The Binding of Vampyr and Its Problems

I've always hated the binding of Vampyr as a concept. It's lore-breaking, but that doesn't bother me, since lore is ultimately up to the DM. What I do dislike is how it trades a gothic horror ending for a big bombastic epic fantasy finale, where evil is vanquished and the heroes prevail. Granted, many if not most groups treat Curse of Strahd as less of a horror story (where escaping Barovia is a perfectly legitimate end goal) and more like classic D&D heroic fantasy where anything less than total victory feels like a Bad Ending.

There's nothing wrong with running Curse of Strahd like an average D&D campaign with gothic horror trappings (I'd argue the majority of D&D players prefer this), but even then the binding of Vampyr feels unnecessary. Why bother including a video-game style "secret good ending" instead of simply re-writing the one the book gives you? Why not make it so Strahd doesn't come back when he's killed? I worry that some Strahd DMs see this as a cop-out, so they make their players jump through unnecessary hoops to avoid an ending they could easily just change. There's no shame in changing lore that you dislike.

My biggest issue, though, with the binding of Vampyr is how it undermines Strahd himself as a villain, turning him into a second-tier puppet being controlled by the "secret final boss." I strongly believe that a Curse of Strahd campaign should end with fighting Strahd, not some vaguely defined god of vampirism. Some DMs will fix this by having the binding take place before the campaign climax, and this is a change I strongly encourage if you want to use the binding at all. I've even heard it framed as a compelling moral choice to offer to your players: do they bind Vampyr and free Strahd, setting him loose on the world if they fail, but making it possible to permanently kill him?

Personally, though, I don't think this choice is either difficult or all that interesting. For one thing, players will almost always risk a bigger defeat if it means they have a chance to score a true victory. Think about it from your players' perspective. If Strahd wins, their PCs will be dead either way and Barovia will be doomed. Sure freeing Strahd means he might do more damage than he otherwise could in some nebulous post-campaign future, but he's not exactly a world-ending threat. Your average D&D world has plenty of vampires (and worse), and life somehow still goes on. All this does it turn a Bad Ending into a Slightly Worse Ending, whereas permanently killing Strahd turns a short-lived victory into a permanent one. Sure players might fret in-character about unleashing Strahd on their home world, but given this choice, I would be surprised if even 5% of groups decided NOT to take the risk of binding Vampyr. Why would they, when the risk reward calculus so firmly favors binding Vampyr first?

A Better Alternative: The Binding of Strahd

Compare this to the RAW text of the module, which actually does offer a compelling moral choice, albeit one buried in Strahd's stat block. That choice is not whether to bind Vampyr (who, notably, is already bound) but whether to bind Strahd himself. To quote the archangel Avacyn from Wizards of the Coast's other popular gothic horror setting: "That which cannot be destroyed shall be bound." Strahd cannot be destroyed forever, but he can be bound.

One of Strahd's generic vampire weaknesses is Stake to the Heart: "If a piercing weapon made of wood is driven into his heart while Strahd is incapacitated in his coffin, he is paralyzed until the stake is removed." This weakness is conveyed in-universe to the PCs via the Tome of Strahd, where Strahd writes: "Even a stake through my heart does not kill me, though it holds me from movement." PCs who reduce Strahd to 0 hp (without destroying him) can track him to his coffin and stake him through the heart. While staked, Strahd is indefinitely paralyzed until the stake is removed. Barovia will still be trapped, of course, but its people will be safe from the tyranny of Strahd for as long as he can be kept bound. With Strahd pacified, no more vampires can be made, and the slow work can begin of making Barovia a better place.

This is a genuinely difficult, compelling choice: do your players choose to destroy Strahd knowing he will eventually return, or do they imprison him, bringing peace to Barovia, at the cost of being trapped in Barovia forever? The biggest complaint I've heard about the RAW ending is that it undoes everything the PCs have accomplished. The Binding of Strahd is a RAW way to achieve something lasting in Barovia, at enormous personal cost for the PCs. Do they devote the remainder of their natural lives to keeping Strahd imprisoned and Barovia safe? Or do they return home, condemning Barovia to Strahd's despotic rule? This is what a Good Ending looks like in gothic horror: victory, for now. Victory, for a price.

