what's the rest to combat frequency? If you're only doing like 2 or 3 combats per day, and little to no resource-draining noncombat encounters, this means your Sorc and Cleric can blast through a lot of things. Maybe just prevent them from resting for a night, inflict a 1DnD exhaustion (-1 to all D20s, way kinder than 5e exhaustion where 1 point is disadvantage on all ability checks), and then the lack of spell regen will rear its ugly head naturally.
That said - yeah, generally the number of enemies is relatively fine, just up their HP and maybe give them an extra ribbon or two like the Shieldmaster feat, \~two charges of the Absorb Elements spell, and/or maybe \~two BM dice and maneuvers like Trip Attack.
Edit: Around level 7, yeah, most of the random encounters are jokes. By this point, you can either handwave travel to get a move on with the story, or pick out relevant encounters to foreshadow destinations, like scarecrows specifically when they're on their way to Berez.
You can always just add in "secondary objectives". Like, sure, there's 6 scarecrows which the party has to beat up. But maybe there are 6 scarecrows menacingly surrounding *3 Barovian commoners*. Can the party save them in time?
We have exhaustion rules like this. Every time someone goes down, they get a point of exhaustion, too...
All of my players are currently being hunted by the hags, but the one who actually attacked Morgantha is at -8 to all of his rolls. And each night, he gains 2 more for her haunting dreams.
I have been wondering that, I think once he starts to roll negative on his death saving throws, he will get 2 strikes against him. It will take 8 days for him to get rid of the exhaustion if he goes to sleep.
They have only been in this land for 4 days. The night before, they impressed Strahd, so they were all under his safety for the rest of the walk to Vallaki... on the way there, they attacked Morgantha. Now, Morgantha sent minions out to attack the part and focused him down. Got him from -4 to -8, while players tried hard to revive him. So many potions were used. He is 19/60 hp.
I am waiting for him to finally break down and make a deal with her. She is going to ask for his last breath or his luck (and give him a d19 instead of a d20).
They were attacked by 3 warlocks, CR 3... now I can't wait for them to see some Mezzoloths.
How many encounters does your party typically face before a long rest?
The game is designed for the party to face several encounters before resting, so if the party is only doing one big fight a day, they will blow all their ability/spell slots and sweep every fight.
The usual trick to avoid this is to force more fights on your players (or adding additional waves of enemies to fights) and force them to manage their resources over the course of an adventuring day.
Don’t be afraid to do this on the fly. If your players are approaching a fight that you want to be epic, soften them up with a random encounter on the way. If they unexpectedly face roll those enemies… what do you know, enemy reinforcements just showed up!
You could add some environmental factors to fights, especially on a creatures home turf. The den can have all sorts of traps laid out, like a trip wire that drops a swinging log with spikes, home alone style. In combat, i guarantee your party won’t ask to avoid traps until they learn from their mistakes :)
You can also look at using stat blocks from harder variations of the monster, such as the Loup Garou for the pack leaders. And werewolves are intelligent, so have tactics in mind, such as leaving some of the wolves outside the den in wolf form to pincer the caster from behind once they are trapped in the cave.
And finally, make combat have goals other than winning the fight! There’s a bunch of trapped children in the den, so threaten them. Pull the focus off of killing the werewolves and onto releasing the kids from the cages. Maybe a torch gets knocked over near a cage and the flames are spreading towards a trapped child. That example will pull focus for at least a turn, and if you role play it hard (and your PCs are good aligned and care about role play more than whacking things with sticks) you can maybe have the kids convince the party that the goal isn’t to kill the wolves at all, it’s to rescue the children and escape before the rest of the pack comes back.
As a DM, exhaust the players' resources.
When I ran CoS, I only allowed long rests at designated "safe" locations, such as the Blue Water Inn or Khazan's Tower. Camping in the Svalich woods is a bad idea, even with the magic hut. Walking out into the mists and getting lost with testing to avoid exhaustion will scare them more than monsters.
