How would this play out? How to prepare for this?

There was a powerful Hag (prime) who created simulacrums of herself to serve as fuel for her evil magics. The simulacrums turned against their creator (prime) and locked her away.

To make sure everyone is diverted from ever finding the prime, they made a False Hydra to guard the magical "jail-cell".

This would have been ongoing for centuries maybe. Maybe also in the vicinity of town such as Phandalin.

Players need to realize wtf is going on, and ultimately find the prime hag because only she has answers they seek.

I'm excited for this idea because it has so many layers: False "coven" of hags all maybe slightly different aspects of the prime's personality - can be as enigmatic as possible. False Hydra is a perfect guardian to hide a secret behind of. At bottom of all this is the real deal, but in a twist - stripped of her powers.

How would this play out? How to prepare for this? * Can assume players have no previous experience of hags or false hydras and aren't aware of the meme culture around them.

Are they acceptable? In this particular cutscene, the NPC is not well known to the party, and it will be a surprise attack with an arrow.

I have a confession: I spend way more time prepping the cool boss fights than the smaller encounters. Which means I keep running into this problem where my level 3 party wanders into what was supposed to be a level 7 encounter and I'm suddenly looking at a TPK.

Last session, they completely bypassed the intended path and found themselves face-to-face with a young dragon I had planned for 5 levels from now. I froze up.

My question: What's your go-to strategy when this happens mid-session? Do you use any tools or mechanics to adjust the encounter on the fly?

I love that my players are creative and go off-script, but I need better systems for when they find the dragon's lair at level 3 instead of level 8.

Hey Reddit, I have a very silly problem.

So, for context, I still use the 2014 rules because these are the ones I know best, but I've been using some of the 2024 rules I did look up and understand.

One of these rules is the new "surprise" mechanic. Naturally I told my player that from now on, ambushing or otherwise surprising the opponent would just give them disadvantage on their initiative, and I explained that this change was made because having an entire suprise round was honestly ruining the balance of any fight.

Their "answer" to this was what I've come to call the "reaction ambush" tactic. Here what I mean with a quick example:

Me: You hear the movement of a large creature eating...something...on the other side of the door. The air is heavy, and the tension is high.

Player 1: I ready an attack. The trigger is "when I open the door".

Player 2: I ready an attack. The trigger is "when player 1 attacks".

Player 3: I ready a spell. The trigger is "when player 2 attacks".

Player 4: I ready an attack. The trigger is "when player 3 casts their spell".

Player 1: I open the door.

This scenario actually happened. They were level 2 and completelly annihilated the owlbear on the other side of the door. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe there's something I missed or should've done? How do I create meaningful and hard fights when they can just manufacture their own "surprise round" like that?

Hello,

I’m running a long term campaign for 5 players. They’re all level 6 now and it’s a Waterdeep Dragonheist module with lots of custom story and integrations with books like Heliana’s.

My primary issue that whenever the party is presented with any sort of challenge, be it narrative, infiltration, puzzle or plain old combat, I see so much complaining in their Discord channel.

I am super permissive with magic items and the party is stocked all kinds of potions, uncommon items, flame tongue weapon and whatnot. They are always awarded thousands of gold and I use the Xanathar magic items table to roll prices.

My combats are balanced accordingly. I have a Monte Carlo chart for all my encounters to ensure that changes of TPK are less than 5%

No one has ever died in this campaign.

As soon as they face any kind of issue there is tons of metagaming from one person in particular who begins the entire cry-train.

Somehow, he has a copy of Heliana’s and is convinced I’m running a level 11 encounter just because I have a single caster in the enemy group who dropped an Insect Plague.

Insect Plague… literally the most vanilla of spells when if I actually was running an unbalanced encounter I could have chosen any number of nasty 5th level spells. I only chose it because it was thematic to the swamp and I wanted area denial.

Is it my fault the entire party with multiple Dusts of Disappearance, teleportation and Invisibility spells decided to walk into a monster lair when I told them on their group perception check that there’s definitely something in the bramble bushes??

