I was reviewing ‘Curse of Strahd’ as well as some of the best supplements for it on Reddit (see Curse of Strahd Reloaded), and I started to wonder what some of the best Race and Class combinations would be for both clean sweeping the Adventure as well as defeating Strahd on his home turf in Castle Ravenloft. I wanted to know what the community thought? Now, Strahd in this case would have 255 HP base (not including his plot bonus (temp) of 50), Strength 20, CR 17 (for Proficiency Bonus) and the Spells of an 11th level Wizard. Players would start with the standard 27 Point Buy, and the only restriction would be that they cannot be an Artificer or a Blood Hunter. Eventually they could reach 11th level. Keeping in mind the treasures and a few passive bonuses they could gain. What would be your dream party of 6?
Knowing the magic items in the module, there must be:
A cleric. A warrior (of some kind) who uses longswords.
Knowing how difficult it is getting supplies (especially ink), I'd suggest there isn't:
A wizard. Any highly gear-dependant class. When every item is bought at a minimum of 10× price and sold at a maximum of 1/10×price, even purchasing something as mundane as a shield turned out to be an epic task.
Other than that, anything works.
As an aside, when I played it, our GM used 8-hour short rests and 7-day long-rests, wo we ended up just not playing rest-dependant classes.
That’s interesting, I’m assuming you’re using spell components in your game. I’ve looked over the full module and using components is most certainly not intended. As stands, if the DM is using the monsters and Strahd to their best with well thought out tactics (Strahd has an Intelligence of 20), no party could legitimately survive with their Cleric and any potential Wizard humbled that way. Even Chris Perkins played without Spell Components, which have obviously become a little used optional rule (not including big components such as with Heroes Feast).
As a tactical note. Strahd effectively has 120 feet of movement in any round, thanks to his base movement and 3 legendary actions. He can move through walls thanks to his lair actions, once every 2 or 3 rounds. He has every spell in the PHB available to him and I see no reason he wouldn’t take Misty Step and Mirror Image. Being a 500 year old warrior, he will wear the party down with attrition unless they are able to pin him down.
Even without upgrades, Strahd played dirty is pretty near unbeatable in his castle, because he can use a lair action to walk through walls so there's no easy way to prevent him from escaping and regenerating to full -- and he's got very high stealth as well (and nondetection), so pretty good chance of ambushing the PCs. Best bet is probably to level the castle with earthquake but level 11 PCs can't cast that.
Setting that aside, most of this is general party optimization. Some notes:
Nothing above 24 gp is regularly available, and the best merchant still charges 5x. I don't see any limits on selling things, but in my experience money was never a problem because there wasn't anything to spend your money on anyway (my players considered studded leather armor a reward beyond price...).
Wizards aren't going to be scribing any new spells, and any spell that requires expensive material components is out, but the automatic 2 spells per level gained is probably adequate.
There are a bunch of places in the module that mention things you can do by casting greater restoration. There is no diamond dust in the module...
There aren't any magic bows, so don't bring an archer unless they can solve that problem. That said, there are a number of fights where ranged damage is quite nice to have.
Don't expect to be using potions for healing, there's only a handful in the module and no way to buy more.
You don't want more than 2-3 martial characters, for the simple reason that there aren't enough magic weapons to go around.
All that in mind, I'd say my only really solid choices are
Hexblade Warlock/Paladin
Twilight Cleric
Some things to consider
A bard to be a designated skill monkey.
A monk to burn off legendary resistance by spamming stunning strike.
That’s interesting, I’m assuming you’re using spell components in your game.
We did, and the costs were brutal!
1,000 GP cost for the material component for [spell]greater restoration[spell] to cure the bearbarian of their night hag hanting (on top of paying for the NPC to cast the spell). This was after months (realtime) of just putting up with the reduction in HP damage because we had no practical way of stopping the haunting.
As an aside, night hag haunting combined with 7-day long rests will just plain kill a low level character. "Hey, here's 5d10 reduction on your maximum hit points."
