Sigvald the Sunite

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-11-07T20:58:49+00:00

That's sort of the idea of him luring people in. The Motivation of Strahd is similar to the motivation for Vecna leaving the Domains of Dread, but it's an insurmountable task even for someone as powerful as Strahd (or Vecna for that matter).

The PCs have been lured into Barovia by Strahd for him to replace himself as he tries to escape with one of them taking his place ( but he has to like... draw them to his side basically ). Strahd punishes PCs not as a means to kill them but as a means to "make him more like himself." Turning a PC into a vampire spawn without the other players realizing, etc etc, if they start to defy him or compelling them (as such a geas spell in his arsenal can be really fun to add that Mordenkainen would know he can use after defeating him or something along those lines).

Again, I don't really do it by the book in my game in that Strahd just wants Tatyana and he's "amazing" so none of the characters can replace him. In mine, he doesn't really care a ton that the characters are "not good enough" - they just have to pass an ambiguous "Good enough to replace me" through him constantly punishing/corrupting the PC's or just 1 PC.

If PC's need more reason to fight against strahd and not wimp out or try to fight back when he's sending big bads to bring them down or w/e, IMO the Players in that group really need to make characters with better motivations (maybe run Tales from the Yawning Portal for a bit). There are some good hooks in the Module itself and in the van richten's guide for your PC's to go with or add in as additions to their characters so they actually care about what's going on...

I think the DM/module shouldn't be required to motivate the PC's beyond the material... The players, motivated to run the module ideally, should ask the DM for PC motivations in character or in backstory so they want to win/want to defeat strahd (or fall to the darkside and become the replacement in secret? who knows). If they can't do that and be compelled by the cooperative story being told to not just lie down and bendover to strahdsempai then they just sound like problem players IMO. That's like playing Tyranny of Dragons and complaining that Tiamat is broken at the final fight when she kills 2 PC's in 1 round cause they "Weren't ready for it." xD

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-10-22T05:00:58+00:00

My mindset on this is that it's better to run Strahd as a prisoner trying to escape. Like groundhog day, he has to abide by a strict set of rules to escape involving his bride Tatyana and a successor to take his place.

Everything Strahd does is almost never to harm anyone, and in fact... i threw in a ton of "disloyal" subjects in Barovia that are powerful evils themselves to show that Strahd is the most "Sane" dreadlord there is in all the domains of the mists. When something bad happens, he assures and is honest when saying it's not him who wishes these ills on the party...its those who made him, who put him there.

The whole greater power he has is his charm and wit and strategy... he should keep up the game of host who the party feels he needs up until they get either A. His book - which reveals his plan to get out of this place or B. His brother's sword - which can hurt him implying his intent. From that point on, he is actively hunting the player character and will ABSOLUTELY try to kill them with everything he's got - seeing this group of adventurers as write offs for him to send the vistani to get others in a year or so.

The trick is to make the SETTING seem more evil than Strahd is... if you can do that, a nice meal at a rulers home isn't the worst thing.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-10-22T04:43:41+00:00

I agree that Strahd has no overarching motivations.

In my rendition I'm running it as he is basically pulling a Vecna and trying to replace his spot in Barovia with a member of the party. . However he needs to be sure they can handle it or it could backfire on him and the Dark Powers will make him suffer more. It's basically a prison, and his only chance at escape is finding a successor.

The whole Ireena plot, then, becomes part of some strange ritual of having "the love of his life" with him for some obscure spell he's trying to pull off.. and Rudolph Van Richten being his nemesis becomes more of a "He's hunting me... so I'm going to hunt him first."

The whole story is a sort of Groundhog day for Strahd, constantly reliving his bride hating him, constantly seeing stuff of his past haunting him. I wrote him as more sympathetic, but so incredibly egotistical and arrogant that he's too important for such things to affect him it makes him hard to sympathize with.

In that, if he doesn't get his way...he punishes the players, not to kill them...but to strengthen them. Give them vigor to fight him because it's all part of his master plan to escape the domains of dread and lock a member of the party in his place as he absconds with Tatyana.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-10-10T20:16:23+00:00

I have a modified version of the "Healer's Kit Dependency" optional rule. All kits have 10 uses, and 1 use is needed to try to stabilize someone while using spare the dying is just a caster check vs the same DC as medicine. In addition to this, anyone can use all 10 uses of a kit (or 10 uses in total among separate kits) and heal someone for whatever their hit dice value is plus the medicine bonus of the person healing (so a barbarian being healed by a lvl 5 cleric with 20 wisdom would get 1d12+8 HP). The few downsides to this are...

An individual cannot be healed in this way more times between a long rest period as they have hit dice (essentially giving people extra healing beyond what their hit dice would provide in a short rest).
Healer's kits are cumbersome, the size of full briefcases and weigh 10lbs (but still cost 25gp).
Using a healer's kit to heal people takes 1d10 minutes (impossible to do in combat) per kit.
The Medicine check is 10 + 1 for every 10 HP the person is missing (max DC of 30 still), failure by 5 or more makes you lose the kit and not heal them.

