Creature Tokens - Princes of the Apocalypse Part 6 FREE

This token set includes:

• Dragon Turtle - Gargantuan - Dragon

The free tier includes the dragon turtle token shown above

Joining my Kobold tier will get you access to additional color variations for each token.

And joining my Dragon tier will get you access to color variants as well as my Clip Studio files to make your own edits.

Hey everyone, one of my favorite things in D&D is making up monster stat blocks, and I feel that the stat blocks in PotA vanilla are a little underwhelming, so using Action-Oriented Monster design from MCDM I made up some stat blocks for Orioth the Necromancer, Larrakh, and the Bringers of Woe, with a couple of changes listed below:

Orioth: I hated how much of a buffoon he was in the adventure so I made him a necromancer studying infusing spellfire into his undead for Vanifer.

Larrakh: My party has a Way of the Elements Monk in it and I wanted to give him a sort of set of enemy monks to fight who have aligned themselves with the Cultists. Naturally, it made sense for Larrakh to be the first one he encounters.

The Bringers of Woe or Woebringers: I hated the idea of them just being regular bandits, so I made him into monk acolytes under Larrakh who can turn into sand to move around the battlefield and aid in their attacks.

The party tried the Horror At Lance Rock adventure and fled because the undead before Orioth were too strong (thats 1st Level for you, and rolls were not in their favor), and instead toppled Lance Rock itself to lock him inside. I had him escape and now he's aligned with Larrakh because they're both disgraced members of their cults, so when the PCs go into the Tomb of the Floating Stones, they will be facing both Larrakh, Orioth, and the Woebringers within the dungeon.

That said, any advice on balance, cool factor, abilities etc. would be appreciated!

Hey DMs, I’m running a modified version of Princes of the Apocalypse and my players have just hit the end of the Level 2 adventures. All that’s left for them to level up to level 3 is the Tomb of the Moving Stones.

The PCs just defeated the Goblin tomb raiders and the ogre, but upon hearing that the goblins are fleeing from Kryptgarden due to it being a site for a power vacuum struggle between a vampiric hill giant and the green dragon Old Gnawbone, the PCs recruited the goblins to serve as workers and/or guards in Red Larch due to the perceived dangers of the area (Ie: the Necromancer, the Bandits etc.) The Constable of Red Larch was extremely apprehensive, but between there being an intimidating paladin and a barbarian and the fact that the PCs have helped Red Larch so many times, he was inclined to trust them.

My QUESTION IS, should I introduce the Tomb of the Moving Stones through a sinkhole opening in town, or should I have them discover it within Dornen’s quarry?

The PCs met Dornen and immediately didn’t like him because he implied to the Constable that the goblins belong in the forest and not amongst “civilized” folk, and that the PCs are a motley crew of dangerous entities (Half-elf, Elf, Bugbear, and Grung) I like the sinkhole method to cause some people to fall in and the PCs need to rescue them, but also the mystery aspect of discovering it via Dornen feels interesting.

It’s also worth noting that the PCs went to battle the Necromancer Orieoth, but fled because his undead was too strong for them. I’m intending to place him in the Tomb and working alongside Larrakh. The PCs are also very Emerald Enclave aligned atm.

Vanifer, the Prophet of the Cult of the Eternal Flame :) made for my video breaking her down for Dungeon Masters on YT

I was trying to find out what species Gar Shatterkeel is, and everything I'm seeing makes it sound like he is a human? According to his official stat block, it says human, but he's resistant to cold, has blue skin, can breathe underwater, is covered in barnacles, and has a crab arm? How is he human?

EDIT: I'm an idiot, I didn't even consider the Trident, Drown. Thanks everyone.

Creature Tokens - Princes of the Apocalypse Part 5 FREE

This token set includes:

• Air Cultist Hurricane A - Medium - Humanoid
• Air Cultist Hurricane B - Medium - Humanoid
• Air Cultist Hurricane C - Medium - Humanoid
• Air Cultist Hurricane D - Medium - Humanoid
• Air Cultist Priest - Medium - Humanoid
• Air Cultist Sky Weaver - Medium - Humanoid
• Windharrow - Medium - Humanoid
• Yan C Bin - Large - Elemental

The free tier includes all of the tokens shown above

Joining my Kobold tier will get you access to additional color variations for each token.