250 GP to make a flask of holy water.
The GM straight-up told us that we would never find any pearls, annoying the character who had picked identify. :-(
I'm still not sure what the GM's goals were, but what actually happened is that we all went for non-resource-dependant characters. Rogue, Barbarian, Druid, Bard, Warlock.
It also turned the party into murderhobo packrats. We went through a house and the bearbarian's player looted and wrote down everything in the house. Buckets, plates, knives, forks, pots, pans, everything. We were so desperate for every last single copper piece. While the mayors house was burning down, instead of rescuring people half the party was looting the mayors dressing room for her jewellery and toiletries.
We fought over every tarnished silver fork! Silver! That can be turned into holy water!
Maybe it’s just me but that seems like horrifically bad adventure design. Obviously this was one of the first (honestly the first “real” adventure if only for quality writing) that 5e produced, but it still seems sloppy. I’m hoping that this is fixed with Phandelver.
1,000 GP cost for the material component for greater restoration to cure the bearbarian of their night hag hanting (on top of paying for the NPC to cast the spell).
The problem isn't the 1,000 gp. The problem is that no merchants sell diamond dust in the first place. Other than killing the hags (who exactly thought that a full coven of night hags is a level 4 encounter?) or not picking a fight with them, your only real option within the module is to restore the bones of St Andral, at which point the Hallow spell will keep the night hags out.
I've seen many different party combos survive a run through Barovia. A "power gaming" strategy isn't ideal, and indeed could be a good way to die.
Honestly, I would recommend the most old-school of parties: fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue. They offer options to answer almost any challenge. If adding two more, a paladin and a divine sorcerer would trivialize some encounters.
You are also not limited to a literal interpretation of the adventure and its omissions. Healing potions and holy water can be made (rules as written). It breaks nothing to treat gem treasure as diamonds. There are a few locations where wizard's arcane ink and spell components could be expected to be available, even if the module doesn't say so specifically. Treat this as treasure. Your party will!
The Ravenloft library, Khazan's tower, the Amber Temple and even Durst Manor all make sense for arcane ink and spell components. Kasimir may have some materials. The Mad Mage, if healed, would have many components at his disposal in his mansion. For divine spell components, Durst Manor, the Abbey, the Amber Temple, and possibly Argynvostholt are options.
Early radiant damage gives an advantage and a cleric is needed for the symbol
There are allot of undead, fiends etc so a paladin can do pretty well. Devotion and watcher are a good choice.
There are a couple of magic items that increase per attack damage which is particularly good for a fighter but can be used by any martial
If you want a wizard I recommend the scribe. Your spell book is a focus, you have reduced scribing costs and you can change damage types. When you get third level spells this includes radiant damage if you pick spirit shroud and fourth level spells if you pick sickening radiance. Often this damage will be unavoidable for vampires which really kills their regen. There are also quite a few other monsters will vulnerabilities or other weaknesses and you will likely be able to hit them pretty easily. Finally the wizards general utility with things like fly is intact.
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I was reviewing ‘Curse of Strahd’ as well as some of the best supplements for it on Reddit (see Curse of Strahd Reloaded), and I started to wonder what some of the best Race and Class combinations would be for both clean sweeping the Adventure as well as defeating Strahd on his home turf in Castle Ravenloft. I wanted to know what the community thought? Now, Strahd in this case would have 255 HP base (not including his plot bonus (temp) of 50), Strength 20, CR 17 (for Proficiency Bonus) and the Spells of an 11th level Wizard. Players would start with the standard 27 Point Buy, and the only restriction would be that they cannot be an Artificer or a Blood Hunter. Eventually they could reach 11th level. Keeping in mind the treasures and a few passive bonuses they could gain. What would be your dream party of 6?
Knowing the magic items in the module, there must be:
A cleric.
A warrior (of some kind) who uses longswords.
Knowing how difficult it is getting supplies (especially ink), I'd suggest there isn't:
A wizard.
Any highly gear-dependant class. When every item is bought at a minimum of 10× price and sold at a maximum of 1/10×price, even purchasing something as mundane as a shield turned out to be an epic task.
