I'm starting up Curse of Strahd for a group of new & old players in a few weeks. For some of the new players, this will be their first time playing D&D. I've never run CoS before, but have played through most of it, though the campaign fizzled out before launching the assault on Castle Ravenloft itself. Some of the more experienced players were in the same campaign.
...
I'm aware of Curse of Strahd having a reputation of being relatively dangerous, both for a deadlier-than-usual opening dungeon in 'the death house, and in terms of much of the campaign being relatively sandboxy in nature, with the players free to explore a number of locations of interest in whatever order, some of which are can be far out of their league if tackled too early. I'm planning on using a variant of the Adventurer's League "Dark Gift" rules for returning characters to life if they die and cannot afford a resurrection, coming back at the next midnight instead of the next round, basically inflicting a thematic penalty instead of a character re-roll. This should insulate the newer players from arbitrary & early death while also avoiding the tonal disruption of having to introduce new party members repeatedly. I do worry though that it will suck the sense of danger out of the game. Does anyone have experience with the Dark Gift rules they can share?
For the players familiar with the game, I'm looking to change a bunch of plot elements. I know the card reading changes some things by default, but apart from the locations of items and what character will help the party it doesn't seem to change all that much. The items are still the same, the locations and encounters are mostly the same, the main plot points are still the same, the npcs are the same apart from who can be convinced to join the party, etc.
There are a few main angles I'm looking at here:
Bringing in the Raven Queen, & changes to Strahd himself
The Morning Lord, Mother Night, and the Dark Power that Strahd made his dark pact with are all the same entity, the Raven Queen, specifically the 5e version of the Raven Queen, the aloof and amoral collector of trinkets and sorrows, not the imposing goddess of winter and death from 4e. The people of Barovia, including Strahd, do not know this, but the Vistani do. The Vistani are in fact shadar-kai, disguised by a powerful illusion maintained by the Raven Queen that only true seeing can penetrate. Strahd believes the Vistani can enter and leave his realm because he allows it, and that they bring him adventurers for his entertainment. The truth is they can enter or leave because the Raven Queen allows it, and they bring him adventurers to torment so that she can add their sorrows to her collection. The bats and wolves are Strahd's spies, but the ravens belong to the Raven Queen. Undisguised shadar-kai using the monster entries from Tome of Foes will be added to the random encounter table, and ravens will congregate around the deceased, never eating the carrion but instead snatching and flying off with trinkets of sentimental value.
Strahd is not a wizard, but rather a high level hexblade warlock with the pact of the tome. The Book of Strahd is his tome pact boon, which he destroyed in an act of bitter defiance and regret when his dark patron trapped him in Barovia, but was later restored to existence by the Raven Queen, a physical manifestation of the pact that binds him to Barovia. Presenting the book to Strahd can temporarily repel him, destroying it can weaken his magical powers and may be a required step to kill him.
In life he was also a conquest paladin, and while he's forgotten many of his martial skills over the centuries, having abandoned his arms and armor in favor of subtle vampyric powers and the more refined art of spellcasting, he will still have a few conquest paladin abilities, including the channel divinity, aura of conquest, and some daily spell slots to supplement his pact magic. This changed ability lineup should hopefully switch up the final encounter some.
I'm also considering switching up some of the other items, perhaps replacing the sunlight blade with Blackrazor. Like, the card reading would describe a blade of sunlight, the characters would receive prophetic visions showing the glowing blade in whatever location it's found in, but when they get there Blackrazor is in its place. Then again, replacing a sword that is very good at fighting Strahd with one explicitly useless against him might be going too far. Maybe a homebrew blade with dark powers rather than light, but still at least usable against Strahd?
Add a bit to Strahd's backstory that he drank his brothers blood not just to seal his pact with the dark powers but also to take on his brother's appearance in order to fool Tatiana, and she only killed herself when she discovered his deception. This would be as foreshadowing that Vlad /can/ imitate his brother. If they players let Ireena go into the magic pool to answer the beckoning figure of Strahd's brother, the way Ireena was saved in the CoS campaign that some of the players already went through, then as soon as she's beneath the image of Strahd's brother reveals himself to actually be Strahd himself and Ireena is spirited away into Strahd's clutches at Castle Ravenloft.