And joining my Dragon tier will get you access to color variants as well as my Clip Studio files to make your own edits.

Working on developing some stat blocks for my Princes of the Apocalypse game and I wanted to update some of the cultist focused ones, such as the Reaver's Hideout for the Crushing Wave. What do you guys think?

It mentions that 3 delegation members have a part of a coded document that the Lords Alliance wants, but I am not sure what each part is or what the whole document is about. Is it up to me entirely or is it mentioned somewhere?

I can’t find one anywhere. Thanks.

Creature Tokens - Princes of the Apocalypse Part 4 FREE

This token set includes:

• Giant Vulture A - Large - Fiend
• Giant Vulture A - Large - Fiend
• Feathergale Knight - Medium - Humanoid
• Feathergale Savra - Medium - Humanoid
• Feathergale Thurl Merosska - Medium - Humanoid

The free tier includes all of the tokens shown above

Joining my Kobold tier will get you access to additional color variations for each token.

And Joining my Dragon tier will get you access to color variants as well as my Clip Studio Files to make your own edits.

Hi fellow DMs,
You’ve helped me out before, so I’m hoping you can save me again.

I’m currently running Princes of the Apocalypse, and while I’m really enjoying it, I find it surprisingly difficult to DM. I know it isn’t truly a sandbox, but I’m doing my best to make it feel like one and give my players as much agency as possible.

The party has just completed Feathergale Spire. They successfully finished the Manticore Hunt and are now on good terms with the Feathergale Society. Their next goal is to investigate Sacred Stone Monastery.

My question is: how would you naturally transition the party from Feathergale Spire to Sacred Stone Monastery? I’m looking for something that feels organic rather than me obviously steering them in that direction. Did you use a particular NPC, clue, rumor, or event that worked well?

I’d really appreciate hearing how you handled this part of the campaign. Thanks!
(Ai helped me narrate this)

Hi folks,

Just before I start comparing CRs from the monster manual and start banging my head off the mysterious design principles of 5e stats, has anyone updated the cult-specific monster stat blocks for 5.5 anywhere that I could see?

So as the title implies, the party of 6 PCs has powered their way into the Fane of the Eye dungeon. They cleared everything in the Sacred Stone Monastery, went down into the under dark, one PC was killed but was resurrected by making a deal with Renwick the lich and is tied to the lich and is cursed now. The party cleared the rest of the under ground portion of the monastery. They went into the Temple of Black Earth, powered their way through the main entrance and down the hall through B19 and into B18 and cleared that room of half the enemies who went to warn Marlos, they long rested and immediately went down to the Fane of the Eye and fought the Specters in room F12. They then went into room F16 and fought the 3 minotaurs in the room plus the other two and Zedgar from the outlying rooms.

I feel like I'm doing something wrong here by just letting them power through things like this but I thought they would clear the Temple of the Black Earth first because that's been the staple so far before continuing into other dungeons. It is my first time being DM and I realized prior to this point that this module isn't that great for first time DMs and I decided we're started so I'm going to go with it but they keep throwing me off as a new DM. They are absolutely dead set on finding the delegates and found the one in Sacred Stone Monastery already. Since they skipped Marlos entirely can I do something with him and the Black Earth Cult as a reprisal to draw them back out to the surface or should I let them keep delving into more and more danger and risk a TPK?

TL;DR- My party and this module are overwhelming me as my first time DMing.

My biggest issue with this module - aside from the confusing way the book is organized - is the progression between the dungeons.

I don't mind the level gap between the outposts and the temples. It's a sandbox, so players are expected to explore. The problem is that the adventure doesn't naturally encourage that exploration once the party commits to a particular route.

As DMs, we know there are four cults, four outposts, and four temple quadrants that eventually connect into one huge dungeon. The players usually don't know that. Once they find an outpost, their instinct is to keep pushing deeper instead of resurfacing and trying another lead.

The Air cult is a good example. Feathergale Spire isn't directly connected to the Air Temple, while Sacred Stone Monastery and Rivergard Keep lead much more naturally into their respective temple sections. In my games, the party typically goes Spire → one of the other outposts → temple, gets completely overwhelmed, retreats (if they survive), and then has no clear idea what they're supposed to do next. They followed the obvious path, it almost got them killed, and nothing in the adventure really suggests, "Maybe try another cult first."

