I suspect the dirt floor thing is a reference to Dracula who needed to sleep in. coffin on soil from his own homeland or something. I think its mentioned in the book I, Strahd aswell :)
This is really smart! Vampires, once defeated, need to return to their coffin or the soil from the area where they became a vampire. So even if Strahd's coffin is destroyed he can return to his tomb and rest in the soil.
Tbh Castle Ravenloft gives me headaches, when I think about all the prep I have to get done. And I usually I LOVE PREP, but oh boi this castle is special. Thank you LBH for making my dm job a little easier. It's nice to have some more perspectives and that way I can create something unique.
I'm so nervous. I'm having my players sneak down to the dungeon after their first dinner to get the tome of strahd out of his crypt. It's going to be hilarious. I'm playing scooby doo and mission impossible music as they all sneak around. 😊
My party is on their way to the final confront on the castle! I gonna put the headless and skined corpse of Danika Dorakova on the cell, then Rahadin (who I biffed with the corpse colector stats) is gonna taunt they whering a crow feather cloak, and claim revenge for the demise of his beloved Ludmila. Since him already kicked my party ass two times now, my party is rly craving for this fight! Forget about Strahd, this gonna be the apse of the campaign!
My first group had the King and Queen tomb as their fated location. Opening Patrina's tomb triggered his investigation, and accidentally the final battle. When he left to recuperate, two Pcs looked in his parent's coffins, triggering him to smash through the window angrily. He got a little careless after that and made his first mistake.
0:30. I mean... Dude has a bedroom. And a throne room. And a chapel. I seem to recall the location cards for Strahd being weighted more toward the above-ground levels of the castle than toward the dungeon, indicating that he doesn't spend most of his time down there.
I don’t know about you, but I love the boom Tortured to death line. Good recommendation changing that is probably better for a late game adventure location. Keep up the good work I love hearing your content on the subject. Good work, proud to be a patron
The room with the crypts i made the other ones with some locks on them with past consorts from before the current ones. They sleep with his previous play things as a constant reminder
I ran my self written, one-shot, Ravenloft module last night 10/29/20 for Halloween. I made a castle and props for the game. It was a 4 hour one-shot, so I had to modify to the (pardon the pun) bare bones & core essence of Ravenloft/CoS. I did include the dungeon/catacombs of Ravenloft in one of the encounters. They flipped out and loved the whole session!!! They had a "bloody good time!" (sorry) I killed myself over the passed two weeks in writing the 4 hour module and crafting everything... But the payoff was AWESOME!!! When the players have so much fun, how can the DM not have fun!!! Now they want a tradition Ravenloft/CoS session for every Halloween! Luckily for next year I'll have most of the crafting stuff out of the way and mostly just focus on the module! I recommend to everyone doing your own Ravenloft/CoS one-shot, because it's soooo much fun!!!
My first instinct for the luck blade is to have all wishes granted by strahd himself. I mean it's his land and his sword after all. He'll grant most wishes for entertainment purposes, but not any that target him. Also an increased chance a wish could backfire.
Eleven months later, but this is the first time I've heard about this. This sounds amazing, I love it. Just like Strahd hears every prayer (directed towards him), this would be directed too him as well.
@@HoaxNess of course. Strahd could have easily been trying to study wish magic for his own desires, either having the vistani find a luck blade or enchanting it himself. When he tried to use it the dark powers twisted the magic to always be tied to him. But never grant him what he truly wants. There's alot of story potential for it. Even 11 months later I still need to try it out lol
The timing of this video is perfect.. My players are about to tackle the Amber Temple (which has all your mods in).. When (and if) they put ***** back into a **** they will be heading to Castle Ravenloft right after. With the new and improved mods you just described in the video. Good one LBH.
