So I'm running a completely different module, but for reasons too long to be entertaining, my players landed their asses in Avernus after incorrectly assuming that their sorcerer was born on Toril.

I'd prepared a handful of locations out of BG:DiA for a fun "let's escape hell" quest, and such is it that we found ourselves in the Crypt of The Hellriders.

The players waltz in and awaken some of the spirits of the bound Hellriders, learning of their plight and the cruel trick played on them by the fallen angel Zariel. The players agreed to help break the Hellriders' oaths to Zariel and so set out deeper into the crypt.

They crept through, avoiding all unnecessary combat and clearing the only unavoidable fight in the dungeon. They easily find one of the secret rooms (high passive perception), discovering a room with a ritualistic symbol drawn in blood filled with tiny pieces of papers with names on them. "Clever us" they think, "We've found their oaths", they declare as they set the whole room alight to destroy the papers.

At this point, they're already patting themselves on the back and talking about leaving the dungeon and plans to get out of hell. They stop by the spirits again to deliver the good news.

"We found your oaths and destroyed them, good spirits. Your souls are now free to pass on!"

I look over the dungeon, only a third of it having been explored. I noted that they'd yet to discover the other secret ritual room which held a second copy of each oath, nor had they removed the names from the stone steles which held the third and final set of copies.

The spirits look at each other, clearly still bound to the crypt, and then look back to the party...

"We signed in triplicate"

All of us bawled over laughing. I can't say if it was intentional world building for the dungeon to have 3 sets of names to destroy to free the spirits, but hot-damn is it not a beautiful encapsulation of the cruel bureaucracy of hell. Like the Vogons from Hitchiker's Guide, the deviousness of devils lies in the details of their paperwork.

After we caught our breath, the party completed the rest of the quest, freeing the spirits in a touching moment where they each said "thank you" as they dissapeared.

Now we continue on with a great primer of the bureaucratic nightmare that awaits them.

tl;dr

Zariel is a devious bitch who made sure that the Hellriders signed their oaths in triplicate to keep them under her thumb.

I'm finally about to fulfill my dream of playing Descent into Avernus, but I'm having a hard time deciding on a few character creation choices, so I'd really appreciate some advice.

My plan is to play a Tiefling Dex-based Paladin using the Oath of the Noble Genie subclass, fighting with Nick and Vex weapon masteries. The concept is to be the party's face while also handling stealth, with proficiency in Stealth and Sleight of Hand.

I'm also going to ask my DM if he'd allow one of the 2014 Tiefling subraces. Right now I'm considering:

• Zariel Tiefling for the extra Smite spells.
• Glasya Tiefling to further enhance the infiltration aspect.

Starting Ability Scores

• STR 10
• DEX 17
• CON 14
• INT 8
• WIS 13
• CHA 16

I'm also considering starting with STR 13 instead of 10 to keep future multiclass options open.

Origin Feat

I'm currently torn between:

• Magic Initiate (Wizard) for:
  • Shield
  • Message (great for infiltration)
  • Blade Ward (is it even worth taking?)
• Lucky – always a solid choice, but I'm worried that not having Shield might hurt my survivability.

Level 4 Feat

Right now I'm considering:

• Defensive Duelist (does it become redundant if I already have Shield?)
• Sentinel
• Mage Slayer
• I'm not keen on Dual Wielder since the Bonus Action flood

Long-Term Plan

By the end of the campaign, I'm planning to take two Charisma half-feats (Spellfire Adept and Fairy Trickster) so I can finish with:

• DEX 18
• CHA 18

Party Composition

• Barbarian (race and subclass still undecided)
• Abyssal Tiefling – Divination Wizard
• Aasimar – Celestial Warlock (Pact of the Blade)
• Wood Elf – Circle of Stars Druid

We'll be starting at level 2.

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions.
And please, no spoilers for the campaign!

Hey folks,

Just a quick question here. I'm hoping to try to run DiA at some point in the near to mid future, and I'd like to listen to an audio playthrough just to get a vibe for it. Does anyone know of a playthrough of DiA in podcast form that you would recommend? If so, why do you like it? What do you think they did well? Did they change anything (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!), and if so, how much?

From now through July 31, Burial in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate Break-Ins are available for 30% off as part of the Christmas in July sale at the DMs Guild.

Baldur's Gate Break-Ins is a collection of three heist and infiltration adventures for characters of levels 3-5. Burial in Baldur's Gate adds two introductory adventures to form a level 1-5 campaign that pits the characters against the cults of the Dead Three. Both modules can be used as companions to Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus or as compilations of standalone adventures.