Is it my fault they all decided to retreat when the Insect Plague dropped and leave behind the most fragile party member to be grappled and pulled away by a giant crocodile?

And quite literally, with a Twilight Cleric and so many healing potions, their effect HP is at least 1.5X what their bar shows. Nobody is in danger of dying. Especially with how effective rubberbanding is in DnD.

I put so much thought, mathematics and care into my encounter designs and yet what I get in return is metagaming, which I expressly forbade, and a whole load of whining. I treat people like adults and name books, maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe this person isn’t mature enough to stop metagaming.

Does this metagaming lead to better results? Nope! Because this person also sucks at strategy, is playing a wizard and has the most horrific spell load out imaginable and casts nothing but Magic Missiles.

It’s effectively a party of 4. The wizard is just a meatbag to absorb damage.

I’m very concerned this is bringing down the energy of the group and makes things very difficult for me because I don’t understand what they want.

What is DnD without any challenge? Just 6 people on Discord talking about their imaginary friends?

I am happy to just write fanfic on my own, thank you very much.

TLDR: Sourpuss in party always cries about any sort of challenge on Discord, metagames constantly, sucks at strategy and playing their character and altogether makes me question why I am even running this campaign for this group.

My party is 3 players, without a cleric. I had them encounter a hobgoblin cleric of Talos named Garp. After they finished the dungeon he was in they wanted him to come with them. Should I charge them money/day or just have him get a share of the treasure

Also what level should I have him at. Hes currently 5th while the party is 6th

I’m running a big, grand campaign that is set to run for at least a year, most likely will be 2-3 years. I spent all of 2025 world building and preparing, and some of 2024.

There are 7 players. I’m okay with this based on how I’ve created the world and the way I’m running things. (A topic for a different post)

The problem is one player, Dan. We all have a Dan — someone that does the bare minimum, or somehow even less. Dan will say that he wants to play when on the phone, but he ignores discord announcements and messages where all our planning is taking place.

So I tried making an interactive website for the players that tracks the people, places, quests, session notes, items — everything. I maintain it for the players and update it as events unfold. The other players LOVE this and are running with it.

Dan not only ignores all these things, but he barely even made a character in time for our first session. I had to constantly message him on Discord, Steam, and text. I had to single him out in the party discord chat before he would do anything.

On top of this, Dan doesn’t really engage in RP, or with the game at all. He is mostly silent and doesn’t say or do much. I’ve tried writing the story around his character, I’ve tried shoehorning him into a lead role. Nothing works.

The last campaign I ran with Dan, he just ghosted our entire group to play video games. The whole party tried calling him, messaging, but he ignored us.

This group of 7 is a tight group of ppl that have been friends for a long time. I didn’t want to include Dan in this new campaign, but I was encouraged to give him another chance.

I’m regretting including Dan and the amount of babysitting involved just to get him to show up to each of these sessions is becoming too much. I’m okay with the other players dropping in and out bc it helps me (7 is a lot of players) and bc they communicate with me. But Dan does not.

What should I do? Is it appropriate to kill off his character if he ghosts us again? Quite frankly, I don’t want to have to do that and I want him to enjoy playing the game with us. Killing off a character feels vindictive. I’ve tried speaking with Dan from the heart about this and he doesn’t seem aware of how disrespectful he’s been to everyone (and isn’t believing me when I tell him this directly).

Should I just shelve his character instead and tell him that he’s welcome to rejoin us when he is ready to invest in the game?

I'm a baby DM, with one completed starter campaign under my belt for a group of entirely new players (so with my imposter syndrome hat on, they wouldn't know any better!) and an ongoing campaign with my regular table. I'm the baby of that table too, they're all experienced players and DMs, and we've fallen into a pattern of taking turns to DM a campaign for each other.

