Last night, I ran a few hours of Curse of Strahd for my brother and sister. The three of us are relatively inexperienced, and... This module is surprisingly rough for a two person party!
We started the party at level 1 (first mistake), and entered through A Plea For Help. I rolled for encounters on the 5 hour walk through the woods (am I supposed to?), and surprisingly none happened! Lucky us! Or so I thought.
Then, just beyond the main gate, the party found the corpse with the note. While one of the players was reading the note, I started the other part noted in the book. You know, the one where if the players take too long off the path, a pack of five Dire Wolves (Are you kidding me??) attacks the party. Then we realized that neither player had Darkvision, so the minotaur had to spend an action lighting a torch. (How'd he read the note?) As the Warforged fell, the Minotaur fled back to the gates, predictably ended by the wolves.
Party Wipe #1: five Dire Wolves. Strahd: 1, Party: 0
I then decided to allow the party to keep their characters, and wake up nearby, on the path, with 1 level of Exhaustion, and an Indefinite Madness effect for each of them. Is that fine? I don't know how long I can fit that in to the Curse of Strahd theme. I need to be fair with these two, since we live in the same house. But I also need to play this as spooky and challenging.
For this second part, we decided to try to run through the Death House, since that was structured to allow us to go from level 1 to 3. Easy, right?
They died to the Animated Armor at the top of the stairs. The druid didn't think they'd need to prepare a healing spell, since they only had 2 slots to use at level one. Oh, and the Exhaustion never became an issue.
Party Wipe #2: Animated Armor. Strahd: 1, Death House: 1, Party: 0
We're getting frustrated at this point. I decide to go ahead and level the party up to 3 right then (Why didn't I do that before???), and had them select one of the four characters I had in reserve to play. They chose the Tabaxi Wild Magic Sorcerer. Because we REALLY need an arcane roulette wheel with a gambling addiction? Oh, and I had them add another madness effect. I'm sure it doesn't actually add anything to their characters, they don't seem the type to roleplay that.
And back into the House they go. This time, dismantling the Armor that had stopped them before.
Death house is intended to kill people with a low chance a single player being cautious would live through it. The module hints at dark powers being there and offers a d4 of options. Can find some free expanded ideas if you don't care to think of any. can make it from a d20 to d100 of chances and follow the adventure league system where first 4 levels you can come back and 5th is when you need some rez abilities. So if they are dying a bit too much, can offer some boons to increase their stats a bit for up to 7 days as a bit of cushion.
Would make encounters easier by reducing the numbers of some enemies and many of the encounters are servants of Strahd, who could knock em out instead of kill so that it does the intended crush the spirits of some and those who are resilient get to be played with more for the vampire lords amusement. Granted many areas are fairly tough unless like any module expects stupidly perfect counters to each encounter and perfect working together. Arganvostholt is a place where you could be level 5 or 6 and be fine, but level 8 should be easy, yet lack of working together can make there a deadly place.
If any other advice, maybe when they meet Ireena, make her a veteran or champion so she can be a big help to them early on, and the random ally to be not Van Ritchten or Ezmerelda so that they can be there to help in a few places (usually seperate unless party gets one of them as random ally so you shouldn't normally have both since they are fairly powerful allies) Can empower one of the weaker ones to slowly increase in power.
The game I played, our ally was Father Donovich, which an adept is fairly useless against Strahd to somehow not die and give inspirations out on his turn, maybe give a fitting class for the description of the npc and maybe half, or half+1 class levels as the party.
Worst case scenario, you can do the Descent into Avernous thing and introduce a mercy coin and Strahd could show up and end combat for them or steal hero points from pathfinder to do things for em to help balance it, since modules are intended for 4 to 5 party members not including the DM. They may just need some npc allies to simply take the brunt of some hits and bring the party up to module size and help them out a bunch. After the death house and the into that is. Maybe have the npc's offer a quest or something to help get rid of the dark aura's of death they got. (since in the very first village, a vampire spawn or walking out of the gates has some nasty encounters can wreck them.)
Make sure they know they're supposed to run away from a lot of stuff. If they need to compromise on their ethics to survive, don't give them shit about it, that's the nature of a horror game. So if they kill a rat to escape Death House rather than get slaughtered by the shambling mound, they made the right decision. If they walk past Old Bonegrinder instead of charging in and getting killed by the witches, don't say the Paladin loses his powers. If they're picking a minotaur and a warforged as their character, they sound like they want to brawl. Uh-uh. If they want to brawl, stop right now and do Mines of Phandelver or Sunless Citadel. Curse of Strahd is about running, hiding, thinking and occasional panicked frenzied fights, trying to gain the information you need to finally turn the tables on the villain.
