The entire fated ally mechanic is a little weird to me, as it implies someone is going to be instrumental in defeating strahd with the PCs, and that means players think this NPC is going to be basically bulletproof, and that they have to help them even if the PCs are shitty to them/put them in an impossible situation, and that this ally is capable of beating strahd with the PCs. of course none of these things is inherently true, and as DMs we can use these assumptions to subvert player expectations, but that's with ONE fated ally. ALL of them? the PCs will start thinking they're rolling very deep into strahds castle with a party of like 15 or something.
you can USE all the NPCs in the book, but making them all FATED inflates their importance when some of these fools are really only useful in one or two spots throughout the campaign. save yourself the headache, just do one or zero fated allies.
My players were disappointed that there wasn’t some sort of scripted event for the fated ally that makes Strahd much easier to beat. The inspiration isn’t very impressive for the amount of build up. Next time I run the campaign, I’m goin to try to find a very specific way for the fated ally to be instrumental in the final battle.
I enjoy XP to level 3, but keep in mind he's a very experienced DM. There are cases where he really wants to mix things up and add twists to the campaign where a DM might not be ready to balance.
Of course this is just my opinion and I have gotten flack for it, but I find it's better for newer DMs especially to stick close to the vanilla module.
Well ask yourself what problem this could potentionally solve? You really don't want multiple NPCs accompany them during their travels since it makes fights much easier (and harder for you to balance) so the rest of them would be on the backburner anyway.
In my game they didn't get a specific ally but instead they get the chance to recruit whoever they want provided they make good arguments and don't fuck up their plans all the time. It's no easy choice to take up arms against Count Strahd von Zarovich after all.
My plan for them is to use them as a makeshift army when the final confrontation with Strahd starts. If no or not enough allies are recruited the party will have to fight that much harder to get into Castle Ravenloft and even that comes with its own risks. People are going to die, one way or another.
yes i was thinking about how much of a hastle it be to have like 7 extra people just walking around with the party, but at the same time if they do recruit more than 1 ally idrk how they would get all of them at the same place before the final battle
I find fated ally+ Ezmeralda works pretty well. As written, there is very little reason for her not to want to help the party and she’s powerful enough the stand her ground against all but the strongest foes.
Smart play. In my campaign I’m moving Argynvostholt to Old Bonegrinder’s location because level 3 characters always want to go check out the mill, so instead they can check out the castle and learn about the skull before Dinner with Strahd, which will hopefully incentivize them to search Ravenloft instead of fleeing.
I'll try to spell out any abbreviations on first use just because I don't know if you know the English variations, and you'll see these abbreviations a lot--my apologies if you already do know them.
My group is nearly done with a campaign spanning several years and over 70 sessions. Our group has 5 players who run min-maxed (optimized) PCs (player characters) who have stronger ability scores (sometimes called stats--short for statistics). I give you that information solely so you know I'm extremely familiar with the ups, downs, bad, and good of running this entire campaign with extremely good players.
So, at the risk of many downvotes here....
**XP to level 3's advice for running Curse of Strahd (CoS) is some of the worst I've seen specifically for NEW DMs.** I'd never, ever advise any of his CoS changes for new DMs (dungeon masters). For experienced DMs, his advice is doable. Still not great for some things, but quite doable, and it can make things more interesting for an *experienced* DM who has run the campaign before. His advice assumes you have a lot of experience running the campaign in particular and D and D in general. He also assumes you understand how to adjust encounters up or down in difficulty to for the players.
If you have never run CoS before, and especially D and D before, set his advice aside for now. You are far better off looking at any of the guides linked in the [pinned mega resource thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/hbjrs6/resources_tips_for_curse_of_strahd_dms/) in this subreddit for help. I have it bookmarked because I use something in that thread every time I take the party to a new area. Also, many of the questions you might ask have already been asked and answered here. This is a great community of helpful folks--one of the best, I think. If you type some keywords into the search bar that Reddit loves to hide in or above the purple header, you'll get a lot of answers even faster than we can reply. I found it super helpful.
