The idea of Pidddlwick II sneaking behind strahd as he's slowly walking down stairs to be intimidating and pushing him down the stairs makes me laugh.

Ireena: the one character with plot armor who is destined to die

Really like the concept that Ireena knows she is going to die. Wish I had thought of that earlier.

Pidlwick has surprisingly saved the party on several occasions in my game. The ranger has even taken him in as her adopted son

My idea for arrigal was kind of a malcom x type. Vistani don't just exist in Barovia, but thats the only place their safe at strahds whim. If he genuinly belevies madam evas reading that strahd's gonna fall, he will want to take that position so he can keep Barovia safe for his people. He betrays the party to take control of Barovoa and finally give his people a home of their own.

Our Ireena died during the Feast of St. Andral because of poor player choices... oh well looks like the Dark Powers won again.

Ireena, to a PC in the party: "This is the dress, and the necklace, that I will wear when I am buried. Promise me that I will wear this, no matter what. Give me your word." Hopefully, the PC is the kind of PC with a strong sense of honor.

I love Pidlwick, but hate that you only find him waaay up at the top of the castle. I know Dice, Camera, Action put him in Luvash's treasure wagon, but I had another place that I put him: If there's one NPC in the entire module that would absolutely adore Pidlwick II, it's Blinsky. So I thought, "maybe P2 has left the castle and is now helping around Blinsky's shop." When the party meets Blinsky, he asks them to look for his friend that was riding with a trade caravan to Krezk. "He's short, he's wearing a hat like mine except red, he's made out of wood, leather, and metal..." Now they've got a quest to find a murderous little clockwork clown, who's in pieces next to the wrecked and obviously attacked cart on the side of the road. Bring the pieces back to Blinsky (possibly having to retrieve some bits from who or whatever attacked the cart), and now you've got a robot friend.

In my campaign Ireena has been staying in St. Andral's Church while the party has been...helping...in Vallaki (i.e. burning down the Baron's manor), so I'm stating her as a Healer/Fighter Sidekick who is a recent follower of the Morning Lord. Also, changed her dead father to a dead mother who went to Krezk to rally an army against Strahd (spoilers for if my PCs are reading this: but was injured on the way and taken to the Abbot who let her die and then took her face for Vasilka).

my first playthrough of barovia, my party did a little bit of meta gaming (looked through the pictures in the book) and they were obsessed with pidlwick. they all loved him so much. when the time came to meet him, i played him as that creepy regular show doll with a pull-string and a set amount of voice lines. it was so much fun, the first thing he said was an awful creepy joke about breaking necks and our warlock gave him a poison dagger and let him sit in his backpack. he tried to kill them once, but they forgave him and he came in clutch in the final battle so it was super fun. i loved it so much and so did they. pidlwick is a great companion i swear by him!!

6:30 fuck didnt have to hit me that hard with the feels god damn. lost a friend to cancer a few months ago and you're absolutely bang-on with the description.

I begun running COS recently (we'll be doing our 5th session later today). While Ireena isn't my fated ally, I think the advice here is very useful for running her in general. One thing I opted to do for pretty much all the allies that were CR 1/2 or lower was to make them side-kicks, so that they never out-shine the party while still being useful for the level they are. For Ireena, I thought she'd be best suited as an expert side-kick. While she knows how to fight, Ismark focused on teaching Ireena evasive tactics to escape fights rather than actually hold her own in one. She's also spent a lot of time in her home, with access to whatever books her father could buy, which would allow her to pick up a lot of skills and even a few expertises. Finally, it also allows her to mostly just help the party, as she can either bonus action disengage and use the help action for advantage, or use the help action twice on two different creatures. This makes her incredibly useful in combat, while still showing she probably could not hold her own in a one on one fight. Another thing to consider is the fact that while the book doesn't give us much, it makes one thing very clear- Ireena has a lot of willpower. And as LBH said, I would play her as having a lust for life. As such, she probably wouldn't be happy with simply running around distracting people. She would want to actively contribute to battle. But she's also NOT stupid, and recognises as she is she'd be more of a hindrance than a help. As such, I recommend having Ireena approach the most combat savvy character and request that they train her, as she has no intention of sitting idly by while strangers fight for her survival. Don't make this an easy process either, she's an NPC and for her multi-classing should take time and effort.