Something I did in the crypts is I replaced ireenas crypt with a crypt for tatyana because it adds to the sense that strahd keeps trying to get her but never does. He has prepared everything but he keeps failing
Since I am early, I really enjoy ur guides I don't copy everything but it's still very helpful to see what u think are week points and what u would improve ^__^ one of those days I am going to set up this patreon account xD
I’m still tweaking a few things, I just started our CoS campaign so I have some time hopefully before they storm the castle. (I say hopefully, this is a gun-ho party) and I love the idea of making the brides and consorts more than mindless beasts. Giving them each their own tomb makes a lot of sense. Which is actually the exact reason why I actually like the idea of keeping Ireenas tomb. It’s unfinished currently, and that’s the timer for strahd to make his final move. He wants the tomb finished before they “wed” (helps explain why he doesn’t just snatch her the instant she leaves the house) A lot of the treasure in the tombs was a little odd for me. So a lot of the treasure that strahd would take a liking to he snagged, while the rest stayed. I’m trying to keep as many of the backstory rooms as possible, but a lot of the “before strahd” kings are hard to make sense why they are there. If they died before the castle was built, where they moved here? Why? And why should the players be invested in there stories?
it's pronounced "Bray-zur" What your pronouncing is a much more unusual room and brings up a lot of questions about Strahd's dungeon activites. Also on the dirt floor, this is primarily from earlier editions and vampire folklore. Vampires have to sleep in a coffin that contains dirt of their native soil (or their grave depending on the legend) this gives him easy access to that dirt.
I’m loving the changes you’ve made, but I offer some of my own: Regarding the brazier, some thing I established earlier was that Lydia The burgomaster’s wife, had actually ran away with Blinsky The toymaker during the revolt. He had rescued her from being stoned to death when they lit the mayors house on fire and threw them out onto the street. The party never found Viktor performing his experiments in the house, so I wrote that in that moment he used his knowledge of teleportation to actually get him and his mother and Blinsky out of town. They ended up in Krezk. Being that my party had already been to the castle and randomly teleported to Krezk, Viktor would be there with his teleportation circle able to send them back to the castle. Unfortunately his first travel resulted in him losing his legs because he still learning his magic. Having Blinsky as a stepfather now that he and Lydia have become a thing, allowed me to craft him some prosthetic legs. Being that this was the last city my party had been to, the last hurrah for all of my I NPC allies was here. We ended things off with Viktor becoming an apprentice to the mad mage, and learning how to teleport people properly, and with his aid was able to teleport the party back to the castle. For added hilarity, the party crossing the drawbridge did actually suffer one of them to fall almost to their death, but he happened to have been made a Were Raven earlier in the campaign so I was able to save himself. When I teleported them back to the castle, I deposited them back in front of the drawbridge to have to do it again. LOL Having defeated Strahd out in Krezk once the dinner with the Abbot went South, it became a race for them to get back to the castle. The party teleporting to get there first sort of put a timer on how long they have in the castle before he gets back and starts regenerating himself. Having them try and cross the drawbridge in a hurry a second time when 1000 bats forming Strahd‘s face Is rushing back to the castle towards them is hilariously stressful.
For the random locations in the campaign I just started. I set Strahd near the top of the castle, and put the Sunsword in Sergei’s tomb. I am also going to prompt the grave cleric to return the skull to get them to explore this area and hopefully before the end game.
Curse of Strahd is the first module I've ever run and I just wanted to say thank you, your guides have been super helpful. The crypt always bugged me a bit, why are there endless piles of silver lying about, why don't the consorts have crypts, why is there no protection around Sergei's tomb, what is up with Strand having a dirt floor anyway?! I guess your videos have also shown me that the RAW are pretty flexible and not the be all and end all of the world :)
I changed the rooting corpese in the dungeon for a captive revenant from Argynvostholt. He was the 6th able to resist Vladimir's angry and tried alone to invade Ravenloft and kill Strahd. I also made the watter in the catacumb running watter, the prision are operetade by Vistani and wights guards. To a vampire enter or pass trow this area, it should be limited to the walls.
