r/CurseofStrahd

Reading various posts on this subreddit shows that issues arise when DMs portray Strahd as too kind or gentlemanly. When players do not feel constant danger, they tend to:

(1) Ignore the main quest to complete every side quest.

(2) Openly mock or underestimate Strahd.

Despite his gentlemanly demeanor, Strahd should always remain sinister, evil, and oppressive.

Another DM trap is treating Curse of Strahd purely as a sandbox, not a quasi/semi-sandbox. While CoS offers open exploration, a subtle linear narrative runs beneath it. Running the campaign too loosely causes players to lose direction. Players should be constantly (1) pushed by threats or (2) pulled by NPCs, toward certain directions, even though players have options on where to go.

Hi Strahd hive mind,

I come to you today because I need some aid in cooking up consequences for my players.

TLDR
- I have been playing Strahd as very non antagonising, even charming, knowing the party pose no threat to him and has thanked them multiple times for "keeping Tatyana safe" (he invited them to Barovia)
- Party made friends with Vasili who recently dramatically proposed to Ireena, revealed himself to be Strahd, and whisked her away (only the monk and cleric tried to stop him, the other two fled)
- The following session party decided to rescue Ireena from Ravenloft after Escher tipped them off to her location (upset he would no longer get any attention)
- With help of Danika they've spread rumours of RvR sightings in Vallaki which drew Strahd away from the castle and the party retrieved not only Ireena but also Gertrude
- Party fled the castle via teleportation brazier and landed in Amber Temple (on purpose, however it was spur of the moment decision) - they are currently lvl 8
- They are now in the temple picking up gifts etc, Ireena and especially Gertrude are not dealing with the cold well though as they brought no cold clothes

Here's where we arrive at my issue:
- The monk is a dhampir whose internal motivation is to prove she above her more animalistic urges that come from her lineage, which Strahd picked up on and taunted her about when he took Ireena
- The monk (whose vice is pride) now wants to send a message to Strahd in which she:
- expresses she is "nothing like him"
- gloats about snatching Ireena from under his nose
- proposes a 1 on 1 meeting opportunity in 3 days time during which she will offer him information he might be interested in and making a demand that "he better bring something good" in exchange

The monk characters reasoning for being so bold is:

1. Strahd might think she has info on RvR's whereabouts and be intrigued enough to come
2. She wants to get some sort of upper hand and snitch on Escher with hope that his betrayal will take away some heat off the party and also that Strahd will be willing to trade something good to the party in exchange
3. From players POV of Strahd he has interacted in a way thus far where he was almost curious about what party will do next and how far they'll be able to go. That’s what they're hinging on him not killing their monk on - a hope that she can use his own ego against him.

Important context:
- The party has never faced Strahd in combat proper
- Ludmilla, Rahadin, Escher and Kiril are still alive (as possible lieutenants)
- They don't have the Symbol nor the Sunsword yet (one in Berez, one near burned down Windmill)
- The party will probably spend at least another day or two if not more in the Temple (they are kinda getting their butts kicked atm) and will be joined by Kasimir at some point during that time
- Strahd knows party was going to head to Amber Temple - he hasn't succeeded at scrying to confirm it but its only a matter of time

As you can probably tell this is quite a juicy position to be in from dm's perspective. Strahd, as I would imagine, would be ENRAGED when he found out that the party managed to grab Tatyana from him, just as he was so close again. I could definitely have him play up the cool, cold, calculating monster angle still at this point - or maybe I should go full assault already? I can have him meet 1 on 1 with this player (what could that look like?) or he meets the whole party, on his terms and tries to recapture Ireena (however that might get very messy, I think he'd be very worried about her getting hurt etc.)

Thank you for your help!

In the CoS book it is stated that in the event of St. Andral’s feast, the following day, townfolk of Vallaki turn against the burgomaster, burn his house and drag him and his family to the stocks, and stone them all to death. Izek flees the town to avoid the same fate.

In my game the Feast has happened, and Ireena is currently held in Izek’s room. The party left Ireena and Ismark as soon as they had escorted them to Vallaki and thus Izek has found Ireena and has her captive. The party knows this, but have so far elected to leave her there.

