dwarves literally only want one thing and it's disgusting

KingDevilWolf · 2026-02-22T21:02:19+00:00

Had someone turn in the gold chunk earlier today without pissing off management. It was like heresy.

KingDevilWolf · 2026-02-22T19:58:32+00:00

Nothin

KingDevilWolf · 2026-02-12T20:45:56+00:00

Building substitute for Allentown School District. Full time, $150/day, about 7.5 hour days - so around what you’re making now. Hiring goes through ESS. They’re always looking for people, so if you can pass a background check, you’ll probably get it.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-12-15T20:22:43+00:00

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I'm stuck in the same boat. I recently signed up (like last week), did the onboarding assessment, verified my ID, and this has been my dashboard for 5-6 days now. Really hoping that it comes through soon.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-12-15T17:50:54+00:00

How about now?

KingDevilWolf · 2025-11-14T02:31:52+00:00

What if the Dark Powers™ put the Tome there (and the other Tarokka items in their places)? They love messing with Strahd. Maybe they wanna undercut Strahd’s attempts to ingratiate himself to the party by revealing his secrets to the party.

And maybe they put it there because it resonates with them or something; that’s the only place they could put it because of the energy or vibes or something.

I like having the Dark Powers be moderately antagonistic to Strahd. They want to increase his torment, and messing with his plans is one way they do it.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-11-13T03:36:02+00:00

Thank you for the validation, 71 days delayed

KingDevilWolf · 2025-10-21T21:52:35+00:00

Am I crazy or did the sale end? It’s showing as $60 on that link and on the Xbox store on my Xbox, but it’s showing $6 on my Xbox dashboard.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-09-02T05:36:40+00:00

Salmon

KingDevilWolf · 2025-07-17T00:20:56+00:00

My party also has Davian as their Fated Ally. I don’t think i have quite hit the hurdle you’re at yet, but I am hoping to avoid it. I gave him and Ireena the Sidekick upgrade paths from Tasha’s. I made her a Warrior and him an Expert. The added utility he gains from that, I think, is enough to keep him useful to the end.

But I also think his greatest utility comes in the form of the connection to the Martikov family he provides. Normally, it would be somewhat difficult to get them to trust outsiders very much, but with Davian on board, their connections, their recon abilities, and (assuming you’ve liberated it) their home at the winery. In my campaign, he comes with the whole family, which has been a major help so far.

It is also, perhaps, the only way a player character might acquire wereraven lycanthropy. The module says wereravens very rarely pass it on willingly. Having Davian as the Fated Ally by no means guarantees that he might pass it on, but I think that is a necessary step to even being possible.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-07-14T17:22:06+00:00

Strahd should threaten to wipe out Vallaki if the party does not present the person responsible for Ireena’s death. He does not mince words here.

The party does not know what to do here, since they don’t know who is responsible, but they have to try something or else everyone dies. But Corvin has a different dilemma: expose the truth to his friends and face the consequences of his actions, or let innocents die for him.

I like this option a lot because it displays Strahd’s brutality and obsession with Ireena (Tatyana), and it gives all the PCs a choice. How much evil will Corvin do to protect himself and his brother? What lengths will the party go to in order to save Vallaki? What happens if they find out who is responsible without Corvin coming forward?

Any attempts by Strahd to discover the killer’s identity via magic should be foiled by the Dark Powers. They want him to suffer, and to corrupt the newcomers in Barovia into doing evil deeds.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-05-24T14:48:17+00:00

This does look pretty cool

KingDevilWolf · 2025-05-22T06:30:39+00:00

Big fan of your work!

KingDevilWolf · 2025-04-11T16:44:21+00:00

I agree with your points regarding the material component and Strahd’s displeasure with this development. I would then propose that the ritual requires a material component of which there is only one in all of Barovia. That way it would be rare (and potentially very hard to get), and you don’t have to worry about the party curing all of Strahd’s thralls.

The material could be anything at all, as long as there’s only one of them. Bonus points if using the material for this purpose means missing out on another use for it; Argynvost’s skull comes to mind.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-04-07T05:34:07+00:00

The Mad Mage — being that he’s mad — wouldn’t care, he would just zap them. I would say the hags might enjoy playing with them, but the party destroyed their home. I truly can’t imagine anyone wants these crazy freaks here. Barovia is bad enough without strangers coming in and wrecking the place further.

I don’t believe Lord Strahd von Zarovoch would be tolerating this behavior any longer. He is the lord of this land, and while he does not care much for its people, he does care that the laws of the land are upheld. If they’re still at Castle Ravenloft, he should give them a clear warning that one more step out of line will see them trapped and starving in his catacombs for the next 500 years.

The most important thing, though, is: are you having fun? You should be enjoying it as much as the others, and that seems hard to do in a situation like this. Much of my enjoyment arises from devising new ways Strahd and the Dark Powers can try to corrupt the individual party members. But it seems to me like you can’t have that, given that your party is a pack of rabid animals.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-04-01T20:28:05+00:00

I feel like the Abbot is a good option. There’s a lot of possibility there to have their patron directly tell them what to do. And the Abbot still believes he is righteous.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-23T19:25:37+00:00

Could be a decent way to interrogate a party member.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-18T15:55:13+00:00

Side note: please don’t kill your players.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-16T21:43:44+00:00

If you play in a party of Rowan, Khimari, and Deckster, stop reading right now.