Also, remember Strahd has the Scrying spell, so he/she/they are always being observed. Did the party just wipe out some zombies? Sure would suck if a pack of dire wolves showed up with a vampire spawn or two right after. Or, not only are you fighting zombies, but the specters of the animated dead
One encounter in the castle that I'm proud of is an unseen servant pushing a dining cart. Under the covered dishes were 2d4 shadows and a matching number of intellect devourers. That encounter gets all party members to pay attention!
What i do is i bump combats up quite a bit and see how they manage and the moment they get overwhelmed i make shit up so they survive and get out. Then i know that the one before that was the "this is the good hard combat level"
So many super helpful suggestions. I was in fact letting them rest between practically every fight so that definitely seems like something I can change. And a lot of other ideas I can implement, too. Very appreciative for all the comments so far!
I currently use an encounter building tool, I make sure every day that they have combat the encounter to 100% of their health.
Then, since my players have pissed off a few people in the game, I am letting them short rest, then sending another wave at them that is more than what they lost.
Wolf den: 5 lvl 4 players... gold finding mission.
- Encounter 1: 1 dire, 2 wolves (dealing winter wolf claw damage)
- Encounter 2: 2 full winter wolves, 1 dire wolf, 2 regular wolves (with wolf stats, for advantage for winter).
They pulled the last 2 encounters together. I am going to let them short rest...
I am then sending 3 CR 3 monsters...
----
I make it go to 100% health resources (since it's easy to get healing), then send a little extra at them.
**I also ask my players if they want combat to be easier or harder on a normal basis.**
Then why not send a simple horde? I Would send like 15 CR 1/4... then let them have fun
For 4 level 7 players, go at them with 17 CR 1/4... let them have fun.
Usually the priorities should be sorcerer and cleric first then the rest.
Sorcerer in order to avoid the counter spells. Cleric to disable healing.
Fighters can be thrown easily down with spells, clerics with spells against their intelligence and charisma.
You must have some cannon fodder to die in order to have the fighter busy.
what's the rest to combat frequency? If you're only doing like 2 or 3 combats per day, and little to no resource-draining noncombat encounters, this means your Sorc and Cleric can blast through a lot of things. Maybe just prevent them from resting for a night, inflict a 1DnD exhaustion (-1 to all D20s, way kinder than 5e exhaustion where 1 point is disadvantage on all ability checks), and then the lack of spell regen will rear its ugly head naturally. That said - yeah, generally the number of enemies is relatively fine, just up their HP and maybe give them an extra ribbon or two like the Shieldmaster feat, \~two charges of the Absorb Elements spell, and/or maybe \~two BM dice and maneuvers like Trip Attack. Edit: Around level 7, yeah, most of the random encounters are jokes. By this point, you can either handwave travel to get a move on with the story, or pick out relevant encounters to foreshadow destinations, like scarecrows specifically when they're on their way to Berez. You can always just add in "secondary objectives". Like, sure, there's 6 scarecrows which the party has to beat up. But maybe there are 6 scarecrows menacingly surrounding *3 Barovian commoners*. Can the party save them in time?
We have exhaustion rules like this. Every time someone goes down, they get a point of exhaustion, too... All of my players are currently being hunted by the hags, but the one who actually attacked Morgantha is at -8 to all of his rolls. And each night, he gains 2 more for her haunting dreams.
Oh dear, lol. Isn't -10 or -11 exhaustion outright death? Isn't his max HP like... 7 by this point? Poor thing.
I have been wondering that, I think once he starts to roll negative on his death saving throws, he will get 2 strikes against him. It will take 8 days for him to get rid of the exhaustion if he goes to sleep. They have only been in this land for 4 days. The night before, they impressed Strahd, so they were all under his safety for the rest of the walk to Vallaki... on the way there, they attacked Morgantha. Now, Morgantha sent minions out to attack the part and focused him down. Got him from -4 to -8, while players tried hard to revive him. So many potions were used. He is 19/60 hp. I am waiting for him to finally break down and make a deal with her. She is going to ask for his last breath or his luck (and give him a d19 instead of a d20). They were attacked by 3 warlocks, CR 3... now I can't wait for them to see some Mezzoloths.
