Relatively new DM here. I’m running CoS and the group is having fun. The party is lv5 after beating the Bonegrinder and finding the Tomb of Strahd. They are currently in vallaki, to help keep tracking of everything that can happen in the town I worked out a set of events happening as the party play, that way if the party mess around then the festival would happen and the vampires will terrorise the town. Now unfortunately some terrible rolls meant the party failed to persuade, intimate or track milivoj. As a back up I decided that the vampires chose the kill the kid and wrap up loose ends while the party was at the Bonegrinder. I intended to have the party find the body the next in game day, and have some clues.

Unfortunately The party made up for a lack of good dice rolls by splitting the party, half went to the burgermaster and spilt their secrets in a hope of seeing how he reacted, this triggers a guard led investigation. Simultaneously the other half went to the church and found the body beginning their own investigation. The burgermaster fast tracking the investigation and the party went head first to stay ahead of the guards barged into the coffinmakers shop. The session ended there, giving me time to plan.

So to my question, this is a horror campaign and meant to be hard. The party (6 players) is lv5 and against 6 vampire spawn. As DM do I allow this to play out for the parties choices?

A side note, one party member came to me OOG to discuss a spell (daylight) they understand that as DM it’s not always good trying to throw wild cards and hope the DM rolls with it. I looked up the spell and it’s not daylight but I really like my players trying to be clever and I want to reward them thinking tactically. So I’m thinking of allowing it to be daylight but I don’t wanted to trivialise the encounter. To balance the fight I’m planning to allow the vampires to bite without needing to grapple? This way they can potentially get health back but they won’t regenerate because of the daylight spell. I feel this should balance out but I’m curious if anyone else has experience with similar situations?

thanks in advance for any advice.

I've run CoS a few times and my take on it is that Vallaki is a town that is written to explode. There are several ways it can happen but the players are meant to leave Vallaki running for their lives.

The vampire spawn can be a really tough, potentially devastating fight. But a clever group can get through it. If the vampire spawn don't mess them up, there are a lot of other ways you can scare them out of town.

The best way, in my experience is to set up a scenario where Izek sees Ireena and loses his mind trying to take her. Strahd's spies inform him that Ireena is on the loose and potentially in danger and he shows up along with some minions to take her for himself. The Burgomaster calls in the city guard and chaos ensues. The players will naturally want to get involved initially but then when it all goes south, they're very likely to run. Let the wereravens at the inn intercept them and offer to help them get out of town.

Another way is to have them witness the festival, get blamed for the Burgomaster's embarrassment, and the guards come after them and try to string them up in the town square. Hang one of them if you have to and let Rictavio (Van Richten) rescue the body as he also tries to get out of town. He can bring the PC back to life with his raise dead spell scroll and meet up with the players outside of town and point them in the next direction.

There are other ways. But in short, Vallaki is a powder keg. Pulling on any of the plot threads leads to inevitable danger. They will run out of that town fleeing for their lives.

Thanks for the advice. So I should just let it play out and if the party run then they run. 

for some reason despite there being a lot in Valaki, I saw it a bit as a hub place, it’s central in the map and has the blue water inn so I wasn’t sure if the players were meant to take part and hopefully steer how the powder keg explodes so the fallout favours a faction who then takes control of the town (or keeps control). 

I’ll bear your advice in mind when flavouring how NPCs react and how events act out.

Quote from M3theston >>

Thanks for the advice. So I should just let it play out and if the party run then they run. 

for some reason despite there being a lot in Valaki, I saw it a bit as a hub place, it’s central in the map and has the blue water inn so I wasn’t sure if the players were meant to take part and hopefully steer how the powder keg explodes so the fallout favours a faction who then takes control of the town (or keeps control). 

I’ll bear your advice in mind when flavouring how NPCs react and how events act out.

How it plays out is up to the DM and the player decisions.

In the game I ran, the players were approached to overthrow the mayor in favor of the other faction seeking control. The party was really unimpressed with the other faction and didn't trust them. They ended up getting the other faction run out of town, by starting a conflict between them and the mayor/guards and then overthrowing the mayor and Izek once they were weakened a bit. They then got the priest to step in and help run the town at least on a temporary basis since his sister is the wife of the mayor and is a logical choice to take over.

The group also managed to follow Milivoj, were able to defeat the vampire spawn by using the doors/rooms as choke points to limit how many could attack at once - though it was still a tough fight - and recovered the bones for the priest.