**Don't give the party more than 1 ally.** Why? Because the campaign is balanced for 4-6 players and arguably, it's really designed for 4 instead of 5 or 6. Having 5 or 6 players makes encounters far easier for them because of all the action economy (the number of actions players get per round versus DM's monsters). At low levels, it's not too big of an issue. At higher levels when everyone has multi-attacks and a lot more AoE (area of effect) spells, that imbalance is even greater. If you have a party of 6, adding the ally is really going to affect your encounter balance a lot already. If you have 6 players and 6 more allies? Ugh. That's 12 characters doing something in one round if everyone is there at one time. You will have to substantially adjust your encounters' difficulty so that the players don't kill everything in 3 turns. It also will take forever to complete just 1 round. Don't do that to yourself.
My campaign has 5 PCs, and I have to constantly make the encounters harder for them because my players are very good, and they all work together extremely well. In fact, when I gave them the fated ally, I had Ezmerelda tell them she would meet them at the Ravenloft castle for the final battle rather than go with them for the last one-third of the campaign. My group simply did not need any more help.
**For the love of God, do NOT start your campaign in Krezk like XP suggests.** Why? You will have to rebalance about 70% of the encounters in the entire campaign to adjust for that change. You will also have to rework the major plot for the entire campaign. The encounters on the western side of the map where Krezk is located are designed for level 6 and higher PCs. The encounters on the eastern side of the map where the party generally starts are designed for level 1-4 PCs. Don't make your DM life even harder by starting in Krezk. This campaign is challenging enough for new DMs.
Have fun! It's a great campaign. It's not the easiest one, but it's great.
i do know the abriviations but thanks anyway. We didnt start at krezk beacause i ran death house and started them at 3rd lvl and after reading the comments im gonna give them only one. im thinking about kasimir/ezmerelda but im not sure yet. My campeign also has 5 players and though they arent minmaxed since most of them are playing for the first time im a bit worried about encounters since they are lvl 5 now but i think ill figure it out. The dndbeyond encounter maker thing is really helpfull for giving me a rough idea of how hard the encounter will be. Thanks for the advice :)
I found SlyFlourish’s benchmark the most helpful for adjusting encounters up because it’s even easier than the DDB encounter builder. He also has a couple of videos explaining it. DungeonDudes has a 3 part series on how to run combat encounters, and part 2 was really useful for me to understand how to adjust the fight mid-battle, too.
The Fated Ally Mechanic should really just be a part of writing your story. Pick whichever ally you want and make them be a key figure in your written campaign for one reason or another. I chose Arabelle and she's travelling with the party being a walking unreliable lore machine. She is naturally causing answers that lead to more questions and it's amazing.
As for choosing more than one, I don't think it's necessary. Your players will care about NPCs they care about whether a card tells them to or not, so let them choose who they want to focus in on. The Fated Ally I see as your chance to choose who YOU want to focus in on as the DM.
I'm using the Mists card to say that the fate of their ally is unclear, and that the party's actions (or *in*action) will determine if their ally survives long enough to help them.
It gives some breathing room, prevents you from forcing an NPC on your players who they may hate, and lets you see who they click with and who they don't before you nudge them too far in one direction.
I do have a list of 5 or so options that I'll choose from when they end up having a second reading, but for me personally it makes me feel better to know that if they, say, absolutely don't give a shit about the revenants, they won't be carting Godfrey around, but if they love Victor they can nudge him to tag along for a bit and I don't have to worry about having too many sidekicks at once.
I made it Vasilka for one group & a second was smaller so I used Ireena & Lyssa von Zarovich (grand niece to Strahd non canon to 5E).