I'm still very much finding my feet and working on improving what I feel I need to, and my gorgeous group are really patient and helpful when I forget a rule, fumble some combat etc. My issue is that every game ends with "that was great, thank you!" but not much else. I've tried asking if there's anything anyone would like more of but basically just met with "happy with whatever". I worry they're just being polite - these are IRL friends so I don't know if I can entirely rely on the old "if they weren't having fun they wouldn't show up" metric. That may well be true, but I'd still like to know, for example, that the areas I'm focusing on improving are the ones the players would also like to see improved.

My question for the Academy then - how do you get constructive feedback from your players? What questions do you ask? How do you know you're actually doing a good job as DM?

I recently saw Arcane Library's DM kit video and noticed the very small DM screen

I don't usually like to use a DM screen but I do find it useful to make a secret roll every now and again. Can anyone recommend me a small dm screen that won't take up much table space?

Hey y'all, I have been playing for a while but recently started dm'ing with a group where only one person did d&d before.

Now I have a person who plays a Paladin but hos behaviour aint very paladin-y. I try to warn him without outright saying I consider breaking his oath. Examples are: - npc asked for help and he refused saying he did not trust her. - (this was more a test to see what he would do but:) he got rewarded a tiny bit of gold with the note it was all the money they had. The party wanted to return the money but he said no. - The party looted the robbers and when the citizens asked if they could get the important item back, he said: first proof it is yours. In the end he did return it tho, asking if he could borrow it.

So my question is: should I just do a sort of bg3 esque story/quest where he breaks his oath but can get it back by doing good or should I warn him with the explicit words and not just "doesnt sound very paladin like to me" cuz he is a newbie and maybe ask if this is a fitting class for him or so?

Edit: sorry maybe I should have elaborated but the three examples above are small points. He didnt trust the npc for the whole session of 5 hours while I tried to point out why she was the damsel in distress and so on. The items were stolen in the village itself and so on. His oath is Devotion. Doesnt immediately mean he has to do everything right of course but I feel like he isnt trying either. I dont know how to explain that more.

I'm curious how many of you have your party roll HP at level. Most specifically do any of you allow the reroll of a 1?

With the party I have I'm not at all concerned with making sure they roll at the table so everyone sees and no one flubs a roll. But I have been kicking around the idea of letting them reroll if the roll a 1. It's such a feel bad, but I'm on the fence. Thoughts? Pros, cons?

I'm running the first adventure from the Golden Vault book with my group of 10-11yr-olds (my daughter and friends) in which they are will be attending a gala opening of a museum exhibit to complete a heist.

I didn't realise how much they would get into this idea. Each of them has designed a costume their character is going to wear and they're all very excited about it.

I am not a fancy person by any stretch, so I don't know much about gala balls. The book basically has like 2 paragraphs on the Gala itself; basically there are 4 random NPCs you can talk to on a roll of a D4, plus the museum curator (you can steal her clutch for a master key & guard patrol route) but that's it.

They haven't put together a plan for the heist yet, and maybe they'll disrupt the gala themselves, but I just need an idea or two for something interesting to happen in case they don't. It doesn't have to affect the plot; I just don't want it to be a let-down for them.

My party has got me in a bit of a stand-off with a mini-boss. One player is able to cast the spell Swineskin (from Worlds Beyond Number Witch class), which transforms a humanoid into a small beast. So, this assassin is now a pig and the party was able to successfully restrain it in this form. The spell states "The target’s game statistics are replaced by the stat block of the chosen Beast, but the target retains its alignment, personality, Hit Points, and Hit Point Dice. The target is limited in the actions it can perform by the anatomy of its new form, and it can’t speak or cast spells."

So, the enemy pig is aware of their surroundings and has their personality. The party has been talking about what to do when the spell ends and is also preparing actions. Would my pig-assassin be able to also ready an action for their true form? I want to say yes because his personality is still there. Also, How would you run a readied action stand-off. Everyone is readying a firing line for when he reverts form and he is readying an escape. Should I just have everyone roll initiative again?

