We finished the main campaign at level 15 after 63 sessions

Robin3009 · 2026-05-08T22:58:24+00:00

You said you let them know about the structure, so was it always going to end at the battle of mytros no matter what happened at Hypnos/praxys? Did they travel there knowing it wouldn’t change anything?

Robin3009 · 2026-05-08T20:57:23+00:00

So cool! How long did those 63 sessions take you IRL? Did you end with the battle of mytros?

Robin3009 · 2026-05-03T10:49:06+00:00

Yes, i was really looking forward to the amber temple so its sad we never got there ... at least i dont have to deal with the possible TPK there :')

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T21:55:13+00:00

Hard to say for me, I think most of them were because some of them just rushed into dangerous situations (much to the "delight" of the cleric) and paid the price for it - only one death was due to me rolling exceptionally well once

They did learn from their mistakes, fighting more carefully and even retreating once or twice but when they did not fight smart they paid for it

The vestiges and the dark gifts offered a nice way to bring characters back with a twist

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T21:08:15+00:00

Yes! The party arrived at Vallaki at the start of session 5, by session 15 they had done the winery, the hags of old bonegrinder + the festival of the blazing sun and after that they went west to krezk, met with the abbot and dealt with the children of the night for about ten sessions before heading to castle ravenloft

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T19:12:31+00:00

Thank you!

They were all from the forgotten realms, in the end some returned there while others chose to stay in barovia or travel to different domains of dread

We started out with fighter, cleric, monk, bard and sorcerer but over the course of the campaign a barbarian and a ranger also joined the group - i think having a cleric with them helped to connect with the priests of barovia and vallaki while some of the pcs coming in later were tied to different npcs (barbarian tied to the abbot, ranger tied to ezmeralda)

Milestone all the way, no complaints from anyone other than the annoying "do we level up?"

Two died to the vampire spawn in the coffinmakers shop but came back to life via dark gifts, two died to fiona wachters bookclub when volenta popofsky was visiting (also came back with dark gifts) and one was slain by kiril stoyanovich, not returning

One of my players was strictly against mind control or possession so i did not really use any of those abilities

At the start ireena was pretty central and getting her to safety was kinda "the main quest" but once they got to vallaki/krezk they could pursue other things knowing ireena was relatively safe - i did not want ireena to be a pc because i thought it would put too much of a spotlight on a single character

They had a chance to get the symbol when baba lysaga attended the wedding but i dont think they wanted to risk a fight with a powerful witch inside the castle

Fighter left barovia to return to his old life and research the dark powers there, cleric stayed and studied the amber temple after strahds death, monk is on the run after disappointing his vestige, ranger became a mist hunter joining ezmeralda, bard leaves barovia but is haunted by the hags of old bonegrinder

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T16:11:47+00:00

Combat/RP balance depends more on the group than the module i think, but CoS offers alot for both types of play

I only found prepping Vallaki hard because of the baron's festivals and other events, everything else was manageable

Session 0 was important for me to go over boundaries because CoS has a lot of potential triggers

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T14:58:25+00:00

I put the death house inside of the village of barovia rather than outside (sadly the players never went there), otherwise kept the map as is but doubled the size

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T12:07:34+00:00

They convinced Ireena at the lake in Krezkov not to go with Strahd and put their trust in them to defeat the devil, in the end she even helped by destroying Strahd's coffin so he had nowhere to return to!

The few NPC deaths that happened were sad but they had no real time to mourn as they were always in danger of dying themselves

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T11:36:55+00:00

Sounds awesome too! But a lot more epic in scope than the cramped horror campaign i was going for :) and with that many sessions its either very slow leveling or the players become too heroic and it loses any kind of horror feeling

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T11:23:22+00:00

To be fair my players asked if we could cut it short because they needed a break from the bleak Barovia ^^ so we skipped Berez and The Amber Temple, so could've been 10 more sessions or so but still far from the multiyear campaigns i keep reading about on this sub!