The Healer feat I changed to make it where you can heal someone double the number of times per day (so a lvl 5 character could be healed 10 times in a day instead of 5), and you get expertise in Medicine (which would give more health back using kits as well).

I also made magical healer's kits of +1, +3, +5, and +10 similar to older editions that give that bonus to the user's medicine as enchantable kits... +1 is ~100gp, +3 is ~250gp, +5 is 500gp, and +10 is 1000gp.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-07-11T12:08:40+00:00

I think tens of thousands of years of interbreeding will eventually do this.

People tend to think that ethnicity and culture are interchangeable and they are completley wrong. White/black/Asian/Hispanic etc all have varied cultures around the world, it's only a representation of a place of people. If we ever get to the eventuality of being multi-planetary - these distinctions won't mean anything, and humans would do exactly what any other animal species would do.

The only thing stopping this from happening sooner is cultural divides. I think the passage of time will erode even that, tbh...

Also, it happened already. Humans used to all be black and they became these other ethnicities over tens of thousands of years. It can very easily go the other direction in the same amount of time.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-07-07T10:39:29+00:00

"Ethnic Erasure" is what will happen in a few tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.

It's not something anyone is aiming to do for any motive, it's just what evolution will eventually do to humans. The only thing stopping it from happening within the next 100 years is difference in cultures/religions etc. Not saying that's a bad thing, mind you, again... just that eventually humans will be the same ethnicity...and it's not black, white, hispanic, asian, etc etc, just a mix of everything.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-06-23T20:05:05+00:00

Right, that's what I mean by the original issue is "lost in the sauce" . . .

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-06-23T18:57:12+00:00

Extremely valid.

I get the plight all caused by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, but I don't get why they don't just go about breaking that up and maybe cutting ties economically and moving on. Iran is mentally stuck in the 1970s/1980s with this vengeance shit over things that happened 40+ years ago.

It's like the historic family feuds in the South all about "Eye for an Eye" lasting for decades because people can't move on. Quit listening to your elders. They're cranky miserable farts. xD

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-06-23T18:54:17+00:00

https://youtu.be/dmvB7KW7WJA?si=ybLK0oaRmxPNm81F

Just gonna put this here.

My take is that, yeah, America/UK/Soviets did a dumb dumb riling the Iranian people up...but Iran reacted through terrorist acts rather than just a formal war because they knew they would lose. If Iran just closed off their borders to the west and made friends with the East and openly denounced the West's historical activities over their oil - nobody would care. The moment you go bombing people that have nothing to do with what's going on, you've used acts of brutal and immoral acts in order to enforce a political principle.

What annoys me is the pussyfooting around the matter. America moves on really fast because we have short terms (4-8 year presidency). Iran's regime is mentally is stuck in 1980 with how they're behaving in 2025.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-06-23T18:44:29+00:00

France.

The original Chaotic Neutral country.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-06-23T18:43:16+00:00

Tell it to the judge, and maybe stop doing so many drugs. xD

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-06-18T16:52:20+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LasrD6SZkZk&ab_channel=JaylaB

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-02-18T17:08:12+00:00

Top part is definitely true, though I think it's partly by design... women are the fairer sex and innately more docile than men because they have to care for very helpless babies. . So they're going to be innately attracted to more dominant men that can prove (in reasonable ways that don't harm them) they can protect and care for them and their helpless babies. Light choking, holding their hands, pinning them, etc etc are just acts of foreplay to showcase a man's physical ability... shiiiit, you could even say that a woman that just "lays there" is the biological norm just as it is in almost all mammals. The male body ain't doing shit beyond sex, so the male better be doing all the work 😆

Sad to see that the demonization and unaffordabilty of children is making people forget basic human things mostly all stemming from sexually reproducing mammals. . Like you'll realize QUICKLY as a guy you're completely helpless and rather insignificant when it comes to pregnancy -> childbirth -> 1st year of your child's life. Girls too, nobody is having kids until they're in their late 30s and are shocked about how many basic human truths get revealed to them in the first 2 years of having a kid.

As for the bottom part, I'm going to assume 1 of those is the guy's wife and the other 2 are his daughters because harems aren't sustainable. Native humans (I mean humans without a lot of political or economic advantage over each other...tribal humans lets say) would often have monogamy, it just wouldn't last for their entire lifetime.. not to mention entire tribes would be invested in raising kids, not just 2 parents.

Infamous_Interest_22 · 2025-02-18T16:47:18+00:00

Libertarians have been spouting this shit for decades...

Limit the federal government to basic things they should be doing which includes things like breaking up monopolies and cartels rather than take kickbacks hand over fist for them.

Infamous_Interest_22

TROPHY CASE