Old Bonegrinder Guide | Running Curse of Strahd 5e
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- Hell hath no fury like a night hag who can't sell Dream Pastries.
💀 See my new book and get a FREE 5e horror adventure at 5ehorror.com/
🏆 Get the WRITTEN version on Patreon! / lunchbreakheroes
⚔ Sign up to get a FREE copy of RAISING THE STAKES: lunchbreakheroes.com/
🗣 Join the official LBH Discord! / discord
This guide will lay out some tips for you to provide
a memorable experience for your players by lowering the chance of a total party kill (TPK), fleshing out the surrounding area, and the characters within the mill. It will also provide you with an alternative to the theme of child murder that is within the chapter, whilst still maintaining the module’s level of darkness.
#rpg #dungeonsanddragons #dnd
~-~~-~~~-~~-~
Be sure to watch: "Do NOT run Curse of Strahd without watching this guide!"
• Do NOT run Curse of St...
~-~~-~~~-~~-~ 
Игры
Never thought the kids would be the less dark option. The suggestion at the end is quite horrifying indeed.
I know, right?! I wish I'd known about it earlier.
Remove child trafficking and insert trauma based mind control. Love it. That’s the great thing about D&D, it’s basically a table top exercise with the GM as the facilitator. Giving out high stake scenarios in which the participants worth through.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm sticking with eating kids. The alternative feels like it's too dark. 😂
In this case, I kept the kids because of something the players did back in Barovia. I used the zombie infection quest involving Strahds zombies in the well. After the group questions the Neizekovs both Dolan and Anya became infected and were killed by the party. With the kids having nowhere to go, the group decided to take them to the 'kind old lady' selling delicious pastries in the square. She gladly took them in saying she can find a nice home for them. About 2 sessions later, the group ended up at the old mill bought some pastries to feed their addiction. Unbeknownst to any of them, their pastries had an air of familiarity to them. Adding on the additional kids they 'saved' from Villaki and the party got their savory reward. It wasn't until 10 sessions later when the discovered the truth about their actions after Strahd revealed it to them during the dinner scene
holy SHIT thats messed up
I hope my players do something similar so they can experience that scenario firsthand lol
I... there are no words.
There is actually a whole section in Chapter 1 of Volo's Guide to Monsters about hags. I recommend everyone who wants to run this encounter - and you should do it, especially with these changes - to read this Chapter as it describes the different hag types more in depth, how different covens work, gives you regional and lair effects, and so much additional flavor. The whole book is a must buy anyway ;)
Counterpoint to 'Morgantha and her daughters are selling pastries so their selling area should be neat": The Old Mill is *really* far away from the village of Barovia, and the roads are dangerous. That's without mentioning that the villagers would only know where the 'pie lady' operates from if they're told - I wouldn't expect random villagers to venture out of the relative safety of their village to go find the woman who sells the pastries, they'd just wait for her. Unless they're really being hit hard by that withdrawal, in which case I'd expect them to turn up as the random encounter of "corpse torn by wolves". In my own mind, the hags have no reason to tell the villagers where their bakery is. After all, what if someone shows up when they're in the middle of um... preparing the filling for the pies?
This is my personal reasoning for it, at least, but physically I'd leave the inside of the mill as it is.
recommendation: anyone who has read the Death House starter knows that Old Bonegrinder originally belonged to the Durst family (the deed found in the chest inside the secret room accessed through the library is to the mill) so you can formally acknowledge it as that. Characters who have paid attention/taken good notes will make the connection and some will be wary but not necessarily hostile off the rip
The Old Durst Mill. I like it!
We actually decided to go take a look at the mill exactly because we found that deed. Like "Well, looks like we own a windmill now. Might as well go take a look at it."
We never actually expected there to be anything evil going on at the mill, though. Like, the Dursts had their little cult inside their house and the mill is miles away, why would they put anything there? We also were given absolutely no reason to suspect the pie lady was evil nor that she was connected to the mill, so it was just an old mill to us until proven otherwise.
That idea at the end.... gruesome, genius, I'll use that!!!
Just when you think killing and eating children is as bad as it gets... Reddit user JadeRavens surprises us all.