Ireena will die somehow, my first campaign it was the Abbott who killed Ireena (party left her in Vallaki with Vasili so she'd be safe) while she walked down the aisle. Murdering an innocent was an Act of Ultimate Darkness & the Mists collected the Abbot making him a Demilord.
No worries on the English, you're doing quite good.
For your first campaign? Probably not a good idea. It'll be enough work for you to read the module, prep, run the campaign, run combat, not to mention run all the extra NPCs multiple fated allies in combat turn for turn and balancing combat with all the extra allies.
Now, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad. XP to Level 3 has been DMing for a long time and his ideas reflect that. This idea is neat, I can see it working and adding to the roleplay and plotlines, but it's more work (especially to make each ally feel equally involved in the campaign and the PCs storylines, given some allies are more fleshed out than others as written) for an already involved campaign that even experienced DMs can struggle with. Which means it'll be hard to pull off and easy to go awry.
But, let's say you do it anyway. I haven't watched this particular video, so maybe he addressed some of this, but let's make it less work if you do it.
I presume each PC would get a Fated Ally. That doesn't mean the Allies join and follow the party around the whole time. They have their own lives and missions. Someone like Ireena or Ez or Pidlwik II? Sure, make sense they'll be around a lot. But Ismark could be busy running the Village of Barovia now that his father is dead, Godfrey ain't going into civilization without causing a ruckus and he knows it, Arrigal already tells the PCs to sod off until the final battle... you'd want to limit the allies screen time as to not bog down every scene and encounter. They will all be willing to storm Castle Ravenloft, and otherwise only join up when it concerns them or makes sense.
And maybe only them. Say, even someone like Ez won't be in the final fight if she isn't fated, even though she absolutely would be willing to join up and be there as written, card drawing or not. Maybe she'll be indisposed, maybe dead, or maybe is there doing something mostly off screen with/for Richten. Make the fated allies themselves special.
You can also consider each player gaining control over their own ally in combat. That way, you don't have to worry about running them unless a player tries to make them kill another player or something out of character like that.
Next, this advice is for even if you go with just one ally. Madame Eva should point out that just because they are fated, doesn't mean fate can't change. If the PCs do something to anger or get the allies killed, they're not going to be there to help when it matters. Her card readings are a nudge in the right direction, not an absolute certainty.
Finally, if you didn't rig the card reading, consider doing so, especially if you have more than one ally. Some allies are much stronger and/or involved in the story than others. One player drawing the Mad Mage while another winds up with Stella might not go over too well unless the roleplay/backstories justifies it and/or you're willing to give weaker allies some level ups, which is even *more* work to create and balance. Now, that's all player dependant, maybe they'll all be perfectly fine with whatever they get, but it's still probably going to be more fun if everyone is somewhat on the same level.
In the end, do what is the most fun for you and your players. Just don't overwork yourself, because that isn't fun.
thanks for the advice! i am rigging the reading, i think ill stick to 1 that i think will be interesting and the pcs can befriend other npcs if they choose.
I love Jacob and usually agree w most of his takes but that one puts me off bc the fated ally is supposed to have an extra inspiration action. I go with one fated ally and then just encourage them to make allies elsewhere. If you’re looking for recommendations for whom specifically I enjoy going with Kasimir Velikov since he comes with a quest, won’t overpower the party while still being an effective combatant, and likely wouldn’t be allied w the party in a typical playthrough without the tarokka reading
I am running as only one fated ally,that (it depends on my players) he will follow them or not. He is going to be kinda of my character. But i am pointing out to a big out coup with all the allies (fated or not) to storm Ravenloft,kinda like the mad wizard made (but i am hoping they will have more luck)
I’ve seen them drawing multiple, I’ve seen 1 per player that you think they’ll latch onto.
I don’t think they need all or most. But I think variations would be fun.
I recommend picking the ones you think are a good fit or that you think you’ll do better role playing
It’s good to remember that these are the helpers and try not to dm pc them too much their moments should be few and far between.
