I've run Curse of Strahd about five times and then I retired it. These days I only drag the Castle Ravenloft finale back out once a year as a Halloween season one-shot. I have like 200+ more hours running Strahd Must Die Tonight events.
Admission first, because somebody's going to ask it in a comment: I've run the legacy stat block almost exclusively and scaled it up a ton for some SMDT events. I haven't run the new version at my table, so all of this is written against the old one and would need "rework" for the new one.
Over those runs, Strahd personally killed at least one player character every campaign. Not one a session. One a campaign, minimum, by his own hand. At this point it's almost a running gag for me. He has a really good kit. YMMV
I want to give you the tricks that made the best of those moments in those runs work, and then the reasoning underneath it.
The armor A.K.A my longest con EVER
Right after the Wizard of Wines, Strahd sends the paladin a gift. Suit of plate, angels worked into the breastplate, and a note that's polite in a way that's basically an insult. It's offered as honest admiration for the guy's faith.
He wore it the rest of the campaign. Over a year.
It's the module's own Strahd's Animated Armor, page 227. False Appearance means that as long as it isn't moving, it's indistinguishable from a regular suit of armor. And Strahd put Nystul's Magic Aura on it before he sent it, because of course he did. Why wouldn't he? We should. So, we do. :3
That's the part I actually want to defend, because it's what makes the con fair instead of cheap. Cast Nystul's on the same object thirty days in a row and the aura is permanent until dispelled. A guy with four hundred years has a month. So identify reads a nice ordinary suit of iron. Detect magic reads nothing. The paladin's own Divine Sense reads nothing.
They had every fair shot at it and the answer came back clean every single time. Oh, and it has blindsight. So it was watching the whole time.
In the final fight it turns. Overrides the wearer and starts firing shocking bolts into the party from inside their own line, and that bolt has advantage against anybody in metal armor. My paladin only lived through it because he could sprout wings and fly. OH, how he ran through the castle. If I could bottle that moment.
Sorry Sir Tico. You were the first but not the last. Martials love plate mail.
The "surprise" isn't the good part. The good part is they carried it to the boss fight themselves, and every choice along the way was theirs. The moment all of that computes is divine.
1. He's everything, not just the BBEG A.K.A the dungeon master effect
This is the thing that changed my Strahd more than any tactic I ever came up with. The campaign takes place inside his stat block. This is metaphorical.
He is the land, and the land does what he says. The fog, the borders, the moon, the animals in the treeline, the roads, the mail, the weather. All of it is him. He doesn't have to be in the room to be in the scene. He's everywhere and nowhere sometimes.
You should be gnawing at your players. The way Barovia is set up so you can see the castle looming over it at all times is kind of the distillation of the entire feeling of the campaign. At least that's what I aim for. Have it pour rain on your party any time they're doing anything of consequence. Strahd's scrying on them and actively making their life difficult. Have him come up in a lot of conversation. Ample chance to bring him up through the Vistani, and loudly and boldly in a tavern, and so on. Coins with his minted face on them. He should be almost omnipresent.
If you run him as a monster who lives in a castle and comes out at the end, you built a dungeon with a vampire in it. That's a fine campaign. It's not Barovia at its BEST. The campaign has some adult-oriented themes. For tables willing to play in that space, it makes for some emotionally weighty storylines.
And here's the part that I preach on combat. If your party is ever fighting Strahd on their terms, you screwed up. Every fight with him ends when he decides it ends, not when he runs out of hit points. He's got an escape prepped before he knocks, another one under that, and Misty Escape under both of those. Worst realistic outcome of any fight he picks is a two hour walk home as fog. We prep for these. It is in his nature. Tactician.
2. Every vampire at my table fights like the Predator A.K.A guerrilla glass cannons
Strahd most of all. Watch from cover, whether that's a spell, Vasili, or minions. Learn what the prey is carrying. Cut off a straggler. Hit from ambush. Take a trophy, or a snack. Leave. Never a fair fight, never a stand-up fight, never a fight he didn't pick. Strahd is the top of the line version of that with a whole country attached to him. We don't just stand there and get blitzed by action economy.
The rotation is only like five phases and you can run the entire campaign off them.