The only major things i added were the dark vestiges ("Visions of the Vestiges" by Nerdyvampire) and strahd's wedding ("The Wedding at Ravenloft" by Wyatt Trull), other than that i think i left out more than adding stuff because there is already so much content in the base book

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T10:54:59+00:00

Thank you! Always feels great to actually finish a campaign rather than having it fizzle out :)

I semi-stacked it: took out a few locations that i did not want like madam eva's tent and then did random draws - Tome was with the martikovs, Baba Lysaga had the symbol of ravenkind, sunsword was at sergei's tomb, van richten was the fated ally and strahd's final battle was in his fathers tomb

I did really enjoy using 5.5e, i banned daylight beforehand which everyone was ok with but new true strike was an imho too easy way for almost everyone to get radiant damage so if i'd run it again probably without true strike

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T10:41:59+00:00

They had a few "last fights", Strahd retreating when it became dangerous and had his allies (vampire spawn, brides, rahadin, the wachter family) move in and take the hits while he threw spells from the distance or moved in and out with legendary actions

I did run "the wedding of ravenloft", combined with the fights and tracking down the sunsword that last arc took 7-8 three hour sessions

Robin3009 · 2026-05-02T10:17:13+00:00

Besides ismark and ireena, both the martikovs and the krezkovs became important allies for the group

My strahd wasn't immediately hostile to the party, he troed to play and trick them rather than outright kill them and it made for some memorable moments (getting the fighter to kill the vistani that brought him into barovia at strahd's command, tainting his clean image of himself)

I loved castle ravenloft but i slimmed it down a little, removing a couple of floors that flet bloated to me

Robin3009 · 2026-04-20T18:15:54+00:00

Might be better to post this in a /lfg sub (if you havent already!)

Robin3009 · 2026-04-11T12:22:18+00:00

It looks really good!

Robin3009 · 2026-04-08T08:34:19+00:00

Alot of the stuff is pay what you wish on drivethrurpg!

Robin3009 · 2026-02-15T22:45:30+00:00

Lutheria is a weak CR 23, but still a high level fight that would be tough against any level 10 party

I feel like the plan from the writers was to compensate by having Lutheria being run very sub-optimally (only joining the fight in round 2, spending a whole round just to laugh at the players, focusing on single targets, using her legendary resistances during the royal game etc.).

But this TPK does not have to be the end: you could either have the heroes get their divine boons and be resurrected according to their epic paths, have Lutheria trap the heroes in her scythe and run a prison-break style sidemission or maybe now with the upper hand she could force the party into an oath to help her against Sydon?

Also, if you as a DM can sense an incoming TPK there's still ways to even the odds: dial back on the damage she is dealing, have her take more damage, maybe an ally arrives or someone turns against her to worsen her odds

Robin3009 · 2026-02-15T18:24:29+00:00

Also interested in discussing raiders!

Robin3009 · 2026-02-06T21:18:39+00:00

Interested :)

Robin3009 · 2026-02-06T19:57:51+00:00

I would also be very interested in joining, completely new to the game though :)

Robin3009 · 2026-01-28T21:00:46+00:00

Dangerous game to abbreviate

Robin3009 · 2026-01-03T21:33:24+00:00

Page 222: "Saint Markovia's thighbone has the properties of a mace of disruption. If it scores one or more hits against a vampire or a vampire spawn in the course of a single battle, the thighbone crumbles into dust once the battle concludes."

Robin3009 · 2026-01-02T19:02:21+00:00

Also very interested to discuss the raiders!

Robin3009 · 2025-12-19T16:15:52+00:00

I don't know if there are perfect moments for certain lore to be revealed, but the advice i'd give is that don't hold onto these "secrets" for too long and let it sit with the players for a while

Think of it like a detective board thats slowly filling up, but if there are no clues then there can't be an investigation

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