I am the DM for a party of five Level 3 characters, and after running a few sessions of my homebrew adventures, I decided it would be a good opportunity to transition them into a published adventure; Curse of Strahd. Now that I have gone over most of the adventure, I have a few questions:
First, Old Bonegrinder (Chapter 6) is listed as being a 4th Level area. However, it involves three Night Hags, which creates a coven, and that makes them CR 7 each! The PCs would have to be an average level of 11 just for it to be a hard encounter, one step down from deadly. Yester Hill (Chapter 14) is supposed to be a 6th Level area, but with 6 Druids, 6 Berserkers, 3 Vine Blights, 6 Needle Blights and 12 Twig Blights, the PCs need to be an average level of 13...what am I missing?
Second, if you perform a Tarokka reading before the adventure, and you plan on those results, what happens if an in-game reading is performed and it changes the results of a treasure location that the PCs have already been to? Try to steer them back to a location to search it all over again?
Thanks in advance! I'm sure I will have more questions.
CoS is not a safe module, there are a lot of things that will kill characters that are unprepared, incautious, or unlucky.
Bonegrinder is not necessarily a combat encounter, if it's turned into one, a single coven night hag or two non-coven ones make for a reasonable fight, if the party picks a fight worse than that, they're gonna have a problem.
Yester hill is a massive area, the plants are a single hard encounter for a lvl 6 party, the druids and berserkers will probably be more like three consecutive hard encounters.
As for the card reading, if you do it by the book, something happened since the players searched the area and the target is now there. Either other NPCs act in the background moving things for safekeeping, or Madam Eva has enough power over the domain that when she does a reading, the world changes. Alternatively, you could stack the deck to get the same reading.
Bonegrinder is not necessarily a combat encounter, if it's turned into one, a single coven night hag or two non-coven ones make for a reasonable fight, if the party picks a fight worse than that, they're gonna have a problem.
I'm just trying to figure out where the designers got the ideas for the suggested levels of each area. They seem to defy the math of the encounter builder by a lot.
Bonegrinder is not necessarily a combat encounter, if it's turned into one, a single coven night hag or two non-coven ones make for a reasonable fight, if the party picks a fight worse than that, they're gonna have a problem.
I'm just trying to figure out where the designers got the ideas for the suggested levels of each area. They seem to defy the math of the encounter builder by a lot.
The fights you listed are not unreasonable for a group at that level to fight, as long as they don't do something stupid, like fighting everything at once.
CoS is designed to kill characters that do stupid stuff, characters are supposed to have to sacrifice their morals to achieve any kind of victory. One of the very first potential encounters pits a group of potentially level 1 characters against 5 CR1 dire wolves, they can easily run away, but if they fight they will most likely die. One of the random night encounters is a ghost that will try to possess someone then run away to kill them elsewhere. This is not a nice place.
CoS is designed to kill characters that do stupid stuff, characters are supposed to have to sacrifice their morals to achieve any kind of victory.
I agree. It's a horror movie. If you act like Jamie Lee Curtis, you survive. If you act like Linnea Quigley, you die. (I apologize for those being the only examples that I could think of, it's a pretty misogynistic genre).
Encountering Madam Eva occurs pretty early on. And if your party dodges the area, put her on the road.
Its worth mentioning that having the card reading isn't necessary for the adventure. Its a pretty well established encounter in the module, but because you do a base reading ahead of time, the party isn't required to do it.
But like Wysperra said, if you WANT the party to do this encounter, you could put her on the road OR work it into one of the encounters the party has with Ezmerelda D'avenir
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Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I think the reading helps the party with clues. Some of the locations are pretty obscure without the reading. The reading also lets the party know about the three artifacts when initially they don't know they exist
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I am the DM for a party of five Level 3 characters, and after running a few sessions of my homebrew adventures, I decided it would be a good opportunity to transition them into a published adventure; Curse of Strahd. Now that I have gone over most of the adventure, I have a few questions:
First, Old Bonegrinder (Chapter 6) is listed as being a 4th Level area. However, it involves three Night Hags, which creates a coven, and that makes them CR 7 each! The PCs would have to be an average level of 11 just for it to be a hard encounter, one step down from deadly. Yester Hill (Chapter 14) is supposed to be a 6th Level area, but with 6 Druids, 6 Berserkers, 3 Vine Blights, 6 Needle Blights and 12 Twig Blights, the PCs need to be an average level of 13...what am I missing?
Second, if you perform a Tarokka reading before the adventure, and you plan on those results, what happens if an in-game reading is performed and it changes the results of a treasure location that the PCs have already been to? Try to steer them back to a location to search it all over again?
Thanks in advance! I'm sure I will have more questions.
As for the Tarokka reading, if you want to do it in-game, you just stack the deck so you get the cards you were planning to get.
CoS is not a safe module, there are a lot of things that will kill characters that are unprepared, incautious, or unlucky.
Bonegrinder is not necessarily a combat encounter, if it's turned into one, a single coven night hag or two non-coven ones make for a reasonable fight, if the party picks a fight worse than that, they're gonna have a problem.
Yester hill is a massive area, the plants are a single hard encounter for a lvl 6 party, the druids and berserkers will probably be more like three consecutive hard encounters.
As for the card reading, if you do it by the book, something happened since the players searched the area and the target is now there. Either other NPCs act in the background moving things for safekeeping, or Madam Eva has enough power over the domain that when she does a reading, the world changes. Alternatively, you could stack the deck to get the same reading.
Encountering Madam Eva occurs pretty early on. And if your party dodges the area, put her on the road.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I'm just trying to figure out where the designers got the ideas for the suggested levels of each area. They seem to defy the math of the encounter builder by a lot.
Nobody said you have to have all the Hags present.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The fights you listed are not unreasonable for a group at that level to fight, as long as they don't do something stupid, like fighting everything at once.
CoS is designed to kill characters that do stupid stuff, characters are supposed to have to sacrifice their morals to achieve any kind of victory. One of the very first potential encounters pits a group of potentially level 1 characters against 5 CR1 dire wolves, they can easily run away, but if they fight they will most likely die. One of the random night encounters is a ghost that will try to possess someone then run away to kill them elsewhere. This is not a nice place.
I agree. It's a horror movie. If you act like Jamie Lee Curtis, you survive. If you act like Linnea Quigley, you die. (I apologize for those being the only examples that I could think of, it's a pretty misogynistic genre).
Its worth mentioning that having the card reading isn't necessary for the adventure. Its a pretty well established encounter in the module, but because you do a base reading ahead of time, the party isn't required to do it.
But like Wysperra said, if you WANT the party to do this encounter, you could put her on the road OR work it into one of the encounters the party has with Ezmerelda D'avenir
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I think the reading helps the party with clues. Some of the locations are pretty obscure without the reading. The reading also lets the party know about the three artifacts when initially they don't know they exist
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Thank you all for the feedback!
Did anyone create battlemaps for CoS? My group really likes using miniatures whenever possible.