I moved the old Durst mill closer to Vallaki. The players find the deed to the mill at Durst manor. When the players arrive at the mill a spell is in a effect that makes the mill look in working order and it is being ran by a sweet little old lady who goes on to offer them some fresh pies. Once the player arrive at Vallaki they will hear stories from the town's children of children going missing and the parents making excuses for their absence but the children are not buying it. With one of the children taking it upon themself to investigate. When the child goes missing the players can ask around and find that the boy was last seen spying on Granny M and her car. It is by this point that the players characters should start feeling the negative effects of the pies and head for the mill.
Thanks for this, my players attempted this last week at level 3 lmao. Let's just say, a swift save by Strahd saved the day. After all, he couldnt have his playthings discarded by hags before he has had a chance to play lol
Absolutely! Those are his toys, and damned if he's gonna share!
I really like this idea and will be using it. I've yet to run the campaign but I'm planning to. I love the idea of a Deus Ex Machina but it's Strahd rushing in and saving the party because he wants to see what they are capable of, or he knows what other factions are up to (for example with the hags, he teleports in and drops their eye on the floor and belittles them a bit and talks them into letting the party go). Maybe this interference can only happen an X number of times per campaign decided on a dice roll, or whatever. Maybe it can only happen between a certain level range or story or progression. It really shows a power play by Strahd, as well adding some great RP moments and if done right can really add a lot to the world building.
Thats fantastic dark fantasy. I’d even have the guy tell a bunch of horrendous Dad jokes about his situation.
“It’s not every father that can claim he IS the bread and the breadwinner!”
“My daughters share my impeccable taste!”
“She once cut off my toe to make a pie, I hated having to eat of it. I called it a pie-hate-toe.”
“All parents love to feed their children.”
“I don’t have to worry about losing weight, being a father keeps it off.”
This is going to be fun.
I was thinking more the three witches from Hocus Pocus only with fewer laughs. Great video.
I'm sure @Chrisperkins would applaud you sir
Im running this module in January, these videos are super helpful! It'll be awesome to see your channel grow! My only regret is not having your help through the whole adventure!
While I can't co-DM with you, this is hardly the end of the series. 😁 Plus you can always hit me up on Reddit or Discord if you have questions!
Night hags actually do have environmental effects in volo's guide but I like the idea of the subtle stuff
I'm running this with some inspiration from your Raising the Stakes, but with a few twists of my own.
My party just went to the mill, and barely made it out alive. I made Offalia and Bella's false appearance to be like ditsy bimbo valley girls. But the party knew what they were because the cleric cast Detect Good and Evil on Morgantha, and Speak with Animals on the raven outside the mill (Muriel). My party barely survived, but the hags remain.
They escaped by setting fire to the mill, grabbing the two children from the crates, jumping out the windows, running around the back, and riding off in their carriage. They only survived because they got Bella down to 6 HP so she went ethereal and retreated shortly after Morgantha arrived. So the coven was incomplete.
Oh, how did the players get a carriage? It was gifted to them by Vasili after they rescued him on the side of the road and escorted him to Barovia Village. But what good is his carriage without a beast to pull it? So Vasili trusted them with his two adorable mastiff hounds, Boris and Natasha, with instructions to deliver them upon arrival in Vallaki to Lady Wachter for safe housing until he can return. But they arrived after sundown, the party boarded Vasili's dogs in the stables at Blue Water Inn until the next morning. You know, the one inhabited by dozens of "ravens," Rictavio's horse... What could possibly go wrong?
I love this chapter. I actually took this chapter as is, and dropped in in another game, i left the names the same; the one change i made was make all the hags just weird old human crones, and the player murdered them by assuming they were hags. I wouldn’t do that with every group, but it worked for mine.
My group's Paladin was able to turn all the hags. (I rolled very badly on the Hags wisdom saves) They fled into the ethereal plane and the group torched the windmill and proceeded to Vallaki. Now the Hags have a personal interest in making them suffer, besides the nightmare hauntings what can I do to continue to torment the players. The Hags are pissed.
Sweet old ladies keep turning up and accusing the party of doing terrible things.
Was literally just looking for a way to get my party to Ravenloft early on to poke around, I’m so going to aim for a TPK here at our next session.
Very helpful stuff, thank you. In the game I'm running, the players caught Morgantha taking a child as payment in the Village of Barovia right away -- and they killed her. So now, it will be interesting running the daughters at the Old Bonegrinder .... planning to play it off like they don't know Morgantha was killed.
"Old Bonechrinder" sounds indeed like a windmill who doesn't inforce ANY of the safety restrictions expected of a mill.
