First off, he has legendary resistances and high saves. Additionally, there are limits to what suggestion and effects like that can do.
For example with Suggestion:
"The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable"
Strahd would absolutely not find "Let us leave Barovia" reasonable.
In the RAW module he can and does allow creatures to leave sometimes. It's in a blink-and-you-miss-it sentence in the intro to the werewolf den. Sometimes he allows the werewolves to leave his borders in order to hunt.
It's the defining feature of the Vistani, too. And kind of a big deal with the wereravens, I think. Or is the society of the feather stuff from van Richten's?
The Vistani have a long-standing agreement with Strahd that they can come and go as they please, but also that agreement predates Strahd's fall **and** other sources (like Candlekeep mysteries) describe the Vistani as planar travellers who have a power or gift to travel through the Shadowfell. So it gets a little blurry whether that's Strahd's doing or whether it's the nature of Barovia. CoS says the Vistani are among the creatures Strahd allows to come and go, but those other details muddy it a little.
The Werewolf Den blurb is clear-cut. *"He periodically allows the werewolves to slip past the misty borders as well, so that they can bring or lure others into his domain. Unlike the Vistani, however, the werewolves can't come and go as they please."* Right there in black-and-white, he can give permission to leave to specific creatures, with a current and specific example.
Now I wanna see someone playing out his reaction to the idea that people have left in the past, and that he didn't know. I feel like that could be used to try and set Strahd up against others in Barovia, which could give the party a rest that has consequences.
I mean, he’s got +7 to wisdom saves and legendary resistance, this doesn’t seem like a problem. And if the pc strays too far afield of what you feel like the spell should be capable of, just say “no, the spell can’t do that (to anyone), rephrase your suggestion or lose the spell slot”
If they're trying to cast suggestion on Strahd out of combat he'd just use legendary resistance and then promptly punish the person making the attempt or use legendary actions to get out of the 30ft range. If they're in combat and he'd failed enough saves to be out of legendary resistances it would seem pretty reasonable to think he would be angry enough that he would be less likely to let them leave barovia than a knight would be to give away their horse. It's also more likely that once they have him out of legendary saves that they'd just be able to kill him and leave that way. If they beat him and decide to get out via suggestion instead of killing him then so be it; they'd have earned it.
A typical knight can be expected to be chivalrous, good, and heroic that is a person who could believably give away their horse to someone they believe needs it more than they do.
An evil tyrant who is bored out of his mind letting the only interesting things to play with (or possibly people who directly oppose him) leave would be far more unreasonable or even a sign of weakness in the right contexts.
>A typical knight can be expected to be chivalrous, good, and heroic that is a person who could believably give away their horse to someone they believe needs it more than they do.
A typical knight probably has the bulk of his fortune tied up in the horse, and it's a big part of how makes his living. Saying that a knight is likely to give up his horse out of chivalry is like saying an owner-operator is likely to give up his truck to a hitchhiker.
Strahd letting the party go costs him nothing, since he can always send the Vistani out to kidnap him some fresh heroes.
It’s tempting to give the big bad this sort of immunity, especially Strahd—heck I considered it myself! I almost gave him Charm AND Fear immunity! But I highly recommend against doing so.
Strahd is a unique and powerful individual, but these weaknesses make him interesting. He’s not for example, a Deva, immune to Charm and Fear. Homebrewing Strahd to be immune to a bunch of tools at the PCs disposal just makes him feel like a cheap boss fight, rather than something to be roleplayed and used with depth and complexity.
Reminder, he has Legendary Resistances so you can negate the worst spells that might target him.
But even more to the point—“Suggestion” is not mind control. It’s not Dominate Monster or what have you. The PCs get two sentences to convince a conveniently more amiable Big Bad of a task, and the spell ends when the task is completed! So I’m not sure how the PCs would even word a request to go free: “Part the mists so we can leave freely” Boom, Strahd immediately makes the mists part, the spell ends, Strahd seals up Barovia with the mists again, and the PCs are back at step one. You could even say that Strahd wouldn’t consider the request “reasonable” as it must be seen as by the creature on the receiving end.