Two players is a small party, but it can work in horror. Think Talahasee and Columbus in Zombieland or Peter Vincent and Charley Brewster in Fright Night. Understand that the module was written for a group of four or five, so nerf encounters accordingly. In the second half of Death House there are a couple places where a party of two lowbies could get in a lot of trouble. There's a ghoul ambush and a couple shadows, iirc, not to mention the shambling mound. Make a plan for a way they could solve the problem without dice rolling.
One time a small party had to use the pulley system from the one area to lift the gate to the final room. They even took the pulley out of the dumbwaiter and set up a double pulley, then tied the rope off to a spike. When the shambler came out they ran, ducking under the gate (the double pulley gave them more lifting power, but it couldn't lift it all the way). When the shambler came under the gate after them, they cut the rope, bringing the door down on it's head. Did it kill the thing? Probably not, it pinned it down and gave them a chance to run. They got full credit from me. Think of stuff like that.
I'll just repeat: CoS is not a hack-and-slash campaign.
As Hryssar points out, there are allies to be found, You should take full advantage of them. The ravens might be extra helpful.
Roll for random encounters before you start, as part of your prep. Think about whether the encounter is a threat your players can handle, and how they should handle it.
Thank you both for your advice so far. It's difficult for us, my brother especially, to adapt to a roleplay heavy format, especially given how much time we've had with DDO. That one's Curse of Strahd adventure is VERY different from this one. Especially with Reapers and Championed enemies in a combat focused environment.
Curse of Strahd is the first adventure we've purchased, and with the local game shop going out of business, it'll be a while before we can afford another. We've agreed on some changes to adapt, while we all learn the module:
We've agreed on a "Lives" system, similar to video games. If one of their characters falls, that's one strike. Three and they're gone permanently. This might not fit the theme, but I was heavily pressured by my family to implement it, so we agreed upon it.
I've prepared some PCs to play in a game. I'll never get to play as a player, so I'm allowing my brother and sister to use them as additional characters. With the caveat that these ones die "properly" the first time. This brings the party up to 4, with two characters per player.
I'll look into how to run the allies for the module soon. We (I) got excited, and started to run this a bit early.
I finally decided to stop drawing the map for every room. This sped things up considerably. I did print out a copy of the map for the Death House though, because having a quick reference for the layout helped with "which way are you going?"
We started at level 3, and leveled up where we would have at level one (much to the annoyance of the druid). This help us survive the basement, and should put the party at a reasonable level after Death House.
Things were going so well! They appeased the cultists, earning the house's favor, and then... My brother, who's played this adventure in DDO, was sure you had to fight the Shambling Mound in order to clear the dungeon. When the regular chanting resumed after appeasing the cultists (If I read that right), he became paranoid that they had not completed the required task (he had technically speaking). So he attacked the sleeping mound. The resulting encounter burned through the group's spell slots.
But defeating the mound was fine, I think? They had technically appeased the cult before hand. So the chanting continued, and my brother became even more paranoid. My sister had the right idea, to leave, but my brother was not convinced. So they attacked the altar, and, with a Nat 20, chipped the altar. There's nothing in the book describing the properties of the altar, whether it was magically protected or not, but I think damaging the altar was enough. I considered the house to be angry now, triggering the escape sequence.
This is where the D&D 5E version differs the most from DDO. There's an escape sequence. You don't just go down, kill the mound, then click "Finish Quest" to leave. Long story short, the Minotaur escapes, carrying the lifeless Warforged and my unconscious Tabaxi Wild Mage. They abandoned my cleric to rat swarms on the third floor.
Here's the big catch. The lives thing we agreed on works best when the party wipes. I can just have them all wake up nearby just a little more crazy, and with one less "life". Now one of them has survived, an NPC is unconscious about to wake up in 4 hours, another is rat food, and the nature robot is very out of commission. I'm not sure how to spin this around so that it makes sense. I'll have to look, maybe one of the modules allies can make sense of how this battered piece of machinery can work.
In the meantime, my sister has said she'll play as that unconscious Tabaxi during the next session. Wait... This means the party is now down both healers. Well ain't that something?
EDIT: Oh yeah, and things went a little smoother once I reminded them that they can take rests, both short and long. They were kind of just pushing forward with all of the everything until then.
I played the I6 module of Ravenloft back in the day, and am just now getting back into the game with my kids. Is the Curse of Strahd a collection of additional stories or a redo of th original? I had been telling them how much fun we had playing the original in the day and was wondering if this was a similar story material?
