Curse of Strahd: Actual Play 5&6—Marathon Double Session

I am super glad that we opted to do a marathon Saturday session for Strahd. I feel that even rushing people through Strahd would take seven 5-hour sessions (35 hours) as they're probably one 5-hour session away from finishing, and this was a shorter version. Today's session went 10am to 10pm with some food breaks and chat in there, so it was basically two sessions.

To be fair, I removed some cards from the reading so they weren't required to go to places that I thought were less interesting. But they did Barovia, Villaki, Krezk, the Wizard of Wines, Yester Hill, the Old Bonegrinder, and now Castle Ravenloft. So that's not nothing. But it's not everything either.

To sum up: This session they started in Vallaki after clearing St. Andral's Church. Last time they defeated a few vampire spawn and let Strahd escape and re-consecrated the church. Ezmerelda had taken Ireena and Ismark out of town, so they met up with her at the Vistani camp but avoided talking to Kasimir and didn't follow up on Arrabelle. They spent another night in Vallaki so they could talk to new new Burgomaster, Viktor Vallakovich and pay to get the church fixed up. Ezmerelda wasn't able to sneak back into Vallaki during the day, and the players conveniently forgot all about her, so now she's just an entry on the random encounter chart. Party isn't into Fiona Wachter, so they get the impression that Viktor won't rule like his father did, and seem content. They ask to see Izek's room, and find it creepy as fuck, distributing the spoils of that amongst the children. That won't creep Ireena and Ismark out at all. They wanted Ismark to take over running Vallaki, but he's not into it and doesn't trust them enough to leave Ireena at St. Andral's church alone, so he stays there.

The party takes little note of the swarms of ravens they've seen and head to the Old Bonegrinder, having a few non-combat random encounters on the way. They come to the windmill and the blood hunter uses spider climb alongside the sorcerer's prestidigitation (to clean windows) and scouts the windmill. I was super excited for the hag encounter but it was a bit disappointing as they were level 7 and just murderized the hags, though Bella Sunbane did escape. They spend the time to take the children they find back to Vallaki before heading to Barovia.

In Barovia they confront Bildrath in his shop, creepily asking about Periwimple (their greatest ally). With some creepy innuendo and a suggestion spell they get Peri with them but realize they can't spend the night in Barovia or he might go back to his mother and people will notice. They stop at Jenny Greenteeth's house (from the Adventurer's League nonsense) and talk to here but quickly realize they can't trade magic items to here but do waste a bit of time swapping trinkets. Eventually they sneak out and stay with the Vistani at the Tser Pool encampment. From there its right on to the castle.

They cross the bridge no problems, and actually take the expected way into the castle: main door, meet Rahadin, get to the dinner scene. Missing the secret door at the organ, they head up because they know one of their treasures from the reading is in a place of dizzying heights where the stones are alive. Trying to get to the taller tower, they go all the way to the parapet and fine Gertruda, who directs them to the other side of the castle to the north (heart) tower. After a somewhat dangerous battle on the stairs where I generously had the first two people only fall 30 feet to the landing and told them it was obvious they could drop prone and crawl up the stairs, they eventually dealt with the halbeards and a group of vampire spawn coming after them. In Vallaki I determined that there was a large group of folk from Kara-Tur so most of the "adventurer spawn" are easterners by dress which makes them stand out. I'm not sure why I did it, but I stuck with it. They're not consorts.

After destroying the heart and finding the Tome, they headed back down, some of them apparently thinking the tome wasn't the treasure despite the part where I clearly described the tower as "alive" and had printed out copies of the reading for them. So they did some scouting with spider climb and saw Pidlewick II in the high tower but didn't go there as I said it was obviously not a good resting place unless they had 8 hours of firewood due to the exposure to the cold and rain. They spied down a bit and saw Escher in the lounge and the bottle room, and I made some of the doors have cat-sized holes from being broken. They took all the scratched up furniture and went back up the heart-tower for a long rest, but were ambushed by 7 invisible witches. The party mostly made their saves against Tasha's and they murderized the witches, earning their long rest and hitting level 8. The bard finally realizes he's lost his original trinket (stolen by some Vistani bandits they met on the road and travelled with) and the winery's gem (stolen by the Martikov's at the Blue Water Inn before they burned it down). he's unfazed.

