DragnaCarta

Dragna's Blog - Reloaded v2.0.7 Release Notes (Part II)

Added 2024-05-02 12:00:08 +0000 UTC

I got hugely positive feedback from the last changelog design notes devblog, so I've decided to keep the train going for v2.0.7! Hope you enjoy.

Arc B - Welcome to Barovia

Gave Doru vampire lore to share

The players can find a torn excerpt of Doru’s copy of Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires (which Van Richten angrily confiscated when Doru coerced him into joining his rebellion) in the guest bedroom of Ismark and Ireena’s home in Barovia. A big part of Doru’s backstory is that he idolized Van Richten, read his book many times, and dreamed of hunting vampires and bringing sunlight back to Barovia.

When a member of the Patreon mentioned that it made a lot of sense for Doru to be able to share some useful lore about vampires with the players, I couldn’t help but agree - not only because it gave players an additional reward for trusting and helping Doru, but also (as this patron pointed out) because (1) it gave players permission to “metagame” using their OOC knowledge of vampires, and (2) allowed Doru to clearly establish that Strahd is far more than an ordinary vampire lord.

Arc C - Into the Valley

Made Eva's request regarding Arabelle more urgent and enticing

I’ve occasionally had issues with playgroups ignoring, postponing, or forgetting about Arc E: The Missing Vistana. This has now become a major issue since Dinner with the Devil fundamentally relies (for now) on the players having a pre-existing relationship with Arrigal in order to kick off the “traitorous bride” plotline that sets up the window for Ravenloft Heist. To prevent this moving forward, I went back and had Eva give the players more explicit encouragement and urgency to head to the Vistani camp and get this quest moving.

Added additional information about werewolf lycanthropy

A number of readers alerted me that, while the Lycanthropy in Barovia infobox tells DMs when the next full moon will be, it gave DMs no clear indication of how frequently the full moon would recur. This is particularly important in Reloaded, which accelerates the lunar cycle to a two-week period, rather than a four-week period. So, in the interest of redundancy and an abundance of information, I put that information here as well as in other places.

Added box notifying DMs regarding absence of random encounters

Reloaded (except in places where I’ve screwed up) generally runs on a clear rule of “if I don’t mention it, it doesn’t exist.” Moreover, the journey from Barovia to Vallaki is chock-full of assorted encounters that (in my mind) are recognizably taken straight from the RAW random encounter table - the scouts, the zombies, the skeletal rider, the ravens, the werewolf/wolves, the revenant, and so on.

Nevertheless, I consistently received messages from people asking whether they should still roll for random encounters in addition to these pre-chosen encounters. In the interest of alleviating this confusion, I added this infobox explicitly stating that random encounters of any kind no longer exist anywhere, with all encounters being pre-placed and pre-scripted.

Clarified the skeletal rider's destination

Apparently one playgroup decided to take a detour from the Old Svalich Road to follow the skeletal rider to see where it was going. No, I don’t know why they did that. Yes, I needed to address it anyway.

Arc D - St. Andral's Feast

Added mark on coffin shop floor from teleportation brazier

One of the members of the Patreon Discord suggested a few months ago that it might be fun to add a scorched sigil of Strahd’s teleportation brazier on the floor of the vampire nest in the coffin shop (kind of like the Bifrost in MCU’s Thor), just to foreshadow the brazier. I thought it was an neat idea, and decided to add it. As a side benefit, once the players find the brazier in the Heist, clever players will be able to use the teleportation sigils they’ve already seen (in Vallaki and, once I get around to adding it, the Abbey) to figure out which teleportation gems lead to which destination.

Expedited Volenta's escape & gave Volenta a means to escape grapples

Volenta is not a plot-critical NPC. However, I firmly believe that players have more fun with repeated antagonists - it lets them build more of a relationship with those villains, which makes the final moment of victory (and vengeance) all the sweeter. In RRL, the players meet Volenta three times: in the coffin shop, at the dinner with Strahd, and during the Heist. Sounds like a great duration for a villain relationship, right?