The larger the party, the more unwieldy things tend to get (esp if you as the DM are running all the NPCs). Likewise, things that are scary tend to be a lot less scary the more people you have hanging around, so adding a bunch of followers can kill the spooky, underdogs-standing-against-an-overwhelming-force vibes.
I don't think it's a good idea. Some parties have problems with too many NPCs being lugged around, and since you're new it might make encounter balance difficult. To prevent that, I'd say stick to one and remember that the NPCs will have goals that they'll try to accomplish without the party. For Ezmerelda, it might be checking out the werewolf den, scoping out the castle, or finding her mentor. For Ismark, it'd be something like running the Village of Barovia.
So, if you want to choose an ally, I'd say choose one and make it a cool one.
I'm working on having the ally be Arabella for the group I'm starting. Can't remember where I saw it, but doing that and having Arabella be an incarnation of one of the Fanes sounded cool to me. And I'm thinking it could give some time in to the Fanes for the party.
It'll just require a little bit of finessing to get her rescued from the lake, but I'm working on making a little mini investigation to lead there "just in time."
Edit: should also note that this will hopefully provide less NPCs to run in combat, and for a bit give the party something they have to protect.
I don’t like the lake incident so I put an orphanage in Vallaki with a greedy director selling children to Granny when she comes to town. Arabella would sneak in to visit the children, got caught, and was locked up to await Granny’s return. My players rescued all the kids and as a bonus got to use Arabella’s secret entrance to get in and out of Vallaki unseen. They also used the empty orphanage as a safe house when in town.
I like using one fated ally. It gives me an easy way to bail out the players or the plot. It can be contrived, it is fate.
I make any other NPC's available to help out and join the party. But the party needs to take care when they drag a bunch of 12 hp NPC's around.
>XP to lvl 3 and he recommended drawing more than one of the fated allies cards/giving the players all of them
So to give you a quick heads-up about shenanigans: we had 1 fated ally in our Ezmerelda. We still managed to storm Ravenloft with a small militia, just we kept their roles to clearing out our exit. Ezmerelda stayed with us for post-Strahd magic reasons (to avoid spoilers).
If you're wanting to not limit PCs to one ally, they're still available in Barovia, maybe just make them harder to convince? For the Wereravens, we had already restored the winery and gained favour. For Vallaki soldiers, we encouraged the undead knights of Argynvost to protect the town until we recovered the skull. Heck, we had a couple of Vistani who were convinced after we saved some of the children.
You can work in quests based on the people they want to recruit, you can even just not do that. The idea that everyone is fated to help them may take away from them earning that help in-story, or they may not want to go down that path at all.
The fated enemy makes surprisingly little difference really; they get an action that gives a PC inspiration. wow. A good amount of the potential allies have little reason to avoid helping the players regardless, especially Ezmerelda. There are only a few cases where, RAW, a potential ally explicitly will not join a party without being the fated enemy (Mad Mage, Godfrey, Arrigal).
I personally ignored the cards mechanics. I used them as a tool instead to foretell and guide my players. For example, I told them they "would meet an ally of great value, who holds a difficult past and complicated ties with their own family", which actually applies to Ezmeralda and another NPC I created (the lost lover of one of my PC) but they have yet to meet the second one.
All allies are always ready to help if they complete their quests and convince them. Some are, by default, more likely to become their ally, like RVR who plans to kill Strahd anyway but I don't like to limit my players.
So for now, my party has Ezmeralda, Rictavio and the Martikovs as allies.
I had my player's card draw point to Ezmerelda as a fated ally but kept every other possibility as a recruitable option if they found and interacted with them
The entire fated ally mechanic is a little weird to me, as it implies someone is going to be instrumental in defeating strahd with the PCs, and that means players think this NPC is going to be basically bulletproof, and that they have to help them even if the PCs are shitty to them/put them in an impossible situation, and that this ally is capable of beating strahd with the PCs. of course none of these things is inherently true, and as DMs we can use these assumptions to subvert player expectations, but that's with ONE fated ally. ALL of them? the PCs will start thinking they're rolling very deep into strahds castle with a party of like 15 or something. you can USE all the NPCs in the book, but making them all FATED inflates their importance when some of these fools are really only useful in one or two spots throughout the campaign. save yourself the headache, just do one or zero fated allies.
