Homebrew The Devil Strahd - A Level Up Rework

[johna_thr33]

I wanted to give Strahd a total Level Up-inspired makeover, using a player character as the chasis for later building a statblock from. I decided to make him an Elven Noble with the Lone Wanderer culture for maximum flexibility and fun-factor for my character building. I fully built him as a Fighter Knight 11/ Arcanist Wizard 9 with the full vampire synergy feat tree, then compared it with the original statblock to combine/tweek into the final CR 17 version you see here. My vision was of a strong battlefield controller, and I wanted to make sure that he was just as strong riding Bucephalus as he is on the ground. Any C&C is welcome, particularly on my GM Binder formatting.

 

[lichmaster]

I'm still absorbing all the material from LU (it's really A LOT!), so I cannot comment on things like balance or adherence to LU monster creation rules.

That said, this example shows how much deeper and versatile PNGs and monsters can be, especially iconic ones such as Strahd von Zarovich!
The collection of abilities, skills, spells, maneuvers and vampire traits is really staggering and frightening to behold, definitely the ultimate villain of a campaign in Ravenloft.

Given its complexity (a 3 page stat block is surely not easy to run properly), I'd suggest to try the following

• group all effects/traits/skills/maneuvers by type of usage: actions, bonus actions, reactions, non-actions, etc
• include the description of most usable spells in combat, and put them in the appropriate action type list as above (this is consistent with the little I've seen for LU's monster stat block design)

Additionally, I'd consider the following

• legendary resistance is 3/day but without any loss on Strahd's side. I recall that in LU when monsters use legendary resistance they show signs of getting weaker, both in a purely descriptive sense but sometimes also from a mechanical pov (lowered AC, etc). Maybe you could try to incorporate something like that, for additional flavor
• a good deal of the "build" revolves around him riding a mount, which is very cool. At this point I'd really love having a related stat block for Buchephalus, with the LU treatment
• I'm still not versed in LU monster design rules, but I'm not sure you can use multiattack with combat maneuvers that require to use an action and allow to make multiple attacks using the Extra Attack feature (the two are not the same)

 

[johna_thr33]

I'm still absorbing all the material from LU (it's really A LOT!), so I cannot comment on things like balance or adherence to LU monster creation rules.

That said, this example shows how much deeper and versatile PNGs and monsters can be, especially iconic ones such as Strahd von Zarovich!
The collection of abilities, skills, spells, maneuvers and vampire traits is really staggering and frightening to behold, definitely the ultimate villain of a campaign in Ravenloft.

Given its complexity (a 3 page stat block is surely not easy to run properly), I'd suggest to try the following

• group all effects/traits/skills/maneuvers by type of usage: actions, bonus actions, reactions, non-actions, etc
• include the description of most usable spells in combat, and put them in the appropriate action type list as above (this is consistent with the little I've seen for LU's monster stat block design)

Additionally, I'd consider the following

• legendary resistance is 3/day but without any loss on Strahd's side. I recall that in LU when monsters use legendary resistance they show signs of getting weaker, both in a purely descriptive sense but sometimes also from a mechanical pov (lowered AC, etc). Maybe you could try to incorporate something like that, for additional flavor
• a good deal of the "build" revolves around him riding a mount, which is very cool. At this point I'd really love having a related stat block for Buchephalus, with the LU treatment
• I'm still not versed in LU monster design rules, but I'm not sure you can use multiattack with combat maneuvers that require to use an action and allow to make multiple attacks using the Extra Attack feature (the two are not the same)

Your advice made me see the light of reason, so in addition to a second full rework, using the Monsterous Menagerie Vampire block as a guideline, I added in all useful spells, bumped some stats around (and still ended up with a 3 page stat block )

Bucephalus in 5e is just a standard Nightmare, so I would say that substituting stat blocks one-to-one would be more than acceptable.

 

[lichmaster]

This is much easier to run now, IMO. Great work!

A couple more things that seem weird:

• Stradh is a level 9 spellcaster here, and apparently has 11 levels in fighter (knight) which has no spellcasting feature. How come it has level 6 and 7 spell slots?
• Bite has an attack bonus of +20, which is way too much. Shouldn't it be something like +10? Also, is it a bonus action that can be performed regardless of the other actions he performed in the round?

 

[johna_thr33]

This is much easier to run now, IMO. Great work!

A couple more things that seem weird:

• Stradh is a level 9 spellcaster here, and apparently has 11 levels in fighter (knight) which has no spellcasting feature. How come it has level 6 and 7 spell slots?
• Bite has an attack bonus of +20, which is way too much. Shouldn't it be something like +10? Also, is it a bonus action that can be performed regardless of the other actions he performed in the round?

Both of those are typos, for the purposes of fully matching and realizing the power level of a CR 17 creature, I bumped his spellcasting level up to 13 and forgot to change it at the top of the block

You are correct that the bite should be +10, I just fat fingered it.

In line with the basic Level Up vampire, it can be used anytime as long as you have a one target that is grappled, incapacitated, restrained, willing, or unaware of the vampire’s presence.

 

[dave2008]

I wanted to give Strahd a total Level Up-inspired makeover, using a player character as the chasis for later building a statblock from. I decided to make him an Elven Noble with the Lone Wanderer culture for maximum flexibility and fun-factor for my character building. I fully built him as a Fighter Knight 11/ Arcanist Wizard 9 with the full vampire synergy feat tree, then compared it with the original statblock to combine/tweek into the final CR 17 version you see here. My vision was of a strong battlefield controller, and I wanted to make sure that he was just as strong riding Bucephalus as he is on the ground. Any C&C is welcome, particularly on my GM Binder formatting.

3 pages is too long for me, but I appreciate the effort and thank you for sharing. I made a LevelUp compatible Vampire Monarch recently that I plan to be the basis for updating my improved Strahd.

 

[johna_thr33]

Here is my final proofread update, thanks to @lichmaster for the help

 

[johna_thr33]

3 pages is too long for me, but I appreciate the effort and thank you for sharing. I made a LevelUp compatible Vampire Monarch recently that I plan to be the basis for updating my improved Strahd.

I understand the dislike of a 3 page character sheet. For the desire of my Strahd, I couldn't manage to get it any smaller. Rather than just a boss monster, I wanted my Strahd to feel like a powerful battlemage with full synergy with Bucephalus.

 

[dave2008]

I understand the dislike of a 3 page character sheet. For the desire of my Strahd, I couldn't manage to get it any smaller. Rather than just a boss monster, I wanted my Strahd to feel like a powerful battlemage with full synergy with Bucephalus.

I get it. I've had stat blocks that long. However, for Strahd they wouldn't be needed for me. Strahd, IMO, is more about how you roleplay him and less about his statblock. I think I can get what I need in a page or so and just wing the rest.