I'm about to run CoS. I didn't even open the book, i'm just watching all your videos and taking notes, and even without reading any word from the manual yet i find your videos so inspiring and helpful. THANK YOU, all your work is going to be gold for me!

These ally vids have helped me a lot. Instead of doing one ally, I matched the players to their own personal ally that best compliments their characters. Since I kicked off the campaign on the Krezk side of the map, they ended up meeting Davian first to help gain entry into the town. He turned out to be a great wealth of information to the party as a whole due to them being "fresh from the fog", and after helping him get back his two magic seeds, he offered his allied player the chance to join the Keepers of the Feather as a fellow wereraven

So a tamer version of Murderbot from Dice, Camera, Action. Cool!

This is the go to channel for anything curse of strahd related in my opinion. Honestly the fact your channel isn’t so much larger seriously baffles me. Thanks for the great content! As a question to the community here how would you all treat races with sunlight sensitivity in Barovia? I’m considering making Rahadin a Drow and a friend (first time player) is considering making a Drow bard as well but is a little put off by the idea of sunlight sensitivity.

"Kick out of Piddlewick", this tickled me xD

7:50 got something in my eye...sniff

This made me laugh. My players found out sneaky way to kill Strahd. They discovered that Vampyr gets all of the souls of the people Strahd kills. So... they disguised Ireena as Ezmerelda and sent her to Castle Ravenloft. Strahd murdered her upon first sight. Then, they broke in, removed her disguise, and nailed her corpse to the top of Strahd's coffin. They laid the disguise beside it. He saw her, and the disguise (meanwhile they watched from Sergei's tomb), took the dagger out of the disguise kit, and slit his own throat. He knew Vampyr had eaten her soul and now she was gone.

I'm DMing CoS and my players just met Madam Eva. Their card reading revealed that Arrigal is to be the party's ally. I'm extremely interested as to how this will play out. Thanks so much for the advice!

My Ireena fell back to the ways of her old self and started using her charms to drive a wedge between the party. That’s just all part of my nobody is innocent in my CoS story style though. Lol

I’m very interested to hear how you think Strahd would react to Ireena dying “prematurely” He knows it’s fated by the dark powers but what if it happens earlier than he expects it? Does he wipe out Barovia in a fit of rage? Does he become single mind focused on enslaving the party? Have you ever had this happen and what did you do?

for me my group had Arigal as their ally, so far he has done some selfless things but only if they benefited him, he took apart of a fireball blast to prove he is loyal but he knew it wouldnt hurt him at all, after this he slinked off to finish sleeping targets while the rest of the group fought the druids. for my game he is trying to gain the parties trust only to take it all away, doesnt help that one character took Arigal as basically a adopted dad figure

Considering my party includes an artificer, what are your opinions on letting said artificer build Piddlewick a voice box should that opportunity come up?

My party already did the Feast at Ravenloft and has Piddlwick as their ally. I'm wondering how crazy it would be to think he snuck in one of their bags and randomly causes trouble for them until they find him. Like a random roll during a stealth save to see if he makes a bunch of noise or something like that.

Running cos this Friday and the party just finished death house so this is perfect, thank you dude!

For my campaign I planned to change things up for the Tarokka Hero: -- If Ireena is the hero, then her stat block will change as well as making her a Paladin with the Noble background. -- Instead of Devin, the card will be for Muriel. I was inspired with how much Lunch Break Hero incorporated her into the adventure. She is young and ambitious, yet has been a semi-guide for the PC's. (Muriel's change was mentioned in the Old Bonegrinder Guide) -- The last change would be to Piddlwick. He is a char very much inspired by Chucky, so why not double down and make him a CoS version of Chucky. He wants revenge on Strahd for trapping his spirit inside of the doll.

My prayers have davian as their fated ally. Annnd they annoyed him. Here is hoping fetching some gems may smooth over the bad tension

Great work as always! You’re really transforming my campaign. Decided to give Ireena some levels in bard to go with that loves life vibe, so we’ll see how it goes

just saw this came out so excited

giving reaaally good tips and suggestions in a sleek+tight format is one thing, but we NEED vods of the campaigns you run!

