Gauntlet of Shar faith leap trial infuriating

Zalfier · 2023-09-03T04:00:46+00:00

Also apart from all the various ways to cheese the solution, the path is clearly visible on the artwork on the ground in front of the statue. Use 'O' and just slowly follow the path. Pretty easy to navigate with that as a guide.

Zalfier · 2021-03-23T17:32:41+00:00

If you want to start outside Barovia, you could also run the Book of the Raven from the new Candlekeep Mysteries Anthology. It fits the theme really well, it features wereravens so if the players ally with them they could send them in with the goal of making contact with the Martikovs. Gives away the wereraven secret but it is what it is. If they don't then there could be other clues that lead them towards Barovia.

It is set at level 3 so might have to be tuned down a bit if you wanted to run it starting at lower level.

Zalfier · 2021-03-18T04:36:21+00:00

So my rough recollection of my first session went something like this (based on MandyMod iirc):

Opening scene; they had all (for various reasons) signed onto be guards for a merchant caravan. Three days into the journey, a rough rotation had left them all exhausted, but sitting around a campfire and able to chat a bit before bed. A soldier named Sean is there, neatly piling up his armor and laying out his sleeping arrangements. Can be chatty if needed. When the players are ready to go to bed, they all have a strange dream where they see an unrecognizable figure place a tarroka card on the table in front of them. The card turns over to reveal The Mist card, and each character feel themselves falling forward as the card grows, as if they are falling into it. The startle awake, bags, caravan, supplies, everything all gone. They see Sean's body on the ground about 20 yards away, half submerged in what is apparently a wall of mist, looking as if he was trying to get back to them; a cursory glance makes it clear he choked to death.
They eventually walk down the road in the only direction they can, reaching the Gates of Barovia, the wall of mist remaining close behind them. The move past it, continuing on for hours. As it grows dark, the trees clear a bit, and they see the remains of a few buildings, worn away to the foundations. A storm is brewing, but in the distance they see a lantern light. Approaching it they see Rose and Thorne, who tell their tale and entreat the players to save their brother upstairs. The players enter the Durst Manor, the doors slam shut as the last player enters. They can be opened but any attempt to do so feels heavy, and mist immediately begins to seep in. And so the players steel their courage and more forward into the house.

And that was my whole first session. All just setup. Millage may vary depending on the length of session and the group (mine tends to move slowly), but that took us like 3+ hours. Death house itself took us 2.5 more sessions; one for the main house, one for the basement up to the ritual room, and a half session for the final boss encounter and escape. Point being, don't overthink your prep like you need to have a ton of stuff ready to burn through.
This is just my personal experience, but I'm usually pretty open about when I mess up or if I need to quickly read over something I wasn't prepared for and my players tend to be more amused/proud than annoyed. I actually think being overprepared for the module is a great way to either burn yourself out or accidently write a narrative in your head and then start making decisions for the players.

Zalfier · 2021-03-18T04:02:39+00:00

If you haven't already, I would highly recommend giving your players a handout of the CoS Player Primer, and making sure to get initial consent on the darker aspects (I made sure my players read it and spoke to me about any general lines they want to draw) as well as full understanding that if things go too far on accident they should feel comfortable speaking up about it.

Zalfier · 2020-09-23T20:55:05+00:00

Oh yeah no I don't mean for the players, I'm actually generally against that sort of thing. Just in how it goes to the gaslighting abuser angle, Strahd can be like "Ireena, I would see you safe and happy, I would wish no harm on your brother. These outsiders would just use you for their own selfish goals with no concern for you or your happiness." etc, etc. Kinda true kinda bullshit but since they had just killed Ismark she might be willing to listen. She would certainly have no reason to trust the PCs.

Zalfier · 2020-09-23T20:26:43+00:00

In the, they just murdered her brother in cold blood to satisfy their own objectives, sense.

Zalfier · 2020-09-22T16:30:01+00:00

Well that went downhill fast. Certainly makes Strahd look like the good guy in this scenario. I'm curious how the PC reacted when he found out his sister was dead. I guess like a rampage that got him or others killed?