After the rest they explored the cat/witch level, then met Escher. He somehow survived till his turn and escaped out the window thanks to spider climb despite the fact that Periwimple is a fucking beast with large number of hit points, 3 attacks, and property that lets him deal an extra die of damage. So Escher is still out there and the party discovered their bedroom after they no longer needed it. Also I realize how lucky they are to have Peri as their ally. They could have had Arrabelle.

They move down to Leif the accountant, and I slightly fucked up by having them encounter the rat swarms on the wrong level. They'll never know, but this castle is fucking complex and I was looking at the wrong level. Sad thing is if each room were named the descriptions it would be a lot clearer rather than just a room number (e.g. this staircase leads to K37 The Study, as well as blah, blah, and blah). Would be a lot more helpful, especially in cases where it's hard to find where a staircase is on the adjacent level or where they same staircase number shows up on multiple levels. I also realized while prepping this beast that the reason the numbering is wonky is it still corresponds to the old maps. This means I could print out some old fan-versions of top-down maps and use the numbering, which is pretty cool even if the players haven't explored any levels enough to get to see them (I plan on just handing out the crypt floor for ease). After some intimidation they get a little information from Leif (who's been through this sort of interrogation a few times) and he gives them directions to the high tower and the crypts (basically: down).

From here they went down down down to the flooded dungeon. It took a while and used up the three witch-zombies the bard created, but they made it and freed Emil and only found the two magic items. I fast forwarded through the strahd zombies in the torture room just asking for 2 resources (i.e. levels of spell slots or hit dice, a HD from the paladin and level 1 slot from the sorcerer) and they encountered the ridiculous brazier room.

This was a bitch, because I knew I didn't want them teleported to Tsolenka pass or the Amber Temple because of time but I hadn't realized that during my read-through. So I panicked and tried to use the House of Strahd version of the trap, which made little sense since I had initially read the description from Curse, not House. But basically it meant they could bypass it as long as they didn't harm the brazier, hourglass, or statues which they didn't. 10 minutes for a detect magic ritual meant a random encounter, and its a black cat who nudges one of the doors open and they blast it with eldritch blast, killing it. No more black cat encounters anymore. But they're left with 3 doors and they pick the spiral staircase over the obviously shorter staircase or the longer one (neither of which spiral).

I try to telegraph they they're going quite a ways up while not telling them exactly how far up they're going, but they end up all the way in the study at the top of the castle. Here's where we end, so I hope they have the sense to go back down and try one of the other doors which at least keep them in the Larder or Crypt levels.

Overall, I'm relatively happy with this adventure so far. The players seem to like the weirdo sense of humor, even ridiculous things like Prince Ariel the Heavy. I think we'll essentially have what amounts to seven 5-hour sessions (35 hours total). If I was running this and not rushing the players a bit, I expect it'd take another session to do Argynvostholt (its biggish, if empty),  another for Berez and the Van R's tower, plus one or two for Tsolenka Pass and the Amber temple, and another one for the Tower of the Mad Mage, the den, and more nonsense in Vallaki. So total about 50-60 hours to do it pretty fully, though not everyone would opt to do everything obviously and the Amber Temple might not be done till after you defeat Strahd (making it an optional final session or two if they finish early, though the book doesn't call that out as explicitly as it could).  My only vague regret is I didn't ban chaotic neutral alignment and didn't force them to intertwine background more, and that I didn't quite have time to let them explore the countryside a bit more (I wanted to use Berez). But I pumped them through levels quickly and they'll hit 9 if the find the Holy Symbol and take a long rest and then they can attempt to kill Strahd or murderize them. I'm slightly glad they didn't hit the elevator trap, though they might still do that.

