Lessons from the Mists: Session 25 - The Werewolf Pack

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This session, the heroes confront the majority of Barovia's pack of werewolves and come face to face with the pack leader: Kiril. Let's get started!

The Recap

We begin this session with the heroes exploring the one area of the werewolf den they hadn’t explored thus far - they climb to the top of the stairwell beyond Kiril’s cave and ascend to the mountain ledge. There, they find a circle of stones, splashes of dried blood, and bloodied spears - presumably, the site of Kiril’s fights to the death. The other notable thing they find is a few broken carved wooden statues. The first depicts a woman with three eyes, a cloak of raven feathers and wings, holding a deck of cards. The second depicts a woman with wispy hair, as if she were underwater, with a dress and skin carved to look like woven plants, who holds carved wooden threads. The third statue depicts a strong woman holding a spear, dreaded hair that hangs over a nude torso and what appears to be animal hides covering her bottom half. Adorning the third woman’s head is a crown of antlers. All three statues have a bloodied handprint covering the faces. The heroes believe that these are depictions of the Ladies Three, and they have been broken and defaced to revere Strahd.

The heroes discuss at length what they must do to prepare for Kiril and his pack returning. I asked each of the players to roll a d20, and on an 18+, Kiril would return at the end of that hour. A tense sequence of rolls followed, but it was 14 hours after they decided to take a rest that Kiril returned. They knew he was coming, and were able to take a long rest and the spellcasters prepared the spells required for the fight ahead. Mary Sue Ann also spends four of those hours deciphering the next chapter in the Tome of Strahd, revealing Chapter 2: The Rise of Ravenloft.

Ylenia believes that it may be best to finally take up Strahd on his invitation to dinner. At the very least, she does not want to harm Zuleika if they don’t have to, but she wants to free the children, and that requires getting Emil out of Ravenloft. Angvar and Mary Sue Ann, however, are not convinced and believe it may be best to kill all the werewolves, so that no more children would be captured to be transformed. Ylenia spends a moment away from the group and rolls up her sleeve, revealing the bite mark scars that Strahd left on her when he visited her for the first time, months ago. She speaks through it, and attempts to form a connection with Strahd, but she feels no changes afterwards. Disappointed, she returns to the group.

The heroes hide on the outcropping of rock that guards the entrance when Kiril and his pack arrive. He smells intruders, and swaggers inside, saying “Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!” Mary Sue Ann springs up, and launches a fireball at the werewolves. It’s initiative!

Mary Sue Ann’s first turn involves launching another fireball at the incoming werewolves, and their morale is shaken after two massive explosions. Three werewolf ambushers appear behind Kane in the back line (having approached through the stairwell at the back of the cave) and attempt to lay into him, but he dodges most of their attacks. He prays to Kelemvor and summons Spirit Guardians to guard him and his allies, which significantly hurt the werewolves. On Kiril’s commands, the werewolves continue to push forward into the cave, and the wolves surround Ylenia, but she handily deals with them until she is grabbed by a large brute. Angvar, however, engages Kiril and some of his defenders, laying into him with his Blood Spear. The brute grabs Mary Sue Ann and Kane, and throws them around the cave, scattering the heroes' defenses. However, Mary Sue Ann casts Haste on Angvar, and Kane’s Spirit Guardians decimate them. The werewolves begin to fall, one by one. The final smaller werewolf is grabbed by Angvar, who demands he surrender, but the werewolf refuses. Angvar spears him and is filled with an exuberant feeling, regaining several hit points.

Satisfied, the heroes give their farewell to Zuleika and promise her they will return within the next seven days with her Emil. They plan on stopping by van Richten’s tower on the way to Ravenloft, and march around Lake Baratok. It is in the late afternoon when they arrive at the Raven River Crossroads.

