Café de Nuit

Ok, here's something that is beginning to get to me... I've played dnd for years. I've been a fan of Ravenloft for years. But it's only now that I'm actually running my first game of it. It started great - the PCs had one level of Commoner each, no weapons or armour beyond what they could scrounge. Three of them ran from two town guardsmen, screaming "they have chainmail!" A wolf was a major threat. The nasty nature of the world was nicely brought home.

That was 12 sessions ago. Now the PC have hit their third character level each. They're enjoying the game, but I'm beginning to find it hard to actually keep them challanged in combat, in a realistic fashion. Now, the game is not only about fighting, but this is the part I'm having a problem with. Going by Gaz I, your average Barovian militaman is a lvl 1 Warrior - CR 1/2. For - say - our Barbarian PC, that mean it takes six men to really threaten him. In order to keep some fear of the local armies, I'm going to have to start throwing in lvl 4 and 5 NPCs, who should be pretty rare and special in the land. And this problem is just going to get worse as they continue to progress in levels.

Thinking about this has lead me to an odd conclusion - Ravenloft isn't really suited to the D&D engine. For a grim'n'gritty, mud'n'blood, etc. setting like this, there has to be a real threat against the PCs whenever they foul up. And short of throwing in monsters or unrealistically high level NPCs, there isn't one. If I were running Cyberpunk 2020, or GURPS, then even after a year of gaming you'll still worry about that one lucky hit from one kid with a knife. The experience system for those games rewards your characters skills, and the best improvements you can get are better bits of kit. But in dnd, a skill increase goes hand in hand with a bonus to hit points, attack modifiers, special abilities, etc.

So has anybody ever tried running the game with a different set of rules? And if so, how did it go?

Bloody Morgan

In one of the BoS___ there's a guide to using the SAGA rules from Dragonlance 5th Age.

I've read that, and I liked it, but I think a more crunchy system would suit better. The kind where knowing the effects of a lucky blow come down to more than GM interpretation, frex, or why it's a real reward to get a proper sword, and not something your father traded a lamb for when there was a wolf nearby, and has kept stuffed up the chimney ever since, slowly letting it corrode. Saga worked for Dragonlance, but it's a bit too loose for my Ravenloft

Part of what makes an army or police force scary IS their numbers. They should be working together, flanking, using Aid another actions, hails of arrows from afar, etc. (Not running up one at a time like in a Bruce Lee movie.) Also, 4th and 5th level NPC's aren't THAT rare, they're officers and the like. And if you want to emphasize the on-the-run aspects, they should be better equipped than the PC's. Even a 1st level soldier gets harder to deal with when they have field plate or masterwork weapons. (Or tanglefoot bags...) (Just make sure they don't fall into PC hands by making them disctinctive, so that if they take them, everyone will know they took them from the army, and they'll be hunted down.)

What are they doing that's running them afoul of the local army all the time? If they're cutting through swaths of soldiers, that SHOULD get the attention of the higher ups, who will be higher levels. At 3rd level, even the barbarian's not going to have more than 48hp. Average 30. That's not one lucky shot, but could be 2 or 3.

I'm not saying the system's perfect, but it doesn't break down at 3rd level, that's for sure. If you want to use another system, that's fine too. I don't have any suggestions, though.

This turned out very long, so bear with me. I've run GURPS, albeit not recently and not Ravenloftian, and while it sounds like it could work for what you want to do, I also think you should make sure that's what your players want to do, too. In GURPS your skills do increase, and if you save up long enough, even your stats and advantages can increase, but it's a very rare thing. Part of the result of that is the players never feel like they're "heroes" much - they don't ever get the feeling of being that far above ordinary people - and that feeling is part of what D&D is set up to provide. You'll notice lots of the GURPS settings/optional rules result in making characters with well over the standard 100 point limit - and that is another way to make the characters heroes, but it runs into many of the same problems you're having with D&D.

I agree with gonzoron - the system definitely doesn't break down at 3rd level. For one thing, you can always move the PCs to a new domain. A Barovian militiaman might be a lvl 1 Warrior, but in Falkovnia, lots of people are level 1 Warriors, so the people responsible for keeping the peace are bound to be higher level than that. Or in Dementlieu, while the militiamen might not be higher level, they're all likely to have guns. Packs of wolves in Barovia might be replaced by packs of Dire wolves in Darkon, and heaven help them if they wander out in the woods in Kartakass or Verbrek.

But even then, you will eventually run into trouble, if you're intent on making every ordinary, everyday encounter potentially lethal. Once they get up to 6th or 7th level, a realistic militia, unless presented in vast numbers, isn't going to pose much of threat. Ordinary wolves definitely won't. But honestly, in my experience, that's a good thing. Players can get frustrated otherwise - by that time, to get to that experience level, they've probably done some pretty heroic stuff; and they'll want to feel like heroes. Some of that can come from NPC interaction - giving them the respect and honor accorded to heroes - but some of it comes from going up levels and becoming literally more powerful.

