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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 6994374" data-attributes="member: 32659">My party met Strahd in the chapel. It went fairly anti-climatically. I decided not to beef him up, in part because the party paladin wasn't all that tactical with his choices. The story of the campaign up to that point meant that Strahd had invited them to his wedding to Ireena, who he had already turned into a Vampire (the players essentially failed a time pressure). So they got into the carriage, rolled into the castle, and met Rahadin the seneschal. Him, they did not like much, especially since he didn't rise to their jokes. One player got freaked out as he led them down the long corridor to the chapel, and tried stabbing him in the back. This turned into a fight that Rahadin started losing, so he fled into the Chapel... where Strahd was standing, along with four Vampire Spawn, the Vampirified Ireena, and the partly-vampirified Ezmerelda. They didn't even stop to talk to him, but instead rolled the fight straight into that chamber.So first off my desire to have a creepy but fun 'vampire wedding' was totally scuppered, and now the players were facing half of the castle's residents at once. You'd think that would be a real problem? Well, no. Vampire Spawn are basically eliminated automatically by the combination of the Sunsword (disadvantage on attack, 20hp damage at start of turn, no regen) and a level four Spirit Guardians (4d8 radiant damage at start of turn, or when first entering). I tried to counter this by having Strahd use Charm on the Paladin, who was not immune, in order to get him to 'turn off the sword and give it to me', but the Paladin easily passed the save. For his Lair Action, he tried turning the Shadow Monk's shadow into an enemy, which I thought would be pretty fun, but the Monk passed the save. The players all rolled straight up to him, and started whaling on him with the Sunsword, Sacred Flame, Stunning Fist, the whole works. I decided that he could use Charm as a Legendary Action, but to be fair it would cost all three; the Paladin passed again. On the second turn, he used a Lair Action to get the ability to walk through walls... but was dead before his turn came around. The Sunsword is basically the killer. Because it does radiant damage, Strahd's misty escape ability does not work. He is instantly destroyed if in sunlight. So he went poof, and the adventure ended with the players having encountered two rooms and killing the BBEG in one and a half rounds of combat. I was not too unhappy with that, since it meant that we ended the campaign on the last game before Christmas, nice timing, but Castle Ravenloft was not exactly all that it could have been.I recommend not having Strahd stay glued in the Chapel. He absolutely needs to run from the players upon seeing them, and attack them while they are engaged with other enemies; I thought that he would be more impressive than he was, but ultimately the module gives you a great villain but also gives the players the exact tools to annihilate him without breaking a sweat. My players were level nine at the time, so your ones will be even more powerful.</blockquote>

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