Curse of Strahd's Tarokka Treasures! RAW Info & Mod Suggestions for the 3 Important Tarokka Items

An important part of Curse of Strahd is the tarokka reading, which leads the players to three treasures (two of which are magic items), as well as a fated ally (or "Strahd's enemy", as it's known more officially) and Strahd's location in Castle Ravenloft for the final showdown. The three treasures are: the Tome of Strahd, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, and the Sunsword.

In this video, I talk about each of them in-depth - not only what they do (as per what it says in the CoS book), but also possible tweaks you might want to consider, such as modifications made by the Curse of Strahd community. I also talk about my experiences with the three items in my own run of CoS and the wider Ravenloft sequel campaign I'm running these days. And if you're not running CoS and still want to use them in your campaign (e.g. you're doing a Ravenloft campaign that doesn't include CoS or Barovia), I give guidance on that as well. #CurseofStrahd #Ravenloft #Tarokka

Spoilers warning! This video is intended for Curse of Strahd DMs, not players. If you're a player in an active, ongoing CoS game, maybe pass this onto your DM and ask them to watch it and then ask them if it's ok for you to watch it afterwards. For example, if you're a player and your PC has just gotten hold of the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind or the Sunsword, then I can understand why you'd want to watch those parts - but there could be wider spoilers in the video.

Quick Sunsword / Sun Blade clarification: I said that the finesse property means that shortsword users can use it. That's not how the finesse property works - finesse weapons do something different. The shortsword clarification is a separate addition to the item's information, separate to it being a finesse weapon. Sorry for the misinformation - I didn't realize my mistake until post-editing.

00:00 Intro
00:13 Spoilers warning
00:45 Intro (cont.)
01:50 The Tome of Strahd
08:06 The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind
17:24 The Sunsword
22:25 What if you're not running CoS?
24:35 Outro

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Links...

General:
My tarokka draw demo video that I mentioned:    • Curse of Strahd's Tarokka Reading - Overvi...  
Near the end I mention my DMsGuild resource The Second Tarokka Reading: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/4692...
I also show illustrations of the three tarokka items (in addition to their official artwork from the Curse of Strahd book)... I commissioned these for another DMsGuild resource I put out, which is called The 3-Pile Tarokka Technique: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/4748...

The Tome of Strahd:
The Interactive Tome of Strahd on DMsGuild: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/3018...
The D&D Beyond Homebrew link, for seeing community-made homebrewed versions of a magical Tome of Strahd that people have created and made public: https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew/ma...

The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind:
MandyMod's Fanes II post, which includes the additional (or replacement?) things that the HSoR can do:   / fleshing_out_curse_of_strahd_the_fanes_of_...  

The Sunsword:
The Reddit post about how a reforged Sunsword could be the Crystal Blade magic item from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons:   / lets_chat_about_the_sunsword  

Music credits: "Barovian Castle", "Defiled Temple", "The Orrery" and "Light the Beacons" by Tabletop Audio; licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Images:
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer GIF I showed... BtVS is copyright Mutant Enemy Productions, Sandollar Television, Kuzui Enterprises, 20th Century Fox Television
The Castle Ravenloft and Barovia artwork is by James' RPG Art:   / jamesrpgart  
The three tarokka item illustrations are from my DMsGuild resource called The 3-Pile Tarokka Technique: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/4748...
All other images, logos, etc. are the copyright of their respective creators, the vast majority of which will be from Wizards of the Coast, as per their Fan Content Policy.