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

As you probably already know, I recently released v2.0.7 of Curse of Strahd: Reloaded, featuring Arc O: Dinner with the Devil. As per usual, this release also featured a number of edits to prior arcs, some of them minor, and others fairly far-reaching.

After the release, someone asked if I had any intention of writing a devblog to explain why I made these particular changes - why they were necessary, and why I implemented them the way that I did. “Huh,” I thought. “That sounds like a neat idea.”

This is (the first part of) that devblog. (If you like this, let me know if you’d like to see release notes for the rest of 2.0.7, and I’ll cover them in the next devblog(s)).

General Changes
Removed references to Arc D - The Tome of Strahd
Several updates ago, a number of playtesters and patrons informed me that they kept running into a particular issue with (the former) Arc D. At the time, the Tarokka reading placed the Tome of Strahd with either Lady Fiona Wachter or Victor Vallakovich. In the former case, the players needed to defeat Izek Strazni in order to obtain the Tome; in the latter, players needed to restore Stella Wachter’s soul in order to do so.

The latter case - which arose when giving the Tome to Victor - raised the bigger problem. By the time the players learn of Stella’s problem, they’re reasonably likely to already have befriended (or at least acquainted themselves with) Victor. If he just arbitrarily holds back the Tome and refuses to give it to them until they help him, that comes off as pretty rude and unfriendly. 

Plus, the players could technically just swipe it from him, simultaneously obtainined a plot-relevant item slightly too early while also pissing off a crucial ally for future arcs (and a load-bearing pillar for those arcs as well). If you allow that, you might as well just have Victor give it to them the first time they ask in order to avoid rewarding players for bad behavior.

On top of that, whether the Tome goes with Fiona or Victor, you run into an anti-climax problem. The Tome hits great if it comes at the end of Act II. The players have made Vallaki into a sanctuary and home base, they’ve made a bunch of allies, and as a reward they get to read this cool tome with secret exposition about Strahd and his backstory. But if it comes in the middle of Act II (e.g., because the players get it right after killing Izek, but before saving Stella), then it just falls fairly flat.

To solve this, I wound up merging the former Arc D with the quest to rescue Stella in the (present) Arc H: The Lost Soul. Now, the gallows speaker of Leo Dilisnya is holding the Tome, and the players get it for free upon defeating him (and saving Stella). We tie together the end of Act II with the players’ first Tarokka reward, and also associate the Tome with an NPC who builds up a lot of suspense for answering the question: “Wait, what’s Strahd’s whole deal anyway?”

Even once I made this change, I kept the old Arc D around as a legacy chapter for anyone who had already given their players the deprecated Tarokka reading placing the Tome with Victor or Fiona. With this update, however, I was confident enough that I was sufficiently far-out from that update that I could relocate the old Arc D to an appendix and reletter the arcs accordingly.

Introduction
Added FAQ infoboxes
One of the biggest issues I see with a lot of DMs, especially new DMs, is that they don’t entirely realize that the RAW Curse of Strahd module is a house of straw built on a foundation of sand until it’s already too late. Sometimes, they’re able to heroically salvage the campaign and tell a great story despite WotC’s failings. In others, they wind up seeking guides and guidance that might have been more helpful earlier, rather than later. 

To try and help those DMs understand (1) why a guide might be useful, and (2) what specific value Reloaded can offer them (vis a vis ease of use, a narrative-first approach, etc.), I’ve added these two callout boxes on the front page of the sight to answer some FAQs that I figured first-time visitors might have.

Added Google Forms feedback form
I currently receive lots of feedback from my lovely patrons via the #proofreading channel in my Patreon Discord server, but I’ve realized that there’s a lot more feedback I could be integrating to make the guide better given the number of people beyond the Patreon currently playing through it. (It’s not uncommon, for example, for me to get helpful recommendations or illuminating inquiries via Reddit messages or a public Patreon comment.) 

As such, I decided to make a public Google Form (published in the “Under Construction” box on the Introduction page) to take advantage of the number of people using the guide and broaden the net of troubleshooting, bug-spotting, and data-gathering as much as reasonably possible. If you’ve got constructive feedback, you can submit it there!