A familiar sight greets them at the crossroads: A large black carriage pulled by four horses, and Rahadin in the driver’s seat. He greets the heroes, and tells them he was sent by his lord to retrieve the heroes for  dinner. Ylenia’s connection worked, it seems. The heroes are battered and bloodied after the werewolf fight, and are unsure if they should accept the invitation now. Rahadin senses this reticence, and produces a trunk, explaining that his lord said they might hesitate to accept, and to present them with this gift. They open it, and see within a clockwork leg - Ezmerelda’s prosthetic.

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

The session went fairly well, but there were some snags that no one could really predict.

This session was on the shorter side, and most of it was the werewolf fight, but a couple things happened before that. First, knowing when Kiril was coming. I really liked the mechanic in the adventure that simulated the characters waiting for an unknown arrival. However, I didn’t want to simply leave it up to chance, and instead I told the players to roll and gave them all the information. I have realized from watching other GMs (primarily Brennan Lee Mulligan for this idea) that sometimes, telling the players exactly what the chances are of success and/or failure actually increases the stakes rather than having it all be secret. I have been granting inspiration during this campaign for moments of great roleplay and jokes that send all of us into the stratosphere laughing. So the heroes had two inspiration points to burn (and I allow them to be rerolls that anyone can use, not just whoever has it). The series of rolls to determine when Kiril would arrive were suspenseful as hell for all of us. I think it really crystallized the verisimilitude of the heroes anxiously waiting to see when the werewolf pack would return. I highly recommend keeping this mechanic from the book if your heroes want to wait around and ambush the pack, but leave it in their hands for when they return.

Ylenia’s attempt to connect with Strahd willingly was a fantastic bit of roleplay, she was at once so scared of what might happen and also desperate to get to Ravenloft quickly. In the moment, I considered asking for a roll, but realized it was too good to leave that moment up to chance on whether the connection would work or not, so I decided it worked, but provided no indication that it did. I knew that the next time they returned to a main road, the carriage would be waiting with Rahadin. I also suspected that Ezmerelda would have gotten caught in her infiltration of Ravenloft (which happens during an event at van Richten’s tower) and Strahd would send another invitation with a box and her leg inside, showing them that she was captured. I still wanted that moment, and so I figured it was a perfect time to deploy that when the heroes finally came to the carriage and had a moment of hesitation. They were unsure if they wanted to go to dinner as low on resources as they were, and Rahadin sensed this moment of weakness to force them to comply. Or at least, he thought this intimidation would force them to comply. We’ll see how they respond next time! At the very least, I wanted to give Ylenia an indication that I thought it was a cool idea to connect with Strahd (because this happens during Dracula with Mina!) and provided her with an inspiration point in that moment. As if to say: I recognize this was a great moment, and nothing happens now, but I wanted to acknowledge it.

Kiril was really fun to roleplay. I looked up a compilation of Negan’s (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) best moments in the Walking Dead and basically just copied down several of his lines of dialogue to deploy when they felt appropriate.

Finally, the werewolf battle went… okay. I did a fair bit of work in developing those creatures for the battle using inspiration from Flee, Mortals! and the monster roles inside. Let’s go over what I developed, and then how the battle itself went:

I wanted a variety of creatures with different strengths and weaknesses in this battle, but I also realized that werewolves thematically can’t really have certain roles. For example, artillery: werewolves are going to be agile, strong, frightening, front line. I didn’t have a believable reason for these werewolves to have an artillery role like a magic user in the back line or controller, and they aren’t using bows or crossbows to lay down fire. I ended up using 2 Soldiers, 1 Brute, 3 Ambushers, 1 Leader, and 10 Minions (the wolves).

Let’s start with the werewolf traits. I borrowed the Radiant Weakness ability from vampires and changed the damage type to anything from silvered weapons and brought the damage down from 10 to 5 to reward using silvered weapons, but keep the fantasy that the werewolves are strong. The other feature each of the werewolves had is called Death Frenzy that I lifted straight from all gnolls in FM! and then stuck onto the werewolves. They read:

Silver Weakness: When hit by a silvered weapon, the werewolf takes an additional 5 damage.