Completing the campaign and defeating Strahd releases the party, but instead of Barovia falling back into the mists with Strahd's revival, Strahd is released on the Realms. Finally stopping him will require an additional party where the party must travel to the shadowfell and barter or steal Strahd's true death back from the Raven Queen's personal collection.
Ripping npcs out of Bloodborne whole cloth
I'm also thinking about switching up some of the major potential allies. Rictavio is exactly what he claims to be, a half elf circus master brought to Barovia by the Vistani to play Strahd's game. He's preparing to attack the Vistani encampment not because he's a vampire hunter who thinks they're serving Strahd, but because he blames them for his current predicament and simply wants revenge. Van Richten is instead someone else, perhaps replacing the "Mad Mage", or Blinzky, or just appearing at his tower when the players first encounter it. I plan to base his portrayal on Gerhman from Bloodborne, rebuild his abilities as a multiclass artificer / blood hunter, complete with wheelchair (Richten will have the artificial leg instead of Esmeralda), hidden workshop full of strange tools and weapons, and nursemaid in the form of a maybe-animate doll crafted in Esmeralda's image. When the party encounters him, wherever they find him, he's broken, crushed by loneliness after Esmeralda abandoned him, unable to abandon the doll that reminds him of her despite the constant pain and regret he feels when he sees it. He believes all of Barovia to be a bad dream from which he cannot awake.
Esmeralda will be rebuilt as a blood hunter in Lady Mariah's image, a half elf of dusk elf descent, raised among the Vistani but not aware of their true nature. Her history with Richten is much the same, except that they didn't have a falling out and came to Barovia together along with a party of other monster hunters to kill Strahd. They had an especially bad experience in the Death House, where in despair they ended up killing one of their own to escape, a hunter ghost who will be added to the Death House when the party goes through to foreshadow these changes. The hunters corpse can be found, along with a magical "trick" weapon that I'll tailor in design to whatever party member seems to need the most mechanical help. After escaping the death house they immediately burned it down - but the fire quickly spread to neighboring houses and zombies poured out into the misty street. The hunters slaughtered all of them, burning the entire neighborhood, but when the death house collapsed and the fires finally drove the mist away, the 'zombies' were revealed to be normal Barovian families fleeing their burning homes. Esmeralda was broken by this, abandoning her weapons in a well in the village. The party can retrieve the weapons, but this calls a hoard of undead, the hunters' victims, to converge upon them and attack until the party abandons the weapons back down the well or escapes the village.
Richten, hurt by his protege leaving him, led the remaining hunters to Castle Ravenloft where they were scattered and mostly slain. Richten fled after his leg was shattered in a confrontation with Strahd, leaving him to rely on an artificial leg of his own design when he isn't using a wheelchair. Esmeralda ends up in the Abby, abandoning violence and tending the mongrelfolk as a nurse.
The party's card readings will tell them their ally will be a lost and broken hunter who has strayed from their path, which might be Richten or Esmeralda depending on how the campaign progresses and which the party best responds to. Richten can be convinced to join the party if informed that Esmeralda is still alive, and told about the card readings which give him hope that Strahd can be defeated, clearing his mind. He insists on visiting Esmeralda first, but she will not go with the party as long as they travel with Richten. Richten will want to kill the mongrel folk as blasphemous beasts, and especially will want to kill the Abbott, believing he has bewitched Esmeralda. Esmeralda will fight to protect them from him. If the party spare the mongrelfolk, Richten will abandon them, but Esmeralda can then be convinced to go with them, supporting them as a nurse. She will only fight if they first retrieve her weapons from the well in Barovia, which finally convinces her that she cannot escape her past. Either hunter, once convinced to fight at the party's side, is slow to initiate combat unless the party attacks or is attacked first, but are especially merciless when they do fight and do not accept surrender or allow enemies to escape if they can prevent it.
Depending on where Richten is located, I may add an additional surviving hunter based on Alfred, appearing where Esmeralda would normally appear. If told of the card reading he will be convinced that he is the hunter meant to aid the party. Openly helpful, Alfred will eventually reveal himself to be entirely unhinged by his time in Barovia, convincing that all Barovians, Vistani, and other creatures native to the region are just extensions of Strahd's evil that must be purged with blood and fire. If the party allow him to travel with them he will eventually drive off and even attack any Barovian allies, including attacking and potentially killing Ireena if left alone with her.