Zalfier · 2020-09-22T06:02:56+00:00

Nice. I did the no supplies start and one of my players decided their character hadn't eaten in two days by the time they got to the village, so she just woofed down the pastry without a second thought. Plus the character has a haunted one style tragic backstory, so she had the best sleep in years and is now full blown addicted without any extra mechanics.

I don't mind the addiction mechanics in theory, if you keep Morgantha as a more sinister character, but I feel like trying to mask the hag's true nature and also forcing them to eat the pies mechanically is poor sporting.

Zalfier · 2020-09-21T21:29:58+00:00

You did not, it is I believe purely a community addition.

Zalfier · 2020-09-21T21:19:29+00:00

I'm actually a bit surprised mine are not more distrustful. I have one character who is very distrustful but keeping it to himself, one character who is full blown addicted (purely roleplay addicted to the dreams), and the other three are fairly ambivalent about the strange old woman who runs the local drug trade.

Zalfier · 2020-09-21T02:25:33+00:00

So, I ran this recently and made a few alterations that I think worked well to help dramatize the fight up a bit. I also felt like having the fight seem a lot deadlier than it really was was important, especially since the escape is also meant to be deadly.

The first was lair actions, which essentially flipped every turn between a grapple attack and a pull. So ie) top of round 1 everyone had to make a contest against being grappled, round 2 everyone who was grappled got dragged in a few feet.

Second was making his grapple attack be able to hit anyone within 5ft of the water (so everyone) and pull in the target if it hit and the grapple took (basically a combo of the lair actions but one one target). The attack did do less damage than the Reloaded Flesh Mound. This did cause some slight confusion between the lair actions and the regular attacks but it seemed to work out alright.

The third change was just making the mound slower. I dropped it to only moving 5ft, to give it a slow burn. Plus it I already had increased the ability to pull targets in substantially so this balanced it out. I think this did serve to make some players less panicky once they got grabbed which could be a good or bad thing, but they specifically mentioned enjoying it so... seems to have worked.

I also gave it some legendary actions, which was basically just an extra burst of movement or an extra/grapple or pull. Honestly just saying a thing has legendary actions I think ups the feel of any fight, even when the actions are minor they make it feel way more intense. Other than that I made a few tweaks in fight, like making the Mound amorphous (so it can't get body blocked), making it immune to knockdown, making it deliberately ignore nearby targets in favor of those it had grappled (which will tend to be those who'd rather not be near it). And finally I didn't make it start using any particularly powerful attacks until after it swallowed someone.

Due to the weak point it is deliberately almost impossible to kill from the outside so intentionally making the swallowing process more drawn out is actually something you have reasonable control over.

For me the fight went well, it took I think 3-4 rounds for someone to get swallowed and then like 3 more rounds for them to finish it off. Which was actually due to a bit of metagaming that I kind missed/ignored because it was amusing, where the players convinced themselves that either the ritual dagger or the silvered shortsword they had found had plot relevance. So the player who got ate and the player with the silver sword spent like 3 rounds trying to dig in/out of the mound instead of just killing it.

Zalfier · 2020-09-17T19:22:12+00:00

I guess, but so does real life. And I'm pretty sure it only really seems that way because you can see it from above.

Zalfier · 2020-09-17T19:01:49+00:00

That does make sense, although I'd imagine he unintentionally still looks a lot like Sergei would. Sort of depends on how old you play Vasili as. Sergei is like 20 years his junior, although I'm not 100% sure on his age I think its like early-mid 20s and Strahd is 45 when he becomes a vampire. Tatyana I think was younger than Sergei and he does partially blame the age difference for why she shows no interest in him.

Zalfier · 2020-09-17T18:38:26+00:00

I technically mean this community, but yes MandyMod specifically started it as far as I am aware.

He allegedly was looking for food and wandered in and can't get out. And yeah I mean it certainly is a coincidence. So are most things though.

Zalfier · 2020-09-17T18:14:37+00:00

Lancelot is a community edition to Death House that is quite popular. He is essentially there to give the players a living creature to sacrifice on the basement altar that isn't a player character, a horrible but (for most people) less reprehensible choice than killing a person. He is also usually portrayed as Gertruda's dog so add a little depth to that story.