So, if the Vallakians go to burn the house, they either find her or don’t. (Dice might decide this?) If they do not find her, she burns with the house as she is locked within. If they do find her, will they listen to her or just lynch her as well, being an angry mob seeking not justice but blood (the dice might have to decide this one as well). It is also not uncommon to have hidden daughters in Barovia. Izek, if present might try to protect Ireena.

Now, if the party does not save her from this possible fate (they would have many opportunities to at the very least try to save her), and the Vallakians kill her, what does Strahd do?

In the book, it is told that the town of Berez was laid waste by Strahd, because the burgomaster had killed Tatyana’s reincarnation to save her. If Strahd destroyed Berez, would this also be the fate of Vallaki?

Now, I understand that this would take the story on a considerably darker path, and also challenge the party in many ways, but imo it would fit the story and it would be one logical consequence of a long series of choices the party has made during their time in Vallaki and the domino effects of those choices and so forth.

Edit: I have planned a Night of the Long Fangs (from witcher 3) type of slaughter of Vallaki in case Strahd destroys the town.

So as per the card reading, the tome of Strahd is in Fiona's possession. My players have been at Wachterhaus twice. They know the card refers to her, but they forgot an item is tied to it.

They killed Izek last session and they will most likely be asking her for their reward soon. She will also attempt to overthrow the burgomaster soon.

How do i remind my players about the item without telling them they forgot?

I've looked around here and couldn't find any opinion about this: I'm thinking about not including Strahd's location in Madame Eva tarokka reading, the idea is, I don't like the idea of fixing where the final conflict will be so early on, what do you think?

Btw the other locations for now are:

-sun sword in Amber Temple

-symbol of ravenkind (reskinned as a lamp of the morning light) will be with the Abbot who corrupted it's power to use it for his experiments

-tome of Strahd is with Viktor in Vallaki burgomaster mansion

-fated ally, is kinda of ireena, but I'll send them to Berez to find Marina's statue and a pendant which will make Irina remember her past lives and become a stronger ally + the world card, which will be interpreted as "look around and you'll find some allies in this world", to encourage them to make more allies

Hello Reddit community.

My CoS campaign is about to start and I'm thinking about the tarokka reading. Do you have recommendations or with which you had success and cool campaign moments?

For Item locations I'm thinking about Tome - Vallaki, Sunsword - Amber temple and Symbol - Argynvostholt.

Ally - Esmeralda seems to be one of the strongest picks but I also find that Vasilka could be very interesting. 🤔

Location of Strahd in the castle - no idea yet 😅

Thx in advance for your opinions.

Hello! This is not only my first post on this sub but on Reddit as a whole, wohooo!

I am a DM running CoS for the first time for a group of new players (I know, big task but so far I'm doing decently well I think) and I'm about to introduce Strahd for the first time. I'm running mostly RAW with some minor homebrewing to incorporate some elements of my player's backstory and some wider plot hooks for a possible campaign after CoS (assuming they survive...)

My players recently met Madam Eva and had their Tarokka reading (rigged, I'm afraid :P) and are escorting Ireena to Vallaki, along with Ismark who joined them to make sure she gets there safe.

Now on their way to Vallaki I want them to run into Strahd, either past the bridge of the Ivlis river or at the crossroads that split the path towards Vallaki or towards Ravenloft.

I want Strahd to initially seem almost nice, in an eerie way. He's simply on his way to the Town of Barovia to pay his respects to the deceased burgomaster of Barovia. I'm having my Strahd respect those who are competent, respectful and able leaders (which I've made Kolyan to be) even if he still thinks of them as beneath him. He is an honorable man vampire, although twisted, so his intentions are genuine.

Lastly, I was thinking that Strahd's obsession with Tatyana would maybe lead him to disregard or ignore the person her reincarnations become, because he is only interested in Tatyana's soul within them. As such, perhaps Strahd would refuse to call Ireena anything other than "Tatyana", which could create an interesting moment where the party thinks "what the hell is he talking about?" and potentially make the reveal later more impactful.