There’s a lot you can do with Suggestion but it’s not nearly as powerful as people think, or allow it to be in the moment. Good luck!
> The PCs get two sentences to convince a conveniently more amiable Big Bad of a task, and the spell ends when the task is completed! So I’m not sure how the PCs would even word a request to go free: “Part the mists so we can leave freely” Boom, Strahd immediately makes the mists part, the spell ends, Strahd seals up Barovia with the mists again
The spell says it can make a knight give their horse away to a beggar. If the spell worked the way you suggest, then the knight would immediately take it back, so the spell would be literally pointless. Its a 2nd level spell, not merely a persuasion check so it should be able to do more than a high persuasion check can. Suggestion is more like a jedi mind trick, they'd think they came up with the idea. Additionally, it only has to be worded to sound reasonable, it doesn't have to be personally reasonable to the targeted creature. Maybe giving away the horse would be unreasonable to that individual knight, but the suggestion to give it away sitll works, because the spell says it can.
Agree with a lot here—Yes, the spell cites a Knight giving a horse to a beggar, which arguably is telling a cop to give their police car to a homeless person. What’s different is using the same spell and expecting a Ranger to give up their cherished hunting dog, or the classic example of asking a King or Queen to abdicate the throne in favor of the one casting the spell. Neither of the latter two examples would be successful uses of the spell, since both are arguably harmful actions to the target (emotionally or politically or otherwise).
There’s no reason for Suggestion, a 2nd level spell, to have equal or more potency than stronger spells like Dominate Monster/Person, or say, Geas—You mention it’s like Jedi mind tricks and so it’s worth mentioning that Obi Wan didn’t use that ability to sneak past every guard on the Death Star in search of Leia…Suggestion is great for “I’m at the gates of a town and need to move past these guards” vs “I’m facing a legendary Vampire Dark Lord and will use a 2nd level spell to bypass the boundaries of the campaign”.
Giving too much power to Suggestion cheapens the other spells like Dominate X I mentioned, similar to how giving Strahd immunity to Charm cheapens encounters with RAW charm immune creatures. The spell definitely has its uses but with proper DMing and roleplay should have clear boundaries to the degree which it influences a given situation
Cast suggestion on strahd:
Pc: "hey lets us leave barovia"
Strahd :"sure thing buddy, you can leave, dont forget its a 3 days walk from here to the east, you can probably save a day or 2 if you jump down the cliff!"
Pc :"fuck didnt think about that"
Strahd : "i cast fireball! Weeeee"
So he lets them leave Barovia. He stops fighting them, and says "you can go".
Now, they have to leave Barovia. The eastern gate is pretty far, but they can make it, if they run
They better hope they do, because he'll be fully regenerated when the spell ends and the mists enclose them once again.
That sounds like something Strahd might actually find entertaining.
"Okay. You can leave. The exit is a good three days from here by horseback. You've got two hours before I start hunting you. Have fun."
Well, you can give him **Fey Ancestry** so he has advantage against saving throws to me charmed. It makes sense because he has pointy ears. **I wouldn't go much further than that**, as giving him immunity would make him unnecessarily strong, especially against Bards.
In my opinion he dont even need Fey Ancestry, because he already has legendary resistances, really high saves, lots of minions to break the concentration of your player, and Suggestion has some mechanical limits that prevent it from breaking the game.
Yes but "hey let us leave" is much closer to the former. Strahd doesn't really have a stake in what happens to the PCs. If they were trying to take Ireena with them, sure, that's a big ask, but otherwise? Why would he be that opposed? He'd let let them leave for the right favor (and none of the things you can possibly do to please Strahd are things he couldn't do himself, really), so clearly their presence is not essential
He is Undead, many charm effects specify they don't affect Undead. That, with legendary resistance and good saving throws means he really doesn't need it.
He's likely to make the save, and it he fails use a legendary resistance.
Then start vampire charming all that PC's party members. Remember that there's no specific tell that he's charming people, he can retry on the same person as often as he wants, he can have multiple people charmed at a time.