And why do I sense a reference to Simple-Rick-Cookies somewhere in here? ;)
Yeah, just played this last night, we were mostly level 4. Our DM put all 3 hags in the mill at the start, so the coven was already complete. We were only saved by the spell silence.
You are such a cool guy. I remember the book "Throught the Mist" by Christie Golden. That moment, when you described the situation with Strahd and the other Vampire. Kudos!
I'm planning to play up the themes of the Fey quest. In my game, the hags plant kids in a sickly garden, where they lay in slumber until their bodies rot. The hags harvest their dreams and bake them into highly addictive Dream Cakes. The party might not even notice the kids in the garden on their first walk through.
I think the hags justify it by saying, hey, at least these kids have a fun, gentle time before their death. would you rather them grow up in this miserable place?
Another solid video. I used all your advice in Barovia and my PCs had a ton of fun lots of memorable scenes. Keep on with these excellent videos!
Thank you! Absolutely more to come, and more written material as well!
Great tips, man! Thanks!
Geas = GEESE, I believe is the proper way to say it, but don't quote me.
I'm currently running a 3.5 Semi-Homebrew CoS campaign, but I've upped the level to 8th, so I can throw some truly terrifying stuff in there. I really appreciate the content as it's very helpful to me, so thank you! Cheers!
That's correct, especially for the Scottish Celts--from which the word has usually been transcribed "Geis". The Irish Gaelic "Geas", is a little more finicky (In classic Iris fashion); it's a bit like, "Gee'ehs". Hard "G", and the it's kinda like one and a half syllable. If I recall correctly. I had a discussion about it with my English professor back in college; he specialized in Celtic and Gaelic mythology and such. My memory on the Scottish variant is stronger than on the Irish. And it's a hard "G" and hard "S"--"Ice" not "Cheese"--the ancients Scots were a very hard people.
Your advices are simply priceless!! thank you!
I LOVE the story without the kids. Frankley I was a little worried about having the children in my game because I'm not sure how some of my players would react and it's not something I really want to delve into (my own personal limit) but I absolutely love this twisted alternative!
Ok so despite my attempts to railroad them to head straight to Vallaki (Ireena: We must hurry, they don’t permit entry to Vallaki after dark etc), my gung ho roustabouts just had to check out the windmill. I described to them ‘Old Bonegrinder’ and the standing stones close by, half the party went to the stones, half to see what that raven was cawing about.
The Druid spoke to the Raven who, repeated ‘Danger’ and ‘Beware nightfall’, but they continued inside where they saw the familiar face of the old Grammie who was welcoming, the smell of cinnamon and baking a strange contrast to the disheveled loft littered with bones. Almost mid description, the tiefling monk declared ‘She’s evil. I attack.’
‘This will not end well’ was my thought. She revealed her true form, screamed for her daughters and let loose the demon in the barrel. With their healer, Ireena and main dps checking out stone henge, the two rogues, monk and Druid (everyone’s lvl4) went hardcore.
To summarise, one of the daughters was slain, Morgantha and her other daughter escaped invisibly, and one of the two rogues bit the dust dead dead.
I can’t wait for the hag’s revenge, which will of course come when the party is at it’s most vulnerable.
Love some of your delicious spin on how to make Morgantha’s revenge a true showstopper.
I should also point out that I ran this prior to watching your excellent video.
You can always count on at least one player to go off half cocked due to an overabundance of foolhardy caution.
I think I'll use the baker idea but no daughters. He was competition that they wanted to do away with. Instead of killing him, he became a secret ingredient. I think I will drop some hints that a baker Valentin went missing quite some time ago in Barovia and the sisters bakery became the only source of excellent pastries. Oddly enough everyone in town says it's one of the only respites of living in Barovia is having one of their famous pies. I love the idea of the deed too I'm seeing in comments. My group did Durst Manor so they would still have the deed. Should be hilarious to see how that plays out.