My question is, is this a good interpretation of Strahd? What do you think about these ideas? I'll be happy to hear any feedback! And if I enjoy the experience and receive helpful tips I might post more in the future as my story progresses!

Thank you!! <3

Hi reddit,

So im running CoS for the first time, having played it once (with some homebrew).
I prepared as well as I could for the dinner, what they where gonna eat, what strahd was going to offer each one of them, how to set them up against each other.

But....

They only focussed on getting the large dragon skull out of the castle, as their sole goal. Their plan was to give it to a party member who could fly. Cast reduce on the skull, give it to him, and have him fly to Village of Barovia.

Once they started the plan (3 hours before the dinner) they cast Knock to get it off the wall, and only then found out that Reduce only lasts for 1 minute, and the gnome with a STR score of 8 would be crushed by it once it would enlarge again.

Now they all scattered, once they heard Rahadin coming up the stairs. 2 of them trying to rush the skull outside over the bridge, the rest scattering all over the castle.

Now i'd love to hear your idea's how you would handle this. It's 3 in the afternoon, so Strahd's sleeping.

My table finished Curse of Strahd differently. Instead of the fight at the castle, Strahd sent an invitation to dinner, and over the meal he asked them for help-go to the Amber Temple, reach back four hundred years, and talk his younger self out of making the pact. (For those who already have The Horrors Within, this idea is also mentioned there on page 201.)

He isn't repentant. He has no capacity for remorse left and he can't imagine having been anyone else. He came to a fork in the road, took one path, and now wants to walk back and take the other. The four hundred years that lie along the path behind him doesn't enter into it.

Three things that came out of running it:

• He's tired, not theatrical. The organ doesn't play. When a player asked why: "I stopped playing some time ago. I grew to dislike the theater." Playing him exhausted made him far more frightening than playing him grand or mischievous. No illusions, no face in the clouds, definitely no zip-line.

• The parting gift is a test. After dinner he gives each character a sealed vial and a letter explaining that if they can't go through with it in good conscience, drinking it will carry them home through the Mists. It's acid. He'd genuinely prefer their help, but he's planned for the other outcome. There's an Insight check that tells you nothing about the contents but everything about the Count.

• The climax is a speech, not a fight. One character projects back and gets one attempt to change his mind. My player arrived with hers handwritten. She opened with "You sent me here" — which, given his ego, was the smartest possible way in. It worked, and the table still talks about it. I'm still talking about it.

I've written it up as a standalone appendix: the dinner, the Amber Temple, the intervention itself, and both endings — failure is a real outcome and it's written out in full, but not treated as a loss. All that means is that you now have an irate Strahd to deal with.

I'm after a few DMs who'd read it and tell me where it breaks. Specifically: does the dinner give you enough to improvise from, and does the one-shot speech read as exciting rather than punishing? Happy to send a PDF.

Send me a direct message with your email address and I'll send the files over.

I am running CoS with one of my players as the reincarnation of Tatyana. Vasilli has been around helping them and been very attentive to them particularly, of course, the Tatyana character. Now she has been a silly billy and told me she suspects Vasilli as working for or being Strahd in disguise. Now do I reward this by staying true and doing the reveal in dramatic fashion but sooner than I wanted. Try to put her off the scent or make him genuinely just a good, charming, genuinely heroic suitor and kill him in a horrible and traumatic manner?

Edit: Thanks for your opinions, it’s kinda cemented my thoughts and I’ll be moving the reveal forward.

I recently ran my third session of Curse of Strahd. After two sessions for Death House, the players finally arrive in the land of Borovia and made their way to Borovia village. Near the tail end of the session, my players have made their way to >!the Burgonmeister’s house to speak with Ireena and Ismark about burying her dad and bringing her to Vallaki.!< Initially, my plan was to have the players encounter Strahd for the first time during >!the burgonmeister’s funeral!< but then one of my players, a Blood Hunter that was a nervous drug addict, during the initial discussions with the group suggested that there was no way Strahd would even know they were there.

