Lessons from the Mists: Session 13 - The Feast of Saint Andral

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This session, the heroes interrogate the coffin maker, and set into motion a catastrophe for Vallaki that none of them were prepared for... Let's get started!

The heroes began this week by investigating the shop of the coffin maker of Vallaki, Henrik van der Voort. Approaching the dilapidated building, they knock on the door, but there is no answer. Angvar asks some nearby workers from the Arasek stockyard about what his hours are, but they are little help, saying he is an odd individual, so he must keep odd hours. Ylenia and Kane continue to investigate the building, finding a back door and all the windows shuttered and closed.

Mary Sue Ann sends her familiar Guinevere in the form of a jumping spider underneath the front door. Inside, she finds Henrik at a table, eating a meal as quietly as he can, his eyes wide with fear and staring at the front door. The room looks like a workshop. She relays this information to the other heroes and they discuss what to do. They believe he is guilty for the missing bones and is trying to hide. They decide to break in.

Henrik moves into another room, a storage room for completed coffins and huddles down next to a bedroll, small crate of food, and a burning lantern. Kane watches the street while Ylenia talks to Henrik through the door while picking the lock. Angvar sets up near the front entrance, and Mary Sue Ann sends her spider familiar up to the second story to look through the windows, but the glass is frosted and she cannot see inside.

When Ylenia gets the door open, Henrik tries to bolt out the front door, but he crashes into Angvar’s shield. Shutting the doors, they confront Henrik, who will say nothing until Angvar threatens violence. He tells them a cloaked figure told him to pick up the bones from the crypt and bring them here, after which he came back and provided payment. He swears that’s all he knows. The heroes suggest to each other to search the upper floor, but Henrik begs them not to, but will not tell them why. He says there is something up there the hooded man brought when he was out of the shop.

Mary Sue Ann sends Guinevere up the stairs to the second story, and when the spider reaches the landing at the top, she triggers an Alarm spell. The spider continues into a larger room, seemingly storage for raw materials. Once inside, she hears the creaking of wood as several crates, a total of seven, are opened from the inside. Out of each climbs a figure caked in dirt, each with pale skin, crimson eyes, and teeth that look hungry. Out of the final crate comes a voluptuous woman in a red dress with long dark brown hair who addresses the other figures. “Hello, my darlings…” she says.

Mary Sue Ann relays all this information to them, and the heroes decide it’s time to leave, but it’s too late. They hear from up above the breaking glass of the second story windows, and screams from outside. They rush out into the street, and discover Vallaki has descended into chaos. They see crowds of civilians running away from a vampire that has sunk her teeth into a nearby man, and after finishing her meal, dashes off to the west. Mary Sue Ann assesses the situation, and concludes they must be attacking the church, bereft of its consecration. The heroes take off running to western Vallaki.

The crowds of civilians are dense, and panic has overtaken the city as calls that vampires have arrived fill every panicked throat. Thus begins a skill challenge to get across Vallaki. First, Kane sees a Vallakian who cradles a woman whose throat has been bitten, bleeding out in his arms. He quickly casts Spare the Dying on her and her wounds close up. The man thanks him profusely through the tears. Angvar springs into action when the main thoroughfare is blocked by an overturned wagon, utilizing a crowbar and his immense dwarven strength to heave it out of the way, allowing them to push forward. Ylenia sees several guards putting citizens in danger by ordering them to evacuate their homes and go to the church. She attempts to intimidate them into listening to her, but there are too many and the damage has already been done - most of the citizens are out on the streets. While on the way to the church, the heroes see several guards taking their cudgels to a vampire, bludgeoning them to death. It seems they can be killed when a single one is focused on. In the chaos, Angvar is knocked to the ground, and the panicked masses begin to stomp over him, but Kane jumps into action and saves him from being trampled. A child who has lost his parents screams out to Mary Sue Ann and jumps into her arms, but the wizard is able to find the boy’s parents and return him. As the mother passes into the crowd, she looks back at Mary Sue Ann with milk white eyes. Mary Sue Ann is confused, but must push on. At this point, the crowd stops as they see above the buildings that the grand church of St. Andral has caught fire. Many citizens rush back from the inferno, but the heroes push on. A flaming cart attached to a draft horse thunders down the main street, and using deft maneuvers, Mary Sue Ann and Ylenia jump into action to untie the horse and calm it down. They make it to the church and push inside.

