I’m playing a Pathfinder 2e conversion of the 5e campaign Curse of Strahd, and I’m currently prepping a session where I expect my players to seriously encounter Strahd himself for the first time. The problem is, the converted versions of him I’m finding are, unsurprisingly, specced out for facing him in the endgame. They’re level 14 or level 15 or higher. My players are level 5.
In D&D this is no problem. He would outclass them in damage and HP, but he wouldn’t be critting literally every single time. They’d feel outclassed, but not be under threat of a completely unavoidable TPK.
If I were using proficiency without level, this would be no problem for the same reason. But I gather that this is not an especially popular variant rule, compared to other variants like ABP and Free Archetype. So how do people playing without this variant typically present players with the big bad earlier on in the campaign?
Play Strahd as disinterested in actually killing them. He’s a god compared to them, they’re not threat to him, so he’s just showing off and playing with them.
Have him make nonleathal attacks, effectively pulling his punches. Nonlethal spells, too. Give him large untyped penalties to attacks, DCs, and damage (-5, maybe) because he’s just playing and not really putting any effort in (untyped so that the players can still attempt to impose circumstance penalties).
Functionally, respec him as a Level 10 creature for the fight. If the players run, let them go. If he knocks everyone out, either have them wake up where they fell 15 minutes later, or throw them in a dungeon cell.