Death Frenzy: When an ally the werewolf can see within 30 feet of them is reduced to 0HP, the werewolf can use their reaction to move 30 feet and make a bite attack.

The soldier role is defined by having a fair number of hit points, decent AC, and the ability to defend their allies by locking down the heroes with attacks that have effects that limit their mobility. To start with, I used the Hobgoblin Trooper, then gave them some effects on their melee attacks that would help lock them down in melee, and this is the finished result:

The ambusher role is defined by having lots of hit and run tactics. They spend their turns attacking in melee, then slipping away so they can’t be hit. They also benefit from features that allow them to not be hit by opportunity attacks. I started with the Bugbear Predator, changed up some names and reduced the HP slightly and and ended up with this:

The brute role is defined by being big and easy to hit, but having lots of hit points, and attacks that deal a lot of damage so that the heroes can’t ignore them and go after more pressing threats. They also can have a little bit of battlefield control by being able to shove and bully the heroes into staying away from their allies. For the werewolf brute, I started with the Gnoll Bonesplitter, then made a claw attack to grapple and restrain a target, which allows a bite attack to deal more damage. They can also shove and throw creatures around, but I opted to skip the free attack that allies could make (which I regret). The final product was:

Finally, Kiril was interesting because he’s a leader. Leaders are defined by the “Action Oriented Design” that is all over boss monsters in FM! I started with Baron Uthrak, the level 5 human leader and reflavored a lot of the abilities while removing ones that didn’t make sense for a badass werewolf. Kiril’s overpowering way of fighting as well as commanding allies around with his villain actions made him almost perfect, and I just had to edit some small things. I ended up with this as the final statblock:

So, the combat itself. Mary Sue Ann’s back-to-back fireballs really hurt them, and so they were starting out the fight with about half the HP that the group as a whole had to work with, which swung the battle in the heroes’ favor drastically. They were very lucky (and smart to use their inspiration!) to have as much time to prepare and get a long rest as they did.

The other thing that happened for the first two thirds of the battle was that I could not roll a good attack roll to save my life. The heroes all have decent AC’s, and the monsters I picked did not have a very high bonus to hit, and those two things made it so that most of the time I was missing with all my attacks. The exception was Kiril because his statblock had very high bonuses to hit, and he was more dangerous than any of the others. My players and I played as tactically sound as I think we all could have - the only blunder I can think of that I made was that I forgot about Death Frenzy one time - overall, not that big of a deal. However, in the final round, all my werewolves began to roll very well, the heroes were spread out, Kane had been knocked out of his concentration on Spirit Guardians twice, and the whole battle began to flow in the werewolves’ favor. Everyone got into 33% or less than their hit point totals, with Kane going down to 3 HP. However, the damage was already done: they finished off all the werewolves, and Kiril never got to use his third villain action - which may have really messed them up, and maybe even knocked some of them unconscious!

I was initially frustrated by my combat encounter not being as difficult as I imagined, but the more I have thought about it since then, I think it went exactly as it should have. Narratively, the werewolves were caught off guard in their home and then were caught in two, back to back magical explosions - of course they would be disorganized and unable to hit. However, as they marched into battle and began to smell defeat, they fought more ferociously and desperately, but the sound tactics and careful planning of the heroes won out in the face of raw bloodlust from the werewolves.

What would I have changed if I could do this again? Not much, all things considered. Maybe take a look at the werewolves CR’s and increase their bonus to hit and damage output slightly. I was a little locked down by the number of werewolves I had already specified in Zuleika’s dialogue, but I wonder if the combat would have been better if I used fewer, higher CR statblocks and modified them in the same ways I already did by reflavoring and tweaking attacks and abilities. The silver weakness felt great, and didn’t feel like so much of a big deal because only Ylenia was attacking with a silvered weapon. Try out the encounter, tweak it, and tell me how yours went.

Next session - the dinner with Strahd. Lots of roleplay, and possibly breaking Emil out of prison, rescuing Ezmerelda, meeting Strahd’s brides, a tour of the castle? It’s gonna be juicy.

Until next time!