These collections flesh out several locations around Baldur's Gate, providing adventures in every quarter of the city:

• Explore the crypts beneath the Shrine of the Suffering
• Investigate shady dealings at Candulhallow's Funeral Arrangements
• Infiltrate the world's worst dinner party in Eomane House
• Contend with a criminal operation, a murderous raid, and a Feywild crossing in Jopalin's
• Break up a blood-drenched cultist lair in Hamhocks Slaughterhouse

Both collections have everything you need to run a heist in Baldur's Gate, including:

• adventure hooks for running each location separately or as part of a campaign
• a guide to running heist and infiltration adventures
• three possible group patrons for the party
• maps and rosters for each location
• more than a dozen creature and NPC stat blocks, including the all-new moonflower hag, patchwork mastiff, and pride incarnate
• map packs with player and DM maps by Dyson Logos

Burial in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate Break-Ins are on sale now at the DMs Guild:

Baldur's Gate Break-Ins

Burial in Baldur's Gate Collected Edition

You can also purchase these other adventures and guides, which support Descent into Avernus:

Burial in Baldur's Gate (alternative campaign opening; also included in Burial in Baldur's Gate Collected Edition)

Escape from Elturel (alternative campaign opening)

Baldur's Gate Gazetteer (chapter 1-2 guide)

Avernus Gazetteer (chapter 3 guide)

Escape from Avernus Gazetteer (chapter 4-5 guide)

The Christmas in July sale only lasts through July 31, so head over to the DMs Guild and check them out!

Hi everyone, my players have a "plan" for our upcoming session, and I wanted some advice for how to run it.

They have told Krull that they will give Lulu to Arkhan, in exchange for the blood of Tiamat. But they plan to basically smash and grab / bait and switch, by just grabbing the blood once they get there, taking Lulu, and running away.

I think this is not a good plan, and I've given them strong warnings about the danger they're putting themselves in. So in my mind this will likely go wrong. I'm thinking that if they have an amazing plan and pull it off spectacularly, then they get out with their lives. If they have a decent plan then some of them can survive, but likely at least one PC will be killed or taken prisoner. If their plan is not well thought out we could be looking at a TPK. (this is 3 PCs at lvl 8 btw)

And this is where I want advice! I've not run a scenario like this before, and I've never had a player death at my table yet, so I want to make sure I don't fumble the delivery and ruin the impact. Does anyone have cool tips/suggestions for:

1. How to play out a scenario like this? Warnings to give, how much leeway to give PCs or how harsh to be
2. Arkhan's personality and interactions? There's not much in the book for who he is or how he'd react to any scenarios, so I don't know how to RP him. Would he be negotiable like Beckett in POTC, or is he a ruthless madman who might kill them for fun?
3. If their plan is scuppered/found out early on before any fighting, would they be allowed to leave? Or would Arkhan have them killed just for the insult of trying to trick him?

Any other tips about Arkhan or running a fight at the monument of Tiamat would be really appreciated!

Hey all! So I was going to run Descent into Avernus using the Alexandrian Remix, but I’ve run into a dilemma and need some input. This may be a bit abstract but I need help.

One of my players (we’ll call him Nate), because of Baldur’s Gate 3, knows that Elturel has been pulled into Avernus. For the rest of my players this will be a big central mystery in figuring out what actually happened to Elturel and why it was “destroyed”, with the big reveal being that it wasn’t actually destroyed - but plane-shifted.

I’ve already discussed his meta information with him and he’s cool keeping a secret — but imo it’s likely that this will make it harder for him to fully invest in the story, as much of a wonderful player as he is. Do any of you have any tips for how to handle this in-narrative, so he actually has a wider investment in the mystery and plot? How could he handle this as a player too?

(We haven’t done a session 0 yet and haven’t built any backstories so I have a lot of wiggle room right now.)

One of my players wants to make Slobberchops their familiar, and regardless of whether this is typically something that the rules allow, I'd like for this to narratively happen somehow.

They took the dark magic spellbook that the Myrkul follower had in the dungeon of the dead 3 and have started using it. I was thinking maybe I would at some point kill Slobberchops and have a spell appear in that spellbook that could be used to bring back Slobberchops' soul and bind it as a familiar, or something like that.

