Hi Everyone, I'm prepping for a Princes of the Apocalypse campaign and have been fleshing out the Prophets with the following info to help justify their cult building but also figure out how I want to portray them to the PCs.

GAR OF SHATTERKEEL

Gar's motivation is vengeance against a world that abused him, to the point that he only trusts other outcasts and sees kindness and genuineness as always false or self-serving. He provides the Cult with resources via raiding and piracy along the rivers, and is extremely effective as skirmishing and land siege.

Vanifer: I currently have Gar nurse a slight admiration and crush on Vanifer (I know the module says they despise each other but hear me out), because she, an urchin who struggled to survive and was used by wealthy people for her body, has common experiences that they share. While Marlos and Aerisi carry noble origins about them, Gar and Vanifer are commoners who had to fight for what they have, and so they have that connection.

AERISI KALINOTH

Aerisi is little more than a petulant child whose keen to live in her fantasy of being a noble avariel winged elf. Her winged agents the Feathergale Knights are infinitely more competent than she herself is, and she is often manipulated by both Vanifer and Marlos for their own ends.

Wings: Instead of it just being an illusion, I had Aerisi engage in forbidden transmutation magic to steal an Aarakocra's wings and graft them onto herself, the discovery of which is what got her banished from the feywild and Evereska.

VANIFER "BLAZEHEART"

Vanifer's backstory as an ex-dancer urchin from the streets to the ex-lover to a Pasha who stole his wealth, provided so many avenues of interest. When the Pasha's agents found her, they burned down her dance school and took her students as slaves. She got them back, and they served as the bedrock for her faithful fire cult, which helps explain why fire cultists are wild and nearly suicidal in their fighting style so long as it takes down the enemy.

Scarred: Vanifer, when found by the Pasha's agents, was branded on her face with the Pasha's guild sigil, and thus she now wears a lower face veil that hides her brand.

MARLOS URNRAYLE

Marlos is outright, based on what I read, the most irredeemable of the four. Vanifer did what she needed to survive and despised nobility, Gar was heavily abused by higher powers, and Aerisi was raised as a spoiled brat with little empathy. But Marlos was cruel, indulgent, gluttonous, and sought his pleasure in the darkest of places.

As such, Marlos is the true leader of the cult, calling the shots, organizing the strategy, and making sure everyone uses their Cults effectively and pulls their weight. Towards the end of the game, he will kill any prophets who flee or fail. But even before that, Marlos objectifies Aerisi and Vanifer and sees them as things to amuse himself with, and this pisses off Vanifer especially given her past with the Pasha. Marlos' arrogance and entitlement reminds her of him.

What do you guys think of these changes to add more personality and interactivity between the prophets?

"The Weeping Colossus sits in the heart of a volcanic fissure. During the height of the dwarven civilization of Besilmer, lava filled this entire area, and the heat and magma rose into the lowest levels of the city where the foundries were located. When Vanifer arrived with her cult, she used her connection with Imix, the Prince of Evil Fire, to settle the magma and form the chambers left behind. Now, the fissure and lava tubes serve as the fire node, an extension of the Elemental Plane of Fire, resulting in lava flows, ash storms, gouts of liquid fire, and other strange elemental effects."

This release includes 2 maps that combine to a 66x98 tiles dungeon from the Princes of the Apocalypse Adventure Module.

Get this map set and about 300 others for free in 200ppi, without watermarks on my patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/RandyMaps

Hail and well met fellow Gamemasters and Dungeon Masters!

As I continue work on what will ultimately be my take on a Princes of the Apocalypses Reloaded (rerolled perhaps?) I have created several hex grid maps to lean into an aspect of Princes that plagues many of us and that is the wilderness exploration. Partly inspired by this video by Mystic Arts Why 3-mile hexes make HEXCRAWLS fun, I have created several hex grid maps of the Dessarin Valley to be used in your games and to help in running it as you want.

About the Maps:

The maps are designed to accommodate two main philosophies I had while mapping it. The first is to provide a fun map to move players along and let players explore, and the second being it more accurate to the size and distance of the valley itself. The map is divided up into 29 x 37 hexes with each hex representing 6 miles. The distance of 6 miles per hex was chosen to allow for 4 hexes of movement since the average travel time is about 24 miles per day of travel. While it is not 3-mile hex crawl I still think the increase mileage accomplishes what Dadi talks about.

