As I've been running CoS for my group, I've felt like something was missing and I just figured out what it was. Fear checks! Where did they go? They were so integral to the Demiplane Dread.
Does anyone know if there's already an article on DMs Guild covering this? Or any other advice how you would house rule it? I don't have my original Ravenloft box anymore (which makes me a sad panda) to reference.
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I never thought of fear checks as the important part, so much as the framing/dressing of the demiplane's eponymous dread, which Curse of Strahd does include some tips for at the end of the introduction chapter.
However, I think the optional rules for madness and the sanity ability score might easily be adapted to be something similar. I'm not entirely sure because I like my Ravenloft play to have a strong edge of heroism shining through the gloom that would be undercut by dice rolls that make the characters lose themselves in more ways than already possible via creature abilities - I save that stuff for when I am running Call of Cthulhu, which helps the two (CoC and D&D in Ravenloft) remain feeling like different flavors of game play.
It's not the important part, but it was always there, and I was kinda missing it. I might just do it for big encounters/dungeons... Like maybe The Amber Temple if I can tempt them to go there, or Baba Lysaga and her ... hut...
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As I've been running CoS for my group, I've felt like something was missing and I just figured out what it was. Fear checks! Where did they go? They were so integral to the Demiplane Dread.
Does anyone know if there's already an article on DMs Guild covering this? Or any other advice how you would house rule it? I don't have my original Ravenloft box anymore (which makes me a sad panda) to reference.
The Adventure league modules actually brought it back in a kinda fun way.
Basically whenever particularly disgusting/brutal/horrific things happened you would have a wisdom save or suffer a short term madness. (Although I would recommend giving a save after each round, as officially they'd last a minimum of 10 rounds which could completely remove a bad save from combat).
Just keep in mind you are adding a very powerful effect for the bad guys, so the dc should be reasonably low unless you just want to murder the players.
Thanks Thain! I'll check that out. I definitely didn't want to make it just a fear check. But something deeper. I'm thinking of something along the lines of a sort of corruption-like mechanic, low will save DC, cumulative to X number, where if you end up with all the tick boxes marked you get a lasting effect. That said, I'm not entirely sold on the whole idea yet. I've done plenty of things so far that could have initiated this check, so introducing it now probably wouldn't be fair or make sense.
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Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Thanks Thain! I'll check that out. I definitely didn't want to make it just a fear check. But something deeper. I'm thinking of something along the lines of a sort of corruption-like mechanic, low will save DC, cumulative to X number, where if you end up with all the tick boxes marked you get a lasting effect. That said, I'm not entirely sold on the whole idea yet. I've done plenty of things so far that could have initiated this check, so introducing it now probably wouldn't be fair or make sense.
I think it would be fair enough to add it, something along the lines of now that you have been in this realm for a week you are slowly starting to doubt if you will ever escape. It's not doing anything that actively prevents you from your quest, the character's just have a lingering doubt. Maybe even they all experience the same nightmare one long rest, where they are back in their home, but as they go about their dream they see the mists surrounding their homeland, creeping in until they are engulfed and suffocating. It would also be a good way for characters to flesh out their backstory by describing their village/castle/clan and what a normal day might be like. Basically giving the glimmer of their happy(er) lives from before, then snuffing it out as the reality of where they are sinks in.
Barovia is on the demi-plane of dread. Dread is thematically a creeping slowly acting fear. Maybe the heroes all merely resisted it at first, but are slowly giving in.
As for how to create a cumulative effect, you could make it so every time a character fails a Madness effect, it lasts for 1 additional round. Again choosing appropriate effects and DC for the situations. So the first failure is just 1 round effect. Which is annoying but shouldn't really shift the balance of an encounter. But each additional failure adds another round to the effect. So now even being horrified when you aren't in direct danger is still impactful, because now you are more susceptible to the horrors. This will make many of the scenes where players see their own corpse or name ,more intense, as even if there is no immediate harm in babbling for a few moments now, you know you are more vulnerable when the dangerous creatures are around.