So, it played out a bit differently. There are lots of options. In this case, I'd tend to let it play out a bit perhaps to help the party learn that splitting up can be a bad idea. They should get the idea that no place is safe so strength in numbers is always a factor.I wouldn't force a TPK unless the party can't realize that the situation is dire enough that they need everyone.

P.S. As you noted, Daylight isn't sunlight and I would not enhance the spells effect to that extent. You might allow it a one round temporary effect as the undead are surprised by the light but when they realize it isn't hurting them, the effect would end. 

There are a few reasons not to upgrade the spell. It becomes overpowered against undead, especially vampires, but more importantly it degrades the value of some of the key artifacts and items that the party is looking for. The sunblade has far less impact later on if the cleric has been able to get the same effect since 5th level.

Hi M3th,

good post. Vallaki is always the hardest and most varied for CoS. I have ran CoS 5 times and each time has been different. I usually ending up burning it the ground. 

If the players die they die. But they don't really die, do they? In fact, dying is sort of critical to the overall story and reveals the focus of power for Strahd. And as we know, splitting the part is ALWAYS bad. Each encounter is setup for 4 players.

As far as the story goes in Vallaki, the party will only work the story that YOU reveal. The main goal of the campaign is to gear up, find and remove Strahds power an defeat him. If anything does not push towards that then it is unneeded. The party still has Wizard of Wine, Kresk, The Amber Temple, the Gilthanouis tree, Berez, the Werewolf den AND castle Ravenloft. In fact, you could really only reveal the atory based on the Tarot Card readings that shows them the three artifacts and thier ally, then just play out those encounters with no one the wiser.

Well, Vallaki can be a hub of sorts. It’s certainly the most well-equipped town in Barovia. They may need to return. But imagine them realizing that they have to return to Vallaki but they know they might be persona non grata. They can sneak back in under disguise, find out that the Burgomaster has been killed and Lady Wachter and her cult have taken over and are demanding that everyone openly worship Strahd. There’s now an underground resistance brewing, etc. Lot’s of fun. 

I do like this idea, having to sneak back in after after the fallout. I had already home-brewed a couple points, so I had intended for the bones to have an alarm spell. I may bring the festival events forward a few days and have the town go into meltdown early.

Thanks, that’s a good point on the magic items. I wasn’t intending on providing full benefits of sunlight, just enough so the player doesn’t feel they wasted their efforts. A surprise round could be interesting as it would allow them to focus on one and skew the odds or run away, although I think the paladin may actually fight and die if that happened.

the first session in vallaki played out with one player missing so I made them kidnapped and the party never met the burgomaster or Wachter family. Then they got really into getting the bones. I was hoping to create a moral dilemma by pushing how bad both factions are and having the party pick the lesser evil but I was waiting for a natural transition point to introduce the Wachter family.

it’s feeling like I should let it play out, up to this point with a party of 6 the encounters haven’t been to difficult so this may be the best time to show barovia being lethal.

Late to the convo, but I personally think the vampire spawn encounter is poorly designed. As written, It's positioned in an area that low level PCs are just bound to stumble into with no warning. My group of seven 4th level PCs found it and we managed to escape when our Blood Hunter sacrificed himself to cover everyone else's retreat. I want to be very clear, this encounter would have been deadly for a party of seven 8th level characters. And players are likely to be caught completely unaware by it, long before they reach that level. 

I recommend DMs make one or two of the following adjustments to it if your party is level 8 or lower.

• Add a villager corpse, drained of blood, at the top of the stairs. Think about it, normally an encounter this deadly would have a number of tells to foreshadow the meat grinder players are walking into. A dragon's lair would have charred corpses, burning trees etc. This encounter is far deadlier than most dragon encounters and there are zero red flags built into the adventure. 
• Adjust the number of Vampire Spawn to your parties level to make it deadly but doable. For a level 3 party, two vampire Spawn are sufficiently deadly, but at least attainable.
• Have one Vampire Spawn burst from their crate per round of combat. When my group encountered this fight, one player lost 40 hit point in one round. 3 of them were grappled. They got swarmed by an enemy that had zero chance of defeating. If you start with one or two Vampire Spawn and introduce more each round, players will get the message and will have a chance to retreat before that get completely overwhelmed.
• Don't let this be their first encounter with a hostile vampire spawn. For my group, this was their first time encountering any vampires in the adventure, and there were 5 of them! Even in Dark Souls games, you encounter ONE black knight to teach you how to fight them before hordes of them have their way with you. So I urge DMs to make sure your PCs fight at least one vampire spawn before they ever reach Valaki. Just so they aren't trying to figure out how to kill them, while getting savaged on all sides by them.