Long story short, the PCs are well positioned to get to Strahd in the next 4-5 hours of play and hopefully will so I don't need to open an extra trap door shooting them into the crypts after 3 hours of play on Wednesday. If you want to run this beast in less than 40 hours you need to cut some things but can defo run it as the original module with just Barovia and Ravenloft (I'd guess 20-25 hours, 2 marathon sessions), or possibly add in a few things like the Old Bonegrinder to spice things up before the castle if you have the time. Fudge the reading, put one of the things there if you need to, or make the winery and Yester hill closer, move the abbey, whatever you want.

Curse of Strahd: Actual Play 4

This session was a shit show. We started about an hour late because of too much chit-chat and some people being 20 min late. the party headed back from Yester Hill to Vallaki, stopping at the Wizard of Wines and Krezk along the way.

First, at the winery, they had the audacity to ask for compensation for bringing the gem back. Even after Martikov reminded them that he found valuable information in his ledger about where a guildmember might be buried and didn't ask for anything (other than them leaving his house). So, Martikov knows they have the gem and sends his kin back to Vallaki ahead of them.

They go to Krezk to make sure Strahd hasn't burned it down. He hasn't, so they head back to Vallaki. Along the way I roll the skeletal rider random encounter. They pursue him and easily take him down, learning nothing.

Back in Vallaki, they learn Rictavio has hastily left town and meet Gadof Blinsky, to my delight. Everyone loved it, and they bought an Ireena doll and a Strahd doll. Ezmerelda showed up late because Vistani aren't welcome in Villaki, and they had heard from Ireena and Ismark there was a strange man staring at them for a while. Putting together clues from the toy shop and the Inn, they realize Izek has some shady interest in Ireena. Ezmerelda asks them what they'll do about Ireena since she's not safe, so they pursue the St. Andral's Bones hook a bit.

The party talks to the orphans in the town square where they were gathering before the parade. They get Yeska to come with them while the paladin has a biggest-dick competition with Izek when he comes to round up the children for the parade. It was a great scene, with Izek being much smarmier than they expected. Gaining info from Yeska, they confront Milivoj about the bones and he admits the Coffinmaker paid him. At this point, however, the festival is about to start.

The blood hunter sticks around the inn, hoping he can hide and not attend the parade while the others look for the coffin maker around the town square. For some ungodly reason, the blood hunter starts the Blue Water Inn on fire. I guess he rolled well on an insight check to know that for some reason the innkeeper didn't like them much, but I didn't think that was a reason to deprive someone of their livlihood.

As the parade progresses in the town square, the party is horrified at the lone laughter. The paladin steps in to light the wicker sun with his sunsword, and the sorcerer casts disguise self to appear as a guard and convinces the other guards that he's got the prisoner handled. The swashbuckler keeps the crows torn between what they should do, and Fiona Wachter makes her play and tries to convince people that they should oust the Burgomaster and serve Strahd. The party was totally thrown by the Burgomaster trying to keep people happy and deposed  him, leaving his son in charge after a brief stint of thinking that the Burgomaster's wife was in charge.

Meanwhile, through some very delayed cut scenes (I'm proud of leaving the bard in suspense by constantly cutting to him for 1 round of action before cutting away), the bard found the coffin maker and went to his shop, forcing the coffin maker to show him where the relic was. The coffin maker reluctantly went upstairs and was killed by the bard's shatter spell when the vampire spawn woke.

Unfortunately, this accelerated the St. Andral's bones plot, so when the whole party realized there were vampire spawn loose in town, they eventually wend to the church to find Strahd killing the priest and they send the spawn packing.

So, now the party has really alienated the Martikovs, who have reclaimed one of the gems from the party. They've deposed the burgomaster of Vallaki, leaving the son in charge (nominally). They still need to get back to Barovia to find their greatest ally, and make it to the castle, probably stopping at the windmill on the way.