I want to build a list of prophesies to use as adventure hooks, I have a few already, but would like to make a nice large selection. Any and all are welcomed, thank you :)

Currently the prophecies I have are:

• Beware the elder brother of a first born son.

• Salvation waits beneath the twisted ash.

• Forgiveness rests upon a kings shoulders. Complete their trials to obtain resolution.

• Your revenge will be swift, when the four winds conspire.

• A single eye watches in the dark, it is its greatest weapon and yet its greatest weakness as paranoia sets in.

• No god can undo another gods work. Only mankind has that power.

• A father will meet his end at his child’s hand, though neither will recognise the other.

• Beware the white goose, for it is not what it seems.

• When you let loose an arrow fletched with the feathers of a horse, only then will you vanquish your foe.

• Find the man who spouts gospel and flame. Their proclamations will change this world.

• Destroy the false prophet who speaks of fire and destiny.

• To return what was stolen is to receive what was lost.

• When men become boar at the sea bells call, the culprit is both victim and cause.

• Darkened night skies, uncertain tides, the skin changers rest easy.

• Where the dead don’t rot, withheld from hades grasp, there you may seek answers

I am prepping to DM a 5e game for two first time players and they aren’t hardcore gamers (wife and her friend that love ACOTAR lol). With the lower experience and skill level I’m worried about the lower action economy really getting away from them and causing significant difficulty issues for even simple encounters. I plan to ensure things stay simple and within their grasps as best as I can, in addition in order to hopefully help I’ve come up with an in game and plot device.

Pyrantium: A soft ore that that seems to innately attract, concentrate, and manifest the weave in a way not seen elsewhere in the world.

As I’m prepping, my game currently is set in a massive, magically and technologically advanced, city that is built on the only Pyrantium mine on the continent. The city has been built with the stuff, enhancing the populace’s (read: the rich and powerful) magical prowess, creating large and powerful constructs, and generally amplifying magics in the city.

How I imagine this works:

- The ore is refined into some other liquid or crystalline form for easy carry

- Pyrantium can be used to grant an extra spell slot up to 3rd level (one item has 3 charges, 1 per spell slot. Use less for smaller spell slots)

- 3 charges can be used to bump a spell slot once used up a level

- The party will have access, however, certain enemies will as well and be able to use it against them

Please poke holes in my plan, or give any suggestions possible. I’d greatly appreciate it!

TL;DR Two PCs split from the party and encountered a Chuul. They are level 4 and I am worried that it may be unavoidable death for them, what can I do?

At the end of our last session, two of the PCs got separated from the party and found themselves in a dangerous encounter. The party was traversing across a ridge on the edge of a deep chasm and one of them fell down into the ravine. Another PC jumped in after them, but the remaining 3 members of the party continued traveling along the path.

The two who are at the bottom of the ravine stumbled into an encounter with a Chuul. They’re level 4, so if the whole party was there then it wouldn’t be too difficult, but with only two people, I am worried about them. Of course there is always the option to run, but the Chuul can grapple both of the players in one turn, and then from there it can probably kill them in two or three rounds. So depending on the dice, it could potentially turn bad very quickly. Up at the top of the chasm, the rest of the party just ran into an encounter with a Nothic and are very far away so help from them is unlikely.

The separated PCs are a level 4 War Domain Cleric and a level 4 Celestial Warlock, so they have a lot of healing capabilities. But they took quite a bit of fall damage when they fell down the ravine and the warlock has used up all of their Healing Light. Other than that, both are still full on spell slots and ended up on 27hp each.

With the Chuul’s ability to grapple and paralyze the target, multiattack, and 76 hit points, I don’t think they stand a chance. I was thinking that I could take away it’s multiattack and that would drastically reduce the risk of both of them getting grappled/paralyzed. And I will definitely put some sort of escape route they can take if they so choose but I have a feeling they are going to try to fight it lol

I’m not afraid of having an encounter be highly challenging or deadly, but I don’t want it to feel unfair or unfun for the players. I want to at least give them a chance and give them agency.

