Yester Hill Guide | Running Curse of Strahd 5e

my dog is down here hey bud if you weren't 90 pounds i'd lift you up into camera review all right go go go go shoo go on he's a good boy here we are once again to talk about the druids of yester hill this video has been a long time coming i've been talking about it since early spring you guys have been asking about it since before that and here it is for your viewing enjoyment my big problem with this chapter is that the druids don't really have a history there's no explanation as to their purpose in the area why they're doing what exactly they're doing and as you know i like a bit more meat to my narrative so what we've done is we've taken these druids we've given them that history that backstory that purpose and if you've watched my video on the winery you have a pretty good idea of what their overarching purpose is hundreds of years ago the druids were a part of a larger tribe of forest folk of mountain folk wild people that roamed the lands of borovia they were led by a fearsome barbarian named kevon and they took to calling themselves the kavani now if you've watched my amber temple video you know what the cavani are up to nowadays they're sending their youth into the amber temple to test their metal but a long time ago shortly after kevon disappeared to fight the darkness and the mist that had enshrouded borovia the cavani kind of split into two sects there was the original nature loving hippy dippy sect and then there was the darker sect that saw straud as the avatar of the land and worthy of their worship now understandably these two sides they didn't get along and a violent schism happened eventually the darker sect was driven out from the main cavani tribe and they had to find their own way lots of them died but enough remnants survived to where the forest folk the druids of barovia remained and thrived around the luna river area back when they were part of the main cavani tribe the druids of yester hill were like any other druid class that you would play as a player they had the ability to wild shape and be really in tune with nature and that all changed when they went to luna river and delved even further into darkness they found the gulfiest tree there within the forests and they began to cultivate it and that spelled the downfall for their true druidic nature they lost their ability to wild shape nature itself saw them as abhorrent and it rejected them and that loss of their wild shape ability has really chapped their ass they don't like it they hate it and they mourn the loss of their heritage and as such it it really drives what they are doing with the martikovs it drives their jealousy they've discovered this family of shape changers and they are hell-bent on getting that secret as such they have raided the winery and they have taken a few people back with them and we'll talk a bit more about that in just a second before we talk about that though if you want the written version of this guide you can get it on patreon by pledging just as little as a dollar that's this guide and all the other lunch break heroes guides yours to download and keep forever so go ahead and check it out and if you don't want to do that that's okay go ahead and subscribe and we'll see you back here for all of our other future videos now that we've discussed the changes that we've made to the druids history let's start talking about the changes we've made to the hill itself the first change that we've made is in area y2 the ring of cairns that surrounds the hill this is a small change and it's that you aren't going to find the blood sphere of kevon in this area we have actually moved it and it is now located in area y3 where we've made quite a significant change as written area y3 is filled with 12 enemies six druids and six berserkers they aren't here anymore in our version we've actually moved them in their place is just a single druid and he's covered head to toe in well blood he's a new enemy called a blood druid and you can find his stat block linked in the description of this video this druid his name is keshgar and he's holding somebody captive it's a woman and she's on her knees in front of him and he's holding her by the jaw forcing her to look at the effigy he's holding up the martikov gem right in front of her he's whispering in her ear and he's taunting her and he's telling her that everything that's happening now can stop if she just gives him what he wants kashgar is obviously not a nice guy now the woman is stefania martikov she has been taken captive along with her teenage son claudio now claudio we'll talk about him in a second he's in area y4 with the golfias tree but focusing back on area y3 another one of the big changes is the effigy itself i mentioned that the winery gem is in keshkar's hand so what the heck is powering the effigy now it's the blood sphere of kevon we've taken it out of area y2 as i stated earlier and it is now right smack in the effigy's chest where its heart should be it's sticking out and it is dripping blood this is something that your players can climb up there and take but not before the spear itself the spirit of kavan reaches out to them telepathically kevon may be dead but this is borovia and being dead doesn't mean a whole lot sometimes the spirit of kevon endures within his spear it's a sentient spear now kavon he does not like what his descendants are doing he's really pissed off he knows that if his descendants succeed in their ritual he's basically going to become a tool of strawed worship and he does not want that to happen so as soon as your players your party enters into area y3 they're going to hear a booming voice in their head saying you you i feel the rage within you come and take me get me out of this and let's kick some ass whatever you want to say but he's ready to be taken out of that effigy and he's ready to be wielded in battle now if your party does decide to climb up the effigy and retrieve the spear they've got to make a dc-13 athletics check just to climb up the effigy now the effigy is