I'm also mean to come up with some more significant changes to a few of the locations in the campaign, moving some of them around or changing what can be found there, but I don't yet have solid ideas for this, and would welcome any suggestions, both in terms of things to change to be surprising and things that I might want to change to be a little less overwhelming for new players. I don't feel a need to change much of anything in Castle Ravenloft itself, apart form the previously mentioned aspects of Strahd's character and backstory, as the members of the party who played through CoS in the past didn't get as far as Ravenloft itself.
Any thoughts or feedback on these proposed changes? Or general advice on running CoS when half the party are new to D&D altogether, and the other half have played through at least most of this campaign before?
Adding the Raven Queen seems not to actually change anything at the ground level, it just sets up a level 10-15 follow-up campaign. Is that a fair assessment? Would the players actually care who has them trapped in the mist? If so, sure, go for it. I do feel like if the Vistani are shadar-kai, the Dusk Elves either become redundant (and should be disposed of) or crucial (and should be elevated in the story). It feels like they should have some kind of story relationship, if both exist. Maybe the Rictavio attack, as you have outlined it has some basis in an ongoing struggle between the two groups?
Changing Strahd's abilities seems perfectly reasonable. I doubt changes to his backstory would really come up, unless your older players are lore junkies bordering on metagaming. Just removing the shrine in Krezk, or taking away the Sergei encounter seem just as easy a way of handling it.
I agree that adding Blackrazor would be causing too many problems for the PCs in return for a small shake-up. Half the NPCs in Barovia don't even have souls, not even counting the undead. Blackrazor, just out of sheer hunger, would be in constant conflict with the wielder and a threat to the party. That might make a perfectly good horror story, a side episode, if you like, but it can't be a replacement for a practical Strahd-fighting tool. Maybe replace Mordenkainen with Blackrazor. The party thinks if they can get it AND the Sunsword, they'll be invincible and then Blackrazor starts backstabbing them and they have to try to destroy it? Or seal it up in the cave where they found it?
Off the top of my head, the only physical change I might propose is moving Bonegrinder off the road to Vallaki, so third level characters don't feel obligated to kick the door down and fight the coven before they're ready.
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I'm starting up Curse of Strahd for a group of new & old players in a few weeks. For some of the new players, this will be their first time playing D&D. I've never run CoS before, but have played through most of it, though the campaign fizzled out before launching the assault on Castle Ravenloft itself. Some of the more experienced players were in the same campaign.
...
I'm aware of Curse of Strahd having a reputation of being relatively dangerous, both for a deadlier-than-usual opening dungeon in 'the death house, and in terms of much of the campaign being relatively sandboxy in nature, with the players free to explore a number of locations of interest in whatever order, some of which are can be far out of their league if tackled too early. I'm planning on using a variant of the Adventurer's League "Dark Gift" rules for returning characters to life if they die and cannot afford a resurrection, coming back at the next midnight instead of the next round, basically inflicting a thematic penalty instead of a character re-roll. This should insulate the newer players from arbitrary & early death while also avoiding the tonal disruption of having to introduce new party members repeatedly. I do worry though that it will suck the sense of danger out of the game. Does anyone have experience with the Dark Gift rules they can share?
For the players familiar with the game, I'm looking to change a bunch of plot elements. I know the card reading changes some things by default, but apart from the locations of items and what character will help the party it doesn't seem to change all that much. The items are still the same, the locations and encounters are mostly the same, the main plot points are still the same, the npcs are the same apart from who can be convinced to join the party, etc.
There are a few main angles I'm looking at here:
Bringing in the Raven Queen, & changes to Strahd himself
The Morning Lord, Mother Night, and the Dark Power that Strahd made his dark pact with are all the same entity, the Raven Queen, specifically the 5e version of the Raven Queen, the aloof and amoral collector of trinkets and sorrows, not the imposing goddess of winter and death from 4e. The people of Barovia, including Strahd, do not know this, but the Vistani do. The Vistani are in fact shadar-kai, disguised by a powerful illusion maintained by the Raven Queen that only true seeing can penetrate. Strahd believes the Vistani can enter and leave his realm because he allows it, and that they bring him adventurers for his entertainment. The truth is they can enter or leave because the Raven Queen allows it, and they bring him adventurers to torment so that she can add their sorrows to her collection. The bats and wolves are Strahd's spies, but the ravens belong to the Raven Queen. Undisguised shadar-kai using the monster entries from Tome of Foes will be added to the random encounter table, and ravens will congregate around the deceased, never eating the carrion but instead snatching and flying off with trinkets of sentimental value.