History of Barovia
Added additional backstory to Khazan, the Radanavich family, and Rudolph van Richten’s revenge against the Radanaviches.
Something I’ve been struggling with has been tying Rudolph van Richten’s tragedy into the narrative of Barovia itself. As-written in the RAW module, VR himself has been isekai’d as much as the players - he’s been transported to another realm (albeit willingly) where his backstory is pretty much utterly irrelevant.

And that’s weird! It makes sense for players, because they’re playing through a fish-out-of-water story. But when it comes to VR - someone who’s a core part of the adventure - it’s strange to have an NPC filling a similar role to the players. Unlike every other NPC in Barovia, he doesn’t have any ties to Strahd; you could excise his entire story and character from the campaign and pretty much nothing of thematic or plot significance would be lost. (This, in fact, is why I’ve gone back and forth for so long in trying to draft the arc-formerly-known-as-Moonlit-Murders, which formerly took place between Argynvostholt/Wolf Den/Abbey and the dinner at Ravenloft, and which featured Anastrasya trying to frame Van Richten for murder in a way that ultimately led to his reconciliation with Ezmerelda/Arturi and reunion with Erasmus - the whole concept just felt like a filler plot tumor that contributed nothing to the campaign’s actual climax.)

So VR’s story basically sat in limbo for a while, as I pondered what exactly I wanted to do with him and how I wanted to pull it off. Then, one day while idly browsing the Fraternity of Shadows Ravenloft wiki will assisting a patron with a campaign help question, I found something fascinating: in old Strahd lore, Van Richten killed the Radanaviches in Barovia.

Let me repeat that: According to old lore, when Van Richten killed the Vistani who kidnapped and sold his son, he did so within the borders of Barovia.

Suddenly, the world opened up significantly. Suddenly, Barovia wasn’t just a random place Van Richten returned to for “one last hunt” - it was, in a sense, where his story as a monster hunter began. In old Ravenloft lore, Van Richten and Arturi Radanavich must burn the wreckage of the old Radanavich caravan while fighting off undead until dawn, symbolizing burning the past and forging a new future. I’d struggled to incorporate that emotional climax into Reloaded because I’d assumed that the caravan was outside of Barovia. Suddenly, I could place the wreckage just south of Krezk if I wanted to, tying Van Richten’s downfall into the corruption of Barovia itself while also providing real, proper closure to his arc.

But where could Van Richten have gotten his host of undead from - the zombie legion he used to slaughter the Radanaviches? I didn’t want to keep the Azalin angle from old lore, especially given the fact that I was specifically and intentionally narrowing this plotline to within Barovia’s borders, rather than expanding it beyond them. 

Fortunately, I already had a lich who had a motive and means to raise an undead army: Khazan, who challenged Strahd for control of Barovia before becoming Strahd’s arcane advisor. But why would Khazan help Van Richten achieve vengeance for his son? I had the idea of tying them together through fatherhood - perhaps Khazan challenged Strahd, not because he was ambitious and power-hungry, but because he had lost his wife and infant son in childbirth shortly after the rise of the Mists, and he blamed Strahd for this. 

Suddenly, Khazan had a real motive to help a fellow grieving father - not to mention a real and tragic character arc tying into his desire to journey to the Amber Temple (to try and resurrect his wife and son) and to challenge Strahd for the throne. As a bonus, this even explained why and how Van Richten knew about Khazan’s tower in the first place, as well as how he obtained the ring and knew how to use the ring to access the tower’s living quarters - Khazan’s ghost told him!

Strahd von Zarovich
Gave Strahd insight proficiency
It shouldn’t be easy to lie to Strahd. Case closed.

Clarified fog bank does not block sunlight
Fog heavily obfuscates vision; it does not create darkness. This has previously been clarified by Sage Advice, and yet people continue making the same mistakes and assuming that fog blocks sunlight. This little clarification was necessary to avoid this problem.

Acts I-III Summaries
Added specific dates and timelines
Ever since Act II first came out, I’ve been referring to dates using Barovia’s lunar calendar (“X days before/after the full/new moon”) as well as dates related to arbitrary other dates (“Y days after the players arrive in Vallaki”). This was well-intentioned and originally necessary, largely because, at the time, a small minority of playgroups went straight from Tser Pool to Vallaki instead of spending the night at the Pool, which screwed with the timeline. (I couldn’t say, for example, “You arrive in Barovia on Octyavr 31 and the bones of St. Andral are stolen on Neyavr 2” because I wanted the bones to be stolen the same night the players arrived, and that could happen on either the 1st or the 2nd.)