You have helped me a lot with my CoS campaign but I won't be using much of this guide, no crypts for the consorts in my game for serval reasons. 1) My Strahd is the narcissistic manipulator that has broken down some of his consorts to the point where they would beg for the privilege to sleep in the dirt just in the same room as him, just because he can. 2) The Crypts here are not the resting places for active servants, they are where Strahd puts those he has no further use for as punishment. Escher from the Lounge K.49 is keeping out of Strahds way to not end up here. I replaced the one in the crypt with a Vampiric Mist from Mordekaidens Tome of Foes. 3) the Crypt for Tatyana/Ireena because Strahd doesn't really care about her as a person, he cares about her as one who belongs to him, and once he made her realize that he will just lock her away as no longer important. The Luckblade in our game doesn't recharge and Strahd has already used up all but the last wish but never getting what he wanted so he left it down here. This leaves the players with the conundrum of how to use their single wish best being aware that some wishes just won't work. However, I might just end up using the catacombs sooner than planned as my party just nearly TPKed last game session. As I have mentioned in past guides I've doted Barovia with Stonecirlces that where the only place outside the party could take a long rest uninterrupted seemingly even keeping out Strahd himself. Then the last session, after having followed the Druids directly from the vineyard the players decided to rest at one before attacking yesterhill. Here they were low on HP, Spells, and ability uses when our Wizard takes out the recently acquired Tome of Strahd while the Villian was scying on them. Enraged Strahd showed up demanding the Tome, the players feeling save decided to taunt him only to be utterly surprised when Strahd rushed across the Circle and one-shot the Wizard, then mopped the floor with the Monk/Fighter, Eldritch Knight, and Ranger while the Paladin uses his last heal to save the Wizard. After two more rounds, the only ones with positive HP are the Ranger and the Knight being given an ultimatum to bow before Strahd and we ended on that Cliffhanger. Already talked through with the players and we decided to keep playing with the same party but have Strahd turn them all into his minions. We will be using the Transformation rules for Werewolfs and Vampires from the Grim Hollow Campaign Guide and the Revenant template from Curse of Strahd. And then the players will have to try to overthrow Strahds rule from with in while dealing with their now cursed nature. Now I am deciding whether to leave them in the woods or have them thrown into the dungeons of Ravenloft. I might end up reworking the Luckblade and its wish spell as a way for the Players to return to their old selves. Edit PS: Barrier only penetrable to undead might work really well now the party is made of them
In "I, Strahd" the reason his crypt's floor is bare because the goddamn black marble never arrived :D But yeah the luck blade only has 1 charge and it doesn't recharge. So it's only 1 wish ever. And apparently I mixed it up with another sword in Ravenloft but I like the idea so I'm making it a lawful good sentient sword that refuses to fulfill any wishes that it doesn't like. It has an extremely annoying personality and is overtly zealous about killing undead.
Nothing in the description of Luck Blades says anything about regaining charges. The module says it only has 1 charge left. That being said, 1 wish is probably still a dangerous thing to give your players.
Not in the bowels, but I want to change the giant Heart from one big heart, to hundreds of regular-sized hearts from all the dead people, all beating in unison. That just seems creepier.
In my campaign, I replaced a couple of the crypts with more meaningful characters, either ones that were deeply entwined with the lore or ones that died during the campaign. Alek Gwilym, the consorts, and Lady Wachter all made appearances there
I like your change to the Guardians, but I do think evil alignment should be able to get through, while good and neutral get teleported away, but this might be the temptation to stick my boyfriend's chaotic evil bard in a room by himself where no sound can be made and if he touches ANYTHING Strahd will come to wreck him talking. 😂😂😂 Thanks for these guides, Castle Ravenloft has been so intimidating, I've been putting it off (and quietly panicking everytime my players discuss going in with yet another harebrained scheme), but this will be a huge help.
"Area K78, the brassiere room." Okay, PSA. I made this mistake once before, tried using a breastplate to cast Find Familiar. It’s a brazier, pronounced "BRAY-zhurr". Not a brassiere. Those are very different things.
From my understanding Strahd didn't drink the blood of Sergei he realized what he had done after Tatyana fled in fear and strahd chased her. He became a vampire the other way when his own personal guards fired multiple crossbows killing him but instantly transforming him into a vampire. At least that what I understood from the entries in the module. But everyone runs their games different. This would also make sense why strahd would kill his guards rather than turn them.
I intend to place some of the Npc adventurersI’ve been using in these dungeons. They really pissed off the party for one reason or another so it’ll be interesting. Not sure if to include live or courpses
Any suggestions on a guide that is unaltered. I'm not trying to make all the changes you did and I don't want a situation where I changed one thing and not another and it destroys continuity?
i really like the change in K87, but i'm a little concerned about use it 'cause the final battle against Strahd will be in K88 (and so far only the rogue and the warlock already died and were resurrected)
Love it good ideas! Honestly I am surprised you guys kept the teleporter room. I never understood its purpose for Strahd... he can use his horse for fast travel, why make a one way teleporter that is limited to specific locations (most of which are in his own castle)? It's a dumb character escape puzzle that I don't like for the same reason the elevator trap is never used lol its just not fun to me. I replaced it with one of those mirrors from the castlevania series on Netflix does the same thing, you have to know the command word, but it doubles as a scrying mirror for locations you simply speak the places name and it takes you to familiar places or to a random one as if you used teleportation. Using the wrong command word triggers the golems much simpler than what is written IMO
cant believe they dont give a detail like if you can teleport back or not, wtf? i changed the teleport destinations to spots around the castle, sergeis tomb, roof of the high tower,etc, made them one way, i want my players trapped in ravenloft!
