Curse of Strahd for two players

[DrGonzo]

Hello all,

I'm starting a Curse of Strahd campaign soon, but most of the time there will be only two players, and occasionally a third. Does anyone have experience with this? Is it doable, with some scaling? Or should I let the players level faster? Any and all advice is helpfull, thanks in advance.

DG

[Citan]

Hello all,

I'm starting a Curse of Strahd campaign soon, but most of the time there will be only two players, and occasionally a third. Does anyone have experience with this? Is it doable, with some scaling? Or should I let the players level faster? Any and all advice is helpfull, thanks in advance.

DG
Hi!

I have no experience with this particular campaign, but a few ideas to compensate the small party.

1. Easiest: make them level up faster if they start at lvl 1, until they are at least level 3. Or if they are experienced players (aka they know RPG in general, and know their class features in 5e) make them start level 3 directly.

2. Add them a stupid NPC: like a thick-headed barbarian, which will mainly obey them (a mercenar). So it's their responsibility to manage it. Perfect if your players mainly lack a tank/frontliner. It can be sacrificed if need be, or you can reward your players if they really try to teamplay with it (and not just use it as a scapegoat). ;)

3. Add a support DMPC: more work for you, and can be difficult to roleplay on the right line (to avoid taking the light), as long as you are aware of the difficulties and have some experience, should be fine. The best if your two players are "brute-like" characters that utterly lack support/heal/ranged offense.

4. Adapt the encounters by reducing the number of enemies: main risk of being a small party is being overcrowded easily. So just removing a few mooks (or just dispatching them throughout the encounter map if it is big enough) should help greatly.

5. Adapt the encounters by giving (reasonably powerful for their level) magic equipment and tools to the players: not at their start, but as a reward for their first milestone for example. Just +1 weapon or piece of armor for each should help a bit already.

Hope that helps. :)

[p_johnston]

Citan gave sone good advice, most of which is somewhat supported by CoS already.

1. The adventure throws helpfull npc's at you. Ezmerellda especially is fairly powerfull and has like twenty diffrent places the party can meet her. The adventute practically begs you to add her to the party.

2. Stack the taroka reading. If you give them the sun sword early it will help solve a loy of problems.

3. Beware killer encounters. Enworld has a good thread of the deadliest encounters in CoS that you can google.

Once i get home ill serif i can give some more advice.

[GlenSmash!]

Citan gave sone good advice, most of which is somewhat supported by CoS already.

1. The adventure throws helpfull npc's at you. Ezmerellda especially is fairly powerfull and has like twenty diffrent places the party can meet her. The adventute practically begs you to add her to the party.

2. Stack the taroka reading. If you give them the sun sword early it will help solve a loy of problems.

3. Beware killer encounters. Enworld has a good thread of the deadliest encounters in CoS that you can google.

Once i get home ill serif i can give some more advice.

Good comments both. I'll echo them. Since the game already accounts for an NPC to join the Party as an ally (one of a few different options based on the Taroka reading) Let multiple allies join.

[Aembrosia]

With two players dont start in death house.

Get them to the blood on the vine, its not hard. Now you should have Ismark and Irena to play with.

If they go to one of the no no places you DONT HAVE TO FIGHT THEM gasp! Not attacking with my monsters?! The thing you say! -as you're throttling the mortician for information on St. Markovia's bones you hear 8 pairs of footsteps decending the eastern staircase. The pale, chuckling countenences of a little more than a half dozen vampires come into view - "but we're level 4 this is a deadly encounter for 5 level 7's???" "you came to the wrong neighborhood MF'er."

[DrGonzo]

Thanks all. I'll try levelling them a bit faster, and have a very favorable outcome of the tarokkareading.

Two allies is a possibility, but also extra work for me, and I like to concentrate on the story, not running an extra DMPC.

One of the players will be a Cleric, the second probably Bard or Paladin. The off and on player is undecided. I may use the 'meatshield barbarian under their control' option, I like the teamplay option.

[p_johnston]

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/2016/03/dungeons-dragons-guide-to-curse-of.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?483009-where-you-re-going-to-die-in-CoS-%28spoilers%29

So I will start off by saying that the two above links are very helpful to running CoS in general. The first one is just a general advice blog with a lot of useful links. The second is the list of deadliest encounters in CoS I mentioned earlier.

1. On the issue of DMPC it's really up to you on how many, if any, you want to use. It is worth noting that the adventure has a baked in assumption that the party will have at least one ally from the tarokka reading and offers several other npcs who would be willing to help the party. I'll tell you a few of the best so you can look them over if you want.

A) Ireena and Ismark: these two, or at least Ireena, are almost guaranteed to be traveling with the party because of the plot. If you bump Ireena up to the same stat's as Ismark they could easily round out the party for combat. Even minus that Ismark alone can function as the party fighter for a few levels.
B)Van Richten: he can be encountered in Vallaki, the second town the party goes to. The book says he won't travel with the party unless he is their fated ally but you can hand wave that easily enough if they need the help.
C)Victor Vallakovich: He can also be encountered Vallaki. He has the stat's of a mage and can really help with a party lacking arcane magic. He is desperate to escape the town and Barovia so him going with the party isn't much of a stretch.
D)Ezmerellda: Like I said the adventure almost begs you to have her accompany the party. They can encounter her in Van Richtens tower, the abbey at Krezek, Argynvostholt, and Castle Ravenloft. Every time the book states that she is willing to join the party. She is a decent melee fighter who also has several wizard levels. If you have no one else travel with the party she still might be worth it.