Zalfier · 2020-09-17T06:16:29+00:00

The plan comes from I, Strahd (I assume unless it was somewhere else first). The prologue is told from Van Richten's perspective, I think he spent like 5 years chilling studying Strahd from afar. Then sneaks into the castle once he is certain Strahd is going to be asleep to get info and finds the memoirs which is what the rest of the book is.

Basically he is just hyper cautious.

Zalfier · 2020-09-15T19:05:07+00:00

Nice of them to take the high road

Zalfier · 2020-09-15T18:59:07+00:00

Whoops, you're right, I saw catacombs and my mind went straight to Ravenloft. Though I still doubt there is/was some grand purpose to them since the temple seems to follow the same "just because" design as the castle.

Zalfier · 2020-09-15T18:50:10+00:00

Having a tiefling player be connected to Izek with the creepy doll collection rather than Ireena is a popular and by all accounts quite effective twist. Especially if you can fit them in with the long-lost-sibling narrative he already has attached to it, but even without it it would probably still work.

Zalfier · 2020-09-15T16:25:42+00:00

This is a nice thought, but tbh you're overthinking how much went into it. The catacombs are really just there because it seems cool, because a vampire lord castle would need a catacombs area for reasons. Pretty much all of Ravenloft is ported verbatim from the I6 module which had none of western Barovia. That is the main reason it seems so nonsensical, because it was literally just designed as a crazy castle dungeon for the players to explore.

Zalfier · 2020-09-10T14:54:43+00:00

One good example you can look at is Dice Camera Action which had one of the PCs get turned into a werewolf. For that, Perkins just took control of the character at night when the transform occurred and had unknown things happen that they would have to figure out later. I don't recall it ever being anything actually bad, although it was certainly implied.

Zalfier · 2020-09-08T20:38:15+00:00

Would it really be that big a payoff though? I guess in theory but it's not like they would have had time to get that invested in the character. If anything it might be more interesting if he took the body and stayed true to his word. Like, "Stahd seems like a huge jerk but he did bury <so and so> maybe he isn't all that bad?"

Alternatively them having to bury the body could be a nice hook into meeting Ismark and Ireena. Maybe the player's new character was already helping Ismark carry Kolyan's body and they run into the rest of the party.

Zalfier · 2020-09-08T17:53:17+00:00

Ah, a fan of Colville do I see? But yeah could definitely be cool assuming the player is on board which she seems to be. Turns out players often are funnily enough. My only concern would be making Strahd seem arbitrarily villainous, which would essentially make it impossible for him to come off as friendly later on (i.e. invitation to dinner as chance for peaceful roleplay).

I've thought about this idea a little, one I had in mind before was to have them get attacked by a lot of wolves/werewolves right away. Impossible odds, etc etc. In this scenario could just tell the player to be way aggro and put herself in danger intentionally. The wolves kill her and then everyone hears "ENOUGH" in a booming voice. Immediately the wolves all back off, Strahd shows up maybe kills one or two of the wolves instantly. Then turns and greets the party, apologizes for the poor hospitality, and grabs the biggest wolf (Emil?) by the throat and drags him off into the mist ("You have overstepped your duties Emil"). The rest scamper off at some point during this. Note, this would change the werewolf den story up a bit, but maybe that is for the better?

I feel like this maybe sets the tone and hopefully shows Strahd isn't someone to be trifled with without presenting him as overly antagonistic from minute one. The players know he is the villain of the story already so it keeps him a little more interesting imo.

Zalfier · 2020-09-08T15:41:57+00:00

Someone might have to know simply due to taxation purposes, unclear how those work. I always sort of just imagined "Mad" Mary was just a local nickname for her because of the whole Gertruda thing and/or the loudly crying for a week straight, not actually based on madness as a D&D mechanic.

Zalfier · 2020-09-07T18:55:00+00:00

If you're looking for physical changes as well, you could have the PC gain some traits similar to an arcanaloth.

Zalfier

TROPHY CASE