wrapped in the roots of the golthius tree that have kind of snaked their way upwards and these roots are gonna actively kind of move away and thwart the climbing capabilities of your characters so they're they're trying to keep you from doing whatever it is you want to do they're trying to throw you off so you got that dc in there when you actually get to the spear it's going to take a dc-15 athletics check to yank it out of there it's jammed in there really good but once a character does retrieve the spear from the effigy they are chosen by kevon they can wield the spear instantly as if they've attuned to it know that removing the spear doesn't stop the ritual the druids can still summon winter splinter they simply want to use kavon's spirit as an animating spirit of destruction and they want to use him to make winter splinter stronger now if you do end up removing the spear the resulting tree blight only has about half of its hit points so it's definitely worth removing but it does not stop the ritual stopping the ritual happens in area y4 coming up right now aside from the druids not having much of a history my other big gripe with this chapter was the fact that the gothies tree in area y4 was easily overlooked a lot of parties had the habit of just hightailing it out of there as soon as they killed all the druids and stopped the ritual and they forgot about the tree there was no impetus to go further south and destroy the thing and i love goldfish trees not insofar as i actually want a bleeding vampiric tree in my backyard but they're just really fun to have in my games and any opportunity to draw attention to one i'm going to take it around the goaltheist tree in area y4 are two rings of people dressed in furs and leathers and covered in muck and grime and worse and the outer ring of these people is formed up of six berserkers dancing around waving their axes to and fro and just acting all wild the inner ring is six druids locked arm in arm and they're chanting these unintelligible words at the gothius tree itself now the golthius tree is a little different from what's written in the module we've added a basically a big mouth to the side of it it's a sacrificial maw it is how the druids water the tree as it were now inside of this ma is claudio stefania's son and he's being pierced by these spikes that protrude from the tree's bark they're basically the fangs of this vampire tree and you know what they're trying to do in addition to the druid's animalistic chance it's claudio's blood that is fueling the ritual that is gonna summon winter splinter his blood is being taken out of his body and it's going into these bulbous black fruits that are hanging off the gulfias tree it's also going into the roots that are attached to the effigy in area y3 and that's what keshkar is making stefania watch as soon as your party enters into area y4 the berserkers on the outer ring are going to attack immediately now this is pretty okay your party's not going to get too ganged up on because the druids on the inner ring are content to continue on with their ritual they are going to ignore your party as long as they possibly can as long as their chain holds if you want to break that chain that the druids are making you're going to have to make a contested athletics or acrobatics check and as long as the drawers are arm and arm they've got advantage on this so you're definitely going to want to get some help from your other party members the ritual that's taking place here is a little different than what's written in the module if you haven't figured that out already it's shorter for one in the module the ritual takes 10 full rounds that's one minute in our guide here it takes six rounds that's 36 seconds that's a pretty quick ritual the reason for that is because being in the maw of the tree confers one level of exhaustion per round and as you know after six levels of exhaustion you just kind of keel over and die and that's what's going to happen to claw to you if your party doesn't get in there and rescue him post haste while the ritual is ongoing and the tree has a victim on initiative count 10 the tree is going to spawn several blights within 60 feet of itself these blights will then start attacking any intruder in the area the fifth round of combat is where things really start to get messy the black bulbous fruit that's hanging from the tree begins to explode and anybody within 30 feet of the tree has to make a dc-15 constitution saving throw or become poisoned for one minute by the black blood that is now dispersed through the air if your party wants to free claw to you from the tree or any other victim that it might have they have to succeed on a dc-16 athletics check to yank them out or they have to deal 50 damage to the tree in one round and then it just kind of reflexively spits them out if the tree goes one full round of combat without a victim the ritual has to be started over now the druids aren't going to let that happen if they can help it they will actually throw themselves into the maw as a sacrifice to keep this trainer rolling so be careful on that and try to block the maw if you can if the druids succeed in their ritual either by draining claudio of his blood or by throwing themselves into the maw then winter splinter is summoned and things happen pretty much according to script the tree blight heads off north and destroys the winery as stated in my winery guide it then heads to vlocky breaks through the walls and destroys the blue water in chances are that won't happen because your intrepid heroes will track it down and kill it before anything bad happens right

Channel: Lunch Break Heroes

Views: 41,294

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, dnd, dnd5e, campaign guide, dm tips, dungeon master tips, curse of strahd, yester hill, strahd, vampire, druid, ritual, summoning, tree blight, wintersplinter, kavan, blood spear, winery, wizard of wines, martikov, wereraven, lycanthrope, shape changer, winery gem

Id: xvNXeMKzH-c

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020