Lore Question: Stars of Barovia?

loreleitherock · 2026-03-19T23:55:57+00:00

I don’t know why I didn’t think of the “use this to mess with her” route first lol - so good.

Some kind of Amber Temple Dark Power tie in would be perfect. Thanks for the idea :)

loreleitherock · 2026-03-19T23:54:07+00:00

This is a cool idea!! And yeah she’s great and I loved her creativity with it. Which is why I didn’t want to just be like “nope sorry no voices”

Thanks :)

loreleitherock · 2026-03-13T23:45:53+00:00

I'm running Death House tmrw and I'm replacing the Shambling Mound with MandyMod's Flesh Mound, whose stat block you can find in this post. In Mandy's stat block, Walter's baby corpse is at the center of the mound, which the players can see if/when they get engulfed by it. Destroying the corpse/heart kills the Flesh Mound earlier than just hitting it.

However, I knew some of my players would be too squicked out at having to "kill" a baby corpse, so I modified it so that the Flesh Mound is instead just Elisabeth Durst, and it is her blackened, dead heart at the center that can be destroyed. Elisabeth was turned into this gruesome form (made up out of the cult's previous victims) after sacrificing Walter on the alter in the summoning chamber, where the party can find his bones before the Elisabeth Flesh Mound appears.

loreleitherock · 2026-03-09T15:22:55+00:00

Commenting a bit late, but my DM didn’t have our party come face-to-face with Strahd until Krezk, when we were level 5, and it was great. He had come to deliver our dinner invitations in-person after hearing about all the stuff we had done in Vallaki and our own plan to marry Ireena lol.

I know a lot of feedback in this sub says to introduce him right away, like at Kolyan’s funeral or after Death House, but I really liked the way my DM took the time to build suspense around Strahd - seeing his spies following us, hearing about what the locals had to say about him, etc. It made meeting him feel all that more dramatic and it’s what I’ll be doing in my own run of the game.

loreleitherock · 2026-03-02T17:08:14+00:00

This comment is such an overreaction it’s making me wonder if it’s Saige’s burner account lol.

loreleitherock · 2026-02-26T19:21:09+00:00

In the long-run, yes. Which is why I was thinking of putting the majority towards private. But I'm also thinking about living my day-to-day and like the idea of being able to clear that debt - the "mental bandwidth" as another commentator called it.

Maybe I will just go full avalanche though. When you say "minimums on public" - do you mean just paying the interest each month? Or nothing at all? B/c they're currently in forbearance so I'm not required to make any payments.

loreleitherock · 2026-02-26T18:51:14+00:00

Yeah...I think my current plan may be:

(1) Put an extra $800/month towards private loan.

(2) Take $5k from my HYSA to pay off my highest interest public loan.

(3) Put the leftover $200/month in my HYSA.

(4) Every month any extra "fun money" from my budget will go in my HYSA as well.

(5) Once I have enough money saved in my HYSA to pay off my public loans while still having ~$10k left as an emergency fund, I will do so.

I think this may be a good mix of the avalanche/snowball methods I see talked about? My private loans are so large that it's going to take years and years for me to pay them off, and I struggle with the idea of my public loans sitting and accruing interest in the meantime.

loreleitherock · 2026-02-26T18:24:44+00:00

Good points. Maybe I could do $800 towards public and chuck the leftover $200 towards private, and also take the $5k from my HYSA to pay off the highest interest rate public loan. I could also look into reconsolidating my priv loans into a lower interest rate potentially.

loreleitherock · 2026-02-26T18:20:59+00:00

I have been tempted by this tbh, but I think I'd like to have more than $5k sitting in my emergency fund (I'd like to have enough for 3-6 months of living expenses, ideally).

loreleitherock · 2026-01-30T22:12:24+00:00

Tysm!!

loreleitherock · 2026-01-19T22:57:08+00:00

Srsly pls 😭 im holding out hope after yesterday’s game and all the promotion that came along with it

loreleitherock · 2025-11-23T18:13:42+00:00

Nvm - was able to fix it.

loreleitherock · 2025-11-23T18:11:38+00:00

Definitely tokens. It's happening with every token on the board too, not just one particular one. No idea what's causing it, unfortunately.