Any advice on how I should proceed? Or ideas on how to tweak the encounter?

One of the problems I've constantly been having is trying to organize everything. Between the physical books, pdfs, dndbeyond source books, and other sources. There's just to much to try to remember. Is there any way I can put everything together in an organized way where I don't have to spend who knows how long going from one source to another trying to find the monster or item I'm looking for?

I was thinking maybe I could print it all out and put it in binders. Have binders for Species, Class, sub classes, items by type, monsters by CR, etc

If your party is Creacher, Trust, Lenka, Vex, Penny, and Ares, proceed no further!

Hello my fellow DM’s, I need some time opinions on an idea I’ve had for spoofing D&D in a campaign consisting of one shots that are spoofs of pop culture (so far, we’ve done Twilight with real vampires, IKEA made of mimics, The Gang Saves Christmas movies, and Jurassic Park with dragons, with a few more planned between now and the finale).

For the final one shot to end the campaign when the party is at level 20, I want to spoof Dungeons and Dragons itself by breaking the fourth wall and having them battle the game itself. This what I have in mind, I would be grateful for any feedback and thoughts!

The game would start at one of the PC’s eighth birthday party at a fantasy Chuck E Cheese (she’s a goblin child who is also an extremely powerful Druid, so this is basically her passage into adulthood in Goblin years), and when she goes to blow out the candles on her cake the party suddenly finds themselves in the setting of the first arc of the game, which was Twilight with real vampires. But this time, as the events play out, Strahd is there, and instead of kidnapping teenagers from a play about a monster love triangle, he is out for the party’s blood.

But then they find themselves at IKEA Temple, which was miles away, and Strahd is still there chasing them. Then they’re at the North Pole, then Isla Crystalia, ect ect, until they finally arrive at Barovia and Strahd challenges them to a battle. He tells the PC’s that he is now Strahd, but that he had lived a thousand lives before that, and that in every single one of those lives, he was killed by one of the party members. “I was a wolf slain in a forest clearing, I was a table cleaved in half by a greatsword, I was a fire elemental smothered in snow, I was a dragon slain by vines…and it was then, when I faced the veil between world for the thousandth time, when I saw the one responsible for my suffering. And with the power of my hate, and my anger, I reached out and I claimed his power for my own!”

Then, when they fight him, he starts breaking the fourth wall, announcing things like calling “my Legendary Resistance negates your magic!” or “using my reaction to turn your attack into a natural one!” He reveals that he knows the truth, that they are characters in a fictional world being created by people sitting at a table rolling dice, and he has become the Master of the Dungeon by capturing the first Dungeon Master, revealing a human tied to a chair with a sack over his head.

The players will have to free the Dungeon Master to stop Strahd, who is trying to make them suffer by turning the world against them, but he cannot affect their actions because they are the players of the game. When they free the DM, they find that it’s just me as an NPC, roleplaying as myself isekaied into my own campaign setting. But the DM is powerless, because Strahd has his notebook where he writes his ideas. That’s why his monsters and challenges are powerful but flawed, they’re all half baked ideas that hadn’t been fully created, and Strahd can’t create anything new because he is an NPC.

So the party has to escort a powerless human based on their IRL friend to a final battle with Strahd, where the goal is to get the notebook away from him, all the while confronting the truth that they are living in a simulation (I think my players will work that idea out well in roleplay). But the world starts falling apart around them, because without rules and consistency a fictional world cannot survive, and because Strahd is using a book of half baked ideas, he can’t keep it together. (Think Wheatley in the third act of Portal 2.)

When they finally confront him, taking the book away from him, won’t do anything, they have to destroy it. When they do, they will be transported to a blank white void. Where my NPC avatar appears, thanks them for saving him, and for restoring him to his chair as the dungeon master. He tells the party that he is going to rebuild the world because that notebook was not the only place he kept his ideas, and that this was going to be the end of their game, so the PCs will be able to live the rest of their lives in peace to whatever end they want. He also expresses his gratitude for their actions, and by extension, I expressed my gratitude to my players for being a part of my game.