It is adding a mechanical effect to the RP element of fear and dread. And as I mentioned originally, it is adding difficulty to a campaign that already has several instances that can TPK a party if the DM follows the encounters by the book and intelligently uses the NPCs abilities. (Bonegrinder,vallaki vampires, Baba + Hut [It deals 90 dmg/round with a +12 to hit]).
Ok, I know what I'm going to do now. I've been looking for a way to add Nightmare on Elm St to this game. Morgantha survived the Bonegrinder. And the characters didn't track her down. Of course she wants revenge. They killed her daughters, destroyed her coven, and burned down her house. She's been biding her time. Waiting. Watching. Now she's going to start her slow torture of the PCs... She's going to start appearing in their dreams. Toying with them. I'm going to use her dreams when particularly messed up things occur (which is pretty frequent in Barovia). When crazy things happen I'll have everyone make a will save. Whoever fails has a vivid nightmare involving Morgantha in some form or element from the PCs back story. When the players wake up they might have a level of exhaustion depending on how they deal with the Dream.
Last week, the players helped "Rictavio" take out the vampire spawn. They barely survived. They found the relic of St. Andral, but Henrick is more in league with Strahd in my game, and left his shop to alert the Valaki guard that the players were the ones who stole the bones from the church. So the players have been arrested. I'll be opening the session with short one on one Dream sessions. Then, escape from Valaki? >:) We'll see...
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As I've been running CoS for my group, I've felt like something was missing and I just figured out what it was. Fear checks! Where did they go? They were so integral to the Demiplane Dread.
Does anyone know if there's already an article on DMs Guild covering this? Or any other advice how you would house rule it? I don't have my original Ravenloft box anymore (which makes me a sad panda) to reference.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
I never thought of fear checks as the important part, so much as the framing/dressing of the demiplane's eponymous dread, which Curse of Strahd does include some tips for at the end of the introduction chapter.
However, I think the optional rules for madness and the sanity ability score might easily be adapted to be something similar. I'm not entirely sure because I like my Ravenloft play to have a strong edge of heroism shining through the gloom that would be undercut by dice rolls that make the characters lose themselves in more ways than already possible via creature abilities - I save that stuff for when I am running Call of Cthulhu, which helps the two (CoC and D&D in Ravenloft) remain feeling like different flavors of game play.
It's not the important part, but it was always there, and I was kinda missing it. I might just do it for big encounters/dungeons... Like maybe The Amber Temple if I can tempt them to go there, or Baba Lysaga and her ... hut...
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Thanks Thain! I'll check that out. I definitely didn't want to make it just a fear check. But something deeper. I'm thinking of something along the lines of a sort of corruption-like mechanic, low will save DC, cumulative to X number, where if you end up with all the tick boxes marked you get a lasting effect. That said, I'm not entirely sold on the whole idea yet. I've done plenty of things so far that could have initiated this check, so introducing it now probably wouldn't be fair or make sense.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Ok, I know what I'm going to do now. I've been looking for a way to add Nightmare on Elm St to this game. Morgantha survived the Bonegrinder. And the characters didn't track her down. Of course she wants revenge. They killed her daughters, destroyed her coven, and burned down her house. She's been biding her time. Waiting. Watching. Now she's going to start her slow torture of the PCs... She's going to start appearing in their dreams. Toying with them. I'm going to use her dreams when particularly messed up things occur (which is pretty frequent in Barovia). When crazy things happen I'll have everyone make a will save. Whoever fails has a vivid nightmare involving Morgantha in some form or element from the PCs back story. When the players wake up they might have a level of exhaustion depending on how they deal with the Dream.
Last week, the players helped "Rictavio" take out the vampire spawn. They barely survived. They found the relic of St. Andral, but Henrick is more in league with Strahd in my game, and left his shop to alert the Valaki guard that the players were the ones who stole the bones from the church. So the players have been arrested. I'll be opening the session with short one on one Dream sessions. Then, escape from Valaki? >:) We'll see...
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....