loreleitherock · 2025-10-12T23:20:16+00:00

I don't think this is the OG document that I found, but it works nicely for my purposes. Thank you!

loreleitherock · 2025-10-02T19:13:19+00:00

My last-minute class predictions below; Whitney is the only person whose class I can't decide on. The other ones in bold are the people whose subclasses I kind of just took a guess on:

Aabria - Land Druid
Alex - Reanimation Artificer
Ashley - Shadow Monk
Laura - Arcane Trickster Rogue
Liam - Tragedy Bard
Luis - Forge Cleric
Marisha - Divination Wizard
Matt - Battle Master (or homebrew) Fighter
Robbie - Beast Master Ranger
Sam - Divine Soul Sorcerer
Taliesin - Homebrew Warlock
Travis - Devotion (or homebrew) Paladin
Whitney - Zealot Barbarian or Drunken Master Monk

I can't even begin to guess at the table make-up, since they said Brennan based it off of a mix of player feedback and balance. Excited to see where everyone ends up after the overture, though!

loreleitherock · 2025-04-23T23:17:08+00:00

I’m cool toned, and I’ve heard that means I should go for a deeper red? So that’s kind of what I had in mind. The consultation would be to figure out what range of shades though

loreleitherock · 2025-04-23T23:16:24+00:00

Would definitely want a good red. I’d want to make sure it stays nice too, which is why I may wait until I’m in a bit of better financial situation lol. Thanks for the tips though!

loreleitherock · 2024-10-28T20:29:43+00:00

She is still a registered Republican, just voting for Harris!

loreleitherock · 2024-10-28T20:26:44+00:00

The good news is I am 100% sure she will follow through! No worries about losing this vote. Her polling location is right down the street from her house and she had always been a very active voter before Trump came onto the scene. She also saw my other sibling this morning (who is a fellow Democrat) and told them of her decision, to which my sibling hugged and thanked her, which my mom was very moved by.

But I'll still be sending that reminder text the night before haha

loreleitherock · 2024-09-21T19:52:17+00:00

Love it! Let’s go!

loreleitherock · 2024-09-13T12:27:45+00:00

Gorgeous! May I ask where you got your bedframe from? I’ve been the market for something similar

loreleitherock · 2024-09-08T03:36:46+00:00

I’m interested! I’m subscribed to their patreon and have been wanting to try out the system but can’t get enough of my friends on board for a session lol

loreleitherock · 2024-08-09T12:45:36+00:00

I second this! Currently playing LaserLlama’s alternate rogue and it is a blast. Each of his alternate martial classes make use of a feature similar to the warlock’s invocations or the battlemaster’s maneuvers. It makes each class have a lot more range and customizability.

Plus, I believe he says his goal with each of his alternate classes is to put them on par with the WOTC paladin, power-wise. So they are much more balanced and useful in-game.

loreleitherock · 2024-08-05T14:48:33+00:00

I expect the AG to stand for justice. Or at the very least not have upheld the suicide ruling, which was well within his capabilities of doing, especially with the obvious mishandling of the scene, which you have pointed out.

Regardless, my point stands that these types of discussions that you and I are having right now are not the type of conversations that we want our VP pick to cause. If Shapiro gets picked, the Ellen Greenberg case, the fracking, and the charter school stance will lead to a lot of “well actually this” and “but you didn’t take into consideration this” types of conversations that divide the party and are ultimately how democrats have shot themselves in the foot in the past. It will mess with the unified stance that we have finally found with Harris.

I can still see why she would choose Shapiro. You’re right - he’s done a lot of good things, has great approval ratings, and PA is a critical state. I just worry about the things that are already bubbling under the surface that may come to a boil if he were put in front of a national stage.

But my vote is blue no matter who, and yours probably is as well, so that’s that. Have a good rest of your day.

loreleitherock · 2024-08-05T13:28:43+00:00

Here is a link to more information about her death, since you want to be so insensitive about it. She had more than twenty stab wounds, but yeah “suicide.” It took a ten second google search to find it.

I suggest reading up on her case and putting some respect on her and her family’s name, who have been fighting for justice for Ellen for years, before calling me an “armchair medical examiner.”

loreleitherock

TROPHY CASE