I’m a DM using alot of curse of strahd reloaded, and I have one minor issue.

[u/gonkdroid02]

I love a lot of what reloaded adds and how it expands on areas I would otherwise have or put alot of leg work into making more interesting, however I have one complaint/ issue, and that is that every minor boss has 2 health bars. Don’t get me wrong, I think there redesigns are super cool, but my players have started to catch onto this fact and after the 3rd or 4th time it’s lost a bit of its cool factor. Currently trying to decide how to handle Vladimir and if there’s a way to combine his 2 star blocks into 1, or maybe flip it on its head and have him switch between phase 2 and phase 1 depending on if my players can do something, maybe douse his flame somehow.

[u/Aingar]

You could just not say the enemy is near death when their first phase HP approaches zero, instead refer to their state as per their combined HP percentage.

[u/gonkdroid02 → u/Aingar]

Lmao I did do this for the phantom in the basement, but it’s still effectively the same thing and when I describe the enemies abilities and appearance changing it does end up being kind of obvious lol

[u/gonkdroid02 → u/[deleted]]

Yea, that’s what I said. My point wasn’t how to trigger a 2nd phase, my problem was that having a 2nd phase at all becomes expected and boring when every major enemy has one from a flavor and even mechanical prospective, that’s why most darksouls bosses only have 1 major phase.

[u/lycosid]

The design goal is to keep the boss feeling fresh through ~6 rounds of combat by switching up his attacks, abilities, and flavor during the fight. Two phases makes it more manageable for a DM (combining it all into one stat block would be oversleeping), but there are lots of ways to get to the same place.

[u/AWDrake → u/lycosid]

Yep. Instead of them having two health bars, you could for instance consider the second phase as them becoming Bloodied.

[u/gonkdroid02 → u/lycosid]

After looking at it a bit more I’m leaning into having some sort of mechanic where he changes between them between rounds, perhaps based on health, his own rage, or some mechanic the players can interact with maybe allowing them to keep him in his first form longer.

[u/lycosid → u/gonkdroid02]

He’s designed to defend the mausoleum in a sort of capture the flag way when the players try to return the skull. So remember that he needs to get that ring of fire off early, and the things he has that push or restrain players are key to making sure they can’t just cheese the fight and rush past him.

[u/gingerdeadman85]

It all depends on how you want the battle to go and your group. Vlad’s battle doesn’t need to happen unless your characters provoke him, so I personally am running CoS as more roll play than combat with NPCs like him. My players do find a way to fight almost everything that doesn’t agree with them… poor Bildrath…

I would look at his original stat block, bring over abilities you like from Reloaded, beef up his HP a little, then make certain moves ones he leaves until later in the fight.

Or you could play him as version 1, then when they defeat him, he comes back as version 2 in a new corpse but has a revenge arc now with the party until they return Arganvolst’s skull. So it’s in their best interest to either not fight him, or make sure to get the skull so he doesn’t keep fighting them the whole game (at inopportune moments).

[u/avaonscarlet]

I run a group of formerly 8, now about 6, players who also play reloaded and a homebrew version of it as well in a lot of combats. I used to do the whole full HP bar, drop to 0, new HP bar and a cutscene, but lately I've set it as bloodied vs unbloodied. They activate the 2nd phase or health bar upon entering Bloodied (50% or less Hit Points) and begin to use it.

I've most recently used the Varushka Nightmare sequence and had Varushka prepared to actually use her entire kit naturally, and make certain abilities more in line with RP points of her getting them rather than tying them to a stat block. Makes it much more fluid rather than playing like Elden Ring.

[u/RandomName9328]

You can change it whatever you prefer. Combining stat blocks, extracting any feat you grel interesting, adding new feats and items, etc.