Basically, I need to prep the whole castle asap, because we're going to do a 8-12 hour marathon on Saturday and then hopefully if they're still alive they'll go after Strahd at the end of that or next week because that's all the time we've got. And lesson learned, even going through Strahd quickly... 25 hours of play wasn't enough. 40 hours for a quick game is probably more like it (I hope), unless you really cut it down to the original module.

Curse of Strahd: Actual Play 3

After the massive amount of prep I did for last week, this week was just a little bit. Still need to prep the castle itself, but hopefully I can get that done soon since my Church game is mostly prepped for the next week. The group started by fleeing back to Vallaki for a long rest after 30 needle blights bested them. They met some Vistani bandits on the way back, and learned a few more rumors and one of them was unknowningly relieved of their trinket so Strahd can scry on the party now quite well. While in Vallaki they encountered Rictavio finally but Ezmerelda hadn't yet brought Ireena and Ismark to the Blue Water Inn. They bought lots of oil and torches in town and the bard chatted up Rictavio.

Now, the bard is being played with what I call 'disruptive traits'. Last time he basically caused the party to loose to the needle blights because he spend all his spell slots early in the morning on mischief and a few reasonable things. So when he rolled poorly on shatter (his last spell slot) he wasn't able to help much in the fight. So this bard basically casts detect magic to identify important NPCs (who else has magic?) and Rictavio obviously has 3 magic items. So he flat out asks what's up with the three magic items. Rictavio is obviously leery about anyone coming up to him and saying "I know you have three magic items" but engages them a little trying not to reveal his secret. The party is obviously suspicious, thinking of his true identity or that he's the mad mage. Bard goes back the next day and hits Rictavio with suggestion, trying to force him to tell the truth. I decide that he can't be forced to reveal information due to the ring of mind shielding, but also that he would be really awkward in doing it and thereby sorta reveal stuff by omission. Anyway, that all took far too long for the bard trying to do something good for the group. At least both Morgantha and Strahd managed to scry on the party for the day.

Party eventually goes back to the winery, but because so much time has passed I rule that the Belviews went to the winery to catch up with the PCs but ended up fighting the druids instead as the PCs had fled. So they get to the winery and start snooping around for the guild member's tomb, thinking he's at the winery (their Tarokka reading). In doing so they alienate the Martikovs who are just trying to clean up their home. So unless they return the missing gems the ravens won't be helping them anymore. I take pity on them though and old man Martikov finds his old ledger and finds some records from back in the guild days and notes that one of them was burried in Castle Ravenloft.

Next the party goes south to Yester Hill, since Ezmerelda did her own reading and had heard about the hillfolk. As they sneak up towards the hill Strahd arrives on Beucephalus and the ritual of the hill starts. This leads to a 40 minute time-out as food arrives and they debate endlessly about what to do. In the process flubbing an insight check (with advantage from inspiration, +d6 bardic inspiration, and +d4 for having a relevant Tarokka card representing the inspiration) to see what Strahd might be doing. That was a great check, but the players aren't yet trained not to ask if they can constantly make rolls. I think they're finally getting that I'll generally only let one of them roll for the party though (the one with the best shot).

So, they totally annihilate the druids of the hill and burn the effigy. Then they have Strahd to deal with. The rogue climbs up on the rock wall and draws a 9 from the minor deck (10% chance), meaning he gets hit with a lightning bolt for 44 damage.

They smartly converse with Strahd a bit, he admits he's just brought them to Barovia to toy with them (mostly true), they catch him lying that he could leave whenever he wants, and they now know he's been spying on them. He asks a few time about Ireena and they imply they left her in Krezk, so he flies off to make his date with the Abbot (who will tell them all about Ireena since they spilled the beans to him previously). Then I realized there were supposed to be more blights by the tree, so they all come out of the branches once Strahd leaves, injure the party a bit, and the party easily beats them (though uses a few resources).