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Chaotic Good- Doing the right thing even if that means killing everyone else in the process.
It appears to be a rewrite of the original, all into one book. I've never played the original, but I'd imagine veteran players might get a little confused at the placement of events and locations. I know my brother did, but he played one of the two MMO versions, which are more combat focused.
You'll need the three core 5E D&D books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual). The text on the back says it's for character levels 1-10, but if you've got a small or inexperienced party, they'll have some difficulties if you run this as written. There are still a number of fights that aren't meant to be fought.
That said, once the party enters Barovia proper (either through the Death House or by skipping it), it's very open ended. I'm looking forward to seeing just how far my brother and sister can get, even with our homeruling.
Not a rewrite of I6. It reuses the village and the castle maps, etc, but the "theme park" is about 10 times bigger than just the village and the castle. Say I6 plus maybe 5 of the old 2e Ravenloft modules.
Also, CoS says right up front in the very first few paragraphs that everything is balanced around a party of 4 to 6 PCs. If you only have two characters going through it, you're going to need to do a bunch of work to nerf the combat encounters to appropriate levels - either reducing the number of enemies, or swapping them out for less deadly monsters. Playing CoS as-is with only two characters is basically ensuring that you're going to have to run with a "party wipes - reset to your last saved checkpoint" mentality.
I think giving the PCs madness is too much since there are only two players. Most of the encounters need to be way way nerfed in order to avoid party wipes even with an NPC to help.
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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?"
My learnings from running Out of the Abyss with 2 (sometimes 3) players is that the written books are written to be balanced for 4 (quite experienced) players. While I was running it I quickly discovered that it's my responsibility to prepare the story in a balanced fashion depending on the players and their experience. Here are some mechanics I used to level the playing field, might be something of value in it for you:
- I created a homebrew NPC with several links to the main storyline which gave them some 'missing' party elements (as you only have 2 players you don't have the ideal setting of a Tank, Healer and DPS). They where playing a mage and a rogue with some healing power, so I gave them a barbarian, big fat fighter who got captured while he was wandering into a strange cavern over night, drunk.
- Also I injected the regular treasures with means of healing, as they didn't have a cleric. So I placed some minor healing pots, healing kits, bandages etc.
- For deadly encounters I sometimes made it just a little bit more obvious that this might be very deadly, if there was an opportunity I oftenly introduced another NPC who was hunting the monster for a contract (often tied to a Faction)
- Then if all else fails, there's an easy option (already mentioned) just lower the amount of creatures, or in case of a large creature/monster lower it's stats by the amount of players missing (I used 25% rounded up, as they had 1 NPC with them)
- And then, I think the DM guide offers one more solution, which shouldn't be used too often is to deviate from your dice roll to just change that one outcome...I limit it to max 1 time per encounter where I try from tipping the scales back into their favor if I see a wipe coming.
- Ohh, be generous with inspiration! They can use it.
- Then if all else fails, there's an easy option (already mentioned) just lower the amount of creatures, or in case of a large creature/monster lower it's stats by the amount of players missing (I used 25% rounded up, as they had 1 NPC with them)
Yes, just because the book says 12 Dire Wolves show up doesn't all of them have to be there. You could even change it to regular wolves. You're the GM, you have ultimate control over everything, if something is too hard, make it easier, if it's too easy, keep it that way or make it harder.
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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?"
Curse of Strahd is a tough module for a party of 4 @ level, and by design. You are prior to death house still underlevel and you are short 2 assumed other players. My recommendation would be to consider finding some more players, or running a DM character for a 3rd party member, and/or leveling up the player characters some before really getting deeper into it. I am currently running CoS for two friends, with a character of my own I run with them, and I started them into it at 5th level. So far, its been tough, but not TPK lethal. Good luck!
Character classes of the party I am running in CoS:
After leveling the party to level 3 before Death House, and adding two DM characters (that I let them control), Death House went much smoother, until....
See, my brother has played DDO. That game's version of the Death House is a LOT more combat focused, and very linear. The goal there was to get to lay the bones to rest, then head downstairs and slay the Shambling Mound as the dungeon boss. The game then let's the player leave without issue via a free teleport.
Not here.
My brother appeased the cult, then became paranoid when the cult's chant returned to the normal one (I may have forgotten to award inspiration). He thought it was absolutely required to fight the Shambling Mound. Then, after blowing the party's spell slots on it, they struck the altar. I considered this might anger the house, so I activated the escape sequence (did I do that wrong?).