I feel like cursing Neutral or Good aligned characters for taking Sergei's armor--but not evil characters--is lame. One, if you're gonna punish people for desecrating something sacred, don't let being Evil get you off the hook. *Maybe* if you're an Evil Cleric, your god protects you or something. Two, the idea of a Good Paladin facing down Strahd in Sergei's armor, the very spectre of his sins come back to haunt him and destroy him, is just too good an opportunity to pass up. I say let Evil (and maybe Neutral) characters be cursed, but let the still gleaming armor call to Good characters, Sergei's righteous spirit calling out for a hero to heed his plight.
What changes did you make down in the bowels of Castle Ravenloft? I'd like to hear all about your experiences down there!
I suspect the dirt floor thing is a reference to Dracula who needed to sleep in. coffin on soil from his own homeland or something. I think its mentioned in the book I, Strahd aswell :)
That's a great insight, thank you!
This is really smart! Vampires, once defeated, need to return to their coffin or the soil from the area where they became a vampire. So even if Strahd's coffin is destroyed he can return to his tomb and rest in the soil.
The fact that no one has commented on the teleporting “brassiere” is a credit to how good this video guide is.
As a Brazilian, i loved the Brazil room
All these videos on Castle Ravenloft are eerily, yet conveniently, coming out every time my party gets to a new part of the castle. Thank you, LBH
You're welcome!
Tbh Castle Ravenloft gives me headaches, when I think about all the prep I have to get done. And I usually I LOVE PREP, but oh boi this castle is special. Thank you LBH for making my dm job a little easier. It's nice to have some more perspectives and that way I can create something unique.
Glad we could help!
Cannot stress enough how much your content is helping with running curse of strahd cheers guys!
Happy to be of service!
I'm so nervous. I'm having my players sneak down to the dungeon after their first dinner to get the tome of strahd out of his crypt. It's going to be hilarious. I'm playing scooby doo and mission impossible music as they all sneak around. 😊
My party is on their way to the final confront on the castle!
I gonna put the headless and skined corpse of Danika Dorakova on the cell, then Rahadin (who I biffed with the corpse colector stats) is gonna taunt they whering a crow feather cloak, and claim revenge for the demise of his beloved Ludmila.
Since him already kicked my party ass two times now, my party is rly craving for this fight! Forget about Strahd, this gonna be the apse of the campaign!
My first group had the King and Queen tomb as their fated location. Opening Patrina's tomb triggered his investigation, and accidentally the final battle.
When he left to recuperate, two Pcs looked in his parent's coffins, triggering him to smash through the window angrily. He got a little careless after that and made his first mistake.
0:30. I mean... Dude has a bedroom. And a throne room. And a chapel. I seem to recall the location cards for Strahd being weighted more toward the above-ground levels of the castle than toward the dungeon, indicating that he doesn't spend most of his time down there.
I don’t know about you, but I love the boom Tortured to death line. Good recommendation changing that is probably better for a late game adventure location. Keep up the good work I love hearing your content on the subject. Good work, proud to be a patron
I'm glad you liked that, and thank you so much for your support!
The room with the crypts i made the other ones with some locks on them with past consorts from before the current ones. They sleep with his previous play things as a constant reminder
I ran my self written, one-shot, Ravenloft module last night 10/29/20 for Halloween. I made a castle and props for the game. It was a 4 hour one-shot, so I had to modify to the (pardon the pun) bare bones & core essence of Ravenloft/CoS. I did include the dungeon/catacombs of Ravenloft in one of the encounters. They flipped out and loved the whole session!!! They had a "bloody good time!" (sorry) I killed myself over the passed two weeks in writing the 4 hour module and crafting everything... But the payoff was AWESOME!!! When the players have so much fun, how can the DM not have fun!!! Now they want a tradition Ravenloft/CoS session for every Halloween! Luckily for next year I'll have most of the crafting stuff out of the way and mostly just focus on the module! I recommend to everyone doing your own Ravenloft/CoS one-shot, because it's soooo much fun!!!
