Hi, i'm a relatively new DM. My characters (gnome bard, and human warlock) are coming close to finishing Curse of Strahd. Does anyone have any ideas for a homebrew/premade adventure to use after COS?
Hi, i'm a relatively new DM. My characters (gnome bard, and human warlock) are coming close to finishing Curse of Strahd. Does anyone have any ideas for a homebrew/premade adventure to use after COS?
Same characters? There's a shortage of campaigns designed for level 10+ characters though you could use the tail-end of a book that contains multiple adventures (you'll have trouble getting the PCs into the story, though).
If you have the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft book, it has a ton of stories/hooks to do a homebrew campaign remaining in the spooky setting similar to CoS
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I think Curse of Strahd ends better with retiring the PCs.
Perhaps do a summary of the remaining life of the characters, forever scarred and broken from their time in Barovia.
"The vampire was dead, never to return. Some semblance of peace could return to the folks of Barovia. But not to Bêlit. Broken by her experiences, she wandered, never settling. Eventually she fell, fighting a nameless, meaningless battle in a forgotten country."
they are around for strahds return and he tries to get revenge
the players try to destroy strahd permanently by going after the dark vestige of vampirisim. Such as in this video
the players end up in another domain of dread form van richten's guide
the players have some back story to pursue for example. I had set up for a warlock to go to want to go to Avernus and planned to bridge into descent into Avernus
You can also just run a time skip and say after a certain amount of time some one comes to collect them all for virtually any adventure and you could also let players swap out a character or two if they want during that time skip. This would work for any adventure because level 10+ heroes are established enough to be pulled into virtually any disaster
The Domains of Dread were created by the Raven Queen as a defense: an active darklord, by keeping the borders, also keeps certain undesirables out of the Shadowfell (most of which want to prey on the souls of the dead). Among these undesirables are certain Elder Evils and Orcus (also Vecna to a lesser degree, but he already has a foothold in the Amber Temple and has a lower interest). The PCs get to deal with this...
Yeah an angle that I went with as the player showed a desire to get to higher levels before strahd was that barovia itself was a kind of illusion design to torment strahd so ultimately the artifacts and even Ireena's body were phantasms if Ireena was freed the shadow fell would merely make an artificial Ireena. As the players began to interfere more by killing powerful figures other than strahd such as baba lysaga and generally destabilize the domain . The priests of osybus became involved to sure him up and ensure they didn't risk destroying him permanently.
What I would do is have the end of COS let them leave Barovia, but now they have to travel around, Sliders/Quantum Leap style through the demiplanes of dread looking for a way back home.
If you want to keep running premade adventures, then Candlekeep Mysteries has 17 different adventures that take you from 1-16. You could run the last 5 or so of them after CoS.
And also, as other have said, Van Richtens does provide hooks for a lot of other realms of Ravenloft.
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This advice may border on useless especially since if your players are new to the hobby, it’s pretty hard to say goodbye to your first character, but in my experience players often start getting bored around 13th level and we usually close a campaign up at 16th, so don’t get your hopes too high, your players may not want to play this campaign for much longer. But if you plan on playing to 20th or even beyond there make sure your players are with you on that. I know if your a good improv DM, seat-of-your-pants plane-shifting campaigns can be a blast, my party’s currently in a situation where we plane-shift every in game half hour.
Retire the characters and start a new campaign, would be my suggestion.
The culmination of dethroning Strahd is a big climax, and continuing on after that seems tenuous.
If you're committed to continuing to run with level 10 characters, then either run stuff from Van Richtens guide or homebrew your own forgotten realms campaign.
CoS is a module with a very limited objective - defeat Strahd so you can escape. This can make it a good stepping off point for anything you decide to do since Strahd is defeated (at least this time around).
The real problem is that you are faced with an infinite number of possibilities and very limited published content for higher levels.
Tales from the Yawning Portal has a couple of modules for level 11+. You could also take some of the tier 2 (level 5+ modules - particularly Dead in Thay) and scale them up. Candlekeep Mysteries has adventures to go from level 1-17. You could probably use several of these directly scale up some of the lower level ones. Candlekeep Mysteries has a common theme of books. Dungeon of the Mad Mage has content for level 5-20. However, it is all dungeons. On the other hand, you could easily drop the characters into DotMM from any other previous experience by having the characters end up at the Yawning Portal tavern in Waterdeep where the access to the dungeon starts.
Other than that, you could homebrew an adventure based in the Domains of Dread - connected to Cos since Barovia is just one of the Domains. You could have an inter-planar adventure and tie it into the new Astral plane adventures that are being released in a few months.
Basically, if you move to stuff you create then you can do anything you can imagine. :)
The party transitions into basically being the ghostbusters.
From there you lean into what ever your players seemed to enjoy the most.
You can set up episodic sessions that are basically dungeon dives based on monsters and the lore around them, or larger dives into other domains of dread.
Looking at Van Richetens is a great way to grab some inspiration.
Looking at Thay is a great way of going after necromancers.
Depending on where you end up you could have them run into organizations like the Order of the Gauntlet or some equivalent that would be involved with the same stuff.
There are countless movies/books/media to rip off for this, just pick your favorite, or the favorite parts of ones your like and mash them together.