Except I had a problem: players kept killing Volenta before she could escape the coffin shop.

Part of this was due to DMs misreading or changing Volenta’s tactics (e.g., having her jump down to the street instead of leaping across to the next roof over). However, a lot of the time, groups wound up grappling or otherwise incapacitating Volenta and then beating her to death - or (somehow) just dealing forty damage in a single round as she struggled to get away.

So I changed three things to help her survive longer. First, I gave her a bonus action that functionally replicates the freedom of movement spell, thereby allowing her to escape grapples. Second, I clarified that once she’s across to the next rooftop, she immediately ducks behind a chimney, giving her full cover.

Third, I just made her leave when her first phase ends, instead of waiting for her second phase to be bloodied. (Often, though not always, the simplest solution is the best.)

Added information regarding players who visit the church their first night in Vallaki

Understandably, some players who escort Ireena to Vallaki immediately latch onto the idea that she must get to the church as soon as possible or else Strahd will immediately hunt her down and kidnap/kill her. As such, you wind up with a non-negligible number of parties who, upon entering Vallaki, make a beeline for St. Andral’s Church, drop Ireena off there, then head to the BWI to check in. This is, admittedly, something of a problem, given that the intent in RRL is for St. Andral’s bones to be stolen while the players are asleep in the inn (in order to let them come upon the crime scene fresh the next day).

To address that and provide some guidance for DMs whose players take that route, I clarified that Lucian is happy to let Ireena stay the first night, but Ireena then comes to request the players’ help the following morning at the inn, thereby hooking them into the arc and ensuring that everything unfolds as expected.

Clarified Milivoj's age

One DM told me they had concerns with running Rahadin’s trial of Milivoj because they felt uncomfortable narrating the flogging or mutilation of a minor. Once I clarified that Milivoj is intended to be around nineteen or twenty, though, that ceased to be as much of an issue.

Arc E - The Missing Vistana

Clarified the identities of the Vistani in the tent

One reader notified me that the entrance into the tent at the Vistani camp doesn’t clarify which unnamed character in the flavortext corresponded to which NPC. Easy enough fix.

Placed Ezmerelda's more precious equipment in a false bottom inside her trunk

This was something I’d been intending to do after replacing the alchemist’s fire bomb with the double-crossbow trap, but had forgotten. In short, what you want to do is avoid rewarding players who break into Ezmerelda’s wagon despite (1) clear warnings by the DM and (2) showing clear antisocial behavior. Giving the players good, free stuff for doing so is tantamount to telling them, “Y’know dangerous places, like the Amber Temple and Castle Ravenloft? You should stomp around them shouting expletives and breaking into random dangerous areas; that’s a great way to find powerful loot.”

Remember: Every single interaction or scene, no matter how small, teaches your players some kind of lesson! Be careful you’re not teaching the wrong ones.

Added information about Ezmerelda's chicken

A member of the Patreon Discord recently regaled the server with a whimsically delightful story of how their players used speak with animals to chat up the chicken in Ezmerelda’s wagon, whom the DM named “Eggsmerelda.” (I contributed a bit as well by answering live-session questions regarding how this chicken might act and what it might have to say.) I was so delighted by the concept that I decided to canonize the chicken’s name and behavior in the guide itself. (I forgot to add a footnote acknowledging this member’s contribution explicitly, but I have a note reminding me to do it in the next release.)

Added a crib to Khazan's tower

See my previous design notes post for more information on Khazan’s new backstory.

Transferred speak with dead role to players in Arrigal confrontation

Originally, Van Richten was the one who cast speak with dead using his talisman of echoes to interrogate Yan’s decapitated head and convince Arrigal that he was telling the truth about Arabelle’s attempted kidnapping. However, after working out the mechanics for the Tarokka deck seance in Arc K: The Fallen Abbey, I realized that letting players ask questions is more fun and allows them to resolve the conflict using their own agency, especially since there’s basically no way for them to mess it up. (Five questions is a lot.)

