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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9155716" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/r1MtFMN.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/product/434026/Assault-on-Castle-Ravenloft" target="_blank">Product Link</a>Product Type: AdventureCoS-Required? YesThis one-shot adventure is designed for 4 5th-level PCs. But unlike other adventure products designed to supplement the base Curse of Strahd campaign, this one is a prequel where the players take on the role of Knights of the Silver Dragon attacking Castle Ravenloft before Strahd became a vampire and Barovia fell to the Mists. The adventure is separated into a Prologue and three Acts, and makes three changes to the base CoS canon: Castle Ravenloft’s construction was completed before Strahd destroyed the Order of the Silver Dragon, the Order assaulted Castle Ravenloft on the same day as Tatyana and Sergei’s wedding, and Sir Godfrey Gwilym can possibly die during the siege rather than at Argynvostholt.With all that out of the way, the adventure goes over the major players and their changes. There are 3 NPCs present who are not in the original adventure but do exist in greater Barovian lore: Gralmore Nimblenobs, Khazan, and Sir Leonid Krushkin, who fight and die for Strahd during the siege. Rahadin is also one of the fighters, but since he’s present in the actual adventure he will be claimed by the Dark Powers to teleport him to the Amber Temple if he’d otherwise die. Quite a bit of NPCs in this adventure have plot armor as a result or have their destinies predetermined via non-interactive boxed text cutscenes. If anything, the only real changes the PC knights can effect are having their equipment show up around Castle Ravenloft during Curse of Strahd proper as mementos of the past. Sir Godfrey Gwilym has stats for this adventure, but instead of the S-tier undead companion he is currently, he instead uses NPC Knight statistics but can cast spells as a 16th level paladin.The Prologue starts out with the PCs attending a war room meeting with Argynvost in human guise* and Vladimir Horngaard laying out the political situation of Barovia. Reports of an internal coup in Castle Ravenloft resulted in the death of Sergei, and Argynvost judges that such dissension is the perfect time to strike. They have Strahd at his weakest, and such an opportunity may never come again. The PCs are to ride ahead of the main force, to secure Castle Ravenloft’s drawbridge before it can be pulled up.The DM is encouraged to ask the players how they came to join the Order and when they first met Sir Godfrey, along with a sample table of Knightly Mementos which are akin to Trinkets but tied more into the Order’s history.*None save Vladimir or Godfrey know he is actually a dragon.Act I begins with the PCs riding on warhorses along the Old Svalich Road. They come across Madam Eva, who at this point in history is known as Katarina, Strahd’s secret half-sister. She fled the Castle along with other servants to escape the massacre at the wedding. PCs who manage to calm her with Persuasion can learn more about what happened at the Castle, notably the death of Sergei and Tatyana and Leo Dilisnya’s failed assassination attempt of Strahd.The drawbridge of Castle Ravenloft is an encounter, complete with a gridded and nongridded map.* A mixture of guards, scouts, and veterans man the walls, and when the guards start to close the gate the PCs must make Athletics checks to jump onto it. They still make it on a failure, but lose an important piece of equipment or Memento as it falls off.*Each Act has an appropriate map, although Act II uses Ravenloft’s existing courtyard.Act II has a larger force of soldiers come out to defend the castle: Rahadin plus the aforementioned Kruskhkin and Nimblenobs and two dozen soldiers. The nameless minions aren’t relevant to the fight, as the Order of Silver Dragon will come into the courtyard to do battle with them. During the conflict, Khazan will appear on the battlements to conjure a storm, which creates intermittent AoE lightning strikes targeting the PCs. In order to deal with Khazan, Argynvost enters Cutscene Mode by transforming into a silver dragon to fly up and kill the archmage with an arctic breath. Argynvost, who has accumulated years’ worth of wounds in dragon form, falls to the ground dead in human form.Act III is the climax of the adventure, when dusk falls and the Mists truly descend upon Barovia. Godfrey’s failure to heal Argynvost’s wounds is remarked by him as feeling “cut off from the Divine,” which is some ominous foreshadowing of Barovia shifting planes. Horngaard leads the remaining forces to the main doors of Castle Ravenloft, which swing open to reveal Strahd who will be broody and unmoved by the paladin’s proclamations of justice. The now-vampiric darklord will cause the courtyard’s fallen to rise as undead, prompting a skill challenge representing a larger defensive battle against the creatures of the night. Some checks are given, and each failure will eliminate 20% of the order’s remaining forces. Sadly these checks have no narrative consequences for the rest of the adventure or even Curse of Strahd proper.After the challenge is completed, Strahd will fell Godfrey with a Blight spell, and the PCs will fight Strahd directly and have a chance to save the paladin if they can reduce Strahd to 100 or less hit points or otherwise secure Godfrey to safety. Like the skill challenge, this has no narrative consequences, as Strahd will use another unnamed spell to blow back the party with no saving throw allowed. Godfrey will either be dead, at which point Horngaard loses all will to continue fighting, or is too weak to assist them in the next fight. The PCs thus pursue Strahd further into the castle, confronting him alone at the altar with him standing over Sergei’s corpse.Strahd will give a melancholy speech of his conflicted feelings over his brother and how he “took” Tatyana from him. He ends the speech by proclaiming that Barovia is his, where not even death can pry it out of his cold, undead hands. Initiative is rolled as normal, but it is expected that the PCs will fall in battle to Strahd. He may spare one survivor to leave and spread what happened at the castle so as to warn others who think to act against him.The Epilogue ends our adventure with the PCs regaining consciousness in a Barovia now lost in Mists, where they become undead ghosts filled with an all-consuming thirst for vengeance. They find their fellow knights in a similar state, including Vladimir Horngaard who says that their watch is not yet over. Not as long as Strahd still stands.Overall Thoughts: Prequel adventures aren’t very common in tabletop RPGs. I am not against the concept in and of itself, but the actions of the PCs in the prequel must have some tangible impact on the present. Otherwise they feel like padding, content for the sake of content.Unfortunately, Assault on Castle Ravenloft’s railroad tracks are downright magnetic, for the player’s agency and meaningful choices are more or less rendered moot. It doesn’t matter if they save Godfrey or fail, he’ll end up as undead in Argynvostholt. It doesn’t matter if the PCs succeed or fail in the skill challenge to repel Strahd’s undead, for the Order of the Silver Dragon will be reduced to literal ghosts of their former selves one way or another. The only NPCs who don’t have plot armor are people who have no real impact on the current timeline besides historical footnotes.One could argue that Assault on Castle Ravenloft can give the players some meta-knowledge on things before the campaign begins, like knowing the impact of Argynvost or why Strahd is obsessed with Tatyana, but these are things that can be learned in the actual adventure. The Knightly Mementos aren’t meaningful items in and of themselves for the plot, being little more than discarded items that act as a metagame shout out to players who end up in Castle Ravenloft.It is for these reasons that I cannot recommend this adventure.Join us next time as we turn Barovia’s ruler into a Dragon Ball Z villain in the Real Devil Strahd! A CR 27 Version of the Devil!</blockquote>

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