CoS Modifications: The Tome of Osybus

Recently, I committed to revive my dead blog as it's been a while since my last post. Despite all that's happened since my last post (graduating college, working my first full-time job post-graduation, reading numerous books, etc), I've struggled to decide what to post about first. So, in the name of at least getting started, which is said to be the hardest step, I've chosen to write about something easy: Some of my favorite original modifications to running the "Curse of Strahd" Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Here is the first of these suggested modifications: The Tome of Osybus.

—

The "Death House" adventure is the classic start to the Curse of Strahd campaign. Notoriously deadly, it establishes the haunted tone and danger of the module. The typical hook to lure the party to the Death House is to have two scared children standing in the street ask for the party's help—they claim that there's a monster in their house and that the rest of their family is trapped inside. My main issue with this adventure hook is that the Death House is located in the middle of the Village of Barovia, which is not uninhabited. There are plenty of residents who would reasonably know that the kids are a trap and that the house is dangerous. One suggestion that I've read is to move the Death House out of the village so that the party comes across it before meeting any other villagers. However, I suggest here another possible solution where the party would go into the house on a quest.

Specifically, I tie it in with the Father Donavich/Doru situation. Once the party discovers what's going on with Doru, they may find out from Father Donavich that he has been looking for a method to cure Doru's vampirism. He will explain that after Doru returned to him turned, he prayed for months to the Morninglord for aid, receiving no answers. While in the depths of despair, he suddenly found a book in the church's basement he'd never seen before: the "Tome of Osybus." The tome described dark rituals one could perform to grant eternal life, bring people back from the dead, etc. and has annotations indicating that it was used by the Durst Family, the former residents of the Death House.

Father Donavich has been studying the book's dark rituals for a while now, and he believes he's close to finding a solution to his son's problem. Unfortunately, the book has numerous torn-out pages. He believes that the Death House may contain these lost pages, allowing him to finish the ritual. Thus, he requests that the party venture into the Death House to find these pages and help him cure his son. Though the party can find the lost pages in the Death House, they do not ultimately present a clear way to cure Doru.

If it comes into play, the Tome of Osybus is a magic item with the following properties:

The Tome of Osybus Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement by a spellcaster)

Bound in weathered black leather, the Tome of Osybus is a spellbook seeping with dark magic. Upon opening the book, one is met with unnervingly smooth, pitch-black pages scrawled with arcane symbols and diagrams in blood-red ink. The book whispers with promises of power and survival eternal.

To attune to the book, you must make a DC 16 Arcana check over 1 hour deciphering the book's arcane glyphs. Upon attuning to the book, you can use it as a spellbook that contains every necromancy spell of 3rd level or below. Furthermore, while holding this book, you can cast any necromancy spell written in this book as a ritual, taking 2d4 necrotic damage that cannot be reduced in any way for each level of the spell upon completion. In place of material components with a gold cost, you can have creatures within 10 feet take necrotic damage that cannot be reduced in any way totaling the gold cost of the material components divided by 10 upon completion; this hit point requirement is doubled if the material component would be consumed.

Curse: A creature attuned to this book is cursed: They are unwilling to give or lend it to another, though it may make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw as an action to suppress this compulsion for 24 hours.

Missing Pages: The Tome of Osybus is missing crucial pages when initially found. When it is reunited with its missing pages, you can decipher higher level necromancy spells in the book by making an Arcana check with a DC equal to 10 + twice the spell level over 1 hour.