Very nice ideas. For my players, I have adjusted this too, because I instantly thought "wait, 3 night hags as coven on 4 level 3 player? Hello, TPK"
I run the hags as business women, I haven't taken the idea of the St Andreal's Orphanage, simply because I think Vallaki has already enough going. The enouncter was the same, only one hag there, Morgantha outside and Orphelia upstairs. The players caught on pretty quickly, that this must be a hag or something like that, the palading checked and sensed that she is a fiend and was mightily confused and nervous about that fact. Now, in my mind I thought, what would the hags want? They have a quite good consumer base in the Village of Barovia, but they never really got into Vallaki. So the hags made a business contract with the most savy PC: He gets 10 pastries to sell or give away to Vallakians, for that he can keep all the money he makes from that. Now, weather the player makes some Vallakians addicted or they try the pastries themselves is up to them. But they know something bad is going to happen, because when they made the contract, Bella pricked the player and collected some blood (the players think it's a kind of devilish contract thing, but in reality, she only uses that to scry for the PCs and use her nightmare haunting ability)
And I placed a bit of hag lore/culture in there, in my game Bella and Orphelia hate Morgantha and her bossy nature and want to get rid of her, maybe replace her with Baba Lysaga or create a new hag on their own. If the players prove useful enough, they might make another deal with them, but that is up to them.
geas
/ɡeSH/
noun
(in Irish folklore) an obligation or prohibition magically imposed on a person.
Thank you!
I love the changes you put in, combining some of your ideas with MandyMod's and other reddit users. Also, your voice is really soothing, great video!
Thank you so much Nicole!
Very helpful. Using some of these tips as my players venture here this next session. Will be broadcasting it on my youtube channel. Thanks for the help!
Glad it was helpful!
I'm so glad that I saw this. It gave me some ideas, but more than anything has reinforced that I'm on the right track that the hags would rather imprison the party and have them do their dirty work. I even homebrewed a special magic item for it:
----
Thorns/Wand of Enslavement
This artifact appears as a black thorny stem with 10 thorns on it. The Thorns can be broken off and embedded onto the body of a creature. Once embedded onto a creature, the wand’s charge capacity increases so that it is 3 per thorn attached to creature, divided by 2 and rounded up. This equates to 5 charges or for a party of 3, 6 charges or for a party of 4, and 8 charges for a party of 5. The wielder of the Wand can then spend a charge to cast the following spells on the Thorn wearers: Scrying, Message, Cold Hand, Suggestion, or Geas, on any Thorn wearer regardless of distance. The wielder of the Wand can dismiss a Thorn attached wearer at any point to free them. This process happens immediately, but it takes 1d4 hours for the Thorn to grow back on the Wand. Attempts to remove or damage the Thorn on the body of a wearer activates Cold Hand, at no Charge cost. Any attempts by Thorn wearers to harm the Wand wielder or to wield the Wand activates Harm on the wearer, at no Charge cost. If you expend the Wand's last charge, roll a d20 the moment the last charge is used. On a 12 or lower, the Wand and Thorns crumble into ashes and are destroyed. At dawn, the Wand gains 1d6 + 1 expended Charges daily at dawn. After a short rest, the Thorn forces itself into an attunement slot, and after every short or long rest, the Thorn wearers learn a new fact about how the Thorn operates.
----
It will feel as if there is no way out of the enslavement of the Thorns, but, the trick is to understand the limits of the magic item just like they do with any useful ones they get (don’t overuse the Wand of Fireballs, for instance). Morgantha knows how to properly wield the Wand, but does not keep it on herself so that her daughters might use it to discipline the occasional haughty child that tries to escape. This arrangement has worked out fine in the past since most of the Thorn wearers are children who can’t put up a physical fight. Smart players, as they come to understand more about the items attached to them, will realize that there are limits to the amount of torture the hags can dole out per day, and that there are ways around it. Some options include:
- Sneaking into the windmill and find a way to get a hold of the Wand when none of the hags wield it
- Getting them to expend all the charges, forcing the item into destruction rolls:
- Intentionally bring them haughty children in to waste the charges on.
- Brute forcing charge expenditure by being disobedient
- Getting the Wand is in the hands of her idiot daughters, they can be tricked into expending the last charge
You are on it with these
Thank you so much! I'm glad you like the videos. :-)
The problem is that Bonegrinder is a deadly encounter so you do need to put the party on guard
Oh you're so much nicer than I am.
My lvl 2 party of course, as soon as I described an old windmill in the distance, went right for it.
The hags weren't home, luckily enough
I followed this guide! Your Raising the Stakes has been a fantastic tool. I kind of worked myself into a hole though, my level 4 party foolishly decided to fight, and Morgantha just came home and they are about to get TPK'd. This isn't the problem, however Ireena is with them......
Dude, I love your videos, you have awesome ideas. Im runing my first campain and I plan to eventualy run Curse of Strahd, and I'll be sure to use your material.