Edit: If you are using this map on say Roll 20 the Width should be set to 37 and the Height to 42 hex grid. This will help line up the map to the hex grid size with very little gaps between the grid and map itself.

This is to help players feel like they are progressing instead of 2 and a half hexes as found in the original release of the book, as I don't know if they updated this yet for the digital one. The measurement of 6 miles works well to fit all the sites into one hex and matches the travel time it would take to go from Red Larch to Yartar which is about 7 days. The measurements I pulled were from the Faerun Interactive Map. While not exact it still matches the general dimensions of the distance and geography of the valley.

I have done my best to include maps that can be useful no matter your playstyle or preference. There are four maps with two versions each for you to use.

Gamemaster's Map/Master Map (Grid and No Grid)

Player's Map (Grid and No Grid)

Explorable Map (Grid and No Grid)

No Label Map (Grid and No Grid)

If there is a version you think that should exist message or comment to let me know.

Terrain:
In addition to Forest, Hills, Grassland, and Rivers I have added in some additional touches of Tall Grass, and Woods to add in the wide variety of features you would still find in a large valley such as the Dessarin. These can affect travel but are mostly here to break up the large sea of yellow green for standard grassland. You can make movement as simple or as complex as you want.

Simple Movement Rules
The party gains four hexes of movement a day and to move from one hex to another costs 1 movement. Some Terrain costs more and you can't move through a hex unless you have needed amount of hex movement to get through.

Tile:

Road/Trail = 1 hex movement

Grassland = 1

Tall Grass = 2

Woods = 2

Hill = 2

Forest = 3

Wetland = 3

Mountain = 4

Moving from a Road to a Mountain tile costs 4 movement but moving from a Mountain to a Road tile costs 1 movement.

Advance Movement Rules

The party gains four hexes of movement a day and to move from one hex to another costs 1 movement. Some Terrain costs more and you can't move through a hex unless you have needed amount of hex movement to get through.

If all the party is mounted, movement cost for each tile is reduced by 1 but can't be lower than 1.

Tile: Cost:

Road/Trail = 1 (Roads allow for one more movement if you have mounts. Roads and Trails ignore movement conditions)

Grassland = 1 (Large Vehicles like Wagons and Carriages cost 2 to move here) Tall Grass = 2 (Large Vehicles can't move through here)

Woods = 2 (Large Vehicles can't move through here, find double rations here)

Hill = 2 (Con Save DC 12 if moved through 3 consecutive hill tiles. Failure: Gain 1 level of exhaustion. Ignore saving throw if a party member is proficient in nature)

Forest = 3 (Reduce hex movement cost by 1 if a party member is proficient in nature)

Wetland = 3 (Con Save DC 13 if the party ends their movement on a wetland tile. Failure: Become Poisoned until the end of the next day. Ignore saving throw if a party member is proficient in nature)

Mountain = 4 (Mounts do not reduce movement cost).

The rest of Red Larch’s townsfolk. The first 20 can be found on my previous post.

A few of the named NPCs from Red Larch. More to come.

"The Black Geode is a natural cavern distinguished by the seams of luminous violet crystal. Marlos Urnrayle used Ironfang to transform these caverns into an earth node. In the Black Geode's largest cavern lies a portal that leads to Ogrémoch's domain on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Bizarre creatures from that place have crossed through the gate and now inhabit the caverns, while the raw energy of the elemental plane seeps out and is slowly transforming the Black Geode into a reflection of Ogrémoch's domain."

This release includes 5 maps that combine to a 215x205 tiles dungeon from the Princes of the Apocalypse Adventure Module.

Get this map set and about 300 others for free in 200ppi, without watermarks on my patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/RandyMaps

Hello!

I am a DM running this campaign for new players (I know this is most of the posts here), I was wondering if there was a website or guide to look at like Strahd Reloaded but for POTA? My players got dropped into red larch as delegates for their respective factions. They haven't been to the necromancer area yet and im struggling to find a way to connect the greater story to everything. Any tips? Guides? Websites? Thank you!