Strahd is not a wizard, but rather a high level hexblade warlock with the pact of the tome. The Book of Strahd is his tome pact boon, which he destroyed in an act of bitter defiance and regret when his dark patron trapped him in Barovia, but was later restored to existence by the Raven Queen, a physical manifestation of the pact that binds him to Barovia. Presenting the book to Strahd can temporarily repel him, destroying it can weaken his magical powers and may be a required step to kill him.
In life he was also a conquest paladin, and while he's forgotten many of his martial skills over the centuries, having abandoned his arms and armor in favor of subtle vampyric powers and the more refined art of spellcasting, he will still have a few conquest paladin abilities, including the channel divinity, aura of conquest, and some daily spell slots to supplement his pact magic. This changed ability lineup should hopefully switch up the final encounter some.
I'm also considering switching up some of the other items, perhaps replacing the sunlight blade with Blackrazor. Like, the card reading would describe a blade of sunlight, the characters would receive prophetic visions showing the glowing blade in whatever location it's found in, but when they get there Blackrazor is in its place. Then again, replacing a sword that is very good at fighting Strahd with one explicitly useless against him might be going too far. Maybe a homebrew blade with dark powers rather than light, but still at least usable against Strahd?
Add a bit to Strahd's backstory that he drank his brothers blood not just to seal his pact with the dark powers but also to take on his brother's appearance in order to fool Tatiana, and she only killed herself when she discovered his deception. This would be as foreshadowing that Vlad /can/ imitate his brother. If they players let Ireena go into the magic pool to answer the beckoning figure of Strahd's brother, the way Ireena was saved in the CoS campaign that some of the players already went through, then as soon as she's beneath the image of Strahd's brother reveals himself to actually be Strahd himself and Ireena is spirited away into Strahd's clutches at Castle Ravenloft.
Completing the campaign and defeating Strahd releases the party, but instead of Barovia falling back into the mists with Strahd's revival, Strahd is released on the Realms. Finally stopping him will require an additional party where the party must travel to the shadowfell and barter or steal Strahd's true death back from the Raven Queen's personal collection.
Ripping npcs out of Bloodborne whole cloth
I'm also thinking about switching up some of the major potential allies. Rictavio is exactly what he claims to be, a half elf circus master brought to Barovia by the Vistani to play Strahd's game. He's preparing to attack the Vistani encampment not because he's a vampire hunter who thinks they're serving Strahd, but because he blames them for his current predicament and simply wants revenge. Van Richten is instead someone else, perhaps replacing the "Mad Mage", or Blinzky, or just appearing at his tower when the players first encounter it. I plan to base his portrayal on Gerhman from Bloodborne, rebuild his abilities as a multiclass artificer / blood hunter, complete with wheelchair (Richten will have the artificial leg instead of Esmeralda), hidden workshop full of strange tools and weapons, and nursemaid in the form of a maybe-animate doll crafted in Esmeralda's image. When the party encounters him, wherever they find him, he's broken, crushed by loneliness after Esmeralda abandoned him, unable to abandon the doll that reminds him of her despite the constant pain and regret he feels when he sees it. He believes all of Barovia to be a bad dream from which he cannot awake.
Esmeralda will be rebuilt as a blood hunter in Lady Mariah's image, a half elf of dusk elf descent, raised among the Vistani but not aware of their true nature. Her history with Richten is much the same, except that they didn't have a falling out and came to Barovia together along with a party of other monster hunters to kill Strahd. They had an especially bad experience in the Death House, where in despair they ended up killing one of their own to escape, a hunter ghost who will be added to the Death House when the party goes through to foreshadow these changes. The hunters corpse can be found, along with a magical "trick" weapon that I'll tailor in design to whatever party member seems to need the most mechanical help. After escaping the death house they immediately burned it down - but the fire quickly spread to neighboring houses and zombies poured out into the misty street. The hunters slaughtered all of them, burning the entire neighborhood, but when the death house collapsed and the fires finally drove the mist away, the 'zombies' were revealed to be normal Barovian families fleeing their burning homes. Esmeralda was broken by this, abandoning her weapons in a well in the village. The party can retrieve the weapons, but this calls a hoard of undead, the hunters' victims, to converge upon them and attack until the party abandons the weapons back down the well or escapes the village.