So if this is the general advice given, what’s the point of having all of these bad ass effects and abilities for level 10-20 characters if almost nobody plays those levels?
Hi, i'm a relatively new DM. My characters (gnome bard, and human warlock) are coming close to finishing Curse of Strahd. Does anyone have any ideas for a homebrew/premade adventure to use after COS?
Fire!! everything's on fire!! Mwah ha ha...
Same characters? There's a shortage of campaigns designed for level 10+ characters though you could use the tail-end of a book that contains multiple adventures (you'll have trouble getting the PCs into the story, though).
If you have the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft book, it has a ton of stories/hooks to do a homebrew campaign remaining in the spooky setting similar to CoS
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I think Curse of Strahd ends better with retiring the PCs.
Perhaps do a summary of the remaining life of the characters, forever scarred and broken from their time in Barovia.
"The vampire was dead, never to return. Some semblance of peace could return to the folks of Barovia. But not to Bêlit. Broken by her experiences, she wandered, never settling. Eventually she fell, fighting a nameless, meaningless battle in a forgotten country."
There are a few options
You can also just run a time skip and say after a certain amount of time some one comes to collect them all for virtually any adventure and you could also let players swap out a character or two if they want during that time skip. This would work for any adventure because level 10+ heroes are established enough to be pulled into virtually any disaster
My plan for the end of my CoS game is:
The Domains of Dread were created by the Raven Queen as a defense: an active darklord, by keeping the borders, also keeps certain undesirables out of the Shadowfell (most of which want to prey on the souls of the dead). Among these undesirables are certain Elder Evils and Orcus (also Vecna to a lesser degree, but he already has a foothold in the Amber Temple and has a lower interest). The PCs get to deal with this...
Yeah an angle that I went with as the player showed a desire to get to higher levels before strahd was that barovia itself was a kind of illusion design to torment strahd so ultimately the artifacts and even Ireena's body were phantasms if Ireena was freed the shadow fell would merely make an artificial Ireena. As the players began to interfere more by killing powerful figures other than strahd such as baba lysaga and generally destabilize the domain . The priests of osybus became involved to sure him up and ensure they didn't risk destroying him permanently.
What I would do is have the end of COS let them leave Barovia, but now they have to travel around, Sliders/Quantum Leap style through the demiplanes of dread looking for a way back home.
If you want to keep running premade adventures, then Candlekeep Mysteries has 17 different adventures that take you from 1-16. You could run the last 5 or so of them after CoS.
And also, as other have said, Van Richtens does provide hooks for a lot of other realms of Ravenloft.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.This advice may border on useless especially since if your players are new to the hobby, it’s pretty hard to say goodbye to your first character, but in my experience players often start getting bored around 13th level and we usually close a campaign up at 16th, so don’t get your hopes too high, your players may not want to play this campaign for much longer. But if you plan on playing to 20th or even beyond there make sure your players are with you on that. I know if your a good improv DM, seat-of-your-pants plane-shifting campaigns can be a blast, my party’s currently in a situation where we plane-shift every in game half hour.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
Retire the characters and start a new campaign, would be my suggestion.
The culmination of dethroning Strahd is a big climax, and continuing on after that seems tenuous.
If you're committed to continuing to run with level 10 characters, then either run stuff from Van Richtens guide or homebrew your own forgotten realms campaign.
CoS is a module with a very limited objective - defeat Strahd so you can escape. This can make it a good stepping off point for anything you decide to do since Strahd is defeated (at least this time around).
The real problem is that you are faced with an infinite number of possibilities and very limited published content for higher levels.
Tales from the Yawning Portal has a couple of modules for level 11+. You could also take some of the tier 2 (level 5+ modules - particularly Dead in Thay) and scale them up. Candlekeep Mysteries has adventures to go from level 1-17. You could probably use several of these directly scale up some of the lower level ones. Candlekeep Mysteries has a common theme of books. Dungeon of the Mad Mage has content for level 5-20. However, it is all dungeons. On the other hand, you could easily drop the characters into DotMM from any other previous experience by having the characters end up at the Yawning Portal tavern in Waterdeep where the access to the dungeon starts.
Other than that, you could homebrew an adventure based in the Domains of Dread - connected to Cos since Barovia is just one of the Domains. You could have an inter-planar adventure and tie it into the new Astral plane adventures that are being released in a few months.
Basically, if you move to stuff you create then you can do anything you can imagine. :)
The party transitions into basically being the ghostbusters.
From there you lean into what ever your players seemed to enjoy the most.
You can set up episodic sessions that are basically dungeon dives based on monsters and the lore around them, or larger dives into other domains of dread.
Looking at Van Richetens is a great way to grab some inspiration.
Looking at Thay is a great way of going after necromancers.
Depending on where you end up you could have them run into organizations like the Order of the Gauntlet or some equivalent that would be involved with the same stuff.
There are countless movies/books/media to rip off for this, just pick your favorite, or the favorite parts of ones your like and mash them together.
Thanks for all the ideas! This has definitely given me some inspiration. I'll probably just end the campaign though...
Fire!! everything's on fire!! Mwah ha ha...
Perhaps they can escape Barovia, but then wind up in another Domain of Dread of your own creation
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So if this is the general advice given, what’s the point of having all of these bad ass effects and abilities for level 10-20 characters if almost nobody plays those levels?