Other than that, anything works.
As an aside, when I played it, our GM used 8-hour short rests and 7-day long-rests, wo we ended up just not playing rest-dependant classes.
That’s interesting, I’m assuming you’re using spell components in your game. I’ve looked over the full module and using components is most certainly not intended. As stands, if the DM is using the monsters and Strahd to their best with well thought out tactics (Strahd has an Intelligence of 20), no party could legitimately survive with their Cleric and any potential Wizard humbled that way. Even Chris Perkins played without Spell Components, which have obviously become a little used optional rule (not including big components such as with Heroes Feast).
As a tactical note. Strahd effectively has 120 feet of movement in any round, thanks to his base movement and 3 legendary actions. He can move through walls thanks to his lair actions, once every 2 or 3 rounds. He has every spell in the PHB available to him and I see no reason he wouldn’t take Misty Step and Mirror Image. Being a 500 year old warrior, he will wear the party down with attrition unless they are able to pin him down.
Even without upgrades, Strahd played dirty is pretty near unbeatable in his castle, because he can use a lair action to walk through walls so there's no easy way to prevent him from escaping and regenerating to full -- and he's got very high stealth as well (and nondetection), so pretty good chance of ambushing the PCs. Best bet is probably to level the castle with earthquake but level 11 PCs can't cast that.
Setting that aside, most of this is general party optimization. Some notes:
All that in mind, I'd say my only really solid choices are
Some things to consider
We did, and the costs were brutal!
1,000 GP cost for the material component for [spell]greater restoration[spell] to cure the bearbarian of their night hag hanting (on top of paying for the NPC to cast the spell). This was after months (realtime) of just putting up with the reduction in HP damage because we had no practical way of stopping the haunting.
As an aside, night hag haunting combined with 7-day long rests will just plain kill a low level character. "Hey, here's 5d10 reduction on your maximum hit points."
250 GP to make a flask of holy water.
The GM straight-up told us that we would never find any pearls, annoying the character who had picked identify. :-(
I'm still not sure what the GM's goals were, but what actually happened is that we all went for non-resource-dependant characters. Rogue, Barbarian, Druid, Bard, Warlock.
It also turned the party into murderhobo packrats. We went through a house and the bearbarian's player looted and wrote down everything in the house. Buckets, plates, knives, forks, pots, pans, everything. We were so desperate for every last single copper piece. While the mayors house was burning down, instead of rescuring people half the party was looting the mayors dressing room for her jewellery and toiletries.
We fought over every tarnished silver fork! Silver! That can be turned into holy water!
Maybe it’s just me but that seems like horrifically bad adventure design. Obviously this was one of the first (honestly the first “real” adventure if only for quality writing) that 5e produced, but it still seems sloppy. I’m hoping that this is fixed with Phandelver.
The problem isn't the 1,000 gp. The problem is that no merchants sell diamond dust in the first place. Other than killing the hags (who exactly thought that a full coven of night hags is a level 4 encounter?) or not picking a fight with them, your only real option within the module is to restore the bones of St Andral, at which point the Hallow spell will keep the night hags out.
I've seen many different party combos survive a run through Barovia. A "power gaming" strategy isn't ideal, and indeed could be a good way to die.
Honestly, I would recommend the most old-school of parties: fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue. They offer options to answer almost any challenge. If adding two more, a paladin and a divine sorcerer would trivialize some encounters.
You are also not limited to a literal interpretation of the adventure and its omissions. Healing potions and holy water can be made (rules as written). It breaks nothing to treat gem treasure as diamonds. There are a few locations where wizard's arcane ink and spell components could be expected to be available, even if the module doesn't say so specifically. Treat this as treasure. Your party will!
The Ravenloft library, Khazan's tower, the Amber Temple and even Durst Manor all make sense for arcane ink and spell components. Kasimir may have some materials. The Mad Mage, if healed, would have many components at his disposal in his mansion. For divine spell components, Durst Manor, the Abbey, the Amber Temple, and possibly Argynvostholt are options.