I'm about to start my third playthrough of Curse of Strahd with a group of dear friends (mostly D&D veterans and have been playing with me for a few years now). They all unanimously requested CoS which is my favorite to run, so I definitely don't mind doing so! The only thing though, is three of the players in the group have seen Old Bonegrinder before (one has seen it twice now one with me and one with another DM).
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas to make some changes to Bonegrinder to make it feel new again for the veteran players of CoS? I think it's such a great encounter because it's the first REAL showing of just how dark and evil Barovia/Ravenloft is, and I love the shock it brings!
Any suggestions would be loved and appreciated. Thanks!
You also might decide to go totally the other way, have it simply be delicious pastries, but a bunch of 'parents' are accusing them of being the hags behind the children dissapearances.
Then have the 'parents' turn out to be the actual hags that are tired of grinding the bones by hand and want the mill to ease their work.
My problem with Old Bonegrinder is that a full night hag coven at a recommended party level of 4 is pretty much a TPK unless you can separate them, and it's not easy to separate them given that a night hag by itself will react to combat by going ethereal and leaving, and is durable enough that a low level party probably can't take it out before it does so.
That aside, you can do lots of variant things. For example, I placed two covered bins labeled 'clothes for the needy children' and 'toys for the needy children' near the fork in the road. The top of the clothes bin is clothes, the top of the toys bin is blinsky toys, but gimlet-eyed PCs will spot something glittering at the bottom.
The bins are mimics, and will not disturb people who just put things in or take a few things from the top. Someone who goes diving will cause it to attempt to swallow them (because who doesn't love a mimic with swallow whole).
I agree with the Night Hags, I generally follow Chris Perkins' way of replacing them with Green Hags instead since they're a bit easier to tussle with. That's a good idea to toss in some mimics!
@Mog_Dracov thanks for linking the extra pastries! I'll give them a look. I never thought about them being innocent that'd be a fun twist.!
I also had an idea to have the Hags just be enslaved women under the children who are actually demonic. Or perhaps one of the children somehow came into controlling the Hags (maybe he found an item that bestowed power upon him, or Strahd did something to twist everything) and that forces the players to deal with innocents making children-pies, but also the question of how to disarm a child or just outright have to fight them.
Hello DMs!
I'm about to start my third playthrough of Curse of Strahd with a group of dear friends (mostly D&D veterans and have been playing with me for a few years now). They all unanimously requested CoS which is my favorite to run, so I definitely don't mind doing so! The only thing though, is three of the players in the group have seen Old Bonegrinder before (one has seen it twice now one with me and one with another DM).
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas to make some changes to Bonegrinder to make it feel new again for the veteran players of CoS? I think it's such a great encounter because it's the first REAL showing of just how dark and evil Barovia/Ravenloft is, and I love the shock it brings!
Any suggestions would be loved and appreciated. Thanks!
Here is a page with some new pastries
https://www.ultanya.com/2016/05/curse-of-strahd-old-bone-grinder.html
You also might decide to go totally the other way, have it simply be delicious pastries, but a bunch of 'parents' are accusing them of being the hags behind the children dissapearances.
Then have the 'parents' turn out to be the actual hags that are tired of grinding the bones by hand and want the mill to ease their work.
My problem with Old Bonegrinder is that a full night hag coven at a recommended party level of 4 is pretty much a TPK unless you can separate them, and it's not easy to separate them given that a night hag by itself will react to combat by going ethereal and leaving, and is durable enough that a low level party probably can't take it out before it does so.
That aside, you can do lots of variant things. For example, I placed two covered bins labeled 'clothes for the needy children' and 'toys for the needy children' near the fork in the road. The top of the clothes bin is clothes, the top of the toys bin is blinsky toys, but gimlet-eyed PCs will spot something glittering at the bottom.
The bins are mimics, and will not disturb people who just put things in or take a few things from the top. Someone who goes diving will cause it to attempt to swallow them (because who doesn't love a mimic with swallow whole).
I agree with the Night Hags, I generally follow Chris Perkins' way of replacing them with Green Hags instead since they're a bit easier to tussle with. That's a good idea to toss in some mimics!
@Mog_Dracov thanks for linking the extra pastries! I'll give them a look. I never thought about them being innocent that'd be a fun twist.!
I also had an idea to have the Hags just be enslaved women under the children who are actually demonic. Or perhaps one of the children somehow came into controlling the Hags (maybe he found an item that bestowed power upon him, or Strahd did something to twist everything) and that forces the players to deal with innocents making children-pies, but also the question of how to disarm a child or just outright have to fight them.