Observe. Animals, spies, scrying, sending. He shows up to their wins invisible. They beat something hard, and what they don't know is that the win was the audition and he was in the room for it. We have the Vistani, bats, rats, wolves, and intelligent undead. That's just agents other than Strahd himself, and he's got plenty of spells to observe in his own way.
If you're feeling particularly bold, you could even go the deep cover route as Vasili. This is tougher to pull off properly at the table. You have to give it some thought. One tip is to make sure he's never actively lying. He's just slightly bending the truth. Ultimately when they ask him what he wants, he wants love. This is not a lie. You need to do the verbal gymnastics to come off clean. This is tough to do faithfully.
Test. Minion waves built to measure them, not to kill them. We watch them go through the Barovia sandbox, like our little funhouse of horrors, and take notes. Who heals, who counterspells, who panics, who covers who and who they cover first. Run one or two waves of undead they beat comfortably where the enemy's behavior only makes sense if it was taking notes, then never try that again. They should be able to look back later and realize it was a survey.
Strahd is looking for his own replacement. Lean into this for any lawful-evil-ish characters at your table. Send his brides. Like talent scouting or something. Have one bride try seduction, the other perhaps flattery, the other potentially threats.
Isolate. Locked doors, walls, a grab in the night, a charm, or just terrain. Try your best to peel one of the party off. Or find them already peeled off. This also extends to driving a wedge within the party, or even courting some of the more "loose-moral" and "edgelord" party members.
Bleed. Three rounds average, hit and run. Attack the downed and make the party triage hard. 5E is about the best way I know to dry up the party's action economy. Even hitting a downed player one time just leaves one roll to fate, and that alone makes everything change at the table. Or have Strahd take something specific (Journal). Leave before the nova lands. And decide his exit before you roll initiative, not when his hit points get uncomfortable. A villain who leaves on schedule reads like a plan. A villain who leaves at half health reads like a DM protecting his toy. We have infinite toys, Strahd isn't one of them. Let throw away undead be the throw aways.
And for those of you that think attacking a downed player is a bit too much, your tables may vary and your players may be attached to the story perhaps. But mine, they want real tangible victory and a world that pushes back, and pushes back harshly sometimes. Especially if what they're fighting is intelligent. This is just how I run my table.
Feast. That's the castle dinner. By then he knows their spell lists and they know his legend, and that gap is what gives you the tension you need. Have Strahd spill details that he knows about the party during dinner. The "Big Brother" feels should just be laying all over the table right now.
Your teaching tool for all of this is the consorts. Run Ludmilla, Anastrasya and Volenta as a pack and they usually just win. I tore a snooping player apart with the three of them down in the catacombs. And socially they're around constantly, at the dinners, out at events, way before anybody shows a claw. They're how the party learns what a vampire does before the party ever meets the teacher. OR Doru, IF your players push that issue. And if they do fall to your party, there's always the Abbot. More on that later.
3. He doesn't have a spell list A.K.A tactical spellbooks
He has loadouts. Plenty of them.
A wizard with four centuries, a captive population and the Amber Temple has collected every spell he ever wanted in the library. So, I don't run a spells known list. I run a loadout, and the only question that matters is what he is doing today.
I know this is the part people might come at me for. His slots are untouched. Still a 9th level caster. Fourteen prepared, and exactly one fifth level slot. His choice of his fifth-level spell should be the most important thing on your mind. Wall of force, scrying, animate objects, modify memory, cloudkill. He picks one, before he leaves the castle, once a day. Whatever we think will best be leveraged in the situation that the players are going to meet Strahd in.
So, AT LEAST four different Strahds can walk into your session. I have many more than this and I encourage you to make a couple of your own loadouts. It's fun.
All purpose. Nothing in particular going on. Shield, detect thoughts, mirror image, counterspell, greater invisibility, scrying on the fifth. The tell is he's polite, he's curious, and he leaves when he feels like it. Nothing about the day was about them. This is the general all-purpose Strahd kit for shenanigans.