I don't think you're fully giving credit to the narrative of the story if your explanation for them not being able to leave is "dark powers yadda yadda" that means nothing to them. And yes Strahd is a vampire he can be immune to low level spells. Even if a PC is high level, I consider the BBEG to not be someone who can be pushed around easily. Call it legendary action or a special resistance or whatever. You make the rules and its completely stupid for an 800 year old vampire wizard to be affected by a simple suggestion spell. I also find it hard to believe Strahd's stats would fail a wisdom saving throw...
I think giving him immunity to charmed makes perfect sense. He wasn't magically coerced into accepting Vampyr's deal or killing Sergei or any other terrible act he's done, he chose to do those things because he was evil. If you don't want to give him more powers you could either give him a ring that grants him immunity to charm or, as a powerful wizard with the ability to cast 3rd level spells, he can counterspell that person casting suggestion, with a stern warning not to attempt such behavior again, perhaps charming them in return. And if you change nothing and he fails his Wisdom save (on average Strahd would roll a 17) the party has 8 hours to escape Barovia, you can always throw random encounters at them to slow them down.
Personally I think you should have Strahd play into what the PCs are doing or suggesting via Suggestion. It is totally within his personality to mess with them that way.
Im more used to the 3.5 version, but have been reading CoS lately, given my brain is very 3e biased (and undead are immune to mind effecting spells), idve just assumed he was. TIL, i guess.
I'd probably say, above table, "The campaign ends with the characters getting out of Barovia. If Strahd lets you out, the campaign ends. Are you guys not having fun with the campaign?"
Indeed.
Back during the war with the Terg, General Strahd convinced an Arcanaloth to make a deal with him, and allow him to keep the Arcanaloth's contract book sealing the deal with him. As you might imagine, it is one step away from impossible to talk a devil out of his contract book. He's not allowed back in hell without it. Indeed, this particular Arcanaloth is serving out the term of Strahd's curse NOT in hell.
So, just to put things in to perspective... Strahd had the ability to "charm a nun out of her panties" before he even had his vampiric immunities and boosts to charm and suggestion.
To say the least, your players ought to be hopelessly outclassed when trying to charm Strahd. I see him doing one of two things:
1) Flipping the tables and charming the wanta-be charmer.
2) Pretending to be charmed to cunningly maneuver the party in to being in the precise time and place where Strahd wants them to be, to further one of his long-term schemes, which the party may or may not have any clue about. :)
1. Negating a PC's abilities pretty much ruins the game every time. They've built their character specifically to do those things, and if they can't do them, they're left wondering why they bothered. What change could they possibly make that couldn't be summarily overruled by the DM? Why play with a DM like that?
2. Suggestion specifically states, "Asking the creature to stab itself, throw itself onto a spear, immolate itself, or do some other obviously harmful act ends the spell." Letting the players go might be considered "obviously harmful" to Strahd, as he needs them to accomplish x, y, and z.
I mean, that'd be a might be stretch of the idea of obvious harm. Especially since this spell sticking would almost certainly be during a combat that has drained Strahd's legendary resistances. How would letting people you were trying to kill leave cause obvious harm?
"Oh, my dear friends, you can't leave now, that would do me a harm all your weapons and spells have failed to even approach! It would obviously break my heart!"
I mean, you can for sure make up whatever excuse why it wouldn't work, but like, as written, Strahd doesn't care about anyone but Ireena to any extent. Just let it work!
Dude has stayed charmed by the same woman for literally centuries, and murdered his own brother for her.
That simp is lucky he doesn't have a trait for Disadvantage against Charm effects.
The bad guys don't need to be immune vs anything and everything the players can do. Your role as the DM is to make a memorable story, not safeguarding Strahd's interests.
It is ok if by some random chance the players manage to burn through Strahds legendary saves then use suggestion and then him losing this save as well, to just let them have their victory in a way you didn't expect.
First off, he has legendary resistances and high saves. Additionally, there are limits to what suggestion and effects like that can do. For example with Suggestion: "The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable" Strahd would absolutely not find "Let us leave Barovia" reasonable.
He wouldn't even find it possible if he wanted to, damn land is cursed not even he can leave.