That gave me a golden opportunity as I had them hear a knock on the door. Our barbarian opens the door to see Strahd standing outside. Initially he tries to charm the barbarian into letting him in, but the barbarian resists. The barbarian has a bone to pick with Strahd and wanted to attack him, but Strahd polymorphs him into a sheep. Strahd offers a deal…he knows that >!Ireena wants to bury her father, but the priest is not doing anything about it, so he gives players a cryptic piece of advice for helping change the priest’s mind. In the end he asks for a favor, that the party escort Ireena to Castle Ravenloft, but only if she chooses to go. He says it’s ultimately her choice where she wants to go…but Borovia is not a safe place for her, so ultimately she WILL make that choice.!<

I ended the encounter off by having Strahd say “for your troubles” and gave the party two blood covered gold coins…the same gold coins they gave to a friendly fisherman who initially helped them understand the land. My players all now HATE Strahd and want to kill him!

Morgantha is a beloved event in the village of Barovia. An old woman dishing out dream pies in the otherwise dark and dour village. If followed you see her seem to abduct a terrified child, and if a player eats a dream pastry they'll fall into a deep trance of a beautiful place, waking up longing for it again.

Morgantha is, of course, a Night Hag.

Many of the subs most esteemed contributors have wonderfully flavoured these interactions by making her a bubbly old lady and incorrigible gossip, and by creating details and stacking effects for the dream pies.
But now that many players (certainly almost all of mine) has played at least Act 1 of BG3 and met Auntie Ethel, the green hag who plays a very similar role in the Druid Grove, is there any way to try and capture that surprise factor again?

My first instinct is to play around with the shapeshift ability. The Night Hag stat block says it can change into any small or medium humanoid while maintaining its same statistics. I'd worry this is too much of a mislead, but what if playing up their appearance as an older woman we instead focus on their ability to appear via the Dream spell (in 2024) or Nightmare Haunting ability (2014)?

Instead of appearing as an old human lady selling pies, she disguises herself as a simple Barovian commoner, even a younger male or child to throw off suspicions. But in the nightmares, they take warped shapes like something out of a Junji Ito manga. To let the players guess it, I'd keep something consistent between the forms: A scar across their entire face, a sickly yellow eye, a withered black tooth etc.

I'd love any thoughts on this one, it'd be great to keep the Hags as a mystery rather than a forgone conclusion!

We are on Reddit so I assume most people heard of Ea-Nasir, but for those who didn't, here is the TLDR :

Ea-Nasir was a copper merchant in Ancient Mesoppotamia some 4000 years ago. Archeologists discovered several clay tablets that can be considered "customer complaints", detailing how Nasir basically scammed people with poor quality copper.

So anyway, I've been running CoS for 7 sessions. On session 4 or 5, they met Madame Eva and the Vistani camp. During their stay, one of the Vistani, called Nana, offered them some discount magic items, made of copper.

One of my player bought Boots of Striding and Springing for the low price of 10 gold. Little did he know, they are cursed. They still work as far as the movement speed and carry capacity, BUT he can't take them off. He didn't tried yet to jump with them, I plan to make him roll and have a 50% chance of jumping backwards instead of forward. It's only been a couple of days in-game for them, so I also hesitate to give him a penalty because he can't take them off at night (Bacteria infection maybe ? Or straight up a level of exhaustion).

Anyway, last session they met the second Vistani camp outside Vallaki after finding Arabelle and delevering her to Luvash, and he told them Nana (short for Nasir) is a scammer and he laughed at my player's boots. One of the players got the reference and we had a good laugh about it.

Greetings Ravenloft family, this is a long ol' post! I've been lurking on this sub for a while now, however this was too good to not be shared with you lovely folk. For context, 3 of the 4 players are D&D newcomers, and though I've played for many a year I'm relatively new to DMing! I'm very lucky to have these friends as players since everyone is focused on the group fun, and they're enthusiastic + attentive. Love 'em to bits.

I ran an alternate version of Death House outside of town without Rose +​ Thorn due to lines and veils, replacing them with a woman who's husband had been kidnapped by the Dursts (she was long dead, this was an echo of her). They caught on that something was up and continued down the road. I didn't want to 'mist' them in, so I (rather mistakenly) let them continue into the village at, well, level 1.