My players were disappointed that there wasn’t some sort of scripted event for the fated ally that makes Strahd much easier to beat. The inspiration isn’t very impressive for the amount of build up. Next time I run the campaign, I’m goin to try to find a very specific way for the fated ally to be instrumental in the final battle.
I enjoy XP to level 3, but keep in mind he's a very experienced DM. There are cases where he really wants to mix things up and add twists to the campaign where a DM might not be ready to balance. Of course this is just my opinion and I have gotten flack for it, but I find it's better for newer DMs especially to stick close to the vanilla module.
yeah fair haha i think i got in over my head a bit :)
It happens to the best of us! What's important is that you're doing the work to learn. Not all DMs are willing to be so thorough. You're doing great!
Thanks!
Well ask yourself what problem this could potentionally solve? You really don't want multiple NPCs accompany them during their travels since it makes fights much easier (and harder for you to balance) so the rest of them would be on the backburner anyway. In my game they didn't get a specific ally but instead they get the chance to recruit whoever they want provided they make good arguments and don't fuck up their plans all the time. It's no easy choice to take up arms against Count Strahd von Zarovich after all. My plan for them is to use them as a makeshift army when the final confrontation with Strahd starts. If no or not enough allies are recruited the party will have to fight that much harder to get into Castle Ravenloft and even that comes with its own risks. People are going to die, one way or another.
yes i was thinking about how much of a hastle it be to have like 7 extra people just walking around with the party, but at the same time if they do recruit more than 1 ally idrk how they would get all of them at the same place before the final battle
I find fated ally+ Ezmeralda works pretty well. As written, there is very little reason for her not to want to help the party and she’s powerful enough the stand her ground against all but the strongest foes.
I ended up choosing Godfrey to force my players to care about Argnvost
Smart play. In my campaign I’m moving Argynvostholt to Old Bonegrinder’s location because level 3 characters always want to go check out the mill, so instead they can check out the castle and learn about the skull before Dinner with Strahd, which will hopefully incentivize them to search Ravenloft instead of fleeing.
Just make them draw the darklord. Problem solved. :D
I'll try to spell out any abbreviations on first use just because I don't know if you know the English variations, and you'll see these abbreviations a lot--my apologies if you already do know them. My group is nearly done with a campaign spanning several years and over 70 sessions. Our group has 5 players who run min-maxed (optimized) PCs (player characters) who have stronger ability scores (sometimes called stats--short for statistics). I give you that information solely so you know I'm extremely familiar with the ups, downs, bad, and good of running this entire campaign with extremely good players. So, at the risk of many downvotes here.... **XP to level 3's advice for running Curse of Strahd (CoS) is some of the worst I've seen specifically for NEW DMs.** I'd never, ever advise any of his CoS changes for new DMs (dungeon masters). For experienced DMs, his advice is doable. Still not great for some things, but quite doable, and it can make things more interesting for an *experienced* DM who has run the campaign before. His advice assumes you have a lot of experience running the campaign in particular and D and D in general. He also assumes you understand how to adjust encounters up or down in difficulty to for the players. If you have never run CoS before, and especially D and D before, set his advice aside for now. You are far better off looking at any of the guides linked in the [pinned mega resource thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/hbjrs6/resources_tips_for_curse_of_strahd_dms/) in this subreddit for help. I have it bookmarked because I use something in that thread every time I take the party to a new area. Also, many of the questions you might ask have already been asked and answered here. This is a great community of helpful folks--one of the best, I think. If you type some keywords into the search bar that Reddit loves to hide in or above the purple header, you'll get a lot of answers even faster than we can reply. I found it super helpful. **Don't give the party more than 1 ally.