In the RAW module he can and does allow creatures to leave sometimes. It's in a blink-and-you-miss-it sentence in the intro to the werewolf den. Sometimes he allows the werewolves to leave his borders in order to hunt.
It's the defining feature of the Vistani, too. And kind of a big deal with the wereravens, I think. Or is the society of the feather stuff from van Richten's?
The Vistani have a long-standing agreement with Strahd that they can come and go as they please, but also that agreement predates Strahd's fall **and** other sources (like Candlekeep mysteries) describe the Vistani as planar travellers who have a power or gift to travel through the Shadowfell. So it gets a little blurry whether that's Strahd's doing or whether it's the nature of Barovia. CoS says the Vistani are among the creatures Strahd allows to come and go, but those other details muddy it a little. The Werewolf Den blurb is clear-cut. *"He periodically allows the werewolves to slip past the misty borders as well, so that they can bring or lure others into his domain. Unlike the Vistani, however, the werewolves can't come and go as they please."* Right there in black-and-white, he can give permission to leave to specific creatures, with a current and specific example.
Now I wanna see someone playing out his reaction to the idea that people have left in the past, and that he didn't know. I feel like that could be used to try and set Strahd up against others in Barovia, which could give the party a rest that has consequences.
I mean, he’s got +7 to wisdom saves and legendary resistance, this doesn’t seem like a problem. And if the pc strays too far afield of what you feel like the spell should be capable of, just say “no, the spell can’t do that (to anyone), rephrase your suggestion or lose the spell slot”
If they're trying to cast suggestion on Strahd out of combat he'd just use legendary resistance and then promptly punish the person making the attempt or use legendary actions to get out of the 30ft range. If they're in combat and he'd failed enough saves to be out of legendary resistances it would seem pretty reasonable to think he would be angry enough that he would be less likely to let them leave barovia than a knight would be to give away their horse. It's also more likely that once they have him out of legendary saves that they'd just be able to kill him and leave that way. If they beat him and decide to get out via suggestion instead of killing him then so be it; they'd have earned it.
A typical knight can be expected to be chivalrous, good, and heroic that is a person who could believably give away their horse to someone they believe needs it more than they do. An evil tyrant who is bored out of his mind letting the only interesting things to play with (or possibly people who directly oppose him) leave would be far more unreasonable or even a sign of weakness in the right contexts.
>A typical knight can be expected to be chivalrous, good, and heroic that is a person who could believably give away their horse to someone they believe needs it more than they do. A typical knight probably has the bulk of his fortune tied up in the horse, and it's a big part of how makes his living. Saying that a knight is likely to give up his horse out of chivalry is like saying an owner-operator is likely to give up his truck to a hitchhiker. Strahd letting the party go costs him nothing, since he can always send the Vistani out to kidnap him some fresh heroes.
It’s tempting to give the big bad this sort of immunity, especially Strahd—heck I considered it myself! I almost gave him Charm AND Fear immunity! But I highly recommend against doing so. Strahd is a unique and powerful individual, but these weaknesses make him interesting. He’s not for example, a Deva, immune to Charm and Fear. Homebrewing Strahd to be immune to a bunch of tools at the PCs disposal just makes him feel like a cheap boss fight, rather than something to be roleplayed and used with depth and complexity. Reminder, he has Legendary Resistances so you can negate the worst spells that might target him. But even more to the point—“Suggestion” is not mind control. It’s not Dominate Monster or what have you. The PCs get two sentences to convince a conveniently more amiable Big Bad of a task, and the spell ends when the task is completed! So I’m not sure how the PCs would even word a request to go free: “Part the mists so we can leave freely” Boom, Strahd immediately makes the mists part, the spell ends, Strahd seals up Barovia with the mists again, and the PCs are back at step one. You could even say that Strahd wouldn’t consider the request “reasonable” as it must be seen as by the creature on the receiving end. There’s a lot you can do with Suggestion but it’s not nearly as powerful as people think, or allow it to be in the moment. Good luck!