Interesting thing, having no barbarian, druid, or ranger I gave the blood spear to the outlander paladin but he was quite happy to take the sunsword instead which was burried under the tree. I named the axe in the tree "Trunkbreaker" (but in Elvish, where it sounds much more elegant, I assured the party). Funny thing though, only 2 members of the party are good and that axe will damage non-good people who attack with it.

So, overall the group did accomplish a lot, even though it felt slow. They uncovered Rictavio's secret, got the sunsword, cleared out Yester hill, and survived their first encounter with Strahd. That's four things! If they give the gem back to the winery (rather than selling it) they'll start out the next session with another XP in my ridiculous system of trying to award XP for doing good deeds and advancing the story. I also mentioned that we might try to schedul one extra session in, because next time if they deal with the bones of St. Andral and the festival of the burning sun, try to collect their greatest ally and stop at the Old Bonegrinder before going to the castle they'll still need at least a whole session before going to the castle. Though they might opt to go to the castle once, then deal with outside stuff before going back to try and defeat Strahd. However it goes I think I need another solid 12 hours of play to try to bring this to an end so hopefully an extra session can happen.

Of the tricks and such that I tried, handing out high-deck cards for inspiration has worked well, as has having players hand their traits around the table to have someone else track their inspiration. Its nice to not worry about that. I keep forgetting to hand out exhaustion when players go down, so some of my grand schemes to make the game grittier haven't taken hold. Also rolling weapon damage with the attack, group initiative has been a mess with this so I might go back and try individual initiative again and rush people through their turns next time. We'll see how it goes. Looking forward to the next 2 planned sessions, but I really think we'll need to do the extra one so hopefully we can make that happen soon.

RamaD&Dan: Curse of Strahd Character Creation

Just posting for posterity at the moment. I'm relatively happy with this, though a few things might change if I run this again. Specifically, variant Human is still real good, I might bump it up to the rare races and allow someone a reroll for stats if they don't roll better than the standard array/point buy (as one player did). Also, a random thought: I hadn't considered dividing classes into rare/common as well, and only letting (say, Barbarians or Battlerager Barbarians) if you keep your stat roll.

RamaD&Dan: Curse of Strahd

Wednesdays—June 8, 15, 22, 29 & July 6 2016

The aim is to plow through Curse of Strahd in the 5 weeks of Ramadan. That means playing something like 5-10 (maybe 4:30-10:30 if we can manage it), and we might see about arranging an additional day halfway through as needed/desired. There’s probably at least enough material in the book for twice as much play time, so we’ll need to be somewhat focused and on-task to get through things.

Party Creation

Before you’re wedded to a character, the group needs to discuss the party. Are you an adventuring family (this might limit races to things like humans, half-elves, half-orcs…), a mercenary group, a heroic group of do-gooders, or something else? Does the party have an alignment (and everyone agrees to pick an alignment at most one step removed?), an association, or some overarching goal? Do you elect a leader, or are you lead by some noble or honorable soul? Are you all from the same culture or religious group? What is home like? Remember in this edition that you don’t absolutely need any particular character class and even single-class parties can survive.

Character Creation

The info below should cover everything we’ll need for character creation. It’s not set in stone, but these are the options I think fit a heroic/good party in the setting/module well. I’m totally willing to consider other options, either as an individual or once a party concept is settled.

Level

Start at 4th level. Curse of Strahd is designed to do 3-9ish and if you get one level per session we’d hit 9 at the end.

Ability Scores

Roll randomly 4d6 drop the lowest in order. Because stats are really important in 5e, you can ditch your rolls and use the standard book system as a human (normal or variant human). As a standard human you can instead rearrange your rolled scores.

Bachelor Party Viking D&D Recap

A month ago I was back in the North having just run a two day Bachelor party D&D marathon and best manning a wedding. Because I wanted some secrecy and surprises, I didn't write much about the thing beforehand and general business afterwards left this lingering. I think its time to tell all.