Recon. He's gathering information and has no intention of fighting anybody. Clairvoyance, arcane eye, locate creature, and sending, which is twenty five words of dread delivered in the middle of a long rest to one specific character. He doesn't threaten anybody. He asks how they're feeling. Also Mordenkainen's private sanctum, because a four hundred year old paranoid counter-scries his own secrets.
This is also the loadout where Rahadin becomes an issue for the party. Strahd doesn't have to be the one doing the work. He keeps the party occupied, being charming, being a problem, being right there in front of them, while Rahadin is somewhere else entirely doing the thing that actually mattered that day. They spent the whole session watching the wrong hand.
Social. He's coming to talk. Abjuration heavy, in case it pops off. It might, depending on what kind of group you have. Counterspell, dispel magic, dimension door, and Otiluke's resilient sphere. Not for you. That one's for sticking the fighter or the feisty player in a hamster ball and getting him out of the conversation without hurting anybody. Then wall of force for the exit. Plan for two escapes, prepped before he knocks, Misty Escape under both, nightmare on ethereal standby. Using an Ethereal Jaunt on the Nightmare should be a trick that you don't show often, and hopefully not early. The tell is he sits down in social mode. We're confident nothing's going to happen to us with this loadout. He's never standing when the conversation starts.
War. The castle, no observe phases left to run. Magic missile is on that list for exactly one job, which is breaking concentration, nothing to dodge, nothing to resist, no miss. Fear, darkness, and animate objects on the fifth so the throne room itself joins in and his action economy problem goes away. I like to get the party with a blight opener here.
There's a fifth one for Vasili, and the keystone there is Nystul's again, because it hides undeath from Divine Sense. That's how he survives shaking a paladin's hand. Same spell that keeps the armor hidden.
Honorable mention for the entire loadouts built around raising whole squads of undead to hug your party to death. And before anyone screams Turn Undead or spirit guardians: Turn Undead runs on Channel Divinity uses, spirit guardians is one concentration slot, and Strahd can just send more zombies. Spell lists aside, he has an endless supply of undead. Think Vampire Counts from Warhammer.
And the system's worthless to the players if they never notice it, so telegraph the hell out of it. One repeated tell per loadout. When he counterspells something, say what he counterspelled and look happy about it. And when a player asks why he didn't just fireball them, answer out loud: "he didn't bring it today." Say that once and the whole thing lives rent free in their heads for the rest of the campaign. That he's actively changing his loadout, and they should be wary of that. It makes him much more unpredictable. Because then they can't just look at his stat block anymore and know what you have in your trick bag today. Hamster ball timeout, or blight. For those of you that already tweaked his spell list, good on you.
Full lists for all six are in a comment below so this post doesn't turn into a spell index.
4. The moon A.K.A lycanthropy on demand
My Barovia has no sun. Permanent overcast starlit night, the moon changes, sunlight never comes fully out. It never threatens Strahd or any other vampire. It's a house rule and I'll defend it in the comments, but here's what I do with it.
Moon phases drift and I narrate them. Full moons happen, regularly, and everybody gets used to hearing about it. Then somebody catches lycanthropy, and I stop pulling full moons out. Have them roll their saves and don't key in. Just nod your head like it was a success even if it was a failure. I don't say anything. I just go quiet about it. We're going to keep this in our pocket.
Weeks later, actual real weeks, the first full moon since then comes up at the worst possible time and that character "goes off." Now what "goes off" means is going to vary from DM to DM. In the old rules that would mean the DM just taking your character sheet from you. In the new rules you may get resistances and some superpowers, but who knows. Only the DM at the table decides.
The land obeys Strahd. Which means Strahd was hiding your disease from you. Or potentially weaponizing it.
It only works because you built the habit first. Mention the moon four or five times, casually, before the infection. The silence has to be a change from something. Write the phase in your notes every week.
Alternately you can use this little bit of tactical lycanthropy for any interactions you might have with Ezmerelda or Van Richten, which would change the candor of the conversation considerably. In my campaign Van Richten wouldn't be helping them lift their curse. They would be monsters. Purge the mutant!
5. The flip ladder A.K.A the "abuser" mechanic
Okay, this is a bit of just my own analysis, but Strahd strikes me as a classic abuser. The old emotional abuse yo-yo. If you want him to feel very authentic, look no further than real life.