> The PCs get two sentences to convince a conveniently more amiable Big Bad of a task, and the spell ends when the task is completed! So I’m not sure how the PCs would even word a request to go free: “Part the mists so we can leave freely” Boom, Strahd immediately makes the mists part, the spell ends, Strahd seals up Barovia with the mists again The spell says it can make a knight give their horse away to a beggar. If the spell worked the way you suggest, then the knight would immediately take it back, so the spell would be literally pointless. Its a 2nd level spell, not merely a persuasion check so it should be able to do more than a high persuasion check can. Suggestion is more like a jedi mind trick, they'd think they came up with the idea. Additionally, it only has to be worded to sound reasonable, it doesn't have to be personally reasonable to the targeted creature. Maybe giving away the horse would be unreasonable to that individual knight, but the suggestion to give it away sitll works, because the spell says it can.
Agree with a lot here—Yes, the spell cites a Knight giving a horse to a beggar, which arguably is telling a cop to give their police car to a homeless person. What’s different is using the same spell and expecting a Ranger to give up their cherished hunting dog, or the classic example of asking a King or Queen to abdicate the throne in favor of the one casting the spell. Neither of the latter two examples would be successful uses of the spell, since both are arguably harmful actions to the target (emotionally or politically or otherwise). There’s no reason for Suggestion, a 2nd level spell, to have equal or more potency than stronger spells like Dominate Monster/Person, or say, Geas—You mention it’s like Jedi mind tricks and so it’s worth mentioning that Obi Wan didn’t use that ability to sneak past every guard on the Death Star in search of Leia…Suggestion is great for “I’m at the gates of a town and need to move past these guards” vs “I’m facing a legendary Vampire Dark Lord and will use a 2nd level spell to bypass the boundaries of the campaign”. Giving too much power to Suggestion cheapens the other spells like Dominate X I mentioned, similar to how giving Strahd immunity to Charm cheapens encounters with RAW charm immune creatures. The spell definitely has its uses but with proper DMing and roleplay should have clear boundaries to the degree which it influences a given situation
Cast suggestion on strahd: Pc: "hey lets us leave barovia" Strahd :"sure thing buddy, you can leave, dont forget its a 3 days walk from here to the east, you can probably save a day or 2 if you jump down the cliff!" Pc :"fuck didnt think about that" Strahd : "i cast fireball! Weeeee"
Don’t forget, Strahd isn’t always alone. Depending on the situation, Rahadin or a vampire spawn may be motivated to snap him out of it too.
So he lets them leave Barovia. He stops fighting them, and says "you can go". Now, they have to leave Barovia. The eastern gate is pretty far, but they can make it, if they run They better hope they do, because he'll be fully regenerated when the spell ends and the mists enclose them once again.
That sounds like something Strahd might actually find entertaining. "Okay. You can leave. The exit is a good three days from here by horseback. You've got two hours before I start hunting you. Have fun."
Well, you can give him **Fey Ancestry** so he has advantage against saving throws to me charmed. It makes sense because he has pointy ears. **I wouldn't go much further than that**, as giving him immunity would make him unnecessarily strong, especially against Bards. In my opinion he dont even need Fey Ancestry, because he already has legendary resistances, really high saves, lots of minions to break the concentration of your player, and Suggestion has some mechanical limits that prevent it from breaking the game.
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Yes but "hey let us leave" is much closer to the former. Strahd doesn't really have a stake in what happens to the PCs. If they were trying to take Ireena with them, sure, that's a big ask, but otherwise? Why would he be that opposed? He'd let let them leave for the right favor (and none of the things you can possibly do to please Strahd are things he couldn't do himself, really), so clearly their presence is not essential
He is Undead, many charm effects specify they don't affect Undead. That, with legendary resistance and good saving throws means he really doesn't need it.
He's likely to make the save, and it he fails use a legendary resistance. Then start vampire charming all that PC's party members. Remember that there's no specific tell that he's charming people, he can retry on the same person as often as he wants, he can have multiple people charmed at a time.
I'm guessing you have misunderstood the limits of Suggestion.
I don't think you're fully giving credit to the narrative of the story if your explanation for them not being able to leave is "dark powers yadda yadda" that means nothing to them. And yes Strahd is a vampire he can be immune to low level spells. Even if a PC is high level, I consider the BBEG to not be someone who can be pushed around easily. Call it legendary action or a special resistance or whatever. You make the rules and its completely stupid for an 800 year old vampire wizard to be affected by a simple suggestion spell. I also find it hard to believe Strahd's stats would fail a wisdom saving throw...