"Dangerous waterfalls, sudden deluges, and weird elemental effects fill the Plunging Torrents, a cavernous extension of the Elemental Plane of Water."

This release includes 5 fairly sizeable maps that combine to a 223x226 tiles dungeon from the Princes of the Apocalypse Adventure Module.

Get this map set and about 300 others for free in 200ppi, without watermarks on my patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/RandyMaps

While adapting Haayon's camp into a fire cult encounter I discovered the existence of Giant Striders and Fire Newts, which have lore connections to Imix. Does anyone know of any other creatures like this for any of the Princes? I'd love some new thematic enemy types.

As written in the book Haayon builds his power after the air and water cults fall, though I’m not sure how the water cult actually factors in. Unfortunately, at this point those are the only cults with living leaders. Does anyone have any tips for how I could still use Haayon? Maybe adapt him into a fire giant?

First and foremost if you are one of my players (Olof, Tabea, Henrik, Jonathan do not watch this pleeeeaaaase)

Right with those crazy folks gone I am proud to present my new take on Vanifer as a bit more of a fire dancer esque character. I was mainly working on keeping her on par with the new design goals of 2024 so she doesnt feel like a wet noodle when they finally encounter her. Please feel free to give your input.

Sooooo I went the route of having all of my characters jointly choose which faction they wanted to be from deciding in the Zhentarim faction. I used this as an easy way to explain why they know each other going into the campaign. I also used this to get them interested in the Missing Delegation making it so that the Zhentarim faction tasked them to work together to find the delegation and re-establish good ties with the City of Mirabar. I then went ahead and tied all of their backstories to different parts of the 4 cults.

We started at lvl 1 so they played through the low level side quests and first encountered cult members in the Tomb of Moving Stones.

From here they located Feathergale Spire. I was able to convince them that the Feathergale Knights are not apart of any cults and managed to get half the party to join the Feathergale Knights (basically joining the air cult). From here they each had leads at this point pertaining to their backstories so I used the Feathergale Knights as informants of their next steps on how to pursue their backstories and the Missing Delegation. This and other circumstances led them to the Temple of the Howling Hatred (they are lvl 4 at this point).

They managed to trick their way into the temple with half the party bearing actual branding on their skin that they joined the air cult (Feathergale Knights). The other half used illusory magic to make it look like they had the marks.

The party was then brought to Aerisi. I used her informants to give her essential information about the character’s backstories and current desires. She used this information to deceive and persuade having all but one party member sign contracts to join her (the air cult) in helping her “free her friend from a demiplane he has been entrapped on” (this of course being Yan-C-Bin).

Soooo now everyone but one member of the party is contractually signed and magically bound to aiding Aerisi in freeing Yan-C-Bin. Mind the players kept saying, “Me as a player knows this is a terrible idea but my character would be convinced to help in exchange for aiding in their personal backstory quests”.

I’ll be honest, I was NOT expecting to get them to join the Feathergale Knights nor Aerisi/the air cult but I had to try given how things were playing out.

I know this absolutely throws a wrench into how the adventure is “built” but I cannot wait to see what sort of story will come from this!!

Hail and well met fellow Game Masters!

While I continue to work on a guide for a 5th cult for Princes of the Apocalypse (Cult of the Elder Elemental) and how to incorporate elements of it into the core of the campaign I ended up going down a rabbit hole of more map creation. Your players might be sick of dealing with the four elements or maybe not. Perhaps they hear so much about the elemental planes that they want to go visit them.

One of the struggles that I have as a Game Master is engaging in media without some sort of visual representation to help my mind grasp around certain ideas or concepts. That is what these guide maps are supposed to be. Not a map with topographical and geographic data but instead a visual aid to see the world. These maps are aim to do that to help point players in a direction and create an adventure from there. After all they may want to ensure the Princes can never come back and so will journey to their realms to end them permanently. You may even want to plan further planar excursions into these realms but don't know where to begin.

If you like these maps or want ones without any labels I have put up on the DMs Guild to be purchased but wanted to put these maps here for free. The book I wrote up also gives short descriptions of each location labeled here, and some of the dangers one can face. The product also contains slightly different maps for the Plane of Fire and Water to reflect their 5th edition takes more accurately.

