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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8984833" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/G67IhGW.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Optional Encounters & AftermatterThese two scenarios are optional content for One Night Strahd, either to add some new content for repeat playthroughs or just because it would be interesting. Each encounter has potential treasures and boons that can aid the PCs during the rest of the adventure.The Treasury is the first encounter, detailing the secret treasure room of Strahd Von Zarovich. It can be added to Act 2, such as making up for lost treasure from running away from a major section that would leave the party underpowered. Located in an enormous octagonal room with a sea of coins that would make even dragons blink, a giant magical machine of destruction known as the Fortress plies these golden waves like a ship of doom. The construct is a modified version of Daern’s Instant Fortress, and doesn’t have a single stat block so much as a series of details of stats for sections of the ship, traps, and offensive abilities such as firing cannonballs or blasts of lightning. Both attacks have amazing range increments of 600/2,400 feet, but can only be fired every other turn. The Fortress has a single Lair Action: Fire Main Cannon, which has a 1d6 randomly-generated effect, ranging from a damaging line of coins and gems, the sea of coins acting like restraining quicksand, or a wave of treasure as per the Tidal Wave spell.In order to disable the Fortress, the PCs must make their way to the ship to safely get within the minimum firing range of the cannons (a mere 10 feet), break through a locked trapdoor or deal 200 points of damage to the hull, and fight off five Gas Spores and one Death Kiss Beholder who is the pilot/heart of the fortress. PCs who can communicate with the Death Kiss can learn that it is magically bound against its will to guard the treasury, and PCs who manage to free it via taking out the binding runes and anchoring crystal will have its gratitude. However, the Death Kiss will explode if the PCs don’t disable the devices in a limited time frame.As for the rewards, there’s one cannon can be salvaged (disabling the Fortress causes the cannons to go offline) for up to 4 shots, 4 potions of Superior Healing, a number of gemstones containing castings of Chromatic Orb or Revivify based on the number of Lair Actions the Fortress performed, and a unique magic item known as the Bulwark of Argynvost. If the death kiss was rescued, it will transform into a Gazer that can summon five gas spores once per day and serve as a PC’s familiar, albeit will eat an existing familiar if the chosen PC has one. As for the Bulwark, it is a +1 shield that acts as an animated shield, a battering shield, grants a +2 bonus to initiative, and is treated as silver for purposes of overcoming damage resistance.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/QAVZYRQ.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The Black Lagoon is intended as an optional superboss encounter like in those 90 and 2000s RPGs; think Emerald or Ruby Weapon from Final Fantasy VII. It can be found if a PC uses the Bag of Beans from one of the initial magic item packs at the beginning of the game. DMs who don’t want to pit their party against this encounter can replace the beans with a Spellbead of Summon Construct. The boss fight can only happen during Act 2; otherwise planting it in Act 3 summons Omu to either throw his hammer at an enemy if he wasn’t defeated by the PCs, or if they did the slaadi instead causes all creatures present the possibility of randomly polymorphing into frogs with 1 hit point each.This encounter is accessed when a PC plants a bean from the bag of beans into the ground at any time in Act 2. The ground surrounding it turns into a tarry black liquid with a walkway of iron lily pads leading into an obsidian pyramid. PCs who venture into the pyramid feel something appear in their bag of beans, being a Thank You note from Omu for “finding my house keys.” Omu’s pyramidal home contains various works of art important to slaadi culture, such as one tapestry dubbed “War of the Frogs” by Kawanabe Kyosai, or a thin book labeled “C1-The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.” However, while grateful for the PCs finding his house keys, Omu won’t be happy if the PCs linger in his house. He’ll shortly show up to explain that the Dark Powers don’t like it when people deviate from the story, and that they should come back another time. Omu will become gradually more threatening if the PCs refuse to leave, at first being polite and giving offers of aid, but eventually summoning a giant hammer and battle gear. If Omu dies in Barovia, he will never be able to return home, so the PCs represent a real threat to him in his eyes.Omu is a CR 12 slaadi with 166 hit points, 16 AC, an average walking and faster swim speed, and typical slaad traits such as darkvision and blindsight, resistances to the four elemental damage types plus thunder, telepathy, and can multiattack. He is wearing three magic items: a Belt of Hill Giant’s Strength, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, and a Hammer of Thunderbolts, and he can multiattack with the hammer. He also has a phase two ability, where once reduced to 0 hit points he transforms into his true white slaad-lord form, regaining 140 hit points, removing all effects on him, and instantly casts Mirror Image. He can also trade in attacks from multiattack to perform an AoE stun attack that is limited to 3 uses in the battle, or spawn a bubble onto the battlefield that creates a random Wild Magic effect if it touches someone.Omu also has your typical boss-style Legendary Resistances, Legendary Actions (involving your typical move, attack, and teleport to the thrown hammer), and Lair Actions. In his phase two form he gets mythic actions such as casting a Vitriolic Sphere made of raw chaos that forces disadvantage on saves for lawful characters; or can teleport, attack, and then teleport back to his original location all in one action. The Lair actions are chaos-themed, being a constant Wild Magic effect that surges for any non-cantrip spell cast, including magic items that use or mimic the use of such spells. The Wild Magic table is far smaller than the sorcerer subclass, being a 1d12 with a preference for negative effects, such as shunting a character out of time for one round, petrifying a PC as per Flesh to Stone, or being forced to cast Fabricate with the object being made from the raw chaos of Limbo.PCs who end up out of commission or who would otherwise reincarnate during the fight instead come back as phase ghosts, afterimages of themselves from alternate timelines where they survived the fight. Phase Ghosts have their own unique stats and are controlled by the player, having the same