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View Full Version : Upping Ravenloft's Difficulty



....
2007-08-16, 01:34 PM
I've got the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure here and I want to run it with my players.

Thing is, EtCR is a game for people levels 6-12 and my players will be about level 12 when I get them into it.

So what I'm asking is any tips for upping the difficulty of this adventure (which is already pretty killer) so that the players at level 12 can feel challanged and maybe make it to level 18 or so over the course of it.

I figure it'd take more than adding more zombies in Barovia. And I'm not sure what level to make Strahd so that he's a threat, but still overcomable. Being an 18th level necromancer vampire would make him pretty tough; and I don't have much experience running characters higher than 13th level or so.

Any tips on monster changes/substitutions or how to beef up Strahd would be appreciated.

goat
2007-08-16, 01:36 PM
Give him some relatively powerful henchmen. The simple fact that your party can't concentrate solely on him will up his difficulty considerably.

....
2007-08-16, 01:41 PM
BTW: For people who don't have EtCR, Strahd von Zarovitch is usually a level 10 vampire (human) necromancer with illusion and abjuration as his barred schools. He also has Enervate Spell and Fell Drain (which let his spells do level drain).

He is immune to usual vampire weaknesses (i.e. sunlight, mirrors, garlic, entering houses)

Tokiko Mima
2007-08-16, 02:01 PM
I made him a triple gestalt (necromancer/dread necromancer/lifedrinker), of the same level as the maximum you expect your players to be and possessed of all the corpse crafting bonuses that he applies to undead that he creates.

Pushing Expedition to Castle Ravenloft up so many levels is going to be tough though. The material assumes that you don't have easy access to a lot of the spells and abilities that 12th level characters will be likely to have. Being able to cast restoration, for example, makes a lot of the undead less scary. You might need to add something even more vicious to make up for it.

Fixer
2007-08-16, 02:02 PM
I played through this recently as a level 6 (until the GM's brother went and brought us to Strahd's direct attention after the church incident) and can say that increasing the number of those flying things that paralyze would definitely do a number on most parties. They'd have to stay close to the paralyzed creatures and use more ranged attacks to keep their paralyzed comrades alive instead of going full-off attacks.

leperkhaun
2007-08-16, 02:02 PM
Having some incorperal critters could help out a good bit. Also for the baron as somone else mentioned, give him some decent vampire spawns that the PC's cant just ignore.

....
2007-08-16, 02:03 PM
I played through this recently as a level 6 (until the GM's brother went and brought us to Strahd's direct attention after the church incident) and can say that increasing the number of those flying things that paralyze would definitely do a number on most parties. They'd have to stay close to the paralyzed creatures and use more ranged attacks to keep their paralyzed comrades alive instead of going full-off attacks.

Vargoulies?

They have a pretty devastating kiss if they can connect with it.

But, once again, and 12th level cleric can cure that fairly easily.

Fixer
2007-08-16, 02:09 PM
I didn't know what they were, I just know they were particularly annoying for our little 6th level band. If not for my Fiery Burst feat, they would have been quite dangerous. (I lucked out and took out both of them in one attack just after they'd paralyzed our meat shields so they didn't lose any actions.)

tannish2
2007-08-17, 12:26 AM
well... there are a lot of obstacles that jsut arent a challenge for a high level party, like falling off a cliff, everyone will have something like a potion of fly or feather fall, finding out wehre things are.... gotta use mundane methods at low levels, but at level 12 scrying contact other plane commune locate object ect. and part of the difficulty is not being able to escape and resupply...... simple at high level, summon a few dire apes to open door, get party out door, teleport to big city, resupply, teleport to back outside door gate, sorry, and reenter using same method, then teleport to town and have fun, even at level 6 the challenge is significantly reduced, and you would basically need to rewrite the whole damn adventure, which would be much more trouble than its worth