Curse of Strahd campaign wrap up.

[NecroDancer]

My group is in the late game of Curse of Strahd so now I'm starting to plan for the final battle. Strahd (BBEG/vampire) is pretty strong so I'll list some strengths/weaknesses.

Part 1: Strahd's Strengths
1. Spellcaster, he probably has access to 3rd level spells minimum.

2. Skilled with swords, he has a magic sword and has at least 2 attacks.

3. Standard vampire abilities, charming gaze, mist transformation, etc.

4. His layer is a gothic castle, it's a large castle filled with a lot of powerful undead and death traps

5. Vistani minions, vistani have the ability to curse people and at least one of them is a powerful assassin.

6. Anti-Sun, the sun of his realm seems to have no effect on him.

7. Devil Cultist, he has a devil cult that hates us (although they are pretty pathetic and Strahd hates them as well). We have beat their leader three time but she might be getting stronger/summoning more Devils.

8. Vampire Minions, a lot of them, a whole lot of them.

Part 2: Strahd's Weakness
1. A book, Strahd will do anything to get his diary back however it is currently somewhere in his castle after he took it from us the first time.

2. The vistani aren't completely loyal to him, the vistani fear him and also need his magic to leave his realm. They won't risk their lives to help him (although there could be exceptions).

Part 3: Potential Allies For Us

1. A revanent, an evil fiendish revanent wants to kill me and will go to great lengths to make sure no one else does. He also got into a fight with some vistani who then blinded/deafned him (no idea if he has recovered yet).

2. A Lich, we befriended a Lich in an Eldritch temple. The Lich won't take direct action against Strahd but might provide us with shelter.

3. Helsing, a vampire hunter named Rictavo is also trying to defeat Strahd but isn't in his prime. He has a protege we met that seems to have disappeared intentionally.

4. Werewolves, we befriended a pack of werewolves, they are mainly trying to stay out of Strahd's way but they might help us if push comes to shove (they also won't make us werewolves to prevent competition and our paladin has forbid us to become werewolves).

5. Graz'zt, my demonic patron is an avatar of Graz'zt and might be able to help us if we summon him although he will most likely just watch us fight Strahd while eating popcorn.

Part 4: Us

In General, we are all level 9 and decked out with a lot of powerful magic items. The few times we've planned have given us great success. We are also are in the 0.1 percent. We have also

1. Me, a warlock with 2 powerful magic staves. I'm the groups lier, demonologost, and arcane caster. Sadly through previous stupidity almost 75% of all named NPCs hates me. I am horrible at managing my pact magic (both IC and OoC).

2. Geoff, a paladin who is has a heavy emphasis on taking the high road always (for some ludicrous reason experimental demon summoning could go wrong). Fireballs tend to deal max damage when he is damaged by them and he can deal ridiculous high smite damage.

4. Aran (Aron? Arron?), a greedy cleric who can throw a fireball like nobody's business. He is almost always death warded. He treats every supply run like it's "antique roadshow".

5. Pipen, your standard rogue. He has a few unorthodox tricks (skeletal dragon wings, some magic, an ancient cursed dagger) that make him a force to be reckoned with (he will ALWAYS be able to sneak attack).

6. Buggy, a barbarian with amnesia. His is probably gone after doing some eldritch speed dating. He can deal ludicrous amounts of pain and now has 50+ new magical abilities from afore mentioned eldritch speed dating. Honestly he scares me.

7. Kaz, an NPC wizard who is on a quest for revenge. Has numerous spells and can keep us safe from his AoE spells.

Part 6: What we have done

NPC index

Kaz: a friendly elf wizard on a quest for revenge

Rahadin : a genocidal elven killer

Strahd: an evil vampire

Arigal: a vistani assassin

Emil: a neutral werewolf

Kiril: an extra-evil werewolf

Fiona: a devil cultist

Ireena: a girl being stalked by Strahd

The fallen angel: the insane protector of Krezk

Izek: an evil man with a devil arm

Rictavo: an elderly vampire hunter

Ezmerelda: Rictavo's awesome apprentice

Exthanter: the tubular Lich

We started off lost and confused in a gothic land called Barovia. After confirming that we can't get through an evil mist that surrounds Barovia we spend a day or two clearing out a haunted house.

Shortly after that we met Strahd who we learned was a vampire and was out to get us. After that we agreed to take a girl called Ireena to a town of Krezk (supposedly safe from Strahd). We also met a seer that gave us vague hints on how to defeat Strahd and escape Barovia.

[War_lord]

Unless you're leaving a lot out, or the DM is running things super loose. I suspect you're boned, how much of Barovia has the party explored?

[NecroDancer]

After a few days of travel (and a fight with a hag coven where we learned about souless people, bone pies and had our first near TPK) we arrived at a small town called Vallaki.

Vallaki was run by a mayor who forced people to attend depressing festivals (on pain of death) to try to keep Strahd at bay with happiness. I met a devil cult run by a woman known as Fiona who wanted to overthrow the mayor and aid Strahd. The paladin recived a quest from the local church to find some holy bones which we recovered after our Cleric killed some vampire spawn with an indoor flash flood. We then hung out of a famous vampire hunter called Rictavo who gave us some vampire killing strategies.