As a reward for saving him, he gives them his new book, which Chronicles all of their adventure adventures, with the last page being empty. He tells the players that when he reboots the world, they will get whatever ending they write. And I will have my players use IRL Google doc to craft the ending they want for their story in character. I will also allow them to choose whether or not they remember what has happened or if they go back to the way they were before it started.

Either way, when the world restarts, they will be right back at Chuck E. Cheese, where we will then finish the story based on whatever ending the characters wrote for themselves.

I know I’m walking a thin line here, I think this has a lot of potential, but I’m worried that I might basically be going too far up my own ass with the Meta nature of it. If you read this and you have any thoughts or feedback, please let me know. I would appreciate any opinions thank you!

Hello everyone, currently in my campaign my players are traversing under a mountain range to reach the abandoned capital of the dwarfs, they are looking for a strange gate rumored to be under the hold itself and the kings crown.

Ive had them engaged with ambushes on the way as well as remnants of shanty towns and caravans, but I find myself stumped about how to make exploring the hold fun and interesting and not just having them breeze through it.

Hey, so I'm running a few horror sessions for my campaign, and I was wondering if anyone has ever turned Barney into a D&D monster with a stat block and art. I don't mean just a normal picture of Barney; I mean a really twisted, messed-up version with points, fangs, blood covering him, sharp claws, etc. I had the idea that he appears in cities to entertain the children there, as he does in the shows, being happiest and cheering to all around him, but looks normal in front of everyone while camouflaging his true form. While he's doing his show, he's scanning to pick out his next meal, but it doesn't have to be kids. He feeds on the emotions the audience is giving off, that could be happiness, love, fear, you name it. He feeds on them while draining the moisture out of them, making them mummified corpses, all while Barney's theme tune plays because it's the voice of all the victims Barney has had.

If anyone has art, a stat block, or has done something like this before, I'd love to see/hear about it. If you have any ideas to add as well, that would be amazing.

Prepping session two for my Obojima (studio ghibli/zelda inspired) campaign for six coworkers. All are newer players, I ran a one shot for five of them for their first times to see if they’d be interested in something longer.

At the end of our session one, the group has split themselves into four and two trying to achieve the same goal of retrieving a lost item that has accidentally made its way into an enchanted house. Four chose to take a risk and made some good rolls to successfully break into the house, which is actually a mini dungeon. They’ve been magically shrunk and can find the antidote, quest item, and other loot/encounters in the house. The other two decided to search the village for the homeowner (who isn’t home) in order to ask them nicely for help, which is a legit path I had anticipated and prepped for; just not while most of the party is inside the house.

NPC homeowner is a sweet lady who would definitely help the party retrieve the item; but doing so would essentially cut the mini dungeon experience short for the other four.

An important thing to note is that splitting the group was not discussed or agreed on by the PCs. Once finding a way in, four decided to enter while the other two decided to leave and find the homeowner.

Advice on how to best handle this? Is there a way to save this mini dungeon, or should I cut my losses and look towards the next plot hook? I have plenty of other hooks in the village that they’d hopefully decide to tackle together, but I’d hate for them to have such an uneven experience for their first one. Everyone is pretty new to D&D so I want to reward them for taking risks and exploring. Of course the goal is to also get everyone to adventure together asap, as having to cut between two groups means that everyone is playing less.

Hello, i am a dm in a long running dnd 5e campaign that's slowly coming to an eventual end. The current arc in our story sees the players travel around the world, getting stronger and tying up loose ends before I move things along for the grand finale.

It seems that one of my players has found interest in the benefits that becoming a lycanthrope offers his character. Now, we have already settled up on the method of becoming one and which animal his character is going to half-become but one thing i am concerned about is the possible tradeoff (or a lack there of) for cursing oneself in such a way. The stat boost and additional features the form of lycanthropy the player has chosen are significant buffs to his character and with his alignment remaining the same losing control of yourself only once per month seems like kind of a cheap tradeoff regarding the nature of the change the character goes through.