On a side, it would be awesome if you had more ideas on hags and how to run them i'de love to see what u come up with.
Congrats on the chanell
Ps. Sory if I misspell anything, english is not my first lenguaje
Oooh I love the idea of the hags capturing them! My party is about to leave Barovia and I was trying to figure out the best way to not tpk them this early on should they decide to go in
aw yiss thanks mate love your video!!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Honestly i love the old bone grinder just because of the interaction with my character who is a young witch named lilly blue who is a warlock in dnd terms but in her backstory she is a witch and i asked the dm if i could see if i know one of the hags from a magic city where most of the witches and wizards lived before being destroyed the dm said roll for history check i got 18 he said i passed and i know one of the witches and to make a long story short my character ended up having a nice talk and some banter and we ended up leaving without a fight and we got what we needed and also some dream pastries
Great guide as always
Gosh, the deed is something I suppose I should have covered. I forgot all about it while writing this script!
I don't imagine the hags would be entirely friendly toward the deed holder. Perhaps they move out and then proceed to haunt the dreams of the party until the deed handed over or they're killed.
Please keep this series up! I'm a new DM and just started running Curse of Strahd as my second ever Adventure! Your videos have helped me make a lot of awesome changes and even inspired me in a direction to make my own. Thank you for these videos and keep up the good work!
Thank you! I'm glad you like it. I'm definitely not finished!
Unfortunately I had already had my players visit! They were all turned into frogs but saved by the children they had set free :)
Win/win!
@@LunchBreakHeroes you got yourself a new patreon sub!
@@DarklordofBarovia Thank you so much! Your support is very much appreciated!
That's an amazing story line!!!
I’ve taken your advice and will now be changing the old bone grinder’s name to murderblood mill
They’ll never suspect a thing!
This is awesome
So I missed this video when it first came out, which is a shame because my party is halfway through the battle with Granny as written. (Two of my players are addicted following your table) But boy have you given me some yummy morsels to mull over. The baker is genius, might tweak that a bit. Thanks, as always, for your content.
No problem! I'm glad you enjoyed the video 😁
Perkins also made them Green Hags instead of Night Hags, judging by their invisibility ability (though I don't think it was explicitly stated). At first I thought it was just the Sisters, but then Morgantha did the same thing. For my campaign, I'm keeping Morgantha as a Night Hag, but having the Sisters be Green Hags. And Morgantha is definitely not home when the party arrives-absolutely not. Great ideas here! I'm definitely going to have the Megaliths be in the midst of consecrated ground from a Hallow spell.
We had the Bonegrinder session last weekend, and my Kensei Monk got polymorphed in to a mouse TWICE and was largely made useless, but we killed two out of three of the hags. Maybe our DM will have the last hag get revenge?
So my party is just now getting to the Windmill (level 6), went to Vallaki and Wizards of Wine before coming back to the mill. One of my players is a Hexblood so he knew what Morgantha was and didn’t want to deal with them at the beginning.
I see it going downhill fast cause the party took the deed to the Mill from Durst Manor so they’re gonna try to kick out the “squatters”
"for some reason" they have thick london accents...HAH!
One interesting modification I saw to Old Bonegrinder I really liked was actually from Chris Perkins, when he ran CoS for Dice, Camera, Action. Instead of Night Hags, Morgantha and her daughters were Green Hags.
Out of curiosity, do you happen to know which session this was?
@themojogamer75 second or third
@themojogamer75 I do not remember the exact episode. It was just something that stuck out to me because I saw DCA before I got the CoS book.
@@orgixvi3 Aaah, I see! Thanks anyway! (Also thanks to LunchBreak for the response too!)
My players were actually suspicious of Morgantha in Barovia (but one of them ate her pie) and asked her where she lived - I told them she lives in a hut in the forest near river Ivlis crossroads with her two daughters. Since one of my players remarked that they are probably hags, I planned something wicked. Morgantha would have gotten two lawful good Barovian women to pose as her daughters in that hut in exchange for safety for their children. They would also be selling her pastries, which would make the PCs lower their guard and buy more. Then when they reach the Old Bonegrinder, they are in for a surprise :)
I like how this video is like "lisend, by the book descripition, no sane person would enter there... obviosly, player character are not sane people, so we will have to change their approch"
(Sorry for any bad spelling, english is not my first language)
How does this video have less than 1000 likes? All of these videos are top notch
Like and share and it’ll get there!