The party then lost the Warforged Druid (they managed to recover the body), and the Dwarven Cleric (RIP) on the way out. Next session will be interesting. The injured minotaur now has to carry an unconscious Tabaxi Wild Mage, and has decided to also carry the remains of the Warforged.
On the upside, the surviving members are now Level 5?
I think my brother and I mostly ran this due to that stinking MMO. He's likely run that one's version enough times to no longer die to it, and might have thought he knew what he was doing. It's still rough over there for new or under-equipped characters, but does drop decent loot that can hold most players until level 20.
Current party:
Minotaur Fighter (Eldritch Knight). My brother's character.
Tabaxi Sorcerer (Arcane Gambling Addiction). My sister will play this one as soon as he returns to consciousness.
Warforged Druid (Out of Commission). My sister's actual character. If they can find someone who can repair it, they might get this one back.
RIP:
Dwarf Fighter (Life Domain). NPC from another campaign. I'll let that one persist in that campaign for a few weeks in-game before getting whisked away to her doom.
EDIT: Btw. Looking to play again tonight or tomorrow night. Gonna do some light reading to see what to prepare them for. Also prep more back up characters. I'm thinking of letting them pick one new character to pull in from outside this session. Might make that the norm while they're below 4 party members. It'll be a conga line of doomed adventurers! Also more chances to role-play as other characters than the ones they intended. Granted, these characters will be trapped here until they complete the adventure and can escape, so there might be some incentive to solve this.
Let's think it out. The minotaur's first order of business will be finding a healer for the tabaxi. So his first stop will be the church. Donavich can cure her and give them the lay of the land. I hope that they don't get into a fight with Doru, but if they do, his goal will be to escape back to his "father" (Strahd, not Donavich). I don't know what needs to happen to repair the war forged. In 5e, I thought it was all just healing magic. But if they need something special, I'd recommend Blinsky in Vallaki. It would give him a chance at relevancy. The other potential fights in the village are with Granny Morgantha, who can always escape and haunt them in their dreams if they cause her too much trouble, or random mobs of Strahd zombies occupying abandoned homes.
The village will be weird for people coming at this from video gaming, because it's RP heavy. Strahd might make his first appearance at Kolyan Indirovich's funeral, I've seen it done that way. It needn't be a brawl, they might just see his coach pull up outside the churchyard or something. If they throw down on him, he can just embarrass them for a few rounds and then leave.
If there's any chance of getting to Madame Eva this session, do the card reading in advance and tailor it to your needs.
Potentially creepy things to happen in the village: I've had a couple of ravens squawking at players as they went into the tavern and then when they came out, there were hundreds of them, just staring quietly down at them from the rooftops; when they dig the grave at the churchyard, they climb out to find extra graves already dug next to it, the same number as the party; you could do a Strahd zombie siege and have everyone get trapped in the burgomaster's house or the tavern and have the NPCs freaking out and screaming at the players, like in The Mist or The Birds or something; the night after they bury Kolyan Indirovich, there could be a creepy knocking at the door of the house where they're sleeping and Kolyan's voice could call his kids. I don't know how long your sessions are, but think of how to put it together like a horror movie.
Thinking on it now, I don't have the Eberron source book, so I don't know how Warforged work. I imagine it'd be possible, albeit very difficult, to reconstruct the shell and the core components, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd get THAT warforged back. I've a feeling that should they successfully reconstruct it, it would be as though it were new. OR maybe it's frame might get possessed by a fallen adventurer or something. That sounds like its own quest arc, that doesn't necessarily need to be solved within Barovia. The minotaur came in the same way as the warforged, so they'd be most likely to know where to go outside this plane.
The main difficulty right now is timing, and also thematics. They spent a short rest, and enough time faffing about in the Death House, that it's now night, or nearly night. So this big scary minotaur just got ejected from an angry haunted house, and is now wandering the streets carrying a cat man and presumably a broken wooden mannequin. In the dark, that'd be pretty terrifying! It'll be interesting to see how my brother can find his way around this.
Thinking on it now, I don't have the Eberron source book, so I don't know how Warforged work. I imagine it'd be possible, albeit very difficult, to reconstruct the shell and the core components, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd get THAT warforged back. I've a feeling that should they successfully reconstruct it, it would be as though it were new. OR maybe it's frame might get possessed by a fallen adventurer or something. That sounds like its own quest arc, that doesn't necessarily need to be solved within Barovia. The minotaur came in the same way as the warforged, so they'd be most likely to know where to go outside this plane.
