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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 7018880" data-attributes="member: 6855114">[MENTION=6780269]dco[/MENTION]Strahd will never ever fight the pc head on. He will ambush. He will retreat. He will come back with help. He will enforce the 6 to 8 encounters per day so that your players will have to spend ressources. Your players should never be able to fight Strahd fresh from rest. Once they try to take on him, he will not allow them to rest. He will harrass them through out their rest where ever it might be.Strahd through his spies will know the PCs' strength and weaknesses and he will use that against them. He will know if they have the sunsword or the symbol or Ravenkind. He will not allow the players to choose the battle ground, he will choose it himself.P239 of the CoS book says that whenever Strahd is encountered outside the Tarroka reading he will be accompanied minions. Only on a 19-20 will you see no minions. That leaves us with many many possible fights/reinforcement.Fighting Strahd is a war of attrition. There will be no glorious charge, no duel to death, no clear cut way to beat him. My first group beat Strahd after 12 non-keyed encounters (with the keyed encounters it must have been about 17 or 18!). They finaly found his tomb and slew him there. The characters were exhausted, beaten and had no more ressources to have even a single encounter and Rahadin came in and attacked! Rahadin felled  the paladin and the bard but was finaly defeated by the cleric's Sacred Flame cantrip. All characters survived but barely. Was that an anti climatic end? By all account it was not. The players were proud of their accomplishment. They still talk about it 6 months later. My second group is just starting CoS now. They talked a bit with the other players and they are already scared of what Strahd can do! They are in the Death House and they are already saying that this place is madness and they only fought a doll, 5 shadows, 1 specter, 4 ghouls and 2 ghasts. They still have to fight the house itself and they all started at level 3 (zero experience but when they get out, they will have the required xp for their level). I almost killed two of the players even if they played flawlessly (I was a bit lucky on the dice). Now they are trying to take a short rest. We will see if they succeed or not. A BBEG does not have to be a fight with only one critter. It can be preceded by any number of fights/hazards/traps and god knows what. It is the DM's call to make a fight as hard or as easy as he wants it.I have an up to date copy of all character sheets.I test most of the fights to see if they are adequate in the difficulty I set them.If a fight is too easy or too hard, I make the necessary modifications.Yes the players know their characters way more than I do. But any DM worth his salt can make these kind of simulations.If you want your group to do a 5mwd, test the fight. If it is too easy, modify the monster accordingly so that the fight turns a bit more as you want it to be. If after modifications you kill the group in your simulation, retry it. Remodify it if necessary. A DM's job is not an easy one. The only two pieces of advice I give to "young" DM are:" Know the rules." and "Prepare a lot". With experience, the work will be done faster but will be required nonetheless.</blockquote>

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