I made them a coven by giving them a hearthstone. Volo's was a lifesaver...er, taker.
I always say Geas like Gi-Ahs
Because of the Anime Code Geass, in which the protagonist has mind control powers very similar to the D&D spell
Sweet mother keep the content coming!!
You got it!
lol. I had to laugh at your comments on the names.
My group (5) of level 4 characters are about to be TPK'd but I plan on doing your idea of delivering the hags eye to Cyrus. But I really dont know how they are going to survive that. Do you have any ideas on where Cyrus should be to make it easier?
Cyrus is usually hanging around downstairs. A good way to get there is from the servant's entrance at the back of the castle, near the coach house. I recommend posing the task as an "infiltration" mission. Get in, get out, don't get caught.
I assume the safety of the standing stones only works if the hags are killed or driven off? Even if the PCs are safe insides, can't the hags at the mill just attack them as soon as they leave?
I firmly believe if a DM wants to run CoS as written PCs need t b at least lvl 3-4 to start with or without death house. That way u don't need t scale back every encounter in the first half of the book; hell even the idea of 1st lvl pcs hunting werewolves is nuts but with a few extra lvls it works (ie run LMoP or DoIP before CoS)
In Volos guide there is region effect for hags.
Ah, thanks for the info. I haven't read much of that guide.
Bonegrinder *ahem old sag bones, is my fave area to run and thanks to you I must rewrite it my players in a few weeks. I like the idea of hags changing the landscape, in mine Morgantha is a green hag and there's a night and annis hag. What I'm thinking is having the area affected by a mass illusion spell to make it seem like everything's ok.
Makes so much sense that Strahd would "protect" the players from death. I always imagined that while they like Barovia, Strahd would add a caveat to make them unhappy just to rub it in I had him forbid the hags to use vistana children. The hags would then employ the players to kidnap children or kill Strahd depending on their relationship.
Love the idea of the baker, maybe his wife insulted morgantha and this is her punishment. While in Barovia the players will meet a sad baker who cries for her stolen family.
Love this vid, more please, especially the winery I want to amp it up a bit
Thank you for watching! The winery is definitely on my radar.
6:24 probably because of Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies?
So my players are level six and this coming up session is the first time they’ve wanted to go to old bone grinder, so would a level 6 party of five players have challenges with fighting the coven? I think the fight will be a good challenge for them but I don’t want to TPK them
I think they’ll be fine
has anyone realized morgatha has super powerful spells and straight up the cr of her plus two other hags is stupid strong.
yet several dms seem to run this frivolously without a hitch and the hags easily die.
the book literally gives her hold person , lightning bolt, bestow curse, eyebite and fuggin phantasmal killer,
phantasmal killer is an instant kill spell.
i came up with 3.5 so when i had an enemy with these powers usually at least 1 player died. not vindictivly , but literally because of the spells themselves that as the dm my monster is supposed to use them, especially if the monster thinks it may die.
I used the party to get pies into vallaki. It's the only place they haven't gotten pies into. I basically turned the pies into a mlm of drug pies.
Should my players go through Vallaki first or Old Bonegrinder? I'm not sure how the timing is for these locations
If your players started on the eastern side of the map (typical start), then your players will have to walk past Old Bonegrinder in order to get to Vallaki. Whether or not they go up to the windmill and knock on the door is entirely up to them, however. It can be entirely bypassed if they want to, and the party can just walk straight on to Vallaki.
@@LunchBreakHeroes Thanks so much for the quick response dude, you kick ass! And yeah they're in the Vistani Camp near the Tser Pool at the moment, and are leading Ireena towards Vallaki.
Playing this tonight. Ismark died whilst players were in death House (which I placed on the road half mile from windmill) and has been replaced by a polymorphed Strahd. There's only 2 pcs. Strahd is looking forward to seeing how his "toys" handle this encounter.
Very interesting. Lemme know how it goes!