Whatever works best for your game. If the warforged is the main healer, I'd want them back on their feet. I gather that means the warforged equivalent of a raise dead spell. If magic works, that means you need to schlep their ass all the way to Kresk and deal with the Abbott, who might be interested in taking the warforged apart and using their parts for the Bride. If it's a mechanical fix, I'd go with Blinsky, who would maybe tell them that they need to make an early excursion into the Castle to find Pidlwick and strip him for parts. Either way has juicy story potential. But that's a future problem.
Character deaths are fine, as long as someone lived to bring them back, or have someone to continue and meet up with new characters, its completely workable unlike a TPK. Again, Curse of Strahd is difficult by design.
Last night, I ran a few hours of Curse of Strahd for my brother and sister. The three of us are relatively inexperienced, and... This module is surprisingly rough for a two person party!
We started the party at level 1 (first mistake), and entered through A Plea For Help. I rolled for encounters on the 5 hour walk through the woods (am I supposed to?), and surprisingly none happened! Lucky us! Or so I thought.
Then, just beyond the main gate, the party found the corpse with the note. While one of the players was reading the note, I started the other part noted in the book. You know, the one where if the players take too long off the path, a pack of five Dire Wolves (Are you kidding me??) attacks the party. Then we realized that neither player had Darkvision, so the minotaur had to spend an action lighting a torch. (How'd he read the note?) As the Warforged fell, the Minotaur fled back to the gates, predictably ended by the wolves.
Party Wipe #1: five Dire Wolves. Strahd: 1, Party: 0
I then decided to allow the party to keep their characters, and wake up nearby, on the path, with 1 level of Exhaustion, and an Indefinite Madness effect for each of them. Is that fine? I don't know how long I can fit that in to the Curse of Strahd theme. I need to be fair with these two, since we live in the same house. But I also need to play this as spooky and challenging.
For this second part, we decided to try to run through the Death House, since that was structured to allow us to go from level 1 to 3. Easy, right?
They died to the Animated Armor at the top of the stairs. The druid didn't think they'd need to prepare a healing spell, since they only had 2 slots to use at level one. Oh, and the Exhaustion never became an issue.
Party Wipe #2: Animated Armor. Strahd: 1, Death House: 1, Party: 0
We're getting frustrated at this point. I decide to go ahead and level the party up to 3 right then (Why didn't I do that before???), and had them select one of the four characters I had in reserve to play. They chose the Tabaxi Wild Magic Sorcerer. Because we REALLY need an arcane roulette wheel with a gambling addiction? Oh, and I had them add another madness effect. I'm sure it doesn't actually add anything to their characters, they don't seem the type to roleplay that.
And back into the House they go. This time, dismantling the Armor that had stopped them before.
We stopped just after defeating the Nursemaid.
My questions moving forward:
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Death house is intended to kill people with a low chance a single player being cautious would live through it. The module hints at dark powers being there and offers a d4 of options. Can find some free expanded ideas if you don't care to think of any. can make it from a d20 to d100 of chances and follow the adventure league system where first 4 levels you can come back and 5th is when you need some rez abilities. So if they are dying a bit too much, can offer some boons to increase their stats a bit for up to 7 days as a bit of cushion.
Would make encounters easier by reducing the numbers of some enemies and many of the encounters are servants of Strahd, who could knock em out instead of kill so that it does the intended crush the spirits of some and those who are resilient get to be played with more for the vampire lords amusement. Granted many areas are fairly tough unless like any module expects stupidly perfect counters to each encounter and perfect working together. Arganvostholt is a place where you could be level 5 or 6 and be fine, but level 8 should be easy, yet lack of working together can make there a deadly place.
If any other advice, maybe when they meet Ireena, make her a veteran or champion so she can be a big help to them early on, and the random ally to be not Van Ritchten or Ezmerelda so that they can be there to help in a few places (usually seperate unless party gets one of them as random ally so you shouldn't normally have both since they are fairly powerful allies) Can empower one of the weaker ones to slowly increase in power.
The game I played, our ally was Father Donovich, which an adept is fairly useless against Strahd to somehow not die and give inspirations out on his turn, maybe give a fitting class for the description of the npc and maybe half, or half+1 class levels as the party.
Worst case scenario, you can do the Descent into Avernous thing and introduce a mercy coin and Strahd could show up and end combat for them or steal hero points from pathfinder to do things for em to help balance it, since modules are intended for 4 to 5 party members not including the DM. They may just need some npc allies to simply take the brunt of some hits and bring the party up to module size and help them out a bunch. After the death house and the into that is. Maybe have the npc's offer a quest or something to help get rid of the dark aura's of death they got. (since in the very first village, a vampire spawn or walking out of the gates has some nasty encounters can wreck them.)