Perfect timing. My group is going to Castle Ravenloft on Halloween night to wrap up the final story arc of the campaign.
Good luck!
My first instinct for the luck blade is to have all wishes granted by strahd himself. I mean it's his land and his sword after all. He'll grant most wishes for entertainment purposes, but not any that target him. Also an increased chance a wish could backfire.
Eleven months later, but this is the first time I've heard about this. This sounds amazing, I love it. Just like Strahd hears every prayer (directed towards him), this would be directed too him as well.
@@HoaxNess of course. Strahd could have easily been trying to study wish magic for his own desires, either having the vistani find a luck blade or enchanting it himself. When he tried to use it the dark powers twisted the magic to always be tied to him. But never grant him what he truly wants. There's alot of story potential for it. Even 11 months later I still need to try it out lol
The timing of this video is perfect.. My players are about to tackle the Amber Temple (which has all your mods in).. When (and if) they put ***** back into a **** they will be heading to Castle Ravenloft right after. With the new and improved mods you just described in the video. Good one LBH.
Thank you! Best of luck to your group!
Something I did in the crypts is I replaced ireenas crypt with a crypt for tatyana because it adds to the sense that strahd keeps trying to get her but never does. He has prepared everything but he keeps failing
Since I am early, I really enjoy ur guides I don't copy everything but it's still very helpful to see what u think are week points and what u would improve ^__^ one of those days I am going to set up this patreon account xD
We're here to provide inspiration! If you're picking out the stuff you like and making your game your own, then you're doing it right. :-)
My group is going to be heading into the catacombs on Sunday, so this is well timed.
Glad to hear it!
I’m still tweaking a few things, I just started our CoS campaign so I have some time hopefully before they storm the castle. (I say hopefully, this is a gun-ho party) and I love the idea of making the brides and consorts more than mindless beasts. Giving them each their own tomb makes a lot of sense. Which is actually the exact reason why I actually like the idea of keeping Ireenas tomb. It’s unfinished currently, and that’s the timer for strahd to make his final move. He wants the tomb finished before they “wed” (helps explain why he doesn’t just snatch her the instant she leaves the house)
A lot of the treasure in the tombs was a little odd for me. So a lot of the treasure that strahd would take a liking to he snagged, while the rest stayed. I’m trying to keep as many of the backstory rooms as possible, but a lot of the “before strahd” kings are hard to make sense why they are there. If they died before the castle was built, where they moved here? Why? And why should the players be invested in there stories?
Have been looking forward to this!
7:04 ahh yes the foreboding brassiere that the party must pass...
it's pronounced "Bray-zur" What your pronouncing is a much more unusual room and brings up a lot of questions about Strahd's dungeon activites. Also on the dirt floor, this is primarily from earlier editions and vampire folklore. Vampires have to sleep in a coffin that contains dirt of their native soil (or their grave depending on the legend) this gives him easy access to that dirt.
I’m loving the changes you’ve made, but I offer some of my own:
Regarding the brazier, some thing I established earlier was that Lydia The burgomaster’s wife, had actually ran away with Blinsky The toymaker during the revolt. He had rescued her from being stoned to death when they lit the mayors house on fire and threw them out onto the street. The party never found Viktor performing his experiments in the house, so I wrote that in that moment he used his knowledge of teleportation to actually get him and his mother and Blinsky out of town. They ended up in Krezk. Being that my party had already been to the castle and randomly teleported to Krezk, Viktor would be there with his teleportation circle able to send them back to the castle. Unfortunately his first travel resulted in him losing his legs because he still learning his magic. Having Blinsky as a stepfather now that he and Lydia have become a thing, allowed me to craft him some prosthetic legs. Being that this was the last city my party had been to, the last hurrah for all of my I NPC allies was here. We ended things off with Viktor becoming an apprentice to the mad mage, and learning how to teleport people properly, and with his aid was able to teleport the party back to the castle.