My Strahd escalates in proportion, and he takes it personally. Between his tantrums he'll try and flip back to the charming side. See if that helps move the needle on the party. If not, it's back to being petulant.
Take his journal and he's mildly annoyed. He sends the Vistani to get it back because he doesn't like being known, but his real position is so what, I'm going to kill you and none of this is going to matter later. If they can't do the job, he'll come take it himself. Focus down the player that refuses to give up the book. Whether you kick him while he's down is up to DM Fiat. Personally if this happens early in the campaign, I would not. If the party is substantially powerful, it puts kind of a speed bump on the whole thing. They're gonna need to triage him before they could actively try and take a bite at Strahd. It also opens up interesting Abbot storylines. Just make sure that you're able to get to the Abbot storyline quickly because you can't leave a player out in the cold.
Take the Amulet of Ravenkind, or lift stuff out of the castle during a dinner, and now he's paying attention. Very careful attention. Start going Big Brother mode here.
Find the Sunsword or start closing on the Amber Temple and the gloves are off. And notice what that actually looks like: he doesn't get angrier, he gets "absent." Never in the Sunsword's sunlight radius when confronting the party, Vistani thieves sent after items, and whoever's holding the sword gets promoted to primary target in everything after that. With great power comes a big ol target on your back. He's now preparing to take the party down actively because they are far too dangerous, so his "absence" is the implementation of strategy.
Anything touching Ireena flips him instantly. Have him try and reason with Ireena that the party can't keep her safe. As always, she should rebuff him, and that should incense him. Lash out at the party.
And the one thing that genuinely scares him is being put somewhere he's actually losing, because fear comes out of an abuser as rage. Rage makes him sloppy.
But here's what most people miss. Your job isn't flipping him on. Your job is flipping him back. Enraged Strahd opens with a blast on the clustered party, slaps people down, spends whatever attacks are left confirming kills on the ones already on the floor, and makes the party triage backwards. It's about control. But it's a mode, not a state. He goes back to being courteous after, and the courtesy is scarier than the rage was, because now they've seen what's under it and he decided to put it away.
If he stays angry he's just a monster, and monsters are a lot simpler than he is. Think of Strahd as, well, primarily he's an abuser, but try and think of him as a complicated one. This is how I play him. Just look at what he did to Rahadin if you need any example of how cruel he can be.
The Abbot A.K.A Operation Humpty Dumpty
I said more on him later, so here it is. This is probably worth a full post in itself, but any of Strahd's favorite toys, or the party's biggest enemies, should be put back together like Humpty Dumpty if possible, with the Abbot prescribing some additional enhancements.
This works especially well in my campaigns on NPCs my players love to hate, like Izek or Rahadin. I personally like to give Izek a couple extra arms. :3 Alternately you can pull back one of the party's more favored NPCs that Strahd has taken off the board, like Ireena's brother Ismark.
6. The ending nobody expects A.K.A shades of grey endings
Some of this may be self-evident to you, but I don't think everybody is on the same page about the curse, especially when they find the source book for the first time. I'm just going to say a little bit about it now.
The curse doesn't break.
If they kill him but they paid for it in dark gifts and resurrections, they get a period of ruling Barovia. Years sometimes. Long enough to believe it. Then Strahd turns up out of nowhere, having had all the time in the world to watch them, plan for them and wait them out, and he wipes them out. And then he picks up where he left off like nothing happened.
Because really, nothing did. This is just a blink to him. That's the horror of this campaign and it was never in the boss fight. It's in the epilogues. Watching the players slowly sell off their soul to try and make it out of here is such an enticing ending.
The callbacks here are even for good-aligned players that do everything right and make it out alive. Describe the curling mist on a hot rainy night sending the hair on their neck up. Or in their epilogue you could always leave a note that they find in their "old" age, that their son or daughter or grandchild just arrived in Barovia. You're gonna be inviting them to dinner sometime soon.
The look on the player's face was something. Again, I wish I could bottle it. I wish I had a camera handy. Enough that I ran it again, the whole campaign, just to see it happen again lol
The epilogue is the bookend to the whole campaign. Now is the time for the twist, something to fit your story. Not mine. No black and white epilogues from Barovia. Only shades of grey. Something punchy. Something that sets it apart from the classic good guys prevail ending.