Make sure they know they're supposed to run away from a lot of stuff. If they need to compromise on their ethics to survive, don't give them shit about it, that's the nature of a horror game. So if they kill a rat to escape Death House rather than get slaughtered by the shambling mound, they made the right decision. If they walk past Old Bonegrinder instead of charging in and getting killed by the witches, don't say the Paladin loses his powers. If they're picking a minotaur and a warforged as their character, they sound like they want to brawl. Uh-uh. If they want to brawl, stop right now and do Mines of Phandelver or Sunless Citadel. Curse of Strahd is about running, hiding, thinking and occasional panicked frenzied fights, trying to gain the information you need to finally turn the tables on the villain.
Two players is a small party, but it can work in horror. Think Talahasee and Columbus in Zombieland or Peter Vincent and Charley Brewster in Fright Night. Understand that the module was written for a group of four or five, so nerf encounters accordingly. In the second half of Death House there are a couple places where a party of two lowbies could get in a lot of trouble. There's a ghoul ambush and a couple shadows, iirc, not to mention the shambling mound. Make a plan for a way they could solve the problem without dice rolling.
One time a small party had to use the pulley system from the one area to lift the gate to the final room. They even took the pulley out of the dumbwaiter and set up a double pulley, then tied the rope off to a spike. When the shambler came out they ran, ducking under the gate (the double pulley gave them more lifting power, but it couldn't lift it all the way). When the shambler came under the gate after them, they cut the rope, bringing the door down on it's head. Did it kill the thing? Probably not, it pinned it down and gave them a chance to run. They got full credit from me. Think of stuff like that.
I'll just repeat: CoS is not a hack-and-slash campaign.
As Hryssar points out, there are allies to be found, You should take full advantage of them. The ravens might be extra helpful.
Roll for random encounters before you start, as part of your prep. Think about whether the encounter is a threat your players can handle, and how they should handle it.
Thank you both for your advice so far. It's difficult for us, my brother especially, to adapt to a roleplay heavy format, especially given how much time we've had with DDO. That one's Curse of Strahd adventure is VERY different from this one. Especially with Reapers and Championed enemies in a combat focused environment.
Curse of Strahd is the first adventure we've purchased, and with the local game shop going out of business, it'll be a while before we can afford another. We've agreed on some changes to adapt, while we all learn the module:
Things were going so well! They appeased the cultists, earning the house's favor, and then... My brother, who's played this adventure in DDO, was sure you had to fight the Shambling Mound in order to clear the dungeon. When the regular chanting resumed after appeasing the cultists (If I read that right), he became paranoid that they had not completed the required task (he had technically speaking). So he attacked the sleeping mound. The resulting encounter burned through the group's spell slots.
But defeating the mound was fine, I think? They had technically appeased the cult before hand. So the chanting continued, and my brother became even more paranoid. My sister had the right idea, to leave, but my brother was not convinced. So they attacked the altar, and, with a Nat 20, chipped the altar. There's nothing in the book describing the properties of the altar, whether it was magically protected or not, but I think damaging the altar was enough. I considered the house to be angry now, triggering the escape sequence.
This is where the D&D 5E version differs the most from DDO. There's an escape sequence. You don't just go down, kill the mound, then click "Finish Quest" to leave. Long story short, the Minotaur escapes, carrying the lifeless Warforged and my unconscious Tabaxi Wild Mage. They abandoned my cleric to rat swarms on the third floor.
Here's the big catch. The lives thing we agreed on works best when the party wipes. I can just have them all wake up nearby just a little more crazy, and with one less "life". Now one of them has survived, an NPC is unconscious about to wake up in 4 hours, another is rat food, and the nature robot is very out of commission. I'm not sure how to spin this around so that it makes sense. I'll have to look, maybe one of the modules allies can make sense of how this battered piece of machinery can work.
In the meantime, my sister has said she'll play as that unconscious Tabaxi during the next session. Wait... This means the party is now down both healers. Well ain't that something?
EDIT: Oh yeah, and things went a little smoother once I reminded them that they can take rests, both short and long. They were kind of just pushing forward with all of the everything until then.
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Hey guys,
I played the I6 module of Ravenloft back in the day, and am just now getting back into the game with my kids. Is the Curse of Strahd a collection of additional stories or a redo of th original? I had been telling them how much fun we had playing the original in the day and was wondering if this was a similar story material?