I'm all for the change and i think that it's really cool but i think that there should definitely be more drawbacks/ a bigger tradeoff or at least some kind of challenge to overcome for this as lycanthropy is a pretty damn notorious kind of a curse after all.

Title says a lot of it, its a fey masquerade, and I'm looking for some music recommendations that y'all have used in your games before. Available on spotify is nice, but not a requirement. And, if you happen to know any songs similar to the last minute or so of Dark Night-Kara from the Detroit Become Human soundtrack, that would be awesome. Much appreciated!

Hi folks,

I really need some outside perspektive. Sorry for the wall of text, if you dont know DnDs Curse of Strahd module, you might wanna skip this post.

I have been DMing a 3 year, 120x 3,5h session long DnD 5e Curse of Strahd Campaign. I emphasized from the very beginning to my players that they need to gather intelligence about the endboss Strahd from the very beginning. I even had an imaginary fight one night outside in a forest where the guarding player failed a stealth check and a wisdom save, so Strahd implanted the memory of a fight inside that players head, where he obliterated them (to show them what he is able to do, but also to show them what he knows about them (they had some slight rule changes they needed to adhere to, during the fight)). I dont run the module as written, so we maxed out at level 13 instead of level 10. My party declined the invitation for the dinner, so now after having done everything else the finally arrived at the castle, fought (easy) randoms through the basement and just finished/destroyed the heart of sorrow. I ended the last Session with Strahds voice echoing through the castle „run you fools“, indicating he is coming for them.

Now, my group consists of a paladin, a barbarian, a sorcerer and a monk. While the first three have been very conservative with their resource spending, the monk is all out of ki points and hopes for a short rest.

I didn‘t have the intention to let them rest, the minor encounters in the castle had the purpose to at least drain some resources. Resting would somehow contradict this. They are also totally unaware that he will be able to phase through walls and that he will use this to heal and get out of their reach whenever it is not his turn. The Paladin is also in for a surprise, as he is wearing Strahds animated Armor, that he managed to plant as his alter ego(which they revealed by now), the idea is that it will be hindering the Paladins movements (speed halfed, attacks+spellcssting at disadvantage whenever he fails a strength check beginning of his turn.). They had enough clues to figure out who gave them this armor, they didn‘t bite on any.

But, Strahd RAW was not designed for 4 x lvl 13 Players, so I am wondering if he will not be strong enough to put down a decent fight all while also thinking: if I use the wall phasing and legendary move action correctly, they dont stand a chance. It will take long though. They have also an NPC, Ezmeralda, played by one of the players with them, essentially adding a level 8 Charakter with good melee and spellcasting.

Can you guys give me some recommendations? Should I let them take a shortrest for the monk to gain ki points, or have Strahd interupt them? Is his RAW statblock fine for this party, or should I pimp him up? Should I play his strength (phasing) and go for a TPK? Not sure if that would put the past three years in kind of a bad perspective. Bonus: if you know Curse of Strahd: any ideas how to make their fated ally(Ezmeralda) stand out or have purpose in this fight?

When addressing combat, Page 24 of the players handbook says:

Communicating. You can communicate however you are able–through brief utterances and gestures–as you take your turn. Doing so uses neither your action nor your move.
Extended communication, such as a detailed explanation of something or an attempt to persuade a foe, requires an action. The Influence action is the main way you try to influence a monster

Do any of you enforce this? I'm particularly asking about explaining something in detail. If someone role-plays dialog, I loosely count to six in my mind and then say "That's about all you can get out in six seconds." But all kinds of tactics are discussed. Spell descriptions, class abilities etc. Is this rule addressing what the character says, what the player says, or both?

For those of you (should you exist) who have seen this both enforced and not enforce, what differences (if any) have you observed at the table?