Enter, Strahd

In a story with a singular antagonist, its often good for them to show up "on screen" before the final confrontation. I decided that 5th level, being about the mid-point of the campaign, would be a good time for Strahd to pay a visit to test and taunt the PCs, to pull a "Kefka," or "Sephiroth," if you prefer. Strahd is a trixy customer, and a spellcaster to boot. Spellcasters are always difficult to run, and I admit I underprepared a little.

Around about midnight, Strahd strolled into the camp they shared with the Martikovs with a pair of vampire spawn. He regarded the party, one-by-one in good old fashioned villain form. After regarding Sarra and Tathora, he commented that his last elven consort, "Didn't work out." He saw Tarkir's golden scales and said, "They send a dragon of gold after I had bested one of silver." He admired Lop's spellwork, but he was, "Too short." He found Ap too wild and uncontrollable. However, Cugel, with his ghoul-skin cloak and willingness to animate corpse, Strahd felt had promise. He taunted the Martikovs: "What's wrong, little birds? Afraid the strangers might learn your secrets?" Then he engaged in combat. I managed to resist having him say, "But enough talk, have at you!" I think I will save that for later...

There was a reason I waited until 5th level. Its the first time PCs will have a really wide range of tactical options combined with being sturdy enough to outlast the "rocket tag" of lower levels. Strahd had an off-screen timer as well. He did manage to put the all-important fear of an uncaring universe into the PCs' hearts, but they still handled it better than I expected.

The PCs, unlike the protagonists in most vampire stories, proved to be genre savvy, and Tathora opened by casting daylight in the center of the camp. Sunlight causes radiant damage to vampires and causes them to suffer disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. Radiant damage also shuts down their regeneration for a turn. Daylight is a third level spell mainly because of how effective it can be against foes sensitive to sunlight like vampires or drow. Cugel tried to use his favorite standby, Tasha's hideous laughter on Strahd, but Legendary Resistance kept him up.

Strahd didn't want to kill the party, but test them. He used sleep, which has been made much more user friendly in this edition. The caster rolls 5d8 "damage," and it effects targets in the radius starting from the center, going from lowest to highest hit point total. Strahd rolled really low, so only Tarkir, who hadn't taken much healing, was affected. Still, Strahd was able to retreat out of the radius of bright light, which is a whopping 60 feet. It kept the weaker vampire spawn at bay, too, which Lop and Ap focused on while the rest of the party focused on Strahd. Lop and Ap also convinced the Martikovs to take up arms against the vampire spawn.

Strahd's parting shot was fireball. He managed to roll fairly high damage, but the PCs managed to also roll well on their saving throws (and Tathora was timely with heals), so only Sarra and Cugel went down. Blake had a little bit of analysis paralysis at this point: whether to have Amrus use a healing potion on Sarra or on himself. The group generally counselled toward getting Sarra back into the fight, but both Alec and Will opted for the "Do what you want" option. I beginning to agree with their counsel, that as a DM and as a group we should let Blake make his own mistakes and learn.

After the party recovered, Strahd turned into a bat and left, leaving the party and the Martikovs to deal with the vampire spawn, who I had named Louis and Lestat off-screen, because why run a game with vampires without some references. The PCs discovered, after using some fire (Ap pushing a vampire through the campfire using thunderwave) and acid (Lop using Melf's acid arrow), only radiant damage shuts down a vampire's regeneration. Amrus also learned that his silvered shortsword wasn't effective against the vampire's either; he would need a magic weapon. Still, the vampire spawn lacked ranged attacks, so they were forced to fight in the light, so the party and their allies made short work of them.

At this point, I'm going to point out that there is a spell called magic weapon, which makes a weapon magical. Since some readers are going to go check to see what lists its on, I'll save you the trouble: Cleric with the War Domain, Paladin, and Wizard. Also, a Warlock with a Pact of the Blade feature's bonded weapon is magical, and a Monk's unarmed attacks are magical starting at level 6. So, even though they haven't found any actual magic weapons, Tarkir could have had magic weapon prepared and helped them out.

When the dust from battle cleared, the party confronted the Martikovs on their secret. They admitted that they were Wereravens, and that they use their powers to try and protect the people of Barovia from the machinations of Strahd. At one point Takir asked, "How do you turn into ravens?" Damian Martikov responded, "Like this," and turned into a raven, followed by the witty comeback, "The same way you can breath fire."

The party got a long rest, and approached the winery. The Martikovs warned the PCs about the mass of plant creatures and four druids within. They also mentioned one of the druids carrying poison to corrupt the wine. Another druid seemed to guide the plant monsters with a magical staff, and the Martikovs suggested that if the PCs destroy the staff it might destroy the plant monsters, too.

As they reached the winery, a sagging ivory-covered structure, needle blights like the one they had fought the day before began emerging from the vineyard. The ran into the winery through the stables and soon found themselves in the fermenting room, swarming with twig blights, plant monsters made of twig bundles. They found a female druid within poisoning the fermenting wine.

Ap once again used lightning bolt to clear a line of plant monsters. Lop used a split magic missile, and they learned how many hit point the things had (4 each) by rolling 3 damage on two hits. Using her multiattack, Sarra managed to clear even more twigs. Ap also used shatter to drop more twigs and hit the druid, who used barkskin before entering combat. Tathora finally used one of her offensive spells, guiding bolt, unfortunately it dropped her target: the druid, before the spells rider: the next attack against the target gets advantage, could come into play. Guiding bolt is probably one of the best first level spells in this edition. It does solid damage (4d6) and can set a Rogue up for a sneak attack, a Champion Fighter for an increased chance at getting a critical, a Hunter Ranger for a giant killer strike, for a Battle Master Fighter to connect with one of their more powerful maneuvers, etc.

The problem with the room is that it was too small to properly use the horde, especially since it had very limited entry points and narrow paths. It would have worked better with a singular, powerful enemy with lots of maneuverability, limiting the PC's ability to swarm it. Of course, if the party had chosen to stand against the needle blights outside, the druid and the twig blights within would have emerged to flank them. That could have devolved into another marathon battle, so I'm glad the party sought shelter.

We broke at this point, with players getting a chance to barricade themselves in the winery against the swarm of needle blights outside in the vineyard. They also will need to undo some of the damage Ap did with his spells. Fortunately, Lop knows mending.