Not to mention, if you keep it so that one lucky hit can always kill the characters, it's only a matter of time before one lucky hit does kill the characters. And honestly, having had a campaign where one of the 5th level PCs died from a lucky hit by a villain wielding the second magic items they'd found in the campaign (a +2 spear) on the first round of combat - that's not fun either. Dying because your characters did something stupid, or just lost a really tough fight, is one thing - but dying because because some guardsman got in lucky shot that you couldn't possibly have done anything about - it's the definition of "un-heroic".

You wrote that "there has to be a real threat against the PCs whenever they foul up", and that's undeniably true. But at higher levels, they should be doing bigger things, and then when they foul up, it should be a bigger mess. And from that, it should follow logically that they run into bigger threats from fouling up - so you shouldn't have that much trouble coming up with things to throw at them. As they go up in level, people who previously considered them unworthy of notice will start paying attention - and in Ravenloft that's plenty bad. Kill too many militiamen in Darkon and the Kargatane will notice, for instance. And if they really won't stop screwing up in Barovia, just have Strahd show up - not with intent to kill, but just intent to scare them back into line. He won't have difficulty, I promise.

I guess my point is, if you want to run your game like a perpetual low-level adventure, there are ways. GURPS can work, and I'm sure there are plenty of other systems out there. But then too, you could simply declare a level cap in your D&D games; or skip the XP system altogether, and let them make 2nd-level characters and tell them that's where they're staying. And low-level adventures can be lots of fun, too, so if you've got a whole group that's down with that, so much the better. But just make sure that your players are ok with that, too. But D&D really does deal with the issues you're having. The tenet from the DMG is "just remember there's always someone more powerful than your PCs", and that's just as true in Ravenloft (at least up to level 20 or so) as it is in other campaign settings. Higher level PCs shouldn't have to deal with people just as powerful as they are being really common; and the fact that powerful NPCs are more rare in Ravenloft than other worlds is balanced out by the fact that powerful PCs are equally rare, and thus more likely to attract attention.

One thing that would help you out greatly is the Massive damage threshold from d20 modern. Bascily if any attack does more damage in one strike then the victums Con score the victum must make a fort save at DC 15 or fall to -1 hp. This works on any living creature with a normal anatomy (Ie: no Undead, oozes, abominations, constructs etc; ).

It balance out due to the fact that if the players have high con (in the 16 to 18 range) have little chance to fall prey to it as most 1st level soldiers have only 1d6 daggers or maybe a 1d8 mace. With a crit and double damage you just barely reach the required damage but at the same time for a weeker character a 1st level punk with a dagger and a few good rolls can spell doom.

BTW, this being Ravenloft -- a realm where only a handful of rulers are non-Evil, and compassion is worth fighting for precisely because it's so rare -- you needn't be afraid to have the villains' thugs fight dirty. 1st level minions may not be much of a threat to your PCs, but they CAN be a threat to the NPCs near them: seeing the waitress (2 hp) who'd warned them that the inn's food is drugged held with a knife to her throat by the evil (and mere 1st-level expert ... but he can still kill her with ease) innkeeper, or watching bystanders felled like kindling when the lord's men-at-arms open fire on the PCs in the middle of a crowded street, can drive home the fact that low-level villains can still cause plenty of damage to other low-level characters. That includes ones whom the PCs care for, and/or whose deaths via "collateral damage" they don't want on their conscience.

Suddenly, merely dealing out damage isn't enough to win: PCs must use strategy and cunning to ensure that the NPCs around them are protected, even as they fight, making that the real challenge of combat, rather than simply splattering foes. This works especially well with "peasant hero" PCs like you're describing, as it plays right into the theme of their origins: they'd wished somebody heroic would be there to protect them, when they were weak and fearful; now that they've grown stronger, they can be that somebody, for others who are still vulnerable and afraid. Seriously dramatic, satisfying stuff!

>>Part of the result of that is the players never feel like they're "heroes" much - they don't ever get the feeling of being that far above ordinary people - and that feeling is part of what D&D is set up to provide.<<


This may be true of DnD, but it isn't really the same with Ravenloft. In RL players rarely feel like heroes. Typically they are fighting a battle that too few people know about and for those who would rather they not get involved. Ravenloft is not a setting where players should ride down the road and have peasants tossing rose petals at their feet ... that fairly taints the very atmosphere the setting is striving for.