As they walk in, a guard rushes out with an unconscious Yeska in his arms, saying that Father Lucian is still inside and needs help. When they come inside, they see two guards slain by a pair of vampires, and between them, the woman in red. It’s initiative!

As the fight begins, Izek Strazni joins the fray alongside the heroes. The smoke makes it very hard for either side of the fight to gain an advantage over the other, but the heroes manage to get a good deal of damage on the woman in red. Angvar tells Lucian to leave, but he stays and fights alongside the heroes. Angvar grapples the lady in red to prevent her from getting close to Lucian. Kane and Mary Sue Ann stay back and cast spells at the vampires, to little effect. Ylenia, meanwhile, duels the other vampires alongside Izek Strazni. One of the vampires manages to break away from the scuffle and grapple Angvar, pulling him off the lady in red, allowing her to close distance with Father Lucian. She gets two successful strikes on him, and Father Lucian is grappled and reduced to 0 HP.

At that moment,a commanding voice echoes through chaos, calling out a name: “ANASTRASYA!” All sounds are silenced, and the flames are reduced to embers. The vampire spawn that remain hiss and bow their heads like dogs brought to heel. Coming through the doors of the church is a tall man in nobleman’s finery, a longsword at his hip, long black hair that comes to a widow's peak. His eyes are red and hungry, but his ghostly pale face betrays no emotion. Count Strahd von Zarovich addresses the heroes, saying “I had hoped to speak with you in more civilized surroundings.” Then he addresses Ylenia, saying “Tatyana, my love, come away from all this death, I will keep you safe.” He reaches his hand out towards her. Ylenia considers a moment, and he continues, “If you come with me, the priest will live, and my spawn will vacate the town. I cannot guarantee your safety if you do not.” She takes a step back, raising her rapier in a defensive stance and says nothing. Strahd lets his hand fall and nods once to the woman in red, Anastrasya. She sinks her teeth into Father Lucians’ neck and tears out his jugular. Strahd says “I see. I hope you live. We have much to discuss. My invitation stands.” He turns his back and leaves, while the flames leap up once more, their heat intensified.

And that’s where we left the session!

We have finally come to one of the major climaxes of the Vallaki storyline: St. Andral’s feast. This session was an absolute delight to run for my players, except for the final fight, which I believe was quite broken and I dropped the ball on.

First, I had a lot of fun roleplaying Henrik when they finally confronted him. I have made it more obvious and clear to my players that there is something wrong with many Barovians, in that they are sort of hollow (those without souls) and Henrik was one of them, but they seemed more confused now that Henrik was someone that spoke much more than others. They are also getting close to figuring out who the cloaked man is in Vallaki. I have an idea to reveal his identity if they return to the coffin shop the day following the feast, we will see if they do that.

The skill challenge worked great! I have been running them for years and sometimes they are a great success, other times they suck and my players did not enjoy them. This particular one (ripped straight from Fleshing Out Curse of Strahd) I think was among the best and they had a lot of fun. However, it required me making clear what the stakes were of the skill challenge from the beginning, and that even though they as characters are attempting to make it across town as quickly as possible, their ability to make it in time is measured by their successes for various obstacles. Even though it may seem like they are slowing down to help people, solving those obstacles gets them closer to achieving their goal. Making that clear went a long way in helping them understand and enjoy it, as well as sharing the DC of each skill check ahead of time. I think part of my style is being up front when there are deeper mechanics so the players can engage with them, rather than all of that being under the hood. At the end of the day, we are all still playing a game, I don’t think it is “less immersive” as I hear some people talk about online when we talk about mechanics with the players. In my experience, the players having more information about the stakes of a given moment, and how to engage with a problem, is always better than leaving them without clear direction.

