D&D 5E High-Level Strahd Adventure (14+)

[vilani]

Hi all, I am looking for suggestions/ideas to run the Curse of Strahd as a level 14 to 20+ adventure. The characters are hunters who have been sent in by the church to clean up Barovia. Barovia is not in the mists, its an actual physical place in my world. Characters have a reason to be there so no reason to trap them - especially at level 14+
I can just amp up all the monsters and run it as is but not sure how appropriate the outside encounter areas are at this level - except the Temple. Here are my ideas, but happy for inputs from other DMs.

• The oracle reading is done by the Church before the party leaves for "the hunt". This lets me drop the Vistani stuff to a degree.
• Will hand-wave some of the initial investigations and have the first encounter in one of the towns with an amped up Strahd (draft here) and a bunch of zombie/werewolves. Strahd tries to negotiate (and charm characters) before turning into a giant manbat (via polymorph), then fights them until his minions are dead before retreating. So the first encounter of the game is with Strahd.
• The adventure then follows the standard flow from that point.
• I want to add a Lovecraftian angle, potentially having the actual final bad being a Cthruulu like entity which is the source of all the problems in Barovia including the original dark power that corrupted Strahd. So will start weaving in aberrations into the adventure to further complicate things.
• This will eventually lead to a Cthulhu/Old One fight and sealing a gate to the Far Realm. Currently thinking this is the Amber Temple. How to do this second part I am still thinking about.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

I think Curse of Strahd is extremely difficult to run at high level. The game functions well at low levels because atmosphere has that air of mystery, paranoia, and terror. Around every corner is something that can quickly kill the characters, and lurking within the shadows is Strahd, playing with his prey and manipulating them to his best ability. However, this is much harder to accomplish with high level characters due to the magic they have access to and their strength and confidence in dealing with what lurks in the darkness.

If you are sending in high level characters, you can't just bump up the power of the monsters. You have to create something akin to Tomb of Horrors where the characters can instantly die despite their power, and find ways to maintain mystery despite them having spells that can easily illuminate the path and answers.

Honestly, Curse of Strahd doesn't really work with high level characters in my opinion. It turns into a monster hunt. Which is fine, but if you want Curse of Strahd, it seems to me you are also wanting to replicate that atmosphere of terror and mystery.

 

[vilani]

You maybe right actually. I may shift gears and do a more mind flayer/abberation focused campaign like the old Thoughs of Darkness or Dawn of the Overmind.

 

[epithet]

You have to play up Barovia itself as an enemy, with Strahd just an avatar of corrupted Barovia. Show your players some extra creepy stuff, like have a bloodbath in Valaki with dozens of bodies in the streets, werewolves/vampires triumphant, main buildings in flames. Then, the next time the party sees Valaki, it is as if nothing had ever happened... people whose heads were off a couple of days ago are asking "Vot are you lookink at? Vy you are actink zo strainch?"

Use the mists. The choking mist is an attack by Barovia, and getting lost in the mist will find survivors wherever Barovia wants them to be (back at Valaki?)

Make some adjustments to vampires. Start by doubling their movement speed, give them a bonus to AC, and giving them an extra attack. Let there be a lot of them. Also, add a ton of werewolves, and boost some of them massively, size large and just stupid lots of hit points. You can make them vulnerable to silver (but just regular damage from magic weapons.) You want to create a situation where Strahd controls the werewolf clan initially, and it is very nearly impossible to defeat both the vampires and the werewolves unless you turn them against one another.

A source of allies could be the dusk elves. Instead of killing all the females, perhaps they were turned into trees, and they're still alive. If the PC party discovers the key to restoring them, they could use that to entice the surly elves to join their cause.

If you're going for an elder evil as the BBEG, I wouldn't go with the tentacled ones. Instead, have The Blood God keep the theme of vampirism. Throw in things like any attack that does slashing damage greater than 15 points to a PC will cause the spilled blood to form a blood imp (reskinned mud mephit.) Just to annoy the characters, and let them know The Blood God is watching, and waiting, and that their blood is already claimed.

At high levels, it isn't enough to threaten the party. They can protect themselves from dragons, at that point. To challenge them, you have to give them something to care about, then threaten that. They aren't struggling to survive and escape, so then they need a big ticket item to get them invested. Individualize it--figure out what each character's "epic destiny" goals are, and then place a key to achieving that in Barovia. It might be in the Amber Temple, or Markovia's Abby, or deep in the woods, or whatever. It might not have anything directly to do with Strahd, but it needs to be something that the character can discover hints about, and then have Strahd/Blood God threaten it before it can be achieved.