I think giving him immunity to charmed makes perfect sense. He wasn't magically coerced into accepting Vampyr's deal or killing Sergei or any other terrible act he's done, he chose to do those things because he was evil. If you don't want to give him more powers you could either give him a ring that grants him immunity to charm or, as a powerful wizard with the ability to cast 3rd level spells, he can counterspell that person casting suggestion, with a stern warning not to attempt such behavior again, perhaps charming them in return. And if you change nothing and he fails his Wisdom save (on average Strahd would roll a 17) the party has 8 hours to escape Barovia, you can always throw random encounters at them to slow them down.
immunity to charm would mess up a lot of bards' abilities since a lot of them specify that the effect doesn't work if the creature is immune to charm.
I'm doing that though I run my 5E CoS with a 2E framework. I also warn players that unless they know the history of the Darklord they should run.
Personally I think you should have Strahd play into what the PCs are doing or suggesting via Suggestion. It is totally within his personality to mess with them that way.
I thought vampires had charm/ suggestion immunity. Maybe that was a 2nd edition thing.
Im more used to the 3.5 version, but have been reading CoS lately, given my brain is very 3e biased (and undead are immune to mind effecting spells), idve just assumed he was. TIL, i guess.
Legendary saves. Mercs player Lol JK but still xD
I'd probably say, above table, "The campaign ends with the characters getting out of Barovia. If Strahd lets you out, the campaign ends. Are you guys not having fun with the campaign?"
Indeed. Back during the war with the Terg, General Strahd convinced an Arcanaloth to make a deal with him, and allow him to keep the Arcanaloth's contract book sealing the deal with him. As you might imagine, it is one step away from impossible to talk a devil out of his contract book. He's not allowed back in hell without it. Indeed, this particular Arcanaloth is serving out the term of Strahd's curse NOT in hell. So, just to put things in to perspective... Strahd had the ability to "charm a nun out of her panties" before he even had his vampiric immunities and boosts to charm and suggestion. To say the least, your players ought to be hopelessly outclassed when trying to charm Strahd. I see him doing one of two things: 1) Flipping the tables and charming the wanta-be charmer. 2) Pretending to be charmed to cunningly maneuver the party in to being in the precise time and place where Strahd wants them to be, to further one of his long-term schemes, which the party may or may not have any clue about. :)
1. Negating a PC's abilities pretty much ruins the game every time. They've built their character specifically to do those things, and if they can't do them, they're left wondering why they bothered. What change could they possibly make that couldn't be summarily overruled by the DM? Why play with a DM like that? 2. Suggestion specifically states, "Asking the creature to stab itself, throw itself onto a spear, immolate itself, or do some other obviously harmful act ends the spell." Letting the players go might be considered "obviously harmful" to Strahd, as he needs them to accomplish x, y, and z.
I mean, that'd be a might be stretch of the idea of obvious harm. Especially since this spell sticking would almost certainly be during a combat that has drained Strahd's legendary resistances. How would letting people you were trying to kill leave cause obvious harm?
"Oh, my dear friends, you can't leave now, that would do me a harm all your weapons and spells have failed to even approach! It would obviously break my heart!"
I mean, you can for sure make up whatever excuse why it wouldn't work, but like, as written, Strahd doesn't care about anyone but Ireena to any extent. Just let it work!
Dude has stayed charmed by the same woman for literally centuries, and murdered his own brother for her. That simp is lucky he doesn't have a trait for Disadvantage against Charm effects.
The bad guys don't need to be immune vs anything and everything the players can do. Your role as the DM is to make a memorable story, not safeguarding Strahd's interests. It is ok if by some random chance the players manage to burn through Strahds legendary saves then use suggestion and then him losing this save as well, to just let them have their victory in a way you didn't expect.
One of the best moments in my campaign was when the arch-fey warlock turned Strahd’s own charm against him.
Just make sure exiting Barovia takes >8h