I think the most important thing to bear in mind about Curse of Strahd is that it's pretty sandboxy, and that means it's pretty easy for the party to walk head-first into something that will just kill them all.
Well, it wasn't my intent to say CoS isn't a good campaign. It's just a campaign that relies on the players and/or the DM providing direction, and where the DM may want to subtly discourage going in directions that will instantly kill the party (and don't trust the 'areas by level' table).
CoS is mostly designed around single large fights/day rather than several encounters (the exceptions are likely the Amber Temple and Castle Ravenloft but even then the Amber Temple is mostly one fight).
In addition, as mentioned, it is an open map where the players could choose to go anywhere. The DM then has to provide some guidance from NPC interactions and quests that tends to lead the party towards the objectives they can probably handle rather than the ones they can't. The campaign has enough milestones to get the characters to level 12-14 if they are completionists about it. At that level though, Strahd is not much of a challenge so you need to make him more challenging if they reach that level by adding some minions/helpers/allies and boosting his stats. Strahd is over-confident, not stupid.
If the players either listen to the DM or scout and are cautious and the DM lets the characters know that they aren't able to deal with what they find then the open world aspect is manageable. If the players like to plunge in then there are encounters that will kill them if they are too low a level and the DM should let it happen.
Finally, CoS is a horror module, there are lots of horror elements that some folks could find triggering so it isn't suitable for everyone.
Some examples:
- Witches that bake cookies with ground up children as a component (Brothers Grimm). They have some prisoners ready to be turned into ingredients when the characters reach their mill. (The parents give they children to the witch in exchange for the cookies).
- A werewolf tribe where children are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death. The "winner" is made into a new werewolf.
- An asylum run by a fallen/insane angel making a bride for Strahd from the body parts of villagers (Frankenstein) while minding the inmates of the asylum which are humanoids with a variety of animal features.
- A fisherman kidnaps a child and tries to drown her to improve the fishing by appeasing the spirits of the lake - or something like that.
- Strahd seduces and bites an unwilling woman who resembles his lost love (her spirit returns to a body in Barovia every so often because it can't leave) - this is fairly standard vampire trope fare.
- the Vistani are a group of NPCs that collaborate/are allied with Strahd which are also a thinly veiled imitation of the myths/lies about the actual Roma people - some folks really might not like this aspect.
- evil, corruption, betrayal, gloom, depression, hopelessness - these are pretty much the themes of Cos - so the players need to buy into the premise and like horror to really enjoy it.
Another good campaign to consider is Tomb of Annihilation. If you are just starting out playing 5e then being a bit less ambitious and looking at Lost Mines of Phandelver or Dragon of Icespire Peak might be worthwhile.
I just had a session of CoS today and I'm really hyped. I guess you know this feeling, where you don't care anymore and just need a place to let it all out. So yeah, I'd like to take this chance and talk about some general things that turned out really good in my campaign. Some of the points are mentioned more or less in the official adventure, others are completely made up. If you like some inspiration please read. If you got something to add, please share. If you think I did something very wrong, please point out (I'm new here). Thank you!
1.: Why is Strahd doing what he does?
In my Barovia the souls are washed lawful-evil because Strahd actually has a contract with a devil. Every living thing that does not die as lawful evil is reborn. Every living thing that dies as lawful evil is sent to Avernus to that devil. This way Strahd earned his immortality and power. That means Strahd needs new souls from time to time and has every reason to lure fresh people into his realm. Once they cross his border he just kills them and lets the souls reincarnate. This task has made him bored and frustrated by now. He knows, time is on his side and at some point, every soul breaks. So he is looking for the ultimate challenge. His biggest joy now is to break heroes without reincarnation. He needs to make them kill each other, commit suicide, or worse. Once he found a super-good hero he would even go so far to revive him/her. Physically Strahd can whipe out lvl1 characters without any effort. That's not fun anymore. That's why he needs that rule: without reincarnation. A hero which is dying with a good or chaotic personality is no challenge. Strahd needs the mental war, loosing a battle here and winning a fight there. Playing mind games, make heroes go crazy and desperate. That's what makes Strahd excited. And that's why he likes to take a risk if the players are getting strong. He loves the slight chance of loosing, like playing with fire, the possibility of dying that gives him back some faint echo of excitement.
Advantages for this background:
- Strahd has no reason to kill any player at any point, even if there is a chance of being killed. He loves the risk.