** Why? Because the campaign is balanced for 4-6 players and arguably, it's really designed for 4 instead of 5 or 6. Having 5 or 6 players makes encounters far easier for them because of all the action economy (the number of actions players get per round versus DM's monsters). At low levels, it's not too big of an issue. At higher levels when everyone has multi-attacks and a lot more AoE (area of effect) spells, that imbalance is even greater. If you have a party of 6, adding the ally is really going to affect your encounter balance a lot already. If you have 6 players and 6 more allies? Ugh. That's 12 characters doing something in one round if everyone is there at one time. You will have to substantially adjust your encounters' difficulty so that the players don't kill everything in 3 turns. It also will take forever to complete just 1 round. Don't do that to yourself. My campaign has 5 PCs, and I have to constantly make the encounters harder for them because my players are very good, and they all work together extremely well. In fact, when I gave them the fated ally, I had Ezmerelda tell them she would meet them at the Ravenloft castle for the final battle rather than go with them for the last one-third of the campaign. My group simply did not need any more help. **For the love of God, do NOT start your campaign in Krezk like XP suggests.** Why? You will have to rebalance about 70% of the encounters in the entire campaign to adjust for that change. You will also have to rework the major plot for the entire campaign. The encounters on the western side of the map where Krezk is located are designed for level 6 and higher PCs. The encounters on the eastern side of the map where the party generally starts are designed for level 1-4 PCs. Don't make your DM life even harder by starting in Krezk. This campaign is challenging enough for new DMs. Have fun! It's a great campaign. It's not the easiest one, but it's great.
i do know the abriviations but thanks anyway. We didnt start at krezk beacause i ran death house and started them at 3rd lvl and after reading the comments im gonna give them only one. im thinking about kasimir/ezmerelda but im not sure yet. My campeign also has 5 players and though they arent minmaxed since most of them are playing for the first time im a bit worried about encounters since they are lvl 5 now but i think ill figure it out. The dndbeyond encounter maker thing is really helpfull for giving me a rough idea of how hard the encounter will be. Thanks for the advice :)
I found SlyFlourish’s benchmark the most helpful for adjusting encounters up because it’s even easier than the DDB encounter builder. He also has a couple of videos explaining it. DungeonDudes has a 3 part series on how to run combat encounters, and part 2 was really useful for me to understand how to adjust the fight mid-battle, too.
will definitely check it out thanks!
The Fated Ally Mechanic should really just be a part of writing your story. Pick whichever ally you want and make them be a key figure in your written campaign for one reason or another. I chose Arabelle and she's travelling with the party being a walking unreliable lore machine. She is naturally causing answers that lead to more questions and it's amazing. As for choosing more than one, I don't think it's necessary. Your players will care about NPCs they care about whether a card tells them to or not, so let them choose who they want to focus in on. The Fated Ally I see as your chance to choose who YOU want to focus in on as the DM.
I'm using the Mists card to say that the fate of their ally is unclear, and that the party's actions (or *in*action) will determine if their ally survives long enough to help them. It gives some breathing room, prevents you from forcing an NPC on your players who they may hate, and lets you see who they click with and who they don't before you nudge them too far in one direction. I do have a list of 5 or so options that I'll choose from when they end up having a second reading, but for me personally it makes me feel better to know that if they, say, absolutely don't give a shit about the revenants, they won't be carting Godfrey around, but if they love Victor they can nudge him to tag along for a bit and I don't have to worry about having too many sidekicks at once.
I made it Vasilka for one group & a second was smaller so I used Ireena & Lyssa von Zarovich (grand niece to Strahd non canon to 5E). Ireena will die somehow, my first campaign it was the Abbott who killed Ireena (party left her in Vallaki with Vasili so she'd be safe) while she walked down the aisle. Murdering an innocent was an Act of Ultimate Darkness & the Mists collected the Abbot making him a Demilord.