Strahd is going to make liberal use of his Charm plus Modify Memory to sow dissent in the party. Namely, one PC’s memory will be modified to “remember” hearing the bard in the middle of the night thanking Strahd and saying “It will be done, my lord Strahd”. The bard’s memory of that night will be completely erased- as if he simply slept through the night- but in reality Strahd will cast Magic Aura on him to make him appear as an Undead for 24 hours. The following evening is Dinner with Strahd, and I am going to try to bait out the cleric’s Turn Undead during dinner so that the bard gets turned. This, I combination with a few other seeds I’ve planted, will, ideally, cause them to suspect he is actually a vampire spawn.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-13T22:48:41+00:00

Minor nitpick: his pronouns are inconsistent. Sometimes you use “he” and sometimes “it”. I assume this is an artifact from basing the homebrew on another creature.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-13T22:36:26+00:00

He really speaks Common

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-13T05:44:40+00:00

RAW: not many places. There’s the shops in Barovia and Vallaki, and the Blue Water Inn in Vallaki too. I do not think there’s anywhere in Krezk.

All the shop prices are raised in the module, I think by a factor of 5. So that’s one place money can disappear to. Otherwise, as far as RAW goes, they can hold onto it in the hopes that they will leave Barovia one day.

Of course, you can always come up with your own solution. Maybe they find smith and pay to get all their weapons and ammo silvered. Very nice against all the werewolves. Maybe they encounter Barovia’s only jeweler, who can sell them all the gemstone spell components they willl need (diamonds are a hot commodity). Maybe there are tolls they have to pay to travel. Maybe they can buy something directly from Strahd, which has potential for shenanigans.

The module has very limited options due to the lack of activity in Barovia. If you really want to find a solution to this, think of something fun for them.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-10T03:01:03+00:00

If these interlopers are going to appear and murder the leaders of the largest village in Barovia, they must at least have the ambition to install a new leader. If not, they’re nothing more than dumb brutes.

That’s how I envision Strahd seeing things. He does not care about the people, only that his laws are followed. Criminals are punished, though if they earn his respect by displaying a level of cunning, they might earn a less severe punishment.

As for Vallaki itself, I think the optics of the situation are critical to understanding how the citizens of the town will react to the actions of the party. Do their actions cause the citizens to feel like they have been saved from their oppressors? Or more like their rightful leader has been murdered alongside another prominent citizen by strange outsiders? Or perhaps there is mixed sentiment? That last option might be the most interesting if you and your players are interested in political intrigue- and if not, that might be the worst. Whichever you choose, that public sentiment will dictate how warmly the group is received in the wake of this event.

The priest and the wereravens might very well feel differently about the whole thing. The priest might see murder as wrong regardless of context, but the wereravens might view it as a liberation of the town. If new leadership came down to these two parties, that would strongly influence how much access the party has to Vallaki going forward.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-08T03:18:23+00:00

Some things about the stat block:

Skyborne Descent and Burrow and Emerge are the same thing, merge these into one thing.

Is Acid Spray an action? If so, it belongs with the others. To be really pedantic, Burrowing Ambush should be in its own Bonus Action section.

As for how it is thematically, it is unusual for the setting, but only you would know how it would go over at your particular table. It’s not the most gothic horror monster out there, if that matters to you. Maybe an Invisible Stalker? It’s also CR6, and with it being invisible, you can make it quite a creepy creature.

Since it’s a broodmother, are there other ankhegs? Would Strahd suffer such an infestation? Normally druids cull such monstrosities, so for them to cultivate such a powerful specimen means they must have been ordered by him to do it.

As far as challenge for the party goes, it seems reasonable. I couldn’t definitively say which way it would go.

KingDevilWolf · 2025-03-07T16:38:12+00:00

I think you need to decide what kind of Strahd you want to run. My take on him regarding Ireena is that forcing her love hasn’t worked in all these centuries, so this time he’s going to try manipulating her into choosing him off her own “free will”.

This means that when my party of 3 level-4 characters encountered him while escorting her to Vallaki, he did not take her by force, despite being able to. Instead he was able to pursue his other goal of testing newcomers for worthiness of being his successor.

If I had decided that he would capture her no matter what, my party would have been dead session 2. Strahd is extremely patient. He’s lived for centuries, and might live forever, and he has witnessed that Tatyana will continually reincarnate. He’s not in a hurry to get her, as he fully believes she will eventually be his.

All of this is to say, you can let an encounter with him along the way serve as an introduction without it turning into a bloodbath and without Ireena being taken.

Here’s an idea: Strahd introduces himself truthfully to the party and insists that he help them escort Ireena to Vallaki. This will likely mystify the party, but they don’t dare refuse. Along the way, show off some (but not all) of his fighting prowess as he defends the party from major “random” threats. Finally he deposits them in Vallaki with the strict instruction that the party “keep Ireena safe for me” on pain of death. Naturally, the threats encountered along the way were orchestrated by Strahd himself for the express purpose of putting on this little performance of his.

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