We later were invited/threatened to attend one of the mayor festivals leading to me throwing a one man coup and killing the mayors demonic bodyguard called Izek. The rest of my group ended the mayor, his dogs, and any guards who got in our way (the mayors innocent wife was not happy with us afterwards). Fiona then won Vallaki's first election in a landslide and we left after that.

We stopped by a camp run by Vistani who told us about the vistani and introduced us to an elf named Kaz. Kaz really hated another elf named Rahadin who commited genocide on the orders of Strahd. We returned to Vallaki only to learn the Fiona had quickly turned it into a totalitarian village (I guess letting a devil cultist control a town is a bad idea).

We managed to kill Fiona and loot her house (2nd near TPK). We left but forgot to burn Fiona's body which lead to her being brought back to life by her cultist and expanding her cult due to the fact she came back from the dead. After a meeting with an Imp Majesto we decided to leave Vallaki and promised to stay out of Fiona's way. We left Vallaki with Rictavo who had managed to smuggle innocents away from Fiona's reach.

I also managed to anger the Vistani after a failed Illusion scam and became the enemy of a Vistani Assassin named Arrigal.

We finally got to Krezk and met a fallen angel (who ran an insane asylum for human/animal abominations and was making Strahd a flesh golem bride) and had Ireena (who was actually a reincarnation of Strahd's former crush, Tatyana) taken to safety (by Strahd's brother who was a former paladin and now a good ghost who wisked Ireena/Tatyana to the afterlife without killing her). (I missed that session so I have next to no idea why that all happened).

During our stay at Krezk we killed an evil hag (3rd near TPK) and some evil werewolves, and in innocent man by accident/paranoia (our paladin still feel bad for that). After we got roman on a group of evil Druids who were preventing the distribution of wine via poison. We left Krezk visit Strahd's castle after we got an invitation.

Our visit with Strahd went poorly and we escaped barely (but the rogue got a fancy new magic dagger).

We learned Rictavo was living in an antimagic tower and had an apprentice named Ezmerelda (even more awesome than Rictavo if that's possible). We also learned that Strahd had captured the leader (named Emil) of the "good" (probably CN) werewolves and had an extra evil werewolf called Kiril leading the werewolves for Strahd. We debated about rescuing Emil or finishing off the Druids (who really hated us).

After a successful rescue mission in Strahd's castle (I got rich and almost died from a bloodborne monster). We went back to Vallaki and stopped Fiona from turning the mayor's wife into another bloodborne monster (we destroyed a church in the process). We then managed to easily capture Fiona (we couldn't kill her due to the paladin promising not to kill her) but she later escaped when we left her in the middle of nowhere unsupervised.

On our way to fight the werewolves with Emil we encountered Izek who had powerful CE revenant and wanted to kill me. After I fell 800 feet and almost died we managed to kill Izek again and headed out on our way.

When we got to the werewolves we leaned that Kiril had killed a bunch of kids we wanted to save so in return we turned him into something not unlike paste.

(More to come)

[War_lord]

Hmm, seems like the DM has injected a lot of their own material. You didn't get a card reading at any point, did you?

[NecroDancer]

After ending the werewolf menace we broke into Strahd's castle again to help save the souls of some formerly good undead knights (the leader went insane and I epically killed him in our 4th near TPK). After saving their souls we got approached by Kaz who begged us to visit the Amber Temple before we fight the Druids.

As a token of friendship we followed Kaz to the Amber Temple. On the trip there we almost died (one of us actual died and had to be raised) but we finally reached the Amber Temple when Kaz suddenly told us that Rahadin is going to be here (Rahadin prays at the temple daily) and that we have to kill him. Long story short: we killed Rahadin quickly.

We then angered an Arcanaloth (i take all the blame for this, this one is on me). During the battle with the Yugoloth our barbarian got amnesia and the Arcanaloth escaped wounded. We soon killed a super evil wizard (his name was Vilinus for crying out loud!) and fed Vilinus's soul to a Lich named Exthanter and become best buds with Exthanter.

After some Eldritch Speed dateing (our barbarian went all out and me and the cleric got amber grills) with the horrors of the Amber Temple we prepared to leave and finally finish off the Druids and then Strahd (we hit level 9!) but just as we were leaving we were ambushed by Rahadin who had been resurrected by the Arcanaloth and had obtianed some major power ups (at the low low cost of his sanity and elegance). Rahadin 2.0 started quickly defeating us with a feriocity that would make a demon afraid.

And that's were we left off.......

[NecroDancer]

Hmm, seems like the DM has injected a lot of their own material. You didn't get a card reading at any point, did you?

Our DM added a lot of new things. We did get a card reading and managed to collect all the items. The campaign has become a wonderful mix of gothic thriller and action comedy.

I had to gloss over a lot of things in my recap (we have been playing for over a year).