Richten, hurt by his protege leaving him, led the remaining hunters to Castle Ravenloft where they were scattered and mostly slain. Richten fled after his leg was shattered in a confrontation with Strahd, leaving him to rely on an artificial leg of his own design when he isn't using a wheelchair. Esmeralda ends up in the Abby, abandoning violence and tending the mongrelfolk as a nurse.
The party's card readings will tell them their ally will be a lost and broken hunter who has strayed from their path, which might be Richten or Esmeralda depending on how the campaign progresses and which the party best responds to. Richten can be convinced to join the party if informed that Esmeralda is still alive, and told about the card readings which give him hope that Strahd can be defeated, clearing his mind. He insists on visiting Esmeralda first, but she will not go with the party as long as they travel with Richten. Richten will want to kill the mongrel folk as blasphemous beasts, and especially will want to kill the Abbott, believing he has bewitched Esmeralda. Esmeralda will fight to protect them from him. If the party spare the mongrelfolk, Richten will abandon them, but Esmeralda can then be convinced to go with them, supporting them as a nurse. She will only fight if they first retrieve her weapons from the well in Barovia, which finally convinces her that she cannot escape her past. Either hunter, once convinced to fight at the party's side, is slow to initiate combat unless the party attacks or is attacked first, but are especially merciless when they do fight and do not accept surrender or allow enemies to escape if they can prevent it.
Depending on where Richten is located, I may add an additional surviving hunter based on Alfred, appearing where Esmeralda would normally appear. If told of the card reading he will be convinced that he is the hunter meant to aid the party. Openly helpful, Alfred will eventually reveal himself to be entirely unhinged by his time in Barovia, convincing that all Barovians, Vistani, and other creatures native to the region are just extensions of Strahd's evil that must be purged with blood and fire. If the party allow him to travel with them he will eventually drive off and even attack any Barovian allies, including attacking and potentially killing Ireena if left alone with her.
I'm also mean to come up with some more significant changes to a few of the locations in the campaign, moving some of them around or changing what can be found there, but I don't yet have solid ideas for this, and would welcome any suggestions, both in terms of things to change to be surprising and things that I might want to change to be a little less overwhelming for new players. I don't feel a need to change much of anything in Castle Ravenloft itself, apart form the previously mentioned aspects of Strahd's character and backstory, as the members of the party who played through CoS in the past didn't get as far as Ravenloft itself.
Any thoughts or feedback on these proposed changes? Or general advice on running CoS when half the party are new to D&D altogether, and the other half have played through at least most of this campaign before?
Adding the Raven Queen seems not to actually change anything at the ground level, it just sets up a level 10-15 follow-up campaign. Is that a fair assessment? Would the players actually care who has them trapped in the mist? If so, sure, go for it. I do feel like if the Vistani are shadar-kai, the Dusk Elves either become redundant (and should be disposed of) or crucial (and should be elevated in the story). It feels like they should have some kind of story relationship, if both exist. Maybe the Rictavio attack, as you have outlined it has some basis in an ongoing struggle between the two groups?
Changing Strahd's abilities seems perfectly reasonable. I doubt changes to his backstory would really come up, unless your older players are lore junkies bordering on metagaming. Just removing the shrine in Krezk, or taking away the Sergei encounter seem just as easy a way of handling it.
I agree that adding Blackrazor would be causing too many problems for the PCs in return for a small shake-up. Half the NPCs in Barovia don't even have souls, not even counting the undead. Blackrazor, just out of sheer hunger, would be in constant conflict with the wielder and a threat to the party. That might make a perfectly good horror story, a side episode, if you like, but it can't be a replacement for a practical Strahd-fighting tool. Maybe replace Mordenkainen with Blackrazor. The party thinks if they can get it AND the Sunsword, they'll be invincible and then Blackrazor starts backstabbing them and they have to try to destroy it? Or seal it up in the cave where they found it?
Off the top of my head, the only physical change I might propose is moving Bonegrinder off the road to Vallaki, so third level characters don't feel obligated to kick the door down and fight the coven before they're ready.