D&D 5E Ravenloft I6- 5th edition

[Nebulous]

This past weekend I had some old friends come into town and we ran Ravenloft I6. Several of them had played through it before many years ago, and one had DMd it twice, also many years ago. The majority of the group had not played 5th edition, just 2nd-4th. I will add recaps to this thread in a couple chunks when I have time. It took 10-12 hours over 2 days, and honestly they skipped half of Strahd's castle, but it was still a totally epic adventure. I took 60 photographs of gameplay.

The 4e players now want to play 5e

 

[Parmandur]

Nice; how difficult was it to adapt? As I understand ot, that module is not super crunchy or combat intensive.

 

[aramis erak]

Nice; how difficult was it to adapt? As I understand ot, that module is not super crunchy or combat intensive.

Critters - list is those referenced in I6; indicator is if in 5E MM
"Guardian of Sorrow"
"Maiden vampire" - standard vampire
"Strahd Zombies" - No
Bats: yep
Gargoyles: Yep
Ghost: Yep
Ghouls: Yep
Gypsies: use thugs
Horses: Yep - use draft
Huge Spiders: As Giant Spiders
Iron Golem: Yep
Nightmare: Yep
Red Dragons: Yep. Use adult.
Shadow Demon: Yep
Skeletons: Yep
Spectre: Yep
Trapper: No
Vampire: yep
Villagers: use commoners
Werewolf: Yep
Wights: Yep
Witches: no.
Worg: Yep
Wraiths: Yep
Zombies: yep

So that leaves specific NPC's, the witches, Strahd, Strahd Zombies, the trapper, and the Guardian.

Pretty straightforward.

The witches can be converted as Acolyte, swapping out the spells.

Strahd Zombies - convert the AC, note the flavor text, and note that multiattack number of attacks is number of times it's been hit. CR goes up by 2, simply due to multiattacks

Trapper: AC 3; MV 3"; HD 12; hp 62; #AT 4+; Dmg 4 + victim's AC; AL N.
Close enough to a mimic with AC17 instead (which ramps it up to CR3)

The guardian of sorrow - AC12, 10 HP, multiattack 7 - 6x boulder at +4 doing 1d10 each; 1x shake, Dex Save is DC 13 or fall. CR 3. Atts irrelevant.

The other NPC's: Use HP as listed, subtract AD&D AC from 20 to get 5E AC, pick a suitable weapon for listed damage, use commoner, bandit, or thug stats otherwise.

Strahd - Vampire +2 HD, +9HP, add spells as a 10th level wizard, Dex 22, AC18.
Also can call Strahd Zombies, and can call his swarms during the day, too. Probably Challenge 15. He is a badass.


Not the easiest conversion, but not hard.

 

[Nebulous]

Nice; how difficult was it to adapt? As I understand ot, that module is not super crunchy or combat intensive.

Someone on the interwebs was kind of enough to take all the flavor text and encounter descriptions, copy and paste and add in 5e statblocks and the original maps for reference. So, it couldn't' have been any easier.

 

[Nebulous]

I also gave Count Strahd the Hand of Vecna, which made him even more deliciously horrible

 

[Nebulous]

Part 1

https://app.box.com/s/pm4cbvviyjff33iwzi6ppl77tyyfxmx8

 

[Nebulous]

Part 2

https://app.box.com/s/58se2a5mszy57d4pytzjx24wxgji0cjx

 

[Jeff Albertson]

I think the module is much better served playing TotM.

 

[Nebulous]

It was really a super fun adventure. But that CASTLE, that goddamn castle, the maps are so confusing, i was never really completely sure of where they were headed and had to just make stuff up sometimes. But i think that was the intention, it was a maze of towers, stairs, secret rooms and hidden tunnels.

 

[Nebulous]

I did not use the Guardian of Sorrow. Honestly as a very experienced DM, i was myself confused by the maps and kinda glossed over that and used other story elements.