capabilities of the original PC save they are immune to all damage and condition types, can multiattack with an Annealing Beam that deals radiant damage, can grant an ally either +2 to AC for one round and restore 1d4+4 hit points if the target doesn’t have their own phase ghost, or a single-use and single-target Bless effect. Phase Ghosts cannot move more than 30 feet from the original character’s body, die if their original PC is able to act in the fight again, and the fight is considered “lost” if all PCs end up as Phase Ghosts. Phase Ghosts are basically means of allowing for players with dead characters to still contribute to a fight rather than sitting around, and the book encourages you to try it out in other adventures beyond One Night Strahd.This encounter can be resolved in a variety of ways. If they defeat Omu, they get the 3 magic items he was wearing in the battle. If the party voluntarily left his home or if they were defeated by him, they will instead be given a copy of The Curse of Strahd: Original Manga Adaption along with either a stern chiding for lack of politeness or as a friendly goodbye and gift.The Curse of Strahd Manga is a unique magic item that is basically an in-universe fiction of the Curse of Strahd module, but told in manga form. It is also of use for PCs seeking knowledge about Barovia as it is in One Night Strahd, allowing for a DC 15 Investigation check to get a direct hint about all manner of subjects of the encounters of Act 2, although the DC increases by 1 for every time the book is used this way. Failing a roll any time after the manga's first successful use causes the book to harmlessly explode into a swarm of bats.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/TLDgdJ0.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> AftermatterThis is an appendix of supplementary material. It includes a list of 18 pre-generated characters, stat blocks for the unique monsters and NPCs, and a list of new and altered magic items found in this adventure. We’ve already covered the monsters and magic items where appropriate, so we’ll look over some of the pregens. Each potential PC has a single-page character sheet. They all make use of official Wizards of the Coast material with no third party content, and some of the more wordy abilities are condensed to fit as a reference. Some characters have odd things that don’t fit conventional character creation. For instance, Redress Through Violence is an Astral Self Dwarven Monk with a whopping 8 tool proficiencies, and Pura Adelaide is an Arcane Trickster Rogue with 14 Intelligence who somehow has +8 to Arcana and Investigation despite looking like Expertise was taken for Acrobatics and Stealth (20 Dexterity for +11 in each). And while it’s not wrong in terms of stats, Dread Necromancer Emerald is an Abjurer Wizard who doesn’t have any necromancy spells save for Chill Touch. You might imagine it to be a joke, but as these characters come with no flavor text or backstory there’s no real explanation for the odd name.Thoughts So Far: The Treasury Optional Encounter can be really punishing on groups that don’t have high speeds, as the Fortress can get in a few damaging volleys before the PCs can reach the hull. The idea to board and disable it may not be immediate to the group, who may instead try to fight the thing as a monster and trade longbow shots and eldritch blasts with it, further diminishing their resources. The optional Omu fight feels like something most groups won’t stumble upon, as up until this point the slaadi has been polite and helpful and most players may not be keen on pissing him off out of sheer curiosity. The insertion of a meta-commentary Ravenloft Manga is pretty funny; while it may feel a bit out of line with the gothic horror nature of the setting, One Night Strahd has overall been a rather whimsical and meta take on the greater mythos.I don’t have much to say about the pregenerated PCs that hasn’t already been said.Final Thoughts: One Night Strahd is a beautifully ambitious adventure with a concept that immediately sets it out from the rest of Raven-pack on the DM’s Guild. Its tightly-focused adventure paces itself well without unnecessary lulls or filler encounters, and its recurring cast of few but deep characters help weave a greater story around the module rather than feeling like a plot-sparse one-shot. And areas that don’t have combat, such as the Vistani town of Last Standing or the Prismatic Wall Puzzle, still have meaningful challenges that give the PCs access to more information and/or useful items. The artwork is beautifully evocative and reinforces the otherworldly feel of a dangerous realm that still has spots of beauty. The handouts are concise and easy to read, the vast majority fitting neatly onto one page, and along with the maps are easy to print out or turn into assets for virtual tabletops. Being designed for replayability also helps it, for unlike more traditional campaigns where replaying a module may give players access to vital information they shouldn’t know, One Night Strahd’s difficulty is such that there’s still real elements of failure even if the PCs know what’s coming.While I have high marks overall for One Night Strahd, there are some things holding it back. Notably, the sheer size and scope of the book. Although the plot and adventure are relatively straightforward, being a 524 page product, plus the less than ideal organization and self-referencing, hurts its ability to be an easy one-shot a DM can immediately pick up and run. To get the most out of it, along with its many examples of beautiful artwork and handouts, a DM would need to do as much prep for a typical multi-level campaign. Combine this with not all relevant information being in the places they need to be, and that just adds to its unwieldiness. How much these negatives outweigh the positives may be subjective based on a DM’s ability to cross-reference and self-organize.But with all that said, One Night Strahd is an intriguing enough option that I’d definitely want to run it sometime in my gaming life. It’s a great labor of love, and in spite of its status as Best Platinum Seller not many people are talking about the specifics that make it unique. That is perhaps its greatest weakness that I referenced back at the beginning of this review; even though many people bought it, other online gaming spaces merely presume it to be a compacted version of Curse of Strahd rather than its own campaign entirely. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@denkles/video/7052390790458477870" target="_blank">Interestingly one of the more informative takes on the module was from a gamer musician on TikTok.</a>This review took a lot out of me, so I’m going to rest for a bit. I may do some reviews of smaller products first, but when I get the energy again I have some ideas on what to cover next.</blockquote>

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