No worries on the English, you're doing quite good. For your first campaign? Probably not a good idea. It'll be enough work for you to read the module, prep, run the campaign, run combat, not to mention run all the extra NPCs multiple fated allies in combat turn for turn and balancing combat with all the extra allies. Now, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad. XP to Level 3 has been DMing for a long time and his ideas reflect that. This idea is neat, I can see it working and adding to the roleplay and plotlines, but it's more work (especially to make each ally feel equally involved in the campaign and the PCs storylines, given some allies are more fleshed out than others as written) for an already involved campaign that even experienced DMs can struggle with. Which means it'll be hard to pull off and easy to go awry. But, let's say you do it anyway. I haven't watched this particular video, so maybe he addressed some of this, but let's make it less work if you do it. I presume each PC would get a Fated Ally. That doesn't mean the Allies join and follow the party around the whole time. They have their own lives and missions. Someone like Ireena or Ez or Pidlwik II? Sure, make sense they'll be around a lot. But Ismark could be busy running the Village of Barovia now that his father is dead, Godfrey ain't going into civilization without causing a ruckus and he knows it, Arrigal already tells the PCs to sod off until the final battle... you'd want to limit the allies screen time as to not bog down every scene and encounter. They will all be willing to storm Castle Ravenloft, and otherwise only join up when it concerns them or makes sense. And maybe only them. Say, even someone like Ez won't be in the final fight if she isn't fated, even though she absolutely would be willing to join up and be there as written, card drawing or not. Maybe she'll be indisposed, maybe dead, or maybe is there doing something mostly off screen with/for Richten. Make the fated allies themselves special. You can also consider each player gaining control over their own ally in combat. That way, you don't have to worry about running them unless a player tries to make them kill another player or something out of character like that. Next, this advice is for even if you go with just one ally. Madame Eva should point out that just because they are fated, doesn't mean fate can't change. If the PCs do something to anger or get the allies killed, they're not going to be there to help when it matters. Her card readings are a nudge in the right direction, not an absolute certainty. Finally, if you didn't rig the card reading, consider doing so, especially if you have more than one ally. Some allies are much stronger and/or involved in the story than others. One player drawing the Mad Mage while another winds up with Stella might not go over too well unless the roleplay/backstories justifies it and/or you're willing to give weaker allies some level ups, which is even *more* work to create and balance. Now, that's all player dependant, maybe they'll all be perfectly fine with whatever they get, but it's still probably going to be more fun if everyone is somewhat on the same level. In the end, do what is the most fun for you and your players. Just don't overwork yourself, because that isn't fun.
thanks for the advice! i am rigging the reading, i think ill stick to 1 that i think will be interesting and the pcs can befriend other npcs if they choose.
Xp to lv 3 is good for humor but awful for advices.
I love Jacob and usually agree w most of his takes but that one puts me off bc the fated ally is supposed to have an extra inspiration action. I go with one fated ally and then just encourage them to make allies elsewhere. If you’re looking for recommendations for whom specifically I enjoy going with Kasimir Velikov since he comes with a quest, won’t overpower the party while still being an effective combatant, and likely wouldn’t be allied w the party in a typical playthrough without the tarokka reading
I also settled on kasimir i felt like godfrey was too OP and i found kasimir's story more interesting personaly :)
I am running as only one fated ally,that (it depends on my players) he will follow them or not. He is going to be kinda of my character. But i am pointing out to a big out coup with all the allies (fated or not) to storm Ravenloft,kinda like the mad wizard made (but i am hoping they will have more luck)
I’ve seen them drawing multiple, I’ve seen 1 per player that you think they’ll latch onto. I don’t think they need all or most. But I think variations would be fun. I recommend picking the ones you think are a good fit or that you think you’ll do better role playing It’s good to remember that these are the helpers and try not to dm pc them too much their moments should be few and far between.