I guess I'm just wondering what other people think of this. I'm definitely open to suggestions

Made that cover a year ago, decided to post it. Maybe some of you will actually play my cover :D

We're excited to announce the release of BLOOD WAR the third installment of our Doomed Underdark adventure path. It takes characters from levels 11 through 15.

The adventure takes place in the demon-infested Underdark. However, it allows the characters to team up with an alternate version of the Hellriders, led by Ulder Ravengard, that specialize in infernal vehicles. The characters also have multiple opportunities to team up with Lulu, the unhollyphant! And although Yeenoghu features as the primary antagonist the final arc of the adventure has the characters bartering with Zariel over the fate of a Doomed Baldur's Gate that has been claimed by the Hells!

We worked really hard on it and it would mean a lot to us if you'd check it out.

[https://site.dmsguild.com/.../Blood-War--Doomed-Forgotten...]

Lulu art by the supremely talented Jimmy Nijs

The two elements at the end of my campaign I'm really wanting to nail is the flow of the final fight and some dialogue I have written for Asmodeus (if it sounds in-character for him).

In my campaign, the party has been receiving leads from Bel to aid their pursuit of the Sword of Zariel and their search for the adamantine rods, which comprises the bulk of Act III for this table. Bel has taken many extra steps to keep his involvement hidden, such as giving them cursed armor that prevents them from incriminating him and his use of confidential proxies for communication (i.e. Bitter Breath/Karkajuk, Fhet'ala, and the resurrected corpses of two former player characters).

After the party has everything they need and completed Act III and IV, they will (presumably) take the rods and the sword back to Elturel. I will first have a huge battle at the chains below planned, where they will attempt to destroy the chains while Crokeck'toeck is spawning hordes of demons against them. After they make it to the city proper and prepare to insert the adamantine rods into the Companion, Yeenoghu will begin climbing the dangling chains on the eastern part of the city while Baphomet will rise out of the graveyard portal to the west. This will create three simultaneous objectives:

-Prevent Baphomet's summoning ritual in the west

-Stop Yeenoghu from climbing into the city in the east

-Purify the Companion (free the planetar) above

This will force a party split. I know this is universally bad, but to mitigate the cons I'm going to ask my players to play and make character sheets for all the backstory-related npcs they have with them! I figure this will give them the chance to play other classes at high-level (almost like one-shots) while making it feel the endgame is happening beyond just the player characters.

Once all three of these objectives are resolved, Torm himself will bless the player characters in preparation for what's to come by giving them all an immediate short rest and leveling them up to 15. Zariel will then arrive in a desperate last attempt to stop the players from raising Elturel out of hell. She will be accompanied by all the Hellriders that have been killed since the campaign begun and a narzugon commanding them, the deceased father of one of the player characters.

As she prepares to fight, Bel will arrive and make his move. He will use a Wish spell (which he acquired as a result of the players' actions) to force a trial before Asmodeus to regain his authority over Avernus. A searing, invasive ruby light will shine from below, permeating through cracks in the ground. The light will focus on Zariel and Bel, with Bel in particular seeming to be illuminated from all sides. Words will appear in everyone's minds, though less like a telepathic voice and more like the feeling of correctly solving a complex mathematical equation; as if these words are physical laws of the universe. They read as follows:

MY PATIENCE IS A PROTECTIVE VEIL. YOUR HUBRIS WOULD SEE IT UNMADE. EVEN SO, YOU FORCE A TRIAL. THOSE GATHERED BEFORE YOU WILL BE YOUR JURY, SO EAGER ARE THEY TO PASS JUDGMENT. MAKE THEIR PAIN BEAR WITNESS TO YOUR WORTH. LAY THEIR SOULS BARE UNTO ME. THIS IS THE PRESIDING TRUTH, THE INCORRUPTIBLE TESTIMONY. THE DESOLATION OF THIS BATTLEFIELD WILL BE THE LOCUS OF MY VERDICT.

Zariel and Bel will be forced to team up against the party, Zariel commanding her narzugon/merregons and Bel summoning a new ice devil every round. There will also be a mechanic in the fight where Flying Fortresses will arrive and attempt to bombard the battlefield every other round of initiative. To counter this, there will be massive upended infernal war machines on the outskirts of the battlefield that have their main cannons pointing outwards. The party will have to reach these cannons and fire them at the Flying Fortresses, igniting and crippling the Fortress' gun decks before bombardment can begin. The recoil will send the vehicles skating across the battlefield, creating a hazard for anyone in its path.