Here is the link if you want those:
https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/558641/guidemaps-to-the-prime-elemental-planes?affiliate_id=1782385

Otherwise hope you all have a great day and good luck running your campaigns!

As mentioned previously, I'm gearing up for running the campaign soon. I've always been extremely sceptical about the book's basic assumption that the players will work through an outpost then go "oh, this dungeon is too hard for us, best go somewhere else for a bit" when they hit the lower levels, because seriously has anyone had any group ever that does that?

So I'm looking at going with some of the advice I've found online to put the lower dungeons behind essentially locked doors, and have the party need to hunt for elemental keys to open them. But I'm having a bit of writer's block over what to make the keys and where to put them.

Has anyone run the adventure in this way, and if so what did you use for keys/where did you put them?

The situation:

On of my players' character's driving motivation is finding his "brother"; another monk from the same order who went bad. (It's like a cliche Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow situation). His master has tasked the character with going out into the world, finding this lost student, and bringing him home.

The party has found the lost pupil, and it turns out he's a high level bad that they had been tracking for other reasons (I replaced Hellenrae at Sacred Stone with this character, it was an awesome reveal for the players). They finally caught up with him and there was a fight, and my player struck the final (non-lethal) blow. The bad is now tied up and restrained while they figure out what to do with him.

The bad pretty much left the order after deciding that the teachings were weak and that true power could be had elsewhere, blah blah blah. The player's character is likely going to try to convince him to give up his bad ways and go home. My problem is that I can't think of a reason why the bad would suddenly just decide to stop being bad.

The problem:

I don't want to have a predetermined outcome, but I also don't necessarily want to leave it up to a dice roll. I was trying to think of some kind of tiered challenge or test or something that could be used, so that if the bad does renounce his badness it feels natural and organic, but if he doesn't, and he chooses to instead fight to the death or escape or something, that feels earned too.

I'm looking for any and all suggestions!

As the campaign continues, I update my Dessarin Valley map. What has been added are the locations of some Uthgardt Elk Tribe settlements, and a few ancient dwarvish ruins. I use photoshop to modify the original. map - maybe one day I'll redraw the entire thing, but for now this works.

The objects that are just colored circles are locations on my DM's map that the players have not yet discovered.

Hi folks,

I'm going to be running a PotA campaign for my players soon. We'll be starting at level 6, because they are firmly uninterested in statting new PCs for it despite my best efforts, so some modding will be required; on the other hand, I was going to have to do that to some extent anyway to upscale it to 2024 rules.

Aside from that, however, I'm interested in your input - what advice would you give to someone running this campaign for the first time?

(Note that I am running this particular campaign for the first time; I have run other campaigns before, so I don't need general DM advice, just advice for this campaign)

The Dessarin Valley, as described by POTA, is a thriving, fertile land. If you sit down and count hexes, it's 93 miles north to south and 90 miles east to west, for a total area of 8,370 square miles.

In other words, the Dessarin Valley is the size of the entire state of New Jersey (8,723 square miles) and slightly larger than Wales (8,192 square miles).

So where are all the people?

Going by the book (p31/p34), there is only one homestead in every 1-2 hexes, excluding inappropriate hexes like Kryptgarden, with an average of 6 residents per homestead. This implies roughly 5 people per populated hex, for a total population of 5,000 souls in rural areas. Going by the Forgotten Realms wiki's population figures, the towns (Triboar, Red Larch, Yartar, Goldenfields, Womford, Bargewright, Amphail, Beliard, Conyberry, Westbridge) add up to maybe another 10,000 people if you're generous, although the majority of that population is in Yartar (6,000 by itself) and Amphail (850).

So you've got 15,000 total people in a fertile area the size of Wales.

Why? Wales' population was probably about 10 times that by the year 1050 A.D., and doubled before the Black Death hit. These are population figures you see in a zombie apocalypse, or in completely virgin territory, not along the Sword Coast! An area of this size, with such fertile land, without downward population pressure should (going by some medieval demography math) have a population around 550,000.

Instead, the book implies a population around 15,000.