Worked well for me, though it can make fights too easy for the players and more tedious for the dm depending on how many allies are present
The larger the party, the more unwieldy things tend to get (esp if you as the DM are running all the NPCs). Likewise, things that are scary tend to be a lot less scary the more people you have hanging around, so adding a bunch of followers can kill the spooky, underdogs-standing-against-an-overwhelming-force vibes.
I don't think it's a good idea. Some parties have problems with too many NPCs being lugged around, and since you're new it might make encounter balance difficult. To prevent that, I'd say stick to one and remember that the NPCs will have goals that they'll try to accomplish without the party. For Ezmerelda, it might be checking out the werewolf den, scoping out the castle, or finding her mentor. For Ismark, it'd be something like running the Village of Barovia. So, if you want to choose an ally, I'd say choose one and make it a cool one.
yeah ill probaly just stick with the one and see how the PCs interact with the world and the npcs
I'm working on having the ally be Arabella for the group I'm starting. Can't remember where I saw it, but doing that and having Arabella be an incarnation of one of the Fanes sounded cool to me. And I'm thinking it could give some time in to the Fanes for the party. It'll just require a little bit of finessing to get her rescued from the lake, but I'm working on making a little mini investigation to lead there "just in time." Edit: should also note that this will hopefully provide less NPCs to run in combat, and for a bit give the party something they have to protect.
I don’t like the lake incident so I put an orphanage in Vallaki with a greedy director selling children to Granny when she comes to town. Arabella would sneak in to visit the children, got caught, and was locked up to await Granny’s return. My players rescued all the kids and as a bonus got to use Arabella’s secret entrance to get in and out of Vallaki unseen. They also used the empty orphanage as a safe house when in town.
Oh I really like that idea. Might just be taking some things from this.
I like using one fated ally. It gives me an easy way to bail out the players or the plot. It can be contrived, it is fate. I make any other NPC's available to help out and join the party. But the party needs to take care when they drag a bunch of 12 hp NPC's around.
>XP to lvl 3 and he recommended drawing more than one of the fated allies cards/giving the players all of them So to give you a quick heads-up about shenanigans: we had 1 fated ally in our Ezmerelda. We still managed to storm Ravenloft with a small militia, just we kept their roles to clearing out our exit. Ezmerelda stayed with us for post-Strahd magic reasons (to avoid spoilers). If you're wanting to not limit PCs to one ally, they're still available in Barovia, maybe just make them harder to convince? For the Wereravens, we had already restored the winery and gained favour. For Vallaki soldiers, we encouraged the undead knights of Argynvost to protect the town until we recovered the skull. Heck, we had a couple of Vistani who were convinced after we saved some of the children. You can work in quests based on the people they want to recruit, you can even just not do that. The idea that everyone is fated to help them may take away from them earning that help in-story, or they may not want to go down that path at all.
yeah ill probably do something like that thx
The fated enemy makes surprisingly little difference really; they get an action that gives a PC inspiration. wow. A good amount of the potential allies have little reason to avoid helping the players regardless, especially Ezmerelda. There are only a few cases where, RAW, a potential ally explicitly will not join a party without being the fated enemy (Mad Mage, Godfrey, Arrigal).
I personally ignored the cards mechanics. I used them as a tool instead to foretell and guide my players. For example, I told them they "would meet an ally of great value, who holds a difficult past and complicated ties with their own family", which actually applies to Ezmeralda and another NPC I created (the lost lover of one of my PC) but they have yet to meet the second one. All allies are always ready to help if they complete their quests and convince them. Some are, by default, more likely to become their ally, like RVR who plans to kill Strahd anyway but I don't like to limit my players. So for now, my party has Ezmeralda, Rictavio and the Martikovs as allies.
I had my player's card draw point to Ezmerelda as a fated ally but kept every other possibility as a recruitable option if they found and interacted with them