Back in the day, the Antagonizer had a (somewhat infamous in my mind) surprise D&D birthday party. His now wife will probably never repeat that mistake, as the little white lie to get him to the location ballooned into him prepping for a birthD&D game he wouldn't be running, the game ballooned out of proportion with about 10 or more total players, and the game that was run featured a scenario that I didn't think felt at all birthday-y. So I had to do better, but it also became apparent that the bride-to-be and maid of honor were totally spilling beans left and right, so I also had to do it all on my own if there was to be anything surprising at all.

I went with a relatively obvious choice of scenario: vikings! I vaguely crossed it with hyborean age Conan materials, but that didn't really come out too much. My other good option was something totally Fury Road, but with the honeymoon slated for Iceland I stuck to my original idea and D&D 5e because it was a system I knew reasonably well and figured all the potential players would be familiar with (though I sorta wish I had used Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, I knew going with the familiar was a better option in this case). So I picked up the old Vikings historical reference book, the basic Northern Reaches gazetteer, and a couple others (turns out the Great Glacier isn't really all that useful).  Strangely, I also was able to do a tourism in New York and see a Vikings exhibit at Times Square which also provided some good inspiration, though I didn't include all the trinkets I had been intending.

My original plan was thwarted by scheduling and such, so it wasn't one scenario for the whole weekend, so I had to go with two separate-but-linked adventures. The first riffing off a Croatan comment from the last D&D game that I played with folks (but also Frost Giant's Daughter), and the second ended up being Moby Dick. Because I knew of the Icelandic honeymoon, I also wanted to put some Viking/Iceland lore into the game. Unfortunately my dream of using floorplans and such from actual sites the Antagonizer would visit crumbled because 1) its hard to find floor plans of archaeological sites online, and 2) most of the sites they were going to didn't really lend themselves to this sort of thing. Alas. The one option I had really tried to insert, the crazy big church, didn't end up being discovered either, though that was ok because it was mostly there just to have a crazy big church and filled with boring undead.

Since I didn't think the group and I could pull off a two-day Saga of the Icelanders game, I opted to go with croataning a colony for part 1. The PCs were latecomers to the colony and their loved ones had been turned to seals for angering the Frost Giant's Daughter (conaning it up a bit in the process). I had initially been going to go with they were all just kidnapped, but somehow them being turned into seals (better than penguins, right?) came up when I mentioned my vague plans to one of the D&D guys here in Faraway. I sketched a by-hand map of some potential sites and filled them with a few characters inspired by viking myth and my two primary D&D references. So the party encountered pukja and a witch with a cat-drawn chariot and the like. The Groom hung himself from a tree (and sacrificed 2 points of Constitution) to master the seal-rune so he could transform seals back into humans (with rules basically just stolen from GAZ7), and then they took out the frost-giant's daughter. Fairly successful.

Draft of the map, missing witch's forest to the east, big-ass church, and others. Players didn't explore the Hudrefolk mounds or hot springs.

I think it also helped that I gave them some interesting character options. I gave out a reduced list of options from the available official D&D materials plus Unearthed Arcana. Since it was so restricted I reimagined the list of dooms from the Viking's book, trying to give each one a potential good aspect. The star doom was unlucky, which let any player tell the unlucky player to fail a die roll and grab inspiration. Because I was doing an all human game, I used dooms for the stat-rearranging. If players kept their stats, they got to pick a doom. If they rearranged stats or took the standard array they'd roll to randomly get one. It led to a couple less-than-optimal characters so dooms could be chosen, or the players just didn't care about their stats much. Not quite sure which.