This problem went away circa v2.0.5, however, when I expressly delayed the players’ departure from Barovia for Tser Pool until noon, thereby forcing parties to long rest at Tser Pool in order to avoid traveling at night. Since then, there’s really been no good reason not to set a calendar timeline except for the fact that it sincerely didn’t occur to me.

Arc A Escape From Death House
Removed the mimic, the Your Life book, and Gustav’s rock collection
All three of these things have one thing in common: they’re content for the sake of content. They add nothing to the ultimate climax of the arc (i.e., the confrontation with Elizabeth/Walter and the escape from the house), and were therefore emminently cuttable. As a general rule, I try to cut out any content that doesn’t earn its place - and these three pieces were long overdue for a trimming.

(Regarding the Your Life book, it did serve something of a purpose by briefly spiking the tension halfway up to the attic, which serves to accentuate the trajectory of fear as the players traverse the house. Even so, it was basically an irrelevant jumpscare, and I’d rather have no tension spike than have an irrelevant one. There’s a decent chance I go back in to add a new, plot-relevant tension spike in a future update. I’ll let you know when that happens.)

Modified shadow damage resistances
This one’s more of a flight of fancy, I confess. I recently did some work reworking the damage resistances/vulnerabilities of the gargoyles at Khazan’s tower, and also changed resistances to immunities for ghosts like the phantom warriors at Argynvostholt (more on this later). You could say damage resistances were on my mind.

One of the big reasons I wanted to rework ghost damage resistances was because it made no sense to me that a physical, nonmagical sword could actually cut and harm an intangible ghost. The same problem applied to shadows, but in a slightly weirder way because I couldn’t quite figure out whether they were incorporeal or not.

The way I wound up deciding was this: shadows, like normal shadows, are insubstantial (intangible) in full darkness and solid/well-defined (tangible) in bright light, corresponding to weapon damage immunity and normal weapon damage, respectively. When they’re in dim light, they’re partially defined, but not fully, giving them resistance to weapon damage instead of immunity. (As a bonus, this also promotes a small level of additional gameplay - you don’t want to fight them in the dark, so even if you’re an elf who loves their darkvision, you’re still going to want to light up a torch.)

Modified the mechanics of the amber shard / strengthened the flesh mound and added additional dynamic mechanics
This was a doozy - the biggest change for Death House this update.

Let’s start at the beginning. For several months now, I’ve been reliably hearing of new parties slaughtering both of the flesh mound’s phases - just cutting through them like butter. A few weeks ago, I decided to double-check the math and found two big problems: (1) each phase needed to be CR 3 to challenge the players, not CR 2; and (2) I’d somehow mistakenly built each phase to be CR 1 instead of CR 2.

This was a problem.

So I opened up the statblock and started tinkering to get it up to par. While I was at it, I decided to go back and add in my (more recent) approach to designing “dynamic” boss statblocks (visible with, e.g., Izek, the Bonegrinder hags, and the gallows speaker) by adding in reactions, bonus actions, and overall mobility that would make the fight more engaging and dynamic. I also modified the amber shard’s “daze” effect (which would have a much more severe impact on a dynamic statblock) to instead implement a reaction-driven command effect. (I felt this was both a lot more balanced and a lot more resonant with the whole “evil stepmother-ordering-around-the-monstrous-baby” vibe Elisabeth and the flesh mound had going on.)

Since I was already doing substantial work under the hood, I also decided to revisit the “innocent heart’ mechanic of Phase Two, in which the players could shortcut the second phase’s hit points by attacking Walter’s corpse instead. I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to do this, but eventually I had the idea of allowing the players to play a song/lullaby in order to lure out Walter’s “heart,” thereby rewarding players who were sufficiently perceptive and creative to try it. After spending a few minutes pondering which lullaby to use, I remembered that I’d already seeded Waltz for Klara in the Death House conservatory, reasoned that Klara may well have hummed/sung it to Walter while she was pregnant, and - bam! The Mother’s Lullaby feature was born.   

If you enjoyed these release notes and would like to see additional notes for the rest of 2.0.7, let me know in the comments!