That said, it is really not so difficult a thing to keep players challenged. What you have to remember is that enemies will use tactics and superior knowledge of their surroundings to great advantage. If they are fighting in the streets of a town, the guarde may draw them into an ambush ... not much that barbarian is going to do against a dozen or so archers perched atop surrounding buildings. Then, where are they going to stay? They can't very well stay in a town whose guards they've murdered .. who'd serve them? No one would want the attention that would attract. Like someone else mentioned, the militia also has the benefit of numbers. No, you don't have to throw a hundred men at the part in the middle of a busy road ... but a scout might track them once the party leaves and the militia could hound them every step of the way with hit and run tactics. The guard has enough people to harry the pc's night and day, sleeping in shifts .. the pcs don't have that luxury.

Use your enemies intelligently, taking full advantage of their knowledge and skills. Many times this can turn a push over adventure into a tooth and nail fight.

Something else to consider is the use of atmosphere and surroundings. If the party is traveling through a forest road by night, wolves are going to be a real threat as they use the darkness to their advantage. Are the players wearing armor? Difficult to hear approaching threats over the creak of your splint mail. Then their is the fear that something will spook your horses, or that footing will make riding too treacherous .. but when those foes attack you'd best have one hand for your reigns or that horse is going to bolt.

Using nothing more than atmosphere and description I ran a 10th level war priest and party through a most challenging encounter with zombies. Sure the zombies were difficult to see because they burrowed through mud; sure the darkness and the falling rain made judging your surroundings difficult; sure the odd sensation in the air that made everything look slightly off was disconcerting .... but in the end, they were just zombies.

Part of keeping the game interesting is making the characters (and players) feel as though they are in danger, even if they are not. Give them the impression that there are foes near by who present a very real threat and you will have done half that enemies job for him. My 10th level party was scared to death of going to a dinner party thrown by Dominic. Why? They had no intention of facing the man; knew of no reason why they should have to. But, armed with a handful of disturbing rumors and barely a shred of fact, they were convinced that his mere proximity placed them in danger. I'm not suggesting that you include the threat of a lord in every domain or adventure .. but the threat of danger itself. (though, in barovia, most people believe that The Devil Strahd is always watching anyway ... which means the pcs should soon come away with this impression.)

Suspician and distrust are quite the weapon when they close doors to the pcs. What is to stop the militia from sending a rider to the next town, warning of the criminals bearing down upon them?

Now, I'm not precisely certain what your adventures are like, so it is difficult to give advice. I have no knowledge as to why they are killing town militia by the droves, nor who for and why the local burgomaster hasn't sent a request of aid to castle ravenloft or nearby townships. You seem reluctant to use monsters, so I won't point out that there are pleanty of very challenging and still ravenloftian beasts capable of challenging a party no matter their level. I will note, however, that if every encounter your group runs into becomes one of life and death, you'll quickly fray their nerves to the point that the game won't be any fun. (assuming these encounters happen once or more per night) Sometimes the fodder is just that ... the weak must give way to the strength of your pcs ... but when a true foe makes itself known, then you should feel free to put some fear into them - and if they walk into that fight overconfident because of prior successes, all the better.

(Note, dispite what some others have said, I agree that very few people in ravenloft - unless they happen to be major npcs - should be above fifth level. This isn't forgotten realms, the danger in the setting should never be the next powerful monster, but the world itself.)

Jack of Tears wrote: This may be true of DnD, but it isn't really the same with Ravenloft. In RL players rarely feel like heroes. Typically they are fighting a battle that too few people know about and for those who would rather they not get involved. Ravenloft is not a setting where players should ride down the road and have peasants tossing rose petals at their feet ... that fairly taints the very atmosphere the setting is striving for.

I wholeheartedly agree with the last sentence - but there's a difference between feeling like a hero and having everyone else treat you like a hero. If you've finally vanquished the vampire that was a major campaign villain, it doesn't matter if no one else will ever no about it - you know you're a hero. And after vanquishing such a major threat, a party of PCs should be able to travel through the woods and back to town without having to worry about getting annihilated just traveling through the forest. At low levels, PCs should still have to worry about that sort of thing; but eventually a PC who's slain how-many-odd horrors of the night should be confident in his ability to walk out of an ordinary barroom brawl victorious, even in Ravenloft. I can't imagine the outcry if, in canon Ravenloft, George Weathermay was killed by some unusally lucky street thugs - but DMs always seem much more ok with that happening to their PCs. Maybe it can keep the game 'intense' - but there are other ways to do that, ways with a lower PC mortality rate and less damage to people's nerves.