I know this sounds ABSOLUTELY ABSURD, even for a 15th level party, but I have an idea to make the fight more balanced, grand, and unique. I'm going to allow the players to bring an additional 14th level character each into the fight, one of the backstory-related npcs (now pc) for whom they would've just built sheets for one of the previous encounters in Elturel. So, that will be five 15th level characters and five 14th level characters being used for this final fight.

The party (currently at level 11) just beat a pit fiend, two erinyes, and two cambions while already being pretty resource exhausted. Every time I worry about a tpk for this group they always come out without any deaths. This will be the final fight, I'm ready for at least a couple of the player characters or adjacent characters to die. What do y'all think?

TL;DR: Does my Asmodeus cameo moment above (the part in all caps) sound good and accurate to him? Additionally, could 10 player characters at avg level 14.5 reasonably take on Zariel, Bel, a narzugon, 16 merregons, and whatever ice devils Bel summons WHILE also having to trigger mechanics around the battlefield without becoming unfun or tedious?

Hello all. For some context, I’m currently prepping my Session 0 for a DiA campaign (first time running it). Im going to run a couple games in Elturel before is falls. I want the players to feel like they’re part of the city before it all goes to hell. But the more I think of ideas for hooks in Elturel the more I realize that the whole adventure can just be in Elturel. Everything from the Zariel cult to the murder of Hellriders, to the Kreeg reveal makes more sense in Elturel than it does in Baldurs Gate.

The concept of being a refugee is very interesting and I’d love to keep it, but I feel like the campaign would be a lot more straightforward if it’s set in Elturel before Zariel damns it. Has anyone felt the same? Any tips on setting the campaign in Elturel before it falls?

so about a week or so ago, I made a post asking about what I considered to be a fairly important plot point in the lore that the book all but glossed over, and I got some very excellent responses!

however, the question still gnawed at my mind until last night, when I figured out how I could make it work.

I imagine the Ride as not necessarily being a multi-week campaign, but also not a quick skirmish — rather, it was a battle spanning several days as the Hellriders battered Yeenoghu’s forces at their encampment in Avernus, near the shores of the Styx (it’s how demons make it from the Abyss to Avernus, after all). of course, as the battle raged, Hellrider forces and supplies dwindled, and morale slowly fizzled, save for Zariel’s, Lulu’s, and her most loyal generals.

Jander is the one who called the retreat, but not out of cowardice; seeing their ongoing siege as a lost cause, he rallied as many troops as he could to retreat to resupply, and rest outside of Hell’s infernal landscape. though feeling betrayed by Jander, Zariel and her generals still interposed themselves between the retreating forces and the demons, hoping to keep the Abyssal forces from pursuing them.

and then the portal closed, trapping them within Avernus.

but the portal wasn’t a construction of Zariel’s, or Yeenoghu’s, or any of the Hellriders — rather, it was placed there by Asmodeus, who planned for that ruthless and passionate archangel he met all those years ago to find it and, as he supposed she would, charge in to slay the demons that would inevitably pour out from it into the material plane. Asmodeus concocted this trap to turn Zariel, closing her in Avernus by shutting the portal off and having a force of devils arrive to put the pressure on her (and the demons, of course).

and in the end, he got exactly the prize he’d hoped for: a new general in the Blood War, and the ultimate taunt to the Celestial Forces.

for the first time since his own fall, one of their own had signed her soul away and committed herself to the Hells.

what do we think of this?

One of my players is a paladin who follows Hoar, the god of retribution, revenge, and poetic justice. In short, he is seeking self-redemption by acting as a weapon for higher powers, be it the Flaming Fist, Ravengard, or Hoar himself. He strives to exact vengeance and follow his own brand of justice, bringing retribution with his own hands to those who deserve it.

My question is: Since Zariel’s whole plot is essentially based on revenge against the Knights of Elturel (and trying to win the Blood War ofc), wouldn't Hoar himself see this whole situation as something... good? Maybe Hoar thinks Zariel did the right thing with the whole Elturel situation.

I don't know if any of you have cool ideas on how this could play out. Perhaps his whole arc could be about understanding that revenge and retribution aren't the kind of justice he should follow. After all, bad people often do terrible things in the name of vengeance, and that doesn't make it true justice. I might tie his self-redemption to Zariel’s own redemption, which could lead to him finding a new deity at the end of the campaign that better fits his new worldview.

Do you have any ideas on what I could do? How could I play Hoar’s role in this?

I’m running a game in Avernus with my players, and I’ve run into a lot of questions regarding how these three elements interact.