@@LunchBreakHeroesThe setup in this for us was wicca witches - whilst Morgantha (who was out when they arrived) was the true fiend, Bela and Ophelia were the grown daughters of the baker from Barovia who had left the village 2 years prior. En route to the "big smoke" of Vallaki, they had sought shelter at the windmill and were now 95% converted and corrupted to hags. The rogue scouted the immediate area and found the megaliths before they entered the mill, and they didn't explore the barrow beneath the stones. At the mill door they were met with Bella, a young beautiful woman. She and Ireena recognised each other and as Ireena knew Bella, they struck up a conversation as to why Bella and her sister disappeared 2 years ago. Bella explained they sought to escape their abusive father. At this point Ireena got the party to leave and once a few hundred yards from the mill she explained their baker father was a kind man and that 3 months after his daughters vanished he also left the village to try and find his daughters, and never returned. Morgantha returns with her cart and now freaked out the PCs successfully hide and watch her enter the mill. Meanwhile, Strahd was polymorphed as Ismark (how this happened is too long to go into here) who was wanting to assess the pcs and ensure Ireena was "safe" with them, hence playing the dutiful, if now quite sarcastic, brother. Armed with this information the rogue opted to enter on the first floor (I am English, so this means the one above the ground floor :-)) Once inside, he can overhear the hags who are in the room above. They detect his presence and begin to say that in exchange for his leaving the mill with his life, he must accept a deal AND take the eye to Cyrus in the castle. Meanwhile, the paladin, Ireen and Ismark/Strahd are now inside on the ground floor and can themselves hear about this deal. At this point Strahd is less than happy about the hags wanting an eye in his castle. The PCs of course do not know this but at this point it got interesting. PCs refused the deal and I thought, here we go, its going to now kick off and to protect Ireena, Strahd as Ismark is going to have to step in. The hags appeared in the room with the rogue who dove to the open window he entered earlier through and after a few amazing rolls landed on the ground outside. The hags are now in hot pursuit after the fleeing people downstairs. Whilst they are trying to bash down the magically sealed ground floor door to escape and the hags are coming down the stairs, Strahd/Ismark is summoning all the wolves in the area. The hags start to incant some spells, they open the door and flee, only to be met by a few dozen wolves coming out of the surrounding woods. Sensing the barrow beneath the megaliths offer an easy defensive position they make it there, totally untouched by the wolves. During the chase "Ismark" disappears. Once inside, they wait it out and emerge to re explore the mill. There, on the doorstep are the slaughtered remains of Ophelia and Bella, killed by the wolves under Strahd instruction because of they wanting this eye to spy in his castle. Morgantha is nowhere to be seen. Upstairs in the mill they find the father, now quite insane, with his recently cut off leg on a chopping block. His arms and legs show dozens of scars and the PCs realise that the hags have been using his body as pastry ingredients as well as to feed him. Wishing to end his suffering, they take the poor fellow to the megalith barrow. He is convinced the PCs are his long lost daughters to rescue him which causes much heartache at the table...but not enough to put the poor fellow on the barrow altar and end his suffering in the hope this "sacrifice" does something. Which of course it does not. Ireena keeps pointing out the BOAR on the stone carvings next to the altar but they have none of it. So in one encounter Strahd now knows the PCs are unpredictable and fearless, thus he is now drawn to them, they have pissed off Ireena which Strahd intends to caspitalise on when they reach Vallaki AND Morgantha is now going to start haunting their dreams. At the same time juicy macabre insane force fed cannibalism and a suitably pissed off night hag waits in the wings to reappear later. Incidentally, the PCs arrived in Barovia from medieval England (year 1320) so the campaign hitherto is low magic, even though the PCs have a spell casting Paladin (who is from a home brew typical D&D world but who several adventures before hand had found a portal linking his world to medieval England (which closed when he went through it). So CoS is part of a wider campaign where the PCs are just trying to get back home. As there are only two of them, I have them a few levels higher than recommended to give the poor buggers a fighting chance. Meanwhile, the Paladin in Medieval England had wooed a woman which after a 24 second liaison has resulted in the woman now being with child...who is going to be an ancestor of the 1926 character the same player is playing as part of a Call of Cthulhu campaign we are running. We are all in our mid 40s, with kids, and recently rediscovered RPGs. Our game sessions usually involve cheese, wine and terrible rolls. We're loving it. :-)
@@deanfletcher4962 it sounds like you all had a blast! There's a dice/baking pun in here somewhere, but I just can't find it.
@@LunchBreakHeroes Baker's kids indeed found the "big smoke" lol!