If we're just talking about making intentionally tough battles difficult even with low level opponents, I think we all agree that it's mostly a matter of tactics and numbers (although be wary of playing opponents as unrealistically smart - zombies *don't* plan ambushes, unless there's a necromancer carefully directing them). Environmental hazards work very, very well also - Saragoss comes immediately to my mind, of course, but the Burning Wastes, the Wildlands, or any of the freezing cold domains can challenge unprepared parties.

But eventually in D&D, even these methods break down - certainly not at level 3; but look at how many threads over on the WotC boards there are about "How many thousands of goblins does it take to kill a 30th-level [insert class here] PC?" When they get to a high enough level, it just takes an illogical, silly number of level 1 Warriors in an astoundingly strategically brilliant ambush to really threaten them. Or else it just takes one polite visit from somebody powerful, someone who the PCs know they don't want to mess with, who happened to notice them mucking about. There don't have to be "lots" of powerful people about for that to happen - just one or two, who (as most RL villains do) make it their business to notice what's going on. I'd be quite suprised if you found yourself in the position of having to 'make up one up' and add a high-powered NPC where one wouldn't be found. I'm not sure why, as Jack of Tears seems to, the first option would be considered a threat "from the world itself" while the last one is somehow too Faerunian in nature - too me it seems much more Ravenloftian.

<PS - I really like Rotipher's idea of "collateral damage", although I'm sure you'd have to be careful not to overuse it.>

>>I wholeheartedly agree with the last sentence - but there's a difference between feeling like a hero and having everyone else treat you like a hero.<<

In part this is in response a comment about npcs treating you like heroes. Some few people may recognize such, but few pcs should be recognized by name or face wherever they travel and treated as heroic. It is simply a matter of moderation which I wanted to bring to attention.

That said, it was also stated that players should feel like they are better than common people. I don't think this is neccessarily so. Every person has some degree of arogance and self posession which will make him feel better than others ... but one doesn't want to place too great a gap between pcs and npcs - otherwise they start looking at the non-player characters as things rather than people.


>> At low levels, PCs should still have to worry about that sort of thing; but eventually a PC who's slain how-many-odd horrors of the night should be confident in his ability to walk out of an ordinary barroom brawl victorious,<<

Which is why I made the comment about fodder sometimes just being fodder. You don't want every fight to be a life or death struggle - that sort of thing is quick to either irritate players or make them start min-maxing their characters. But I don't use random encounters in my games, don't believe in them. So if the player's are powerful enough that they need not fear being attacked by wolves on the way to town, I rarely bother attacking them. (I will still relay that wolves are in the woods and give them reason to look over their shoulders, but I won't force them into meaningless combat ... note, sometimes a simple combat can be used to build atmosphere or story, in which case it will happen independant of the pc's level ...)

>>I'm not sure why, as Jack of Tears seems to, the first option would be considered a threat "from the world itself" while the last one is somehow too Faerunian in nature - too me it seems much more Ravenloftian. <<


What I intended to warn against is the continued appearance of high level characters. The comment that "There is always someone higher level" becomes a concern in that it opens the doorway for a gm to have the mere threat of wandering ubermensch act as story police.

I may be in the minority here, but I've been tinkering with the idea of World of Darkness: Ravenloft.

While I am a bit sceptical about WoD being usable with Ravenloft (as an outsider, I don't know the system to a higher degree), I would consider the CoC rules interesting. After all, what I experienced in most RL campaigns that after initial gothic feeling, it happens often that the campaign degernates to *heroes of light butcher the zombies*. CoC seems to be more subtle there; I wonder if some adventures from the Dark Ages line wouldn't find into RL very well too.

Excuse my ignorance, Desdichado, but what's CoC?

I am running Ravenloft in GURPS 4th. The main problem is that i have to spend a lot of time for converting the NPC, monsters etc., and besides, Ravenloft becomes... too lethal. People dies in this world, often, very often. I am running Castles Forlorn for now, and if not to edit the number of the enemies, their statistic and so on - PC have no even a chance to survive.

Jack of Tears wrote: Ravenloft is not a setting where players should ride down the road and have peasants tossing rose petals at their feet ... that fairly taints the very atmosphere the setting is striving for.

Of course, if done correctly, this can be a good way to freak your PCs the hell out!! After sessions and sessions of having villagers treat them as invisible, enemies, or 'trouble we don't need', having an entire town turn out cheering, smiling, and introducing their unmarried sisters and daughters might just be a good way to mess with your players.

MatthiasStormcrow wrote:
And after vanquishing such a major threat, a party of PCs should be able to travel through the woods and back to town without having to worry about getting annihilated just traveling through the forest.

One might want to take into account how many open wounds and other problems the PCs are coming away from thebattle with. Any wild animal can smell blood and fear. [/quote]

>>Excuse my ignorance, Desdichado, but what's CoC?<<
Call of Cthulu