2. A little more advice on some of the deadlier encounters, at least the ones I have personally run.
A) Death house is a horrible murder pit of doom and mayhem. My advice is to just skip it. If you really, really, want to run it buff the PC's to level three before they enter the house.
B) The hags at old Bonegrinder will murder almost any party that engages them, and any good aligned party will see it as their duty to kill the hags. My advice is to downgrade the hags to green hags, and make it so that at least one is out of the windmill at first. This get's rid of the hags damage resistance, coven spells, and ethereal at will ability (any one of which would spell a problem for a full party).
C) The coffin makers shop in Vallaki will likely kill any character who triggers it. I had a party of four characters plus Van Richten fighting against four vampire spawn. They managed to kill one and nearly all died. My advice is to have the coffin maker visibly terrified and say something along the lines of "no don't go up there! you'll wake them." Any party who doesn't ask more questions at that point needs to die. Also possibly leading the party to the amulet of ravenkind before this encounter could really help.

3. For the Tarokka reading it is almost always best to just stack the deck. If you do it vanilla be prepared to have all three items be in the castle, possibly in Strahds own tomb. I'll give you my advice for the reading.
A) The most powerful item the party can get in this adventure is the sunsword. At it's base a +2 long sword will go a long way towards party ability to survive. Add in the ability to radiate sunlight and extra damage against undead and this one item will turn several potentially deadly encounters into survivable ones. With a two man party I would be tempted to put it in Madam Eva's camp just to get it to them early. If not then probably in Vallaki.
B) Make sure they get a useful ally. The list I gave you above are all possibilities. Really any of the allies who are good in combat will work. A good rule of thumb is that any ally who has a CR lower then three is not going to be hugely helpful.

4. Not related to any of the above but in the Yester Hill area has what I believe to be the only other magic weapon treasure the party can get. The blood spear is a +2 spear if the Kavan gives it to a PC. With that and the sunsword the party will be entirely equipped with some fairly powerful magic weapons.

P.S. Players will be Players but if any two characters could survive CoS alone it would be a Paladin and a Cleric, so maybe push the undecided character in that direction.

[DrGonzo]

I''ve lured them towards Paladin and skill monkey cleric, and given them 32 point buy. Starting level is 2. I really like Death House, but I'll give them a bit of slack, and tone it down a little.

The links are really usefull indeed!

I'll keep you posted how things go. First session will be in two weeks probably.

[Therumancer]

One potential solution for this situation is to have each player make and control more than one character. This can allow the easy creation of duos you don't often see in RPGs such as identical twins, or a husband-wife duo (unless you have players who are also married IRL), or whatever else. So two players with two characters each means your doubling your party size without having to worry about the record keeping inherent in creating an NPC companion (or more than one in this situation) basically pushing the work from you over to the players.

You can also start the characters out at a higher level and/or give them more impressive gear. Some people here have already mentioned tough encounters, so with these things in mind remember to level/kit out the PCs to the point where they have a chance of surviving such things. You don't want to make it too easy, but at the same time you don't want to TPK just because the PCs went through the wrong door (so to speak).

I'll also say from experience that a lot of published modules tend to be on the deadly side. I don't know the command for setting up spoiler spaces yet so I won't post any examples, but encounters in pre-made adventures like the ones being discussed are not all that uncommon. I suspect the current batch of 5E modules might seem to be on the difficult side because the designers are trying to think ahead for the inevitable power creep. A $50 super module won't be a joke in say 4 years due to all the new supplements and options that buff even low level characters as there were encounters put in (as mentioned) specifically expecting this.... I can't say for certain, but as I said, I do suspect it was part of the design philosophy.

I guess if it was me, the first thing I'd do is ask the players if they felt comfortable running more than one PC. Given the setting I might also offer an NPC cleric of light to accompany them for extra healing power if *they* want to have an NPC buddy with them.

I've found that some modules designed for low levels which are very deadly can be made more "heroic" feeling if you simply start the PCs out at 3rd level that way nobody gets swallowed and one shotted by an "undertoad" concealed near a moathouse, or split in half by an ogre with a bardachie pretty much right out the gate (award yourself 100 D&D geek points if you know what module I'm talking about). Of course your problem isn't *just* levels but the number of bodies on the PC's side, and that's harder to deal with than simply making the characters a bit more durable and skilled. A party of 6 starting adventurers can probably beat a dozen Orcs in a brawl due to divided attacks for example (that's 2 orcs each), that same dozen orcs mobbing a single 4th level fighter probably won't go well for the fighter especially if the orcs use mass grappling techniques swarm/surround him, etc.... (and orcs are warlike and smart enough to work together to that extent) I'm rambling, but the problem is I understand your dilemma. (and please, I'm not saying there is no way a 4th level fighter could be made to win that with the right tactics, just that it's not likely, so let's not derail the thread into such a hypothetical encounter).

[DrGonzo]

So, after rummaging around in the Svalich woods, and entering through the giant gates the guys entered the village of Barovia. After talking to Rose and Thorn they entered Death House.They pushed straight through to the third floor. By chance, they entered the nursery first, and they destroyed the spectre of the nursemaid in one round. At the end of session one, they broke the lock of the childrens room. Que cliffhanger, next session they'll meet the real children.

So far so good. Next session will probably see a bit more action.

[DrGonzo]

Second session:

The players met the two children's ghosts. Thorn possessed the Cleric, but the Paladin intimidated him out again. After investigating the model house they went through the rooms of the house they didn't go through yet, finding Strahds letter, and eventualy going down the secret stairs. In the basement they laid the children's bones to rest, just after fighting the grick in the larder.

End session.

The guys are taking a long time going through every room, this being Ravenloft they're expecting that everything is a possible deathtrap.