Part 2 featured most of the same characters, but swapped one out for another as I opted to bring in a few others since it wouldn't just be blokes in the wedding itself as I had originally hoped. This time the scenario was Moby Dick. I had tried to lay the seeds of an old hero who was cursed and became a dragon, but it didn't really become relevant as the entire game was about 5 hours and three combats with the same dragon. I used a white dragon as the base and made a few cosmetic changes so the dragon was a bit more corpse-tearer inspired (poison breath, stole lair stuff from green and black dragons, etc). It was satisfying. I wasn't sure I could get the PCs to flee after the first encounter with it, but 5e characters are fairly resilient and once a couple went down the party realized things will be hard. They had gotten the dragon to within an few inches of its life, but it retreated into the water exit of its lair. The party explored the lair a bit, surmizing there was a second entrance so the dragon wisely came back after a rest through the main entrance, avoiding their well-laid trap after laying waste to the colony out of spite. After another encounter they had the dragon on edge again, so it retreated to the frozen lake where it figured it could rest for a day (regaining full strength at the expense of losing its lair). The party short-rested and booked it to the lake (rangers can nicely determine when dragons are around, though I still find that ability to be really vague). I think the players thought the dragon would just come up and play fairly, so I made it instead a bit of a whack-a-mole game where the dragon tried to come up from hiding then retreat back below the icy water. Luckily for them the cleric had water walk as a spell and the sorcerer had mastered the seal-rune so the icy waters weren't a huge danger. In the end they killed the dragon, which was quite satisfying and managed to do it in the time limit we had for the game. Not much exploration of the dragon's heritage and backstory, but it apparently wasn't necessary for folks to have a good time plus they got to go into a volcano.

Overall I think things worked out quite well. If I had had the time I would have ran it here before hand to test things out, as I could have fixed a few things up and done with a little more prep, but so it goes. I also had to go win the Best GM award for prepping and running an old school ridiculous module right after I got back to this sandpit, so I'm very happy with what I was able to do given the constraints that I had. It was exhausting, but worthwhile.

Curse of Strahd: Actual Play 2

This session went better than the previous one, but slower. I was much more prepared. Probably because I types up 6 pages of notes on places I expected the party to go and what they might do there. Obviously they went off the rails right away, but that's always expected. They got a lot of info talking to the Abbot and Ezmerelda. And made some enemies and bad decisions. Obviously spoilers may ensue.

Starting off, the party began at St. Andral's church in Vallaki. They had planned on taking Ireena to Krezk as Donovich had suggested, so they set out to do just that. Strahd's stolen carriage was left with some locals to paint, so they moved at draft horse speed towards Krezk. I had thought they'd take the carriage with them and was planning on having Strahd show up to deal with them, but since they didn't I just used the first random encounter on the road they got: 3 werewolves in human form. The werewolves attempted to pass themselves off as travelers from Krezk, asking about the news from Vallaki. The party dropped a little too much info, so as the wolves got close they suddenly said they had lied and the party is what they were looking for. Lamentably they rolled poorly and I neglected to have the wild sorcerer roll for spell failure. Next time he'll draw from the low deck of Tarokka cards and a draw of the Berserker (6 of swords) or Anarchist (6 of glyphs) will be his surge. After killing one wolf the others fled, but ranged attacks brought one of the two down so only one escaped with his life. A bit to the bard did make the party a little wary, however.

When they got to Krezk my notes said they'd be turned away towards the winery, but a knock spell by the bard opened the gates and the party was reluctantly escorted to the abbey. Along the winding road Ireena was suddenly drawn to the sacred pool when she glimpsed it, but the party stopped her before she could get too close. So her identity had basically been ascertained, but she wasn't safe. They continued on to the abbey.

Ridiculous 5e spells for villains

Playing Curse of Strahd, I have a hankering to let the villains do some creative spellcasting. I made nice use of the 5th level spell scrying as a PC in my Princes of the Apocalypse game, and its given me more inspiration to use some by-the-book spells in nifty ways. I mostly looked through the wizard list on the 5esrd (all of it) as the big-bads in Strahd seem to use the wizard list (Strahd, Baba Lysaga, and the Old Bonegrinder ladies). There's probably others, but these were some of the initial thoughts.

Curse of Strahd spoilers below. I'm sure I read somewhere about an alternate spell list in Strahd for when one of the villains prepairs for the PCs, but I can't find it anywhere now. These spells will give some nice fodder for that though, and a few are already on the character's normal lists.