So, the fight in the church did not go great. I could tell some of my players were frustrated, and this was due to a LOT of different factors, but it came down to two major things: the players were unprepared for a difficult combat encounter, and I did not do the math I usually do to dial the encounter in.

I had warned my players during our session 0 that there would be some combat encounters that would be VERY difficult and possibly deadly if they did not play them right. So far, they have been able to stomp everything pretty well, but this was the first one they are having major difficulties with. They would have a much easier time if they had their resources (the last time they took a long rest was before the fight with the Lady of the Lake), but even WITH their resources, there were some parts of the encounter that made the fight VERY difficult. I doubt we would be in a much different spot if they were able to go nova with all their abilities.

So, how did I fuck up the encounter balance?

Firstly, I took an untested Anastrasya statblock that I did not review and attempted to run it without any prep. Not only did I not know how her abilities worked or how strong they would be, but I also realized while running her many of her abilities were poorly worded and made little sense, making my life much harder.

Secondly, I took the normal vampire spawn statblock from the 2014 Monster Manual (as we are running 2014 rules) and did not take into account some of its major difficulties, among which are the Regeneration trait and their resistance to nonmagical physical damage. That made it so when the players finally were able to get damage on them, their progress did not matter if the vampire healed through it.

Thirdly, I used MandyMod’s lair actions for the burning church, but what kept coming up were the blinded and poison conditions (as a result of smoke within the building), which impose disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. I checked the vampire stat blocks and saw they were not immune to either condition and decided they needed to make saves, and failed on many of them. My players also failed their checks, which meant that the fight turned into a huge slog where neither side could hit the other. I don’t think I got off a single damaging vampire attack in that whole fight, and when the players hit, the vampires were able to heal through the damage and negate their progress.

So I had a bad time with the fight. I had already decided ahead of time that at the beginning of the 4th round, Strahd would show up and ask Ylenia to come with him, and I also planned to have Anastrasya attempt to kill Father Lucian. My players did a very good job at almost foiling that moment, but it just so happened that Anastrasya ended up critting Lucian on her final action in round 3. I made the intentional choice for Father Lucian to stick around because he wanted to help the heroes, it was not just DM fiat that he remained in the church.

For Next Session

So, we are still in combat - how do we fix these problems before next week?

1. Find a new statblock for Anastrasya. I don’t mind regeneration or resistance to nonmagical attacks being on Anastrasya because she is a lieutenant of Strahd’s, but the statblock needs to make more sense.
2. Find a new statblock for the vampire spawn. The PCs are probably going to try and kill some vampire spawn, and I want to make that possible. Removing their regeneration and resistances to nonmagical damage works great, and the vampire spawn from Flee, Mortals! have both of those, as well as a lower AC but higher HP. They also have an interesting trait called Radiant Aversion which makes them take more radiant damage if they take any at all - a more interesting implementation than vulnerability and makes a Sacred Flame that rolls a 1 for damage still valuable.
3. Change up the tactics of the fight. The vampire spawn are going to attempt to leave after Lucian is dead, and it’s my priority to make Anastrasya live. We will see how successful that is - the players could absolutely kill her in this fight. I’m also going to change the lair actions and their DCs slightly to not be as debilitating and fight consuming. They are great ideas, but imposing disadvantage on the entire battlefield if everyone rolls bad makes this fight take a lot longer.
4. Give the fight an end state. I am unsure if the fight will last this long, but after 8 rounds (4 more at the start of next week) the church will collapse. I’ll try and signal this as clearly as I can but if they do not get out of this, the heroes will be in a bad place.

We’ll see how next week goes. I hope these changes make the fight still really challenging especially with their current resources, but not impossible.

Until next time!