Chaotic Good- Doing the right thing even if that means killing everyone else in the process.
It appears to be a rewrite of the original, all into one book. I've never played the original, but I'd imagine veteran players might get a little confused at the placement of events and locations. I know my brother did, but he played one of the two MMO versions, which are more combat focused.
You'll need the three core 5E D&D books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual). The text on the back says it's for character levels 1-10, but if you've got a small or inexperienced party, they'll have some difficulties if you run this as written. There are still a number of fights that aren't meant to be fought.
That said, once the party enters Barovia proper (either through the Death House or by skipping it), it's very open ended. I'm looking forward to seeing just how far my brother and sister can get, even with our homeruling.
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I was hoping that would be the answer. That was one of my all time favorite modules. Hope you guys enjoy it.
Chaotic Good- Doing the right thing even if that means killing everyone else in the process.
Not a rewrite of I6. It reuses the village and the castle maps, etc, but the "theme park" is about 10 times bigger than just the village and the castle. Say I6 plus maybe 5 of the old 2e Ravenloft modules.
Also, CoS says right up front in the very first few paragraphs that everything is balanced around a party of 4 to 6 PCs. If you only have two characters going through it, you're going to need to do a bunch of work to nerf the combat encounters to appropriate levels - either reducing the number of enemies, or swapping them out for less deadly monsters. Playing CoS as-is with only two characters is basically ensuring that you're going to have to run with a "party wipes - reset to your last saved checkpoint" mentality.
Yeah, I may have skimmed over a few (dozen) details reading it before hand. Lesson learned. Don't jump in to a module shortly after acquiring it.
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I think giving the PCs madness is too much since there are only two players. Most of the encounters need to be way way nerfed in order to avoid party wipes even with an NPC to help.
"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
Hi Solray,
My learnings from running Out of the Abyss with 2 (sometimes 3) players is that the written books are written to be balanced for 4 (quite experienced) players. While I was running it I quickly discovered that it's my responsibility to prepare the story in a balanced fashion depending on the players and their experience. Here are some mechanics I used to level the playing field, might be something of value in it for you:
- I created a homebrew NPC with several links to the main storyline which gave them some 'missing' party elements (as you only have 2 players you don't have the ideal setting of a Tank, Healer and DPS). They where playing a mage and a rogue with some healing power, so I gave them a barbarian, big fat fighter who got captured while he was wandering into a strange cavern over night, drunk.
- Also I injected the regular treasures with means of healing, as they didn't have a cleric. So I placed some minor healing pots, healing kits, bandages etc.
- For deadly encounters I sometimes made it just a little bit more obvious that this might be very deadly, if there was an opportunity I oftenly introduced another NPC who was hunting the monster for a contract (often tied to a Faction)
- Then if all else fails, there's an easy option (already mentioned) just lower the amount of creatures, or in case of a large creature/monster lower it's stats by the amount of players missing (I used 25% rounded up, as they had 1 NPC with them)
- And then, I think the DM guide offers one more solution, which shouldn't be used too often is to deviate from your dice roll to just change that one outcome...I limit it to max 1 time per encounter where I try from tipping the scales back into their favor if I see a wipe coming.
- Ohh, be generous with inspiration! They can use it.
Hope there's something in here that helps you.
Kr,
Rob
Yes, just because the book says 12 Dire Wolves show up doesn't all of them have to be there. You could even change it to regular wolves. You're the GM, you have ultimate control over everything, if something is too hard, make it easier, if it's too easy, keep it that way or make it harder.
"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
Curse of Strahd is a tough module for a party of 4 @ level, and by design. You are prior to death house still underlevel and you are short 2 assumed other players. My recommendation would be to consider finding some more players, or running a DM character for a 3rd party member, and/or leveling up the player characters some before really getting deeper into it. I am currently running CoS for two friends, with a character of my own I run with them, and I started them into it at 5th level. So far, its been tough, but not TPK lethal. Good luck!
Character classes of the party I am running in CoS:
Tiefling Sorlock (my DM character)
Yuanti Bard
Goliath Barbarian.
After leveling the party to level 3 before Death House, and adding two DM characters (that I let them control), Death House went much smoother, until....
See, my brother has played DDO. That game's version of the Death House is a LOT more combat focused, and very linear. The goal there was to get to lay the bones to rest, then head downstairs and slay the Shambling Mound as the dungeon boss. The game then let's the player leave without issue via a free teleport.
Not here.