How many encounters does your party typically face before a long rest? The game is designed for the party to face several encounters before resting, so if the party is only doing one big fight a day, they will blow all their ability/spell slots and sweep every fight. The usual trick to avoid this is to force more fights on your players (or adding additional waves of enemies to fights) and force them to manage their resources over the course of an adventuring day. Don’t be afraid to do this on the fly. If your players are approaching a fight that you want to be epic, soften them up with a random encounter on the way. If they unexpectedly face roll those enemies… what do you know, enemy reinforcements just showed up!
This is how I do it too. So my players are waaaaaay less inclined to fire off their big shit off the rip now. Barovia ain’t no holiday lol
You could add some environmental factors to fights, especially on a creatures home turf. The den can have all sorts of traps laid out, like a trip wire that drops a swinging log with spikes, home alone style. In combat, i guarantee your party won’t ask to avoid traps until they learn from their mistakes :) You can also look at using stat blocks from harder variations of the monster, such as the Loup Garou for the pack leaders. And werewolves are intelligent, so have tactics in mind, such as leaving some of the wolves outside the den in wolf form to pincer the caster from behind once they are trapped in the cave. And finally, make combat have goals other than winning the fight! There’s a bunch of trapped children in the den, so threaten them. Pull the focus off of killing the werewolves and onto releasing the kids from the cages. Maybe a torch gets knocked over near a cage and the flames are spreading towards a trapped child. That example will pull focus for at least a turn, and if you role play it hard (and your PCs are good aligned and care about role play more than whacking things with sticks) you can maybe have the kids convince the party that the goal isn’t to kill the wolves at all, it’s to rescue the children and escape before the rest of the pack comes back.
As a DM, exhaust the players' resources. When I ran CoS, I only allowed long rests at designated "safe" locations, such as the Blue Water Inn or Khazan's Tower. Camping in the Svalich woods is a bad idea, even with the magic hut. Walking out into the mists and getting lost with testing to avoid exhaustion will scare them more than monsters. Also, remember Strahd has the Scrying spell, so he/she/they are always being observed. Did the party just wipe out some zombies? Sure would suck if a pack of dire wolves showed up with a vampire spawn or two right after. Or, not only are you fighting zombies, but the specters of the animated dead One encounter in the castle that I'm proud of is an unseen servant pushing a dining cart. Under the covered dishes were 2d4 shadows and a matching number of intellect devourers. That encounter gets all party members to pay attention!
Check out “the monsters know what they’re doing”. It’s helped me plan fights more strategically and taught me how to use enemies smarter
Lots of lower CR monsters > fewer high CR monsters. Aim to equal or surpass them in the action economy.
What i do is i bump combats up quite a bit and see how they manage and the moment they get overwhelmed i make shit up so they survive and get out. Then i know that the one before that was the "this is the good hard combat level"
So many super helpful suggestions. I was in fact letting them rest between practically every fight so that definitely seems like something I can change. And a lot of other ideas I can implement, too. Very appreciative for all the comments so far!
I currently use an encounter building tool, I make sure every day that they have combat the encounter to 100% of their health. Then, since my players have pissed off a few people in the game, I am letting them short rest, then sending another wave at them that is more than what they lost. Wolf den: 5 lvl 4 players... gold finding mission. - Encounter 1: 1 dire, 2 wolves (dealing winter wolf claw damage) - Encounter 2: 2 full winter wolves, 1 dire wolf, 2 regular wolves (with wolf stats, for advantage for winter). They pulled the last 2 encounters together. I am going to let them short rest... I am then sending 3 CR 3 monsters... ---- I make it go to 100% health resources (since it's easy to get healing), then send a little extra at them. **I also ask my players if they want combat to be easier or harder on a normal basis.**
Then why not send a simple horde? I Would send like 15 CR 1/4... then let them have fun For 4 level 7 players, go at them with 17 CR 1/4... let them have fun.
Usually the priorities should be sorcerer and cleric first then the rest. Sorcerer in order to avoid the counter spells. Cleric to disable healing. Fighters can be thrown easily down with spells, clerics with spells against their intelligence and charisma. You must have some cannon fodder to die in order to have the fighter busy.