- The contract might reveal some detail which can be really useful to discover. Maybe it's a backdoor which makes Strahd less powerful once the players cause a breach of contract. I don't know yet details but this gives me many options along the way.
- Having a devil introduced makes it more easy to connect CoS to another adventure (in my case: Descent into Avernus)
2. Upgrade the Card Reading
In my adventure Strahd himself joins the Card Reading and gets his future predicted. I changed the Vistani lady into an extremely old female tortoise (think of a female Master Oogway). She reveals to Strahd truefully that his best chance to keep his status is to kill the heroes right away. Strahd gives his thanks and leaves with anticipation. The heroes are given similar helpful advice: Make Strahd emotional and irrational. A calm Strahd can never be defeated. He is too smart, a master of strategy, and has always one or more back doors to survive even a lost fight (reincarnation in his coffin is something very exciting for him). The heroes' only chance is: Make Strahd emotional: angry, blissful, frightened or ashamed. No matter what, just make him commit irrational decisions. That's the only way to break out of Strahd's game.
The tortoise wants Strahd to loose but she keeps her cool. Remaining lawful good is her best chance to stay out of Avernus, and she knows this. She feels that Strahd wants to make her flip. Strahd wants to turn the tortoise lawful evil, no matter how long it takes. And Strahd's strategy is to give her a rollercoaster of hope and disappointment with each set of heroes. Defeating the tortoise is Strahd's actual goal.
Advantages for this background:
- The players have a real reason to "repair" Strahd's realm. Murder-Hobos make the common population turn lawful evil. But every soul turned good is a direct loss for Strahd and endangers the contract Strahd has with his devil. Strahd needs to keep the supply flowing. My PCs are now very eager to explore the world and get creative. Focusing on Lvl-Ups and killing everybody who looks like an enemy is not a good strategy anymore.
- The tortoise can provide as much information as she wants. Since she is a seer she knows how much information is healthy for the group.
- The tortoise can act as a spiritual guide, like Master Splinter or the oracle from the Matrix. She could provide reincarnation (maybe sponsored by Strahd). If the tortoise dies before turning lawfil evil Strahd will take this very personally.
3. Tatyana
This point remains pretty much as described in the book, but I must mention it because of the impact on point 2:
Option 1: Ireena must be drowned in Krezk. (Her soul escapes Barovia, the PCs are doing something lawful evil though)
Option 2: Ireena must marry Strahd (Ireena sacrifices her soul and becomes a vampire)
Both options will cause Strahd to become completely irrational. Now he can be killed. I don't know yet how my party will deal with this coice. I love the moral conflict. But I also love the idea of challenging the patry to build a story. I want to make the party to get really creative and discovers an even better option: the legendary option No3. Finding such a legendary option 3 would mean: The PCs outplayed the DM. Nobody looses, every NPC is fine, the DM capitulates. This is the holy grail! The PC's chance to defeat me as Dungeon Master in the final quest: How can the PCs drive Strahd into madness while finding the impossible way? Well: By building a great story. This is how I want my DnD table.
The most important thing is as others have said COS is notorious for horror stories where players and DMs go too far with the dark themes or too edgy. Set clear expectations
A couple of locations in COS are lacking in content which can be an issue if you draw them as your item locations
Tsolenka pass
Mt baratok and the mad mage
I recommend adding something to these places if they come up on the taroka deck. Mt baratok has literally nothing going on no map or anything. Tsolenka pass is just a tower.
The book of strahd is also kind of lacking you'll want to add something to it. When I was running COS I linked it to the Heart. Basically while strahd had the heart active he was immune to sunlight, didn't count as undead for spells and abilities (so no extra damage from smite) and undetectable by spells/ cannot have his mind read. The heart would also always regenerate hit points each dawn unless destroyed at the castle with this information being the book of strahd. This makes the book more essential as the stuff you expect to work on vampires wont work and it will throw the party off balance a bit by conflicting with what the expect for vampires.
As others have said COS often lets players into battles with bosses at full resources you need to play bosses pretty well for them to not get nuked. My advice for strahd is that the vampire and hence [Tooltip Not Found] stat block relies pretty heavily on it's regeneration to avoid issues there's a few important things
Use hit and run tactics
Don't give additional sources of sun light for example giving a cleric the components for the dawn the module includes items for that
level 9 and up parties with easy access to radiant damage such as those with clerics or paladins can easily kill strahd in melee use him as ranged instead
Other than that there is a bunch of stuff on reddit and youtube to add to this adventure and I recommend using some of it.