I really screwed up with Ireena. I aged her down (13) because my players are all educators and I really wanted them to legitimately care about her. This succeeded and they do care for her, especially after her saving their assess with a firebomb at the windmill, but now Strahd's going to be even more of a creep for lusting after her. My only hope is to age her up somehow at Krezk and that that was Strahd's plan all along and that will be his time to strike.

In my story I let both Tytana and Sergei's soul reincarnated into Ireena's body Their memories will be awakened gradually throughout the travel and they want to free this land from Strahd's curse but they also want to free Strahd from his own curse Strahd did not no that at the beginning but with the progression of the story, he sees both of their shadows on Ireena and have a more complicated relation with them

So I had a player in my game that wanted to switch characters since they were not enjoying being a meme kolbold Cleric. Only problem was the way the character was made since he was meant to be a long serving companion of another players character who’s a paladin and have sort a weird master mentor relationship going on. So in that void of losing that piece of character from the paladin I’m gonna try to get Ireena to take the kolbolds place. Only thing is I don’t want Ireena to be completely untouchable.

Very helpful. Please keep going

when closer to end I'm going to have her take over borovia in strahds place. Having a previous version who was twisted by strhad is other option.

This is awesome stuff!

love the vids. keep it up

The leader of the feathers is Stefania Martikov in my game, because Davian Martikov has alzheimer. And everything you said applies to her! Thanks a lot!

I've had Ireena go with the party to Yester Hill to help get the gem so they can get into Krezk. Strahd would watch the fight and when one of the dumb barbarians attacked her, he would hit them with Blight and bellow not to touch her. None of the other wildmen or druids would hurt her after that lol

LBH i love you guys! Trato de dirigir esta campaña CoS y tus videos me han ayudado mucho pese a mi pobre inglés, soy mexicano. Gracias por los videos! Salúdame plis! Mándame saludos desde México! Te amo! :v

Really like these videos.

You reference guides of Kresk & changing the Something Blue event. Could you provide a link to the guides? Unfortunately I couldn't find them and I really want to implement some of it as it sounds so much better than the original module. Thanks for all the content, great stuff.

Curious to see your suggestions for vasilika. I'm stuck with that card 😂. Why would the Abbey give her over to a bunch of adventurers

How do the Keepers of the Feathers stay secret? One random encounter is a scarecrow full of ravens - is there a way to prevent wereravens from turning back into humans after death?

One of my party members (Dragonborn fighter) decided to kill Piddlwick II on sight. A little background on the situation: So our fighters (a Dragonborn and a human) decided to do a drive by shooting of castle Ravenloft. Unfortunately my character had to come along and we succeeded in burning the castle to the ground; they shot flaming arrows into the wine cellar. What followed was a chase scene similar to the ones you would see in a James Bond film or something. We were chased by werewolves and other undead creatures. We hired a driver for this mission and got the weapons we needed. I refused to participate given my character did not approve of this mission and knew it would infuriate Strahd. Unfortunately, I couldn't stop them and our dm had me go along for the ride. As mentioned above, we succeeded in the drive by, but now we had to deal with Strahd directly. Keep in mind we were at level 4 or 5 when this occurred. We go to the village of Barovia to fight Strahd and won. Then we have to fight Rahadine who kills me and is killed by our fighters. Afterwards we hear laughter and find Piddlwick II in the rubble of the ruined castle. We do not know what to make of the doll and definitely don't trust him. Our dragonborn fighter decided to cut off Piddlwick's legs and arms before eventually killing him.

awesome!!!

Hi. Greetings from Germany. I love your videos. They help a lot and make barovia so much more believable. Thank you for that. Can you help me out? In which video is the idea of the sunsword hilt and kresk discusses? I can't find it again

A character who can't talk is going to be tough for me, because I love role playing, so Piddlewick II will eventually talk. Perhaps one of the PCs checks his gears, and finds some rust blocking his vocal cords (or the equivalent)? Maybe a loose spring? Maybe he grunts, "...oil ... can ...", like the Tin Man? Of course, I already wrote the dialogue for my party's Ally, the werewolf Zuleika, so Piddlewick II is not going to see much action until they enter the castle.

