Final Confrontation, Part One

You know what having a secret finding machine in the party does? It enables sequence breaking. Okay, in this case, the sequence could have been broken without Tathora, but when I was preparing I realized that what could happen would happen.

Castle Ravenloft is filled with random encounters. While exploring the first floor guard corridor and turret, the party met one: a pair of wights. Wights are soul-devouring undead warriors. These particular wights were once the guards of Castle Ravenloft.

The fight was short. The party barely used many resources to take out the wights.

Then they chose to take the stairs at the end of the corridor up to the second floor, and met four more wights. Once again there was a short battle that ended with a minimal expenditure of resources. Both Cugel and Ap burned lightning bolts on this fight.

At this point, Tathora spotted a secret door leading into the Audience Chamber. In other words, the throne room. Right where the reading said Strahd would be. They found him on his throne, drinking a wine glass filled with blood (because some cliches become cliches because they're awesome). After some exchanging of insults, Strahd threw down the glass and said, "Enough talk! Have at you!"

Feel free to play this while reading the rest of the post. I couldn't play it for the group like I wanted. As much as I love the FLGS and the game space, it was just too loud.

I'm wondering about those dry runs I allowed the players. They opened with their big guns, because Boss Battle. Strahd, like most legendary creatures in 5e, has three stacks of "Legendary Resistance," a feature that allows him to just succeed on a saving throw even if he fails. They burned through all three of those in turn 1. Second, Lop saved his spells slots for counterspell, shutting down Strahd's opening fireball and later a hail Mary blight.

Most notably, they made use of Damian Martikov's feature as Strahd's enemy to ensure that Amrus always had inspiration. And since 5e rogues can sneak attack undead, he helped keep the damage pressure up.

Poor Tathora, though. She tried to use the Hold Undead power of the holy symbol of Ravenkind. Unfortunately Strahd made his save, and, recognizing the danger the item represented, he targeted her first. Using legendary actions, 5e powers some monsters and NPCs have to take actions outside of their turn, he grappled her and put the bite on. This had the combined effect of reducing Tathora's maximum hit points and healing Strahd.

After a few turns of this, it was an allied NPC to the rescue: Van Richten casting freedom of movement to get her out of the grapple when she had 10! hp left. She then dropped a 5th level cure wounds to get her back to her (now reduced) maximum.

After that, Strahd spared a vengeance attack on Van Richten, then tried to blight Sarra, who was also racking up the damage with her sunsword.

Finally, they "misted" Strahd, forcing him into mist form and retreating to his coffin.

Now they'll have to find that coffin and end it.

This being October, I'd say we picked the perfect time for the conclusion, Internet.