For added hilarity, the party crossing the drawbridge did actually suffer one of them to fall almost to their death, but he happened to have been made a Were Raven earlier in the campaign so I was able to save himself. When I teleported them back to the castle, I deposited them back in front of the drawbridge to have to do it again. LOL Having defeated Strahd out in Krezk once the dinner with the Abbot went South, it became a race for them to get back to the castle. The party teleporting to get there first sort of put a timer on how long they have in the castle before he gets back and starts regenerating himself. Having them try and cross the drawbridge in a hurry a second time when 1000 bats forming Strahd‘s face Is rushing back to the castle towards them is hilariously stressful.
For the random locations in the campaign I just started. I set Strahd near the top of the castle, and put the Sunsword in Sergei’s tomb. I am also going to prompt the grave cleric to return the skull to get them to explore this area and hopefully before the end game.
What if for ireena's crypt, it was all the failed attempts(bodys) of Strahd to claim her? Just crammed with coffins.
If memory serves regarding previous lore, the bodies are taken by the mists each time.
Thanks again for a great re-write
My pleasure!
Curse of Strahd is the first module I've ever run and I just wanted to say thank you, your guides have been super helpful. The crypt always bugged me a bit, why are there endless piles of silver lying about, why don't the consorts have crypts, why is there no protection around Sergei's tomb, what is up with Strand having a dirt floor anyway?! I guess your videos have also shown me that the RAW are pretty flexible and not the be all and end all of the world :)
Glad I could help!
Love the new visuals
Thank you!
I changed the rooting corpese in the dungeon for a captive revenant from Argynvostholt. He was the 6th able to resist Vladimir's angry and tried alone to invade Ravenloft and kill Strahd. I also made the watter in the catacumb running watter, the prision are operetade by Vistani and wights guards. To a vampire enter or pass trow this area, it should be limited to the walls.
Very nice!
Thanks!
You have helped me a lot with my CoS campaign but I won't be using much of this guide, no crypts for the consorts in my game for serval reasons.
1) My Strahd is the narcissistic manipulator that has broken down some of his consorts to the point where they would beg for the privilege to sleep in the dirt just in the same room as him, just because he can.
2) The Crypts here are not the resting places for active servants, they are where Strahd puts those he has no further use for as punishment. Escher from the Lounge K.49 is keeping out of Strahds way to not end up here. I replaced the one in the crypt with a Vampiric Mist from Mordekaidens Tome of Foes.
3) the Crypt for Tatyana/Ireena because Strahd doesn't really care about her as a person, he cares about her as one who belongs to him, and once he made her realize that he will just lock her away as no longer important.
The Luckblade in our game doesn't recharge and Strahd has already used up all but the last wish but never getting what he wanted so he left it down here. This leaves the players with the conundrum of how to use their single wish best being aware that some wishes just won't work.
However, I might just end up using the catacombs sooner than planned as my party just nearly TPKed last game session. As I have mentioned in past guides I've doted Barovia with Stonecirlces that where the only place outside the party could take a long rest uninterrupted seemingly even keeping out Strahd himself. Then the last session, after having followed the Druids directly from the vineyard the players decided to rest at one before attacking yesterhill. Here they were low on HP, Spells, and ability uses when our Wizard takes out the recently acquired Tome of Strahd while the Villian was scying on them. Enraged Strahd showed up demanding the Tome, the players feeling save decided to taunt him only to be utterly surprised when Strahd rushed across the Circle and one-shot the Wizard, then mopped the floor with the Monk/Fighter, Eldritch Knight, and Ranger while the Paladin uses his last heal to save the Wizard. After two more rounds, the only ones with positive HP are the Ranger and the Knight being given an ultimatum to bow before Strahd and we ended on that Cliffhanger.
Already talked through with the players and we decided to keep playing with the same party but have Strahd turn them all into his minions. We will be using the Transformation rules for Werewolfs and Vampires from the Grim Hollow Campaign Guide and the Revenant template from Curse of Strahd. And then the players will have to try to overthrow Strahds rule from with in while dealing with their now cursed nature.
Now I am deciding whether to leave them in the woods or have them thrown into the dungeons of Ravenloft. I might end up reworking the Luckblade and its wish spell as a way for the Players to return to their old selves.