Setting Expectations

A significant fault in this ending is that the book never makes it clear to the PCs that Strahd cannot be killed. Only a few NPCs even suspect this is the case. The book tells us that if Strahd is killed, "Ezmerelda d'Avenir isn't convinced that Strahd is truly dead," but this seems like a vague suspicion at best. The Abbot "somehow" realized "that any attempt to slay Strahd would be futile—that the ancient curse upon the land meant that the vampire could never truly die, at least not in Barovia." But the Abbot is hardly a trustworthy source of information. Madam Eva almost certainly knows, since her stated goal is to end Strahd's curse by finding someone else to succeed him, but she's not exactly forthcoming about her knowledge or motives. Exethanter might know (at the very least he knows that Strahd "is the darkness that sustains the Dark Powers"), but he has dementia.

I would personally make Strahd's immortality much more explicit. Have the Abbot outright tell the party that Strahd cannot die, and that they are fools to try to destroy him ("only love can save Barovia; that is why I have created Vasilka). Change it so the Mad Mage did destroy Strahd, and Barovia enjoyed a few scarce months of sunlight before he returned (realizing he could never defeat Strahd is what drove Mordenkainen mad). Have Exethanter, in his addled state, mumble this poem to himself within earshot of the party, hinting at the fact that Strahd cannot be killed unless another takes his place. You can even have the spirit of Sergei tell the party at the pool that Strahd's curse will not end with his demise.

Strahd's return is lame if it's revealed to the players as a post-campaign surprise. It's never a good idea to blindside your players. I would even recommend outright telling them in Session 0 that Strahd cannot permanently die. It's important to set genre expectations early, and the genre expectations of a gothic horror story are substantially different from heroic fantasy. It's why there are so many unwinnable fights (no they're not unbalanced; they're there for a purpose). Not all battles are winnable in horror stories. Evil can be thwarted, but it cannot be destroyed, and never easily, and never without cost.

It's no accident that the only RAW way to permanently defeat Strahd is to succeed him as Darklord of Barovia (something only the Dark Powers could permit), to become the very darkness you once fought. That's a Bad Ending, of course: a very gothic one.

Epilogue

Imagine this as a possible ending to a Curse of Strahd campaign: Knowing that Strahd cannot be permanently slain, the party makes the difficult decision to imprison him, giving up all hope of ever returning home (a lot of soul-searching preceded this choice, which the players roleplayed extensively). Having learned from the Tome of Strahd that a wooden stake will paralyze him, the party concocts a plan. Ezmerelda is their ally, and from her they learn that vampire masters will revert to mist when slain, but not if they are killed in running water or in sunlight. During the final battle, with Strahd low on hp, the party paladin deliberately sheathes the Sunsword, and Strahd is reduced to 0 hp out of sunlight. The party chases him through the catacombs back to his coffin, where they stake him through the heart.

In the aftermath, the surviving party members swear an oath, dedicating the remainder of their lives to keeping Strahd imprisoned and eradicating the remaining evils of Barovia. Together they found a secret society called the Order of Vigilance, entrusted with the secret of Strahd's fate and charged with holding him captive forever. The party place Strahd's coffin in an iron sarcophagus, wrapped in heavy chains. They lay claim to Castle Ravenloft, using it as their base of operations. Years pass. The party are renowned throughout Barovia as monster hunters. They eradicate the werewolves. They destroy the Gulthias tree. Barovia breathes a sigh of relief. It is still a cursed land. But the Svalich Road is safer these days. Trade begins to flourish between settlements. Ireena weds an adult Ilya Krezkov, and the party attends her wedding. For the first time in forever, she is able to live a complete life.

Decades slip away like rain. Our heroes are old now. Ez dies a natural death, and the party mourns their old friend. They ensure that her remains are burned and her ashes scattered, in accordance with Vistani custom. As they near the end of their lives, they look for ways to continue their work after their deaths, to ensure that the shadow of Strahd never again threatens their home, for Barovia is their home now. The party wizard has spent years researching the archives of the Amber Temple. In them he discovered a powerful spell to turn an object invisible and hide it from divination magic. "Sequester," Exethanter calls it: the wizard's longtime reserach partner. The wizard casts the spell on Strahd's iron prison, and the party sneaks the now-invisible sarcophagus into Krezk under cover of darkness. There they submerge it in the blessed pool, trusting that its holy water will deter any undead.

In the years that follow, the Keepers of the Feather (led by an elderly Viggo Martikov) keep a watchful eye on the pool, their raven spies surveilling it by day and night. The party are buried in the crypt of Saint Andral, and statues in Vallaki are erected of them in their honor. They become folkloric heroes whose memory inspires future generations of Barovians to stand firm in the face of overwhelming darkness.