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Please give tips and advice to DMs running a curse of strahd campaign.
I think the most important thing to bear in mind about Curse of Strahd is that it's pretty sandboxy, and that means it's pretty easy for the party to walk head-first into something that will just kill them all.
I see
can you recommend a good campaign.
Well, it wasn't my intent to say CoS isn't a good campaign. It's just a campaign that relies on the players and/or the DM providing direction, and where the DM may want to subtly discourage going in directions that will instantly kill the party (and don't trust the 'areas by level' table).
CoS is mostly designed around single large fights/day rather than several encounters (the exceptions are likely the Amber Temple and Castle Ravenloft but even then the Amber Temple is mostly one fight).
In addition, as mentioned, it is an open map where the players could choose to go anywhere. The DM then has to provide some guidance from NPC interactions and quests that tends to lead the party towards the objectives they can probably handle rather than the ones they can't. The campaign has enough milestones to get the characters to level 12-14 if they are completionists about it. At that level though, Strahd is not much of a challenge so you need to make him more challenging if they reach that level by adding some minions/helpers/allies and boosting his stats. Strahd is over-confident, not stupid.
If the players either listen to the DM or scout and are cautious and the DM lets the characters know that they aren't able to deal with what they find then the open world aspect is manageable. If the players like to plunge in then there are encounters that will kill them if they are too low a level and the DM should let it happen.
Finally, CoS is a horror module, there are lots of horror elements that some folks could find triggering so it isn't suitable for everyone.
Some examples:
- Witches that bake cookies with ground up children as a component (Brothers Grimm). They have some prisoners ready to be turned into ingredients when the characters reach their mill. (The parents give they children to the witch in exchange for the cookies).
- A werewolf tribe where children are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death. The "winner" is made into a new werewolf.
- An asylum run by a fallen/insane angel making a bride for Strahd from the body parts of villagers (Frankenstein) while minding the inmates of the asylum which are humanoids with a variety of animal features.
- A fisherman kidnaps a child and tries to drown her to improve the fishing by appeasing the spirits of the lake - or something like that.
- Strahd seduces and bites an unwilling woman who resembles his lost love (her spirit returns to a body in Barovia every so often because it can't leave) - this is fairly standard vampire trope fare.
- the Vistani are a group of NPCs that collaborate/are allied with Strahd which are also a thinly veiled imitation of the myths/lies about the actual Roma people - some folks really might not like this aspect.
- evil, corruption, betrayal, gloom, depression, hopelessness - these are pretty much the themes of Cos - so the players need to buy into the premise and like horror to really enjoy it.
Another good campaign to consider is Tomb of Annihilation. If you are just starting out playing 5e then being a bit less ambitious and looking at Lost Mines of Phandelver or Dragon of Icespire Peak might be worthwhile.
Hello all!
I just had a session of CoS today and I'm really hyped. I guess you know this feeling, where you don't care anymore and just need a place to let it all out. So yeah, I'd like to take this chance and talk about some general things that turned out really good in my campaign. Some of the points are mentioned more or less in the official adventure, others are completely made up. If you like some inspiration please read. If you got something to add, please share. If you think I did something very wrong, please point out (I'm new here). Thank you!
1.: Why is Strahd doing what he does?
In my Barovia the souls are washed lawful-evil because Strahd actually has a contract with a devil. Every living thing that does not die as lawful evil is reborn. Every living thing that dies as lawful evil is sent to Avernus to that devil. This way Strahd earned his immortality and power. That means Strahd needs new souls from time to time and has every reason to lure fresh people into his realm. Once they cross his border he just kills them and lets the souls reincarnate. This task has made him bored and frustrated by now. He knows, time is on his side and at some point, every soul breaks. So he is looking for the ultimate challenge. His biggest joy now is to break heroes without reincarnation. He needs to make them kill each other, commit suicide, or worse. Once he found a super-good hero he would even go so far to revive him/her. Physically Strahd can whipe out lvl1 characters without any effort. That's not fun anymore. That's why he needs that rule: without reincarnation. A hero which is dying with a good or chaotic personality is no challenge. Strahd needs the mental war, loosing a battle here and winning a fight there. Playing mind games, make heroes go crazy and desperate. That's what makes Strahd excited. And that's why he likes to take a risk if the players are getting strong. He loves the slight chance of loosing, like playing with fire, the possibility of dying that gives him back some faint echo of excitement.