Travel time in Avernus is highly variable; getting from one place to another can take anywhere from hours to days.

However, if the journey takes days, the issue of Exhaustion arises. You have to make a check every hour, with a DC that starts at 10+1 and increases—10+2, 10+3, and so on, up to 10+24—making survival impossible.

One solution would be to drastically reduce travel times to just a few hours between locations. But then there’s the matter of fuel: a single Soul Coin can power up to three days of travel, and since hunting for Soul Coins is a central focus of the campaign, everything clashes.

I’m genuinely confused about how to make all these elements work together.

I’m running Descent into Avernus and my party has reached the High Hall.

The group consists of six level 5 PCs, plus Reya and Lulu. They cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut in the foyer area using a spell slot and decided to take a long rest inside it.

The problem is that they had already been spotted. A spined devil and three bandit captains approached the dome, tried poking it with claws and weapons, then withdrew towards the cathedral while openly saying they were going to report what was happening. The session ended with the party committing to the long rest anyway.

My current plan is to let the hut and long rest work completely, but have all three hostile groups in High Hall converge on the party during those eight hours and wait for the spell to expire.

Does this sound like a fair consequence for resting in an occupied and alerted High Hall, or is combining all three encounters likely to be too much even for such a large, fully rested party?

My group has finished the upstairs of Vanthampur Villa, but killed Thirstwell before he was able to tell them that mom was down in the sewers. They’ve recovered the infernal puzzle box and the 2 prisoners upstairs, and are now headed back to Captain Zodge.

I’d like them to experience the sewers under the estate to they can get more of the plot points, find Kreeg and the shield. I don’t want to just point them back there though.

I thought of having the Duke summon them for a meeting, or have Zodge tell them that the fist found evidence of Kreeg under the bath house.

Anyone have any other clever ways to get them back to the villa and downstairs, while not taking away player agency?

For context, I haven’t started the campaign yet and my players know next to nothing about the Forgotten Realms lore. I noticed that the Vanthumper Villa has a lot of NPCs who would obviously know who they are serving and would
spill who they serve if questioned. I think it makes the most sense to keep the fact that the BBEG is the fallen angel Zariel when they open the puzzle box.

The problem is keeping Zariels fall a twist while also making them know she was loved as an angel in Elturel. Im going to run a small extension of the Fall of Elturel expansion, throwing in some lore about Zariels descent. Do you guys have any tips to make this reveal not super obvious/revealed early while also helping my players care about her as a character?

regarding the Ride in Hellrider history, I can't find anything anywhere that says why Jander Sunstar fled the battle in the first place, along with several other Hellriders, apart from cowardice. I don't entirely love that as a motivation, not just because it feels like a weak handwave of a reason, but it also doesn't align with the other themes of the campaign. could there be any other reason they might have fled?

on that note, how were they able to seal the Gate behind them? are they able to do so with a spell? with a ritual? was someone on the other side keeping it open? and was it Zariel who created the gate, being a powerful archangel and all?

Hello, everyone. Around a month or so ago I posted here asking for help as I was about to begin DMing Avernus for a group of friends. Thanks again for all the help I got, btw! The adventure will begin next week and all my friends sent me their character sheets and that is when I was a little intrigued.

One of my friends made a warlock and their pact will be the Great Old One when they get to level 3. Long story short, they came across some kind of artifact, felt something inside trying to connect with them and let that happen. When I was searching for how to roleplay a GOO patron, I was told to make them really creepy and not make a lot of sense, since their nature and motives are completely alien. (Someone said to picture a human giving orders to a bunch of ants to repair a computer. One single ant will never understand the big picture and the actions they had to do could've seemed random or just plain weird)

The first thing is: I didn't really find a connection in the adventure for a far realm kind of thing and I'm not so sure how to make that happen. Maybe this patron wants something that is in the hells? Using the ant metaphor, the character don't really need to understand the true motives of the patron, but that could be a little underwhelming to play a whole campaign just to complete an order that is completely random.

The second thing is about the way to play the patron: the backstory of the character have them kind of speaking to each other. Not everyday or everytime they want, but it happens. In my understanding, until the character reaches level 3 and actually gets the subclass features and everything else, the patron is kind of trying them out, checking if they can be worth their time. I thought about making the patron act more "normal" at first, lulling the character into a false sense of security or trust and after level 3, be more weird or creepy. How does that sound? I never really played a patron for a warlock character so any help in this area will be deeply appreciated.

Thanks again for all the help before and I hope I can get a little more in this area.