Edit PS: Barrier only penetrable to undead might work really well now the party is made of them
In "I, Strahd" the reason his crypt's floor is bare because the goddamn black marble never arrived :D
But yeah the luck blade only has 1 charge and it doesn't recharge. So it's only 1 wish ever. And apparently I mixed it up with another sword in Ravenloft but I like the idea so I'm making it a lawful good sentient sword that refuses to fulfill any wishes that it doesn't like. It has an extremely annoying personality and is overtly zealous about killing undead.
Nothing in the description of Luck Blades says anything about regaining charges. The module says it only has 1 charge left. That being said, 1 wish is probably still a dangerous thing to give your players.
Not in the bowels, but I want to change the giant Heart from one big heart, to hundreds of regular-sized hearts from all the dead people, all beating in unison. That just seems creepier.
In my campaign, I replaced a couple of the crypts with more meaningful characters, either ones that were deeply entwined with the lore or ones that died during the campaign. Alek Gwilym, the consorts, and Lady Wachter all made appearances there
Jokes on you, even with the written guides I still watched your videos over and over. 😏
I don't blame you--I've been told that my voice is a *wonderful* sleep aid. :-P
Fun fact: Brazier is pronounced 'bray-zure', and it is not to be confused with the complimenting piece to a lady's unmentionables.
I like your change to the Guardians, but I do think evil alignment should be able to get through, while good and neutral get teleported away, but this might be the temptation to stick my boyfriend's chaotic evil bard in a room by himself where no sound can be made and if he touches ANYTHING Strahd will come to wreck him talking. 😂😂😂
Thanks for these guides, Castle Ravenloft has been so intimidating, I've been putting it off (and quietly panicking everytime my players discuss going in with yet another harebrained scheme), but this will be a huge help.
"Area K78, the brassiere room."
Okay, PSA. I made this mistake once before, tried using a breastplate to cast Find Familiar. It’s a brazier, pronounced "BRAY-zhurr". Not a brassiere. Those are very different things.
From my understanding Strahd didn't drink the blood of Sergei he realized what he had done after Tatyana fled in fear and strahd chased her. He became a vampire the other way when his own personal guards fired multiple crossbows killing him but instantly transforming him into a vampire. At least that what I understood from the entries in the module. But everyone runs their games different. This would also make sense why strahd would kill his guards rather than turn them.
Right now i am turning the master of the hunt into his own character
I intend to place some of the Npc adventurersI’ve been using in these dungeons. They really pissed off the party for one reason or another so it’ll be interesting. Not sure if to include live or courpses
What level would you recommend for this section?
Any suggestions on a guide that is unaltered. I'm not trying to make all the changes you did and I don't want a situation where I changed one thing and not another and it destroys continuity?
i really like the change in K87, but i'm a little concerned about use it 'cause the final battle against Strahd will be in K88 (and so far only the rogue and the warlock already died and were resurrected)
are you eventually going to put all the PDFs together so they are on one place?
That's the plan!
Love it good ideas! Honestly I am surprised you guys kept the teleporter room. I never understood its purpose for Strahd... he can use his horse for fast travel, why make a one way teleporter that is limited to specific locations (most of which are in his own castle)? It's a dumb character escape puzzle that I don't like for the same reason the elevator trap is never used lol its just not fun to me. I replaced it with one of those mirrors from the castlevania series on Netflix does the same thing, you have to know the command word, but it doubles as a scrying mirror for locations you simply speak the places name and it takes you to familiar places or to a random one as if you used teleportation. Using the wrong command word triggers the golems much simpler than what is written IMO
cant believe they dont give a detail like if you can teleport back or not, wtf? i changed the teleport destinations to spots around the castle, sergeis tomb, roof of the high tower,etc, made them one way, i want my players trapped in ravenloft!
I feel like cursing Neutral or Good aligned characters for taking Sergei's armor--but not evil characters--is lame. One, if you're gonna punish people for desecrating something sacred, don't let being Evil get you off the hook. *Maybe* if you're an Evil Cleric, your god protects you or something. Two, the idea of a Good Paladin facing down Strahd in Sergei's armor, the very spectre of his sins come back to haunt him and destroy him, is just too good an opportunity to pass up.
I say let Evil (and maybe Neutral) characters be cursed, but let the still gleaming armor call to Good characters, Sergei's righteous spirit calling out for a hero to heed his plight.
Big time disagree with removing the luck blade.