I would so love to play in your campaign of Strahd! Unfortunately, I may have read the book once or twice, worked my way through Mandy Mods and may have even watched all your videos on how to run Strahd. Twice. So I may have encountered a spoiler or two. But other than that, count me in! :-)

I had a great idea... I am giving Irena a kind of hidden personality of a bad ass fighter when she gets her back to the wall and not relize it.

In our campaign both Ireena and her brother are PCs, Ireena made a hex blade pact to survive the love of Strahd. She is kicking ass and taking names. Her brother is a barbarian and is fiercely protective of her as well is the rest of the party. Ireena is pretty much the soul of the group. I gave her a lovely quirky familiar named Devil Chicken *who strangely is tied to the hexblade she wields. Ireena is probably the best and the most interesting PC in my games :D

Important question. Which one of companions would you choose? (If you could; *wink, wink). I was decided on the mad mage, but now I'm not so sure

I can't find the krezk guide he's talking about. What happens to Ireena in the pool in krezk?

Your lack of viewership is criminal, damn it.

What is the best moment you think for Strahd to capture Ireena? I really want strahd to capture her to give the party more reasons to hate strahd and go to the castle.

When can you talk about my boy Ismark?

So my party have drawn the Raven and I intend to have Urwin draw them to one side at some point and explain that he knows he can’t change his fathers mind but he also knows that if the party fails then he and his entire family are dead. So if the party fails, but somehow survive, he is going to ensure he sees each and everyone of them dead.

By the way, Ireena in my games is played as a 3rd Level Sword bard. She's a vicious duelist and a bit of a hedonist, unwilling to die without enjoying everything and glad to fight to extend her life.

thank you for this, ireena and ishmark are currently my partys allies and while theyve met ez ..ireena has kinda been neglected by both me, the party, and strahd as someone whos just kinda there and is just for the plot of "strahd wants her for something " also, for the intents of not having her die instantly every fight, ive boosted her hp to 45 , slightly lower than ishmael but good enough id say. another thing of note im toying with is having sergei alive as a revenant that when ireena meets him, well, she'll get her memories back after passing out though i kinda wish i knew about davian before hand, because my party never met him, wintersplinter attacked the winery, broke a part of it, presumably killed davian, and then in my campaign strahd destoryed vallaki with werewolves, which in the battle, the wereravens decied to try and fight back, resulting ina lot of them dying

We are Tatyana

Mordenkainen?

Irena is a potato. Got it.

Building off of this, I am pondering playing Irena more like a Trill from Star Trek. Specifically, she doesn't lock on to one past life, but instead all of them shuffle into the current incarnation.

Meh, give Ireena more hit points. She has 14HP and Strahds bite does 17 damage, she needs to be stronger Esp since Ismark "has been training his whole life to take out Strahd". Ireena being a soft squashy noble while her brother has veteran stats (58HP) is really sexist.

The Ireena characterization really disappointed me. It’s the same thing everyone does with her. “Make her strong!” “Make her want to take the fight to Strahd!” “She’d rather die than be Strahd’s.” I couldn’t disagree more. The game doesn’t lack strong females, the girl Strahd’s focusing on shouldn’t be one of them. Strahd is the primary villain in a horror themed game. His primary focus is Ireena. Everything you said for him to do undermines him and makes him feel impotent and unthreatening. It’s also unbelievable. Strahd is the literal devil of her whole world and the only power she’s ever experienced who is reflected in every aspect of the entirety of her existence. A devout Christian thinking he’s going to kill god is more believable than a Barovian thinking he’s going to kill Strahd. Ireena should be attracted to Strahd. He’s brilliant, charming, attractive, and powerful. Those are all incredibly attractive. He is telling her she’s special, beautiful and chosen. Everyone wants to think that about themselves. Strahd’s offer should be tempting, he can protect her, make her immortal, take her away from all the death and suffering and show her wonders all over the multiverse she’s never seen. He’d promise her everything and she doesn’t know he’s trapped in Barovia. The temptation should be real, the struggle comes from the knowledge that it will cost her immortal soul. Her wavering and being broken down is far more interesting and makes your villain far more interesting than the toothless “oh Ireena is a fighter.” Yawn.

Can you please say "I am not Data." in a Star Trek Data voice before you intro your vids?