


Start Death House at 2nd levelĬharacters are especially squishy at 1st level, and Death House is a grindhouse horror experience complete with an overwhelmingly powerful final foe. If you’re a Dungeon Master hoping to run Death House as a Halloween one-shot, here are some vital tips:Įach tip assumes that you’re running the game for a group of four, have at least three hours of playtime, and hope to subject your players to as much of the Durst house as possible while avoiding a TPK - at least until they witness the monstrosity that awaits them in the dungeon. When I ran the adventure in October 2018 for Halloween, I quickly found my anxiety spiking as my unsuspecting group of 1st-level adventurers proceeded to nearly get massacred at least five times in a row. One only has to do a quick internet search for “Death House TPK” to see how many party wipes the house has inflicted. It’s not exactly an adventure for new D&D players, but it often ends up being experienced that way thanks to Curse of Strahd being one of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons' premiere adventures. That said, Death House can be a brutal experience. Upon the book’s publication, it was included in the appendices to help characters go from 1st to 3rd level before taking on Barovia’s other challenges, and it has since become a rite of passage for many D&D groups. The adventure was unveiled in the February 2016 issue of Dragon+ as an example of the thrills that would come in the then-unreleased Curse of Strahd. Death House is a modern Dungeons & Dragons horror classic.