Reworked gargoyle balance and mechanics

I’ve historically had occasional concerns about just how much effort it takes for a party to hack through a group of enemy gargoyles, but I didn’t really pay them much mind until a patron reported back post-Lake Baratok that the gargoyles atop Khazan’s tower had been an unfun drag for their players to fight.

On a hunch, I decided to stat them out in a CR calculator and discovered that, despite them being CR 2, their DCR (Defensive Challenge Rating) far outweighed their OCR (Offensive Challenge Rating), turning them into a real grindfest. To fix this, I brought up their DPR and brought down their HP, as well as tweaked their resistances and vulnerabilities a bit to make for a more tactical fight.

While I was at, I added in the traditional fire/ice method for “cracking” stone and metal statues as a fun reward for creative players, and allowed gargoyles to auto-grapple their attack targets in order to let them play the role of “seagulls dropping molluscs from high up to try and get the juicy meat inside.” (I then slowed gargoyle fly speeds dramatically to make sure players could still escape without too much trouble, making sure that gargoyles couldn’t swoop down, grapple, swoop back up, and KO a single 4th-level PC in 1-2 rounds.)

Added travel times

Apparently I forgot to mention how long it takes to travel between points of interest, both here and in a few other arcs. Oops!

Clarified Victor's morale and relationships in his NPC profile

After hearing one horror story of how one poor DM had their players provoke Victor until he lashed out with a cone of cold (thereby killing a PC), I clarified his NPC profile to more clearly convey that, while he might be angsty and irritable, he won’t lash out unless attacked.

Arc F - Lady Wachter's Wish

Added information regarding Izek catching the players

A few playgroups have run into a situation where Izek either detects or is confronted by the players before he drinks the poisoned wine at Lake Zarovich. I had to add in information regarding what happens next.

Arc G - The Strazni Siblings

Clarified player XP if Ireena is kidnapped and rescued

I’ve told people that Lady Wachter’s Wish and The Strazni Siblings are two halves of the same arc - Wish is the carrot, and Siblings is the stick. Nowhere else is this more true than the way XP is assigned: The players only get the XP for defeating Izek once, not twice, if they complete both quests simultaneously.

This is further complicated, however, by the fact that players can partially complete Siblings by rescuing Izek post-kidnapping without ever fighting or dealing with Izek. My intent was that any XP the players earn by rescuing Ireena is deducted from the XP they can later gain from defeating Izek. (Why? Because we don’t want to reward players for screwing up, which incentivizes them to let things go wrong in order to squeeze more XP out of questlines.) However, this was unclear in the last release, so I made sure to clarify it in this one.

Arc H - The Lost Soul

Added NPC profile for Stella

Stella needed an NPC profile, so I added one. (I’m not always the most punctual about NPC profiles - they’re probably the least important component of a new release - so I tend to try and push new updates out of the door as quickly as reasonably possible and then go back and add in the profiles later. Probably a bad habit, but there ya go.)

Added information regarding the refugees' relocation after Lady Wachter becomes burgomaster

The visit to the refugee camp in The Lost Soul assumes the refugees are still camped outside of Vallaki’s walls. This is an artifact of the original version of the arc, which the players could trigger as early as Day 1 in Vallaki. (I later delayed it to the first night after the players reach 5th level to ensure that parties didn’t TPK to the hag coven by going after them too quickly once they learned of Franz’s kidnapped kids.)

Once I moved the start of the arc back, though, I now had to accommodate for the fact that one of Fiona’s first acts as burgomaster is to bring the refugees into the town and (temporarily) resettle them in the town square. So that’s been fixed and updated now.

Removed gallows speaker damage resistances and increased hit points to compensate

I hate ghost damage resistances.

Like, actually despise them.

Immunity to nonmagical weapon damage, I can understand - they’re literally intangible. But it makes zero Watsonian sense to me that you can do any meaningful damage to a ghost by swinging a stick at it. They’re a ghost! You literally cannot hurt it with physical damage! That’s the point of ghosts!