Spell lists are in the comments. Happy to discuss anything further, and if people want it I'll write up the dinner at Ravenloft on its own, because that one's a whole post by itself. I do love Dinner Night. :3
Happy Hunting!
- LIDM
Edit: Clarity
Appendix: the full spell lists, all six loadouts
Full lists, as promised. He's a 9th level caster, so 14 prepared, slots 4 / 3 / 3 / 3 / 1. That one fifth level slot is the whole reason any of this matters.
A. ALL PURPOSE STRAHD
Cantrips: mage hand, prestidigitation, ray of frost, minor illusion 1st: shield, fog cloud, comprehend languages, sleep 2nd: detect thoughts, mirror image, misty step 3rd: counterspell, fireball, animate dead 4th: greater invisibility, polymorph, blight 5th: scrying
Sleep's on there and it's nearly useless against a mid level party. He prepares it anyway, because it's devastating against villagers, and villagers are who he mostly deals with. Animate dead is upkeep, not a tactic. He casts it the way you'd mow a lawn.
B. RECON STRAHD
1st: detect magic, unseen servant, comprehend languages, illusory script 2nd: invisibility, locate object, detect thoughts 3rd: clairvoyance, sending, nondetection 4th: arcane eye, locate creature, Mordenkainen's private sanctum 5th: pick one. Scrying / Rary's telepathic bond / contact other plane
Scrying goes off a stolen Vistani token, which is why he doesn't need to beat their saves. Rary's is for a night when several things are happening at once. Contact other plane once, ever, and let them find out much later what he asked.
C. SOCIAL STRAHD
1st: shield, charm person, expeditious retreat, silent image 2nd: misty step, mirror image, suggestion 3rd: counterspell, dispel magic, nondetection 4th: dimension door, greater invisibility, Otiluke's resilient sphere 5th: wall of force
Resilient sphere is the whole key of this loadout. Nobody died. Somebody got hamster balled.
D. WARLORD STRAHD
1st: shield, magic missile, fog cloud, sleep 2nd: mirror image, misty step, darkness 3rd: counterspell, fireball, fear 4th: greater invisibility, blight, polymorph 5th: pick one. Animate objects / cloudkill / wall of force
Fear is a 30 foot cone against a party that's finally got him cornered, and everybody who fails drops what they're holding and runs. Against a cornering party that's the entire fight.
E. VASILI VON HOLTZ AKA UNDERCOVER BROTHER
1st: disguise self, charm person, comprehend languages, shield 2nd: alter self, Nystul's magic aura, suggestion 3rd: nondetection, sending, dispel magic 4th: charm monster, hallucinatory terrain, Otiluke's resilient sphere 5th: pick one. Modify memory / seeming / mislead / dominate person
And four hundred years means Vasili isn't the only identity he's got. He's seeded them across Barovia for generations, families who have known the von Holtzes forever. If your party investigates him properly they should find a real paper trail, which is a lot worse than finding nothing, because he wrote it a century in advance. :D
F. THE ANSWER, for when they've got the Sunsword
1st: shield, fog cloud, expeditious retreat, silent image 2nd: darkness, misty step, mirror image 3rd: counterspell, dispel magic, fear 4th: greater invisibility, dimension door, polymorph 5th: telekinesis
Telekinesis on a worn or carried object is a contested check, his casting ability against the wielder's Strength. Win it and the Sunsword leaves the paladin/bladesinger/sorlock's hands and lands thirty feet away near Strahd. No damage, no save or die.
Note!
I've used this one multiple times: it usually doesn't work for me. The guy holding that sword is usually strong. That's just how it played out at my table, other people might be able to yoink it. And you only get the one shot, then you have to pivot to "doing" something else.
\- LIDM
EDIT: I forgot a really important point that I wanted to make and even after reading it a few times and checking over everything, I still left it out. On spells, just remember that he can ritual cast anything that he knows. When you have these loadouts also keep a list of all the ritual spells because there's a lot of shenanigans to be had!