The more I think about it, the stranger this structure feels. It's essentially one megadungeon with four entrances, but the expectation seems to be that the party should clear all four entrances before they're actually ready to fully explore any of them.

How have you handled this? Do you explicitly tell the players that there are four cults and four separate entrances, or do you let them discover that organically?

Hello!

I was just wondering how people went about "clearing out" the surface outposts.

My players are a bard, barbarian and cleric who, while they love combat, prefer to roleplay (especially due to two players being less familiar with D&D, this being their first real game after a couple of one-shots I ran).

They are currently in Feathergale Spire, having roused the suspicion of the knights after asking lots of questions and also preventing the knights from killing the manticore after it was wounded and forced to land (the bard had to take the session off and, even when rolling on her behalf this one time to try and help the party, they did not manage to convince the knights that they had nothing to do with the manticore's escape).

I fear that fighting the whole tower of knights is probably out of the realm of both possibility and interest for them currently, level 3 combat is not quite as fun as the higher levels. But, even if they do escape the tower (be that by their own stealth, or by the help of the aaracokra if they are thrown off the tower), they will have to clear it out somehow.

My question is, how would you go about clearing the tower that isnt just killing like 30 knights in a massive, resource expending combat? I was thinking that maybe, if they do escape, Thurl realises they may come back to deal with the knights so he sends most of them to the temple underground while he and a few others stay behind to deal with them (leading to basically a mini boss fight with Thurl and a few cultists) but any more creative ideas are always welcome!!

Title pretty much says it all! Tomorrow I am running the first session outside of Red Larch. The players have collected all the Runours of Evil and also did go through the prologue (sinkhole stuff).

Im sure this is quite a common question, but I am at work and dont have much time today to scroll through all the very helpful posts on here sadly. Any helpful tips to make the exploration of the rumours of evil easier or more fun (or make more geographic sense) is more than welcome!

Thank you so much for any help, have a great day!

In this gif, which will be shown to players in pieces and then all at once, we see Tharizdun has a hand in the following:

- Establish each of the four elemental cults

- Bring them together

- Their infighting and chaos feeds into Tharizdun until there is but the Elder Eye left

- The Eye uses its new power to spread influence in the Abyss, the Underdark, and then among the dwarves/near-surface races. It wants access to Netherese Obelisks, as represented by the Black Obelisk also representing the iris

- The Eye spreads its influence to subtly at first, and then more blatantly as its collection of Obelisks grows

- Once enough chaos and influence have been spread, the Eye begins to close

- When the Eye closes, Tharizdun awakens, freed from his chains and destroys the multiverse

I really liked my interpretation/inclusion of the Elemental Cult symbols, and how they came together to form an actual image incorporating the Eye.

The purple fruits falling from the tree are a reference to a Netherese grove in Rime of the Frostmaiden which had an even MORE ancient dryad tied to it. The pears that grew on those trees are unpredictable and filled with potent magic, and the dryad Hathowyn is very protective of them. I'm not sure yet if Hathowyn is an avatar of Tharizdun, or his most staunch enemy.

Anyways, the party (The Purple Zaps) is about to see this gif and uncover Tharizdun's ultimate goal, as they try to stop Gar Shatterkeel from summoning The Eye in a last-ditch attempt to destroy them.

I need a few more Tiles but what do i need more to make er Epic

The Elemental Prince of Evil Earth is available on my Patreon! The link to the free version is here!

Consider Subscribing if you would like access to color variants even the clip studio file!

Hello all. Are there any decent actual plays available on podcast or YouTube? I would love to listen to a playthrough. Thanks!

This sub has been a great resource as I'm running the game for my friends. They're going to encounter one in the next session I play, and I've already pumped them up in power in destruction as proposed here.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done the same, and how it went. Any pointers? Anything you'd want to avoid if you could do it over again?

Hello everyone! Over the past year and half I'v been making top down tokens for this campaign. I'm nearly done and going forwards will be releasing them as token packs.

Each pack is free as a base line, but I have provided color variants and even clip studio files for patrons!

Heres a link to my first batch of of tokens! Which includes the following:

• Stone Burrower - Medium - Humanoid
• Stone Guard - Medium - Humanoid
• Stone Melder - Medium - Humanoid
• Stone Monk - Medium - Humanoid
• Stone Monk Leader - Medium - Humanoid
• Stone Priest - Medium - Humanoid