evil (which may not fly with some classes like Paladin and Cleric), and they each come with drawbacks, some of which are debilitating. If you feel each individual drawback is not bad enough vs the boons they grant, you are well within your rights to make them more severe. Likewise if they try to take on multiple gifts. Do NOT sugarcoat the drawbacks. Enforce them ruthlessly. Curse of Strahd is intended to be a horror tale. The players may not win the campaign at all, or even if they do, they may end up horribly scarred from their time in Barovia. Corrupting goodness is kind of the Dark Powers' thing.

Yes, I think you need to be sure you emphasize the harmful effects as much as the benefits to the players. If they don't heed the warnings then it can be a good lesson for them in playing with cursed magic/items/effects so make sure to "enforce" the downside(s) as much as the benefits when the appropriate time(s) come.

 

[xanstin]

Also note in the side bar

[sblock]I believe non-evil PCs have to make a Charisma Save DC12 for each power they obtain. If they fail the succumb to evil and become an NPC. You as DM then determine if they can continue. If playing an AL game they have additional restrictions covered in an addendum [/sblock]

 

[maceochaid]

The corrupted characters are actually something that has been a selling point of the campaign. One of my players did a brilliant job role playing a typical Do-Gooder Paladin who has turned into an Oathbreaker Werewolf, and it is going just amazingly. It would be tricky at this point to enforce DM control and not seem arbitrary. Another character is an Egyptologist flavored Warlock (we're playing it in a kind of Gothic Earth), and I reflavored the Amber Temple have a Pharonic Egpyt feel. She blasts through all the DC's with her high Charisma, and it is very in keeping with her character. So I'm really just curious about game-breakyness and if I need the powers to start to fade.

 

[xanstin]

The Adventurers League solution then may be the one for you....

[sblock] A character may accept and be affected by only one dark gift. If a character with a dark gift attempts to accept another from a different vestige, their requests go unanswered. [/sblock]

Obviously from what you said they have more than one, but keep in mind you are the DM. You can decide at any point when this happens, your not a computer running a pre set program for the players.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If you've been going the corruption angle anyway, you gen I say go ahead with what the Amber Temple has to offer. I would just make sure to keep the repercussions in mind. I'd also probably start to have any attempts at heroism by the party begin to fail...things just don't seem to work out when they try to do good.

I would paint a picture for them of the cost it is having, and how they cannot use dark gifts to do good things.

 

[GlassJaw]

I haven't run CoS but I've read it quite a bit as I'm planning to send my group there after LMoP.

I love the Amber Temple...except for the dark gifts. It's an interesting concept for Ravenloft (undecided good or bad) but my main concern is that it has a very Deck of Many Things vibe in that it can instantly disrupt the campaign. I don't want a player to totally instantly screw their character without a lot of warning ahead of time, and to be honest, I generally don't like module design that "takes" a player's character away from them.

I've heard some people skip this section altogether but it's such a cool dungeon I definitely don't want to do that. Undecided....

 

[hawkeyefan]

I haven't run CoS but I've read it quite a bit as I'm planning to send my group there after LMoP.

I love the Amber Temple...except for the dark gifts. It's an interesting concept for Ravenloft (undecided good or bad) but my main concern is that it has a very Deck of Many Things vibe in that it can instantly disrupt the campaign. I don't want a player to totally instantly screw their character without a lot of warning ahead of time, and to be honest, I generally don't like module design that "takes" a player's character away from them.

I've heard some people skip this section altogether but it's such a cool dungeon I definitely don't want to do that. Undecided....

I wouldn't skip the entire Temple. No need for that. If anything, just alter how the vestiges seem...don't make it obvious that they offer such gifts or make it vague what gifts they do offer. Or you could remove the offerings and simply have these ancient remnants of evil rant and threaten and cajole and ramble at the PCs however you saw fit.

The vibe of the place can be really cool if played right. The dark gifts aren't really necessary for that.

 

[maceochaid]

If I could do it all over again I would grab the "Players Companion" for "Adventures in Middle Earth" and use the rules around Shadow and Corruption in my campaign. The book came out after we started, but it would have done a good job giving a feel that Barovia was slowly corrupting the characters.