Advantages for this background:
- Strahd has no reason to kill any player at any point, even if there is a chance of being killed. He loves the risk.
- The contract might reveal some detail which can be really useful to discover. Maybe it's a backdoor which makes Strahd less powerful once the players cause a breach of contract. I don't know yet details but this gives me many options along the way.
- Having a devil introduced makes it more easy to connect CoS to another adventure (in my case: Descent into Avernus)
2. Upgrade the Card Reading
In my adventure Strahd himself joins the Card Reading and gets his future predicted. I changed the Vistani lady into an extremely old female tortoise (think of a female Master Oogway). She reveals to Strahd truefully that his best chance to keep his status is to kill the heroes right away. Strahd gives his thanks and leaves with anticipation. The heroes are given similar helpful advice: Make Strahd emotional and irrational. A calm Strahd can never be defeated. He is too smart, a master of strategy, and has always one or more back doors to survive even a lost fight (reincarnation in his coffin is something very exciting for him). The heroes' only chance is: Make Strahd emotional: angry, blissful, frightened or ashamed. No matter what, just make him commit irrational decisions. That's the only way to break out of Strahd's game.
The tortoise wants Strahd to loose but she keeps her cool. Remaining lawful good is her best chance to stay out of Avernus, and she knows this. She feels that Strahd wants to make her flip. Strahd wants to turn the tortoise lawful evil, no matter how long it takes. And Strahd's strategy is to give her a rollercoaster of hope and disappointment with each set of heroes. Defeating the tortoise is Strahd's actual goal.
Advantages for this background:
- The players have a real reason to "repair" Strahd's realm. Murder-Hobos make the common population turn lawful evil. But every soul turned good is a direct loss for Strahd and endangers the contract Strahd has with his devil. Strahd needs to keep the supply flowing. My PCs are now very eager to explore the world and get creative. Focusing on Lvl-Ups and killing everybody who looks like an enemy is not a good strategy anymore.
- The tortoise can provide as much information as she wants. Since she is a seer she knows how much information is healthy for the group.
- The tortoise can act as a spiritual guide, like Master Splinter or the oracle from the Matrix. She could provide reincarnation (maybe sponsored by Strahd). If the tortoise dies before turning lawfil evil Strahd will take this very personally.
3. Tatyana
This point remains pretty much as described in the book, but I must mention it because of the impact on point 2:
Option 1: Ireena must be drowned in Krezk. (Her soul escapes Barovia, the PCs are doing something lawful evil though)
Option 2: Ireena must marry Strahd (Ireena sacrifices her soul and becomes a vampire)
Both options will cause Strahd to become completely irrational. Now he can be killed. I don't know yet how my party will deal with this coice. I love the moral conflict. But I also love the idea of challenging the patry to build a story. I want to make the party to get really creative and discovers an even better option: the legendary option No3. Finding such a legendary option 3 would mean: The PCs outplayed the DM. Nobody looses, every NPC is fine, the DM capitulates. This is the holy grail! The PC's chance to defeat me as Dungeon Master in the final quest: How can the PCs drive Strahd into madness while finding the impossible way? Well: By building a great story. This is how I want my DnD table.
The most important thing is as others have said COS is notorious for horror stories where players and DMs go too far with the dark themes or too edgy. Set clear expectations
A couple of locations in COS are lacking in content which can be an issue if you draw them as your item locations
I recommend adding something to these places if they come up on the taroka deck. Mt baratok has literally nothing going on no map or anything. Tsolenka pass is just a tower.
The book of strahd is also kind of lacking you'll want to add something to it. When I was running COS I linked it to the Heart. Basically while strahd had the heart active he was immune to sunlight, didn't count as undead for spells and abilities (so no extra damage from smite) and undetectable by spells/ cannot have his mind read. The heart would also always regenerate hit points each dawn unless destroyed at the castle with this information being the book of strahd. This makes the book more essential as the stuff you expect to work on vampires wont work and it will throw the party off balance a bit by conflicting with what the expect for vampires.
As others have said COS often lets players into battles with bosses at full resources you need to play bosses pretty well for them to not get nuked. My advice for strahd is that the vampire and hence [Tooltip Not Found] stat block relies pretty heavily on it's regeneration to avoid issues there's a few important things
Other than that there is a bunch of stuff on reddit and youtube to add to this adventure and I recommend using some of it.