They met with Ismark in the tavern, stayed the night, and ventured to the Burgomaster's mansion. After a chat with Ireena, they agreed to help bury her late pops and so ensued the funeral. I had Strahd quietly and 'respectfully' attend. They levelled up to 2 here. Strahd left after the funeral and the party went into the church only for the party ranger to hear a certain someone screaming from the basement. Father Donny them context and they all rolled a history check to see if they knew anything about Doru's affliction. One character rolled well, so I gave them some information about vampires (sunlight sensitivity, running water, wooden stake, and invitation needed).

They decided that they would go down there and put him out of his misery. The woodcarving Cleric snapped some pews and made some stakes, and the group decided they would try to get Doru's consent for Ceremony so that they could at least give him a moment of peace before the end. I made sure to give them multiple hints that this fight would be very dangerous!! FThey came up with a plan, and entered the undercroft...

After failing to reason with him, combat ensues with the Cleric throwing a net. Doru fails, but breaks out on his turn and goes straight for the Cleric, dealing 10 points of damage. The Sorcerer throws their one holy water flask; she misses. The Cleric attempts but fails to convince Doru to calm down and so they run​ back, taking an opportunity attack and dropping to, quite literally, 1hp. The Rogue is up, tossing manacles to the Ranger and then, by the luck of The Dice, successfully grapples Doru. The Ranger is now up, and he succeeds on locking them around Doru's wrists. Keep in mind, Doru is not restrained as the 2024 manacles need to be attached to a chain that is fixed in place to restrain. The Sorcerer throws a magic missile. 8 force damage. The Cleric makes an attack but misses, which then Doru attempts to break free, but fails. The Rogue stabs Doru with her stake which does 2 damage and she disengages. The Ranger pulls out chains (he has weakened lycanthropy from MandyMod's secrets, so with his starting good he bought manacles and a chain to, well, hinder himself on a full moon!). He successfully attaches the chain to Doru's manacles and fixes it to one of the pillars.

At this point, I'm thinking about how Doru could attack and potentially break the wooden pillar to get free. The Sorcerer throws a firebolt, dealing 4 damage. The Cleric is now up, and they Turn Undead. Doru abysmally fails his save and is now restrained, frightened, and incapacitated. He cannot run since he is restrained, and he cannot use an action or bonus action.

They spent 2 rounds trying to convince him to let the Cleric cast ceremony, and though I let them roll for it, they failed their intimidation / persuasion checks.

The Ranger stuck a stake into an incapacitated Doru's heart, instantly killing and destroying our poor famished Doru. That's where we ended the session.

I'm in awe. We were all so ecstatic post-session, and I gave them a huge round of applause and their much deserved level up to level 3!! Zero dice were fudged in this fight and I made no adjustments to Doru to make it easier. They earned their moment, and I'm insanely proud of them.

P.S: A big ol' thank you to everyone in this community for making this a fun and respectful place ~ the shenanigans that follow are certain to be inspired by the sheer amount of knowledge and resource here.

My players are camping outside Old Bonegrinder for the night, with them is Ireena and Gertruda they just rescued from the castle (with insider help)

it make sense to me that gertruda being young and naive like a child, might just work for the coven. i thought playing them refering her as "still ripe" while saying my yongest PC, which no longer have childlike presepective, as "already rotten". having her being a target.

However - my party is 6 players level 5 and the bonegrinder was marked for level 4. Knowing theres a full coven there i entered the data into difficulty calculator and... this does not look good for them. this encounter marked as deadly before calculating in the coven raised difficulties, any dretch.

Im not used to DM to players that levels and im not sure how accurate is the calculation, especially since the book claim its much easier. is it too hard?

my plan is along with the warning from the raven- they going to meet Morgantha on the way to the Festival of the Blazing Sun that happening the same day (see my idea of Party Pastries)- and i hope they dont miss it. especially with gertruda lighting up and really excited to go.

but if they decide to approach... am i risking a TPK if i run it as written? any advice?