New answers tagged curse-of-strahd
1
As of Season 9, downtime days and renown are tied to level
The latest version of the D&D Adventurers League Player & DM Pack does not contain a separate document for Curse of Strahd, so we'll fall back on the other documents in that pack. The AL Content Catalogue (v9.02) does have some AL-specific adjustments for Curse of Strahd on pages 30-35, ...
2
Yes, this item could be used to help Ezmerelda
The general question of “can a ring of regeneration be used to regenerate an already lost limb?” has been answered on this site:
How to get a character's limb regrown at 3rd level?
How can I recover a missing body part without using wish?
As you can see the consensus in the top answers is that using the ring ...
8
"Lose" is a present tense verb
The ring says "If you lose a body part" not "If you are missing a body part". It doesn't seem like it would help if you've already lost a body part before you put on the ring.
Perhaps the magical ring needs to establish what your body is like so it knows what to regenerate, so passing the ring to ...
0
Don't make it an encounter
If you need to expose the player characters to an NPC that's out of their league, make sure the NPC never has a motive to attack the players.
By "attack", here, I mean both attempting to kill them, and also attempting to embarrass them in a way that would make them want to fight. You've written that Strahd made a bite ...
6
Your NPCs and Knowledge checks are your tools, Use Them
I think what might be the cause for a lingering sense of frustration for your players is a lack of realization regarding the useful gains the encounter provided. You set out with the goal for the players to learn a little about what Strahd can do, but they don't know that's why you did that.
In the ...
8
It's largely about expectations
"Unwinnable" encounters are annoying in games-- there's no way around it. The nature of D&D is that it's a game, and it is a game largely about the player party defeating opponents even when doing so is challenging. The alternative is usually described along the lines of "losing" or "failure". ...
5
I have used the unwinnable combat before as a GM. It's an interesting tool to set up a villain and teach a lesson in humility, but you need to be careful to not make it too frustrating. A couple guidelines I found which work pretty well for me are:
Make it very obvious that it's an unbeatable encounter. The players should not have any illusion that they ...
9
I would have a talk with your players around expectations
The key line I read in your post was that they tried "talking the charm out" of a character charmed by a high level vampire.
This tells me they don't full understand the situation they are in, or the rules of the game. I too have players who expect that magic can be overcome in similar ways ...
30
how can I present such an encounter, which is essentially unbeatable at this point, without frustrating them?
Not every encounter has to be "winnable"
There will always be encounters in games that are not beatable in the traditional meaning. Maybe characters encounter a god, or an enemy AI that they cannot fight against, an enormous alien swarm ...
5
It ultimately comes down to how your players react. If they're the kind of players that need that instant gratification of winning rather than building up to defeating the guy that's been taunting them, maybe have Strahd send a few weaker minions at them, or give them an event like saving people from buildings he set on fire.
If you really want to show that ...
19
It's ok to be frustrated
You hit the nail on the head, "that's kind of the point".
In many stories it's common to have the protagonists face off against an enemy they cannot possibly beat at their current level of skill and ability. This leaves them feeling defeated, humiliated, frustrated, but it should also leave them feeling driven, hungry for ...
14
You say "TPK" like its a bad thing ...
There are groups that adopt a style of play where the onus is on the players to assess risk and to pay the price when they get this wrong. These groups scoff at your namby-pamby ideas of "level-appropriate challenge".
Curse of Strahd is explicit that this is an appropriate and encouraged style of ...
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