My brother appeased the cult, then became paranoid when the cult's chant returned to the normal one (I may have forgotten to award inspiration). He thought it was absolutely required to fight the Shambling Mound. Then, after blowing the party's spell slots on it, they struck the altar. I considered this might anger the house, so I activated the escape sequence (did I do that wrong?).
The party then lost the Warforged Druid (they managed to recover the body), and the Dwarven Cleric (RIP) on the way out. Next session will be interesting. The injured minotaur now has to carry an unconscious Tabaxi Wild Mage, and has decided to also carry the remains of the Warforged.
On the upside, the surviving members are now Level 5?
I think my brother and I mostly ran this due to that stinking MMO. He's likely run that one's version enough times to no longer die to it, and might have thought he knew what he was doing. It's still rough over there for new or under-equipped characters, but does drop decent loot that can hold most players until level 20.
Current party:
RIP:
EDIT: Btw. Looking to play again tonight or tomorrow night. Gonna do some light reading to see what to prepare them for. Also prep more back up characters. I'm thinking of letting them pick one new character to pull in from outside this session. Might make that the norm while they're below 4 party members. It'll be a conga line of doomed adventurers! Also more chances to role-play as other characters than the ones they intended. Granted, these characters will be trapped here until they complete the adventure and can escape, so there might be some incentive to solve this.
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Let's think it out. The minotaur's first order of business will be finding a healer for the tabaxi. So his first stop will be the church. Donavich can cure her and give them the lay of the land. I hope that they don't get into a fight with Doru, but if they do, his goal will be to escape back to his "father" (Strahd, not Donavich). I don't know what needs to happen to repair the war forged. In 5e, I thought it was all just healing magic. But if they need something special, I'd recommend Blinsky in Vallaki. It would give him a chance at relevancy. The other potential fights in the village are with Granny Morgantha, who can always escape and haunt them in their dreams if they cause her too much trouble, or random mobs of Strahd zombies occupying abandoned homes.
The village will be weird for people coming at this from video gaming, because it's RP heavy. Strahd might make his first appearance at Kolyan Indirovich's funeral, I've seen it done that way. It needn't be a brawl, they might just see his coach pull up outside the churchyard or something. If they throw down on him, he can just embarrass them for a few rounds and then leave.
If there's any chance of getting to Madame Eva this session, do the card reading in advance and tailor it to your needs.
Potentially creepy things to happen in the village: I've had a couple of ravens squawking at players as they went into the tavern and then when they came out, there were hundreds of them, just staring quietly down at them from the rooftops; when they dig the grave at the churchyard, they climb out to find extra graves already dug next to it, the same number as the party; you could do a Strahd zombie siege and have everyone get trapped in the burgomaster's house or the tavern and have the NPCs freaking out and screaming at the players, like in The Mist or The Birds or something; the night after they bury Kolyan Indirovich, there could be a creepy knocking at the door of the house where they're sleeping and Kolyan's voice could call his kids. I don't know how long your sessions are, but think of how to put it together like a horror movie.
Thinking on it now, I don't have the Eberron source book, so I don't know how Warforged work. I imagine it'd be possible, albeit very difficult, to reconstruct the shell and the core components, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd get THAT warforged back. I've a feeling that should they successfully reconstruct it, it would be as though it were new. OR maybe it's frame might get possessed by a fallen adventurer or something. That sounds like its own quest arc, that doesn't necessarily need to be solved within Barovia. The minotaur came in the same way as the warforged, so they'd be most likely to know where to go outside this plane.
The main difficulty right now is timing, and also thematics. They spent a short rest, and enough time faffing about in the Death House, that it's now night, or nearly night. So this big scary minotaur just got ejected from an angry haunted house, and is now wandering the streets carrying a cat man and presumably a broken wooden mannequin. In the dark, that'd be pretty terrifying! It'll be interesting to see how my brother can find his way around this.
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Whatever works best for your game. If the warforged is the main healer, I'd want them back on their feet. I gather that means the warforged equivalent of a raise dead spell. If magic works, that means you need to schlep their ass all the way to Kresk and deal with the Abbott, who might be interested in taking the warforged apart and using their parts for the Bride. If it's a mechanical fix, I'd go with Blinsky, who would maybe tell them that they need to make an early excursion into the Castle to find Pidlwick and strip him for parts. Either way has juicy story potential. But that's a future problem.
Character deaths are fine, as long as someone lived to bring them back, or have someone to continue and meet up with new characters, its completely workable unlike a TPK. Again, Curse of Strahd is difficult by design.
strahd for a first timer is rough. run lost mines or some smaller adventure, the new essentials kit has one too.