Update on the misadventures of me running COS: I had planned for my players to fail/fail forward. Changed the old bonegrinders to a battle against 3 death hags and 3 hex blood children. Result: my lv 5 party came out on top by the skin of their teeth. I rewarded them with 2 levels and an inspiration because they succeeded. Morgantha used earthquake. They tried to spare the hex blood children by knocking them out via non lethal damage... but ultimately 2 out of the 3 hexblood children died to the earthquake fissures. And were raised as zombies. I still used the chained up man as the source for their pastries. My hags pulled no stops in trying to capture and misdirect the party. Ended up with 2 successful captures of players by getting the drop on them. They decided to try to scout out and attack the windmill and hag hut at night. Things went very wrong with their attempted stealth mission.
"For some reason for me, Bella and her sisters have really thick London accents."
Don't suppose you're a fan of Sweeney Todd?
God, that’s good!
"🎶Seems a damn right shame🎶"
My players stole morgantha’s heartstone in barovia and I’m trying to figure out what to do with that
Those London accents probably come from Sweeney Todd
Lunch Break Heroes; How would you dress up the Abbott’s dress finding quest?
I replace it outright. ruclips.net/video/WrQtRf7prp4/видео.html
Is "Ophalia" a reference to something? I've seen it mentioned here and in MandyMod's posts to not mention her name, but why? If you told me this old lady's name was Ophalia, I'd totally accept it.
Offal is the entrails of a butchered animal.
@@LunchBreakHeroes ah, thanks. I know the word, just didn't make the connection. Offal has a shorter o and a sound than Ophalia does.
The spell is pronounced “gesh.”
Excretia deFile 😊
What I'm planning is removing the kids, because the players are too late, and they have already been made into pies.
The Bonegrinder encounter, as written in the book, is so terrible, it's almost funny. The recommended level is 4, but that is laughably low for an encounter with three coven night hags. Furthermore, the book only offers one warning for the players, that this combat encounter is outside their abilities: a crow cawing at them. Indicating that the place is dangerous.
Yeah, no sh!t, almost every place in the wild that adventurers venture is dangerous. Thanks for nothing, crow.
Not even the GM is explicitly warned about how the players basically stand no chance, so if you have a newbie GM, who just runs a module because they aren't confident enough to write their own adventures, or are just not very good with tactics, they will cluelessly let the party die against a completely overpowered encounter. Because of course the players will know that something is up with the magic dream pies and will want to stop whatever evil might be going on there.
Also, there is no way for the players to learn just how dangerous they are, before the secret is out. They can guess at most, but based on what? They are evil and use magic? Thanks, that should put their CR at somewhere between eeeeeh.... 1/2 and 20.
And lastly, the book lacks the foresight to offer a resolution if the players attack the hags, or the hags attack the players and they obviously get wiped. Or why the hags wouldn't kill them, once they find out the secret.
The book just throws a place with completely overpowered monsters at the GM and says "Here, you figure out what to do with this. And your players better not be some kind of weirdos who try to save children from certain doom, or something".
If your group consists of rollplayers, who will go "Right, we know better now" and just roll new "characters", that's fine, but if your group cares about their characters, then this place wiping them or forcing the GMing to do some rather forced return from the dead mechanic is going to seriously mess up the session and possibly even the enjoyment of the campaign in the long run.
Sorry about the rant, but I just ran this encounter and I got so mad about all the things I had to twist and change, just so that I could make it work. And a friend just got done having half his party wiped in this. It's just SO bad in its raw form.
Its pronounced gesh btw
I’m considering running a small one shot for a group of 4-5 year olds to teach them about working together as a team. One thought I had was running old bonegrinder similarly to a Hansel and Gretel type of story. What are your thoughts?
I don't get one thing though. Why are the hags running a business? What are they gonna do with all that money? Maybe it's because i'm a newbie and don't know enough about dnd and hags but i don't see the point.
Maybe they're reinvesting it back into their business. Or saving it up in order to invest in their initial Lula-Ravenloft shipment.
The hags are more into kidnapping and murder and keeping that cycle going, which the money helps with. Granny hag bakes stolen kids into addictive dream pastries (delicious morsels some of the local Barovian populace squander their money on). The pastries elicit dreams which provide a sort of respite for the downtrodden addicts. Long term, the hags create complacent addicts, missing children, and an overall worse pall over the Barovian valley. Happy Hags!
@@macc.1132 thx that helps. I looked the hags up since my comment and got an rough idea of them but that helps in fleshing it out more.
Aren't these guides just stolen from Fleshing out Curse of Strahd and others?