(This is, amusingly, one of the few times where a substantive change I made was driven entirely by Watsonian reasons, rather than Doylist ones.)

So I spent some time during the last update cycle figuring out what to do with ghosts. Obviously, the damage resistances had to go - and I don’t just mean the weapon ones. Fire, lightning, acid, cold - there is no goddamn reason why any of these should do a single point of damage to an intangible ghost. Necrotic/radiant/force? Sure. Those are, or can be, pure magical energy themselves, and ghosts are energy beings. That makes sense to me. But purely physical elemental forces? Absolutely not. You cannot burn a goddamn ghost.

(I will die on this hill.)

But how do you injure something intangible? I remembered that phantom warriors exist and wondered to myself, “Wait, how do they deal weapon damage if they’re also intangible?” And so I looked them up in the module and found that, according to their lore, their armor and weapons are surrounded by invisible force fields, and those fields are the things that deal the damage.

That gave me an idea - what if the weapon wasn’t the thing dealing the damage, but something coating the weapon was (e.g., a poison)? Holy water was the most obvious option. I tried to think of anything else that might be able to hurt a ghost and then remembered phase spiders can flit between the Material and Ethereal Planes easily. Surely, as part-time denizens of the Ethereal, they might have evolved some defense mechanism capable of wounding hostile spirits - namely, their venom?

So I decided that martials can deal weapon damage to intangible undead by coating their weapons or ammunition with holy water or phase spider venom, and that casters can deal elemental damage by using a phase spider’s fang as an additional material component. They can obtain both in the Spiders’ Ballroom in Argynvostholt, which -

- Wait, weren’t we talking about Leo?

The bad news is that there are no phase spiders I can reasonably have the players find in The Lost Soul, and parties probably won’t think to bring holy water. The good news is that I had an easy excuse for removing Leo’s resistances anyway (and pumping up his HP to compensate): the players are fighting him in the Ethereal Plane - his home turf - a place where they, functionally, gain the attributes of ghost (e.g., intangibility, flight, etc.).

After all, who’s to say that ghosts aren’t tangible on the Ethereal Plane - at least insomuch as players are intangible when they cross over?

Added information regarding phase spiders to Ethereal Entities

I wanted to foreshadow/hint at the attributes of phase spider venom in Argynvostholt earlier. Fortunately, Ethereal Entities, which already mentions phase spiders several arcs earlier, gave me the perfect vehicle to do so.

Changed the hags to act on separate initiatives

One of the biggest issues with having “team initiative” - all PCs go, then all monsters go - is that things become very swingy; whichever side goes first gets a big advantage. Another big issue, however, is that if the DM isn’t fast enough, or if there are a lot of monsters, or if any of the monsters are complicated to run, this can really bog down combat because the players just sit around twiddling their thumbs for a while while the DM takes their turn.

These problems are, obviously, exacerbated when facing a high-difficulty coven of three night hags with two phases, with each hag having separate actions, bonus actions, and reactions - including a number of spells that require real tactical thinking (not to mention Concentration management).

To address this, I took the advice of some members of the Patreon Discord and split the hags up so that they each act on their own separate initiative. This makes combat less swingy, keeps the DM’s turns shorter, and keeps combat moving. In the future, though I didn’t have time to do it now, I might also just split up the hags into three separate statblocks (though they’ll continue to share HP) to make it even easier for a DM to run a hag on her turn.

Clarified the hags' lair actions are centered on the windmill

There was some confusion about how the hags’ lair actions worked, specifically their spells (e.g., warding wind). I clarified it by specifying that these lair actions are centered on or originate from the windmill itself.

Added the hags' claw attack to their statblock

We’ve had two incidents in the past two months in which players cast the silence spell in Old Bonegrinder during the hags’ first forms. The hags’ first forms pretty much can only cast spells with verbal components. ‘Nuf said.