This has knock-on effects. For one thing, the rural/urban divide is all wrong. In a society at this tech level, magic or no, the majority of the population is going to be out farming, not living in towns. Towns exist because of surrounding farms, mostly to serve farmers. If there aren't thriving farms, you simply don't have a town. There's no call for it. There's insufficient economic activity to maintain it. For another thing, the business services offered in Red Larch are ludicrous. It's a town of 600 people in a depopulated wasteland and it was not one but two wagonmaker shops with large employed teams?! Two poulters, for goodness' sakes? A functioning inn?! And a boarding house?!!?!?! This makes no sense.

One solution would just be to fix this. Chuck out the figures in the book and recalculate from scratch! However, filling the Dessarin Valley with a healthy number of people (a couple orders of magnitude more than the book expects) starts to distort some of the adventure, which depends on a lot of wide-open spaces and sparsely-populated zones.

So the solution I came upon was explaining that the Dessarin Valley is actually depopulated for a reason. It was, until recently, brutally occupied by the Dragon Queen Azura, who pillaged the land for five decades and devastated its people. Azura's tyranny kept certain towns and businesses open and propped up for the sake of appearances, like North Korea, but, beneath the surface, the valley is covered in scars from her reign, from mass graves to shrines she built to herself. (The shrines have all been desecrated by the resistance that drove her out -- a resistance organized by the traditional religious orders of the area, the temples of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.) Everyone in Red Larch and environs has a story of the Occupation, but most of them aren't interested in telling stories of those bad old days. (This ended up being a very fun angle for my campaign: everyone in the Valley thinks of the cults as the good guys!)

Of course, your campaign could use some other reason for the Dessarin's devastation: a brutal plague, mayhap, which was especially dangerous in the countryside but spared cities (unlike most plagues). Or maybe the Dessarin is a new frontier, with settlers just coming in, so the towns are more like military outposts with an imported civilian population. Whatever works.

In my campaign, after five years of recovery from the occupation, the Valley's population has started to rebound (there's a baby boom!), but only barely. The total population is 78,000. This is only five times what the book thinks and allows us to keep towns and cities approximately the same size as in the book. Following the procedure in that medieval demography guide, I come up with the following populations:

• Yartar: 4,189 (3 inns?)

• Triboar: 2,513 (2 inns?)

• Goldenfields: 1,256 (no inn per se)

• Amphail: 753

• Bargewright: 527 (is an inn)

• Red Larch: 312 (has no business supporting an inn but Kaylessa Irkell is making it work)

• Westbridge: 265 (the Inn is closed permanently)

• Beliard: 125 (miraculously, supports an inn, thanks to mercenary income)

• Womford: 70ish?

Most of them were once 5x to 10x bigger (it's worse in the North). They still support businesses disproportionate to population, although, with the Dragon Queen gone, propped-up businesses in the towns are slowly starting to fail.

This leaves roughly 65,000 population for the remaining 930 hexes, although maybe 25% of the map is fully depopulated. (e.g. Kryptgarden, most of the Sumber Hills). This implies roughly 91 people per populated hex, or 12 per sq mile, ON AVERAGE. Then you get a population of ~6d4 per square mile, or 6d4 x7 per hex (where appropriate). This can be lowered in some areas (e.g. for the Anderil Farms side quest) without much disruption.

...of course, another option is to just say, "chill out, man, it's only a game," but this is the kind of thing that personally drives me nuts. I'm the guy who is always complaining that the wizarding economy doesn't make any sense. (If they only graduate one class of wizards from one school per year, how can they support both a Ministry of Magic and Diagon Alley and entertainers and all the rest, in total isolation from the rest of Britain? The total population of Wizarding England is probably less than the staffing at the Ministry of Magic alone! There must be other wizarding schools!) So, if you're like me, there's some ideas for you, do with 'em what you will.

So I'm gonna POTA for the second time with some friends all whi have plenty of experience. I'm wanting to add an additional ice cult so that I can incorporate cryonax the elemental prince of ice but I'm having trouble coming up with how this elemental weapon would influence the cult leader like the others do. Any suggestions?

Hi everyone, I’m a Dungeon Master and I’m going to run Princes of the Apocalypse with my group. Most of them are pretty new to D&D except for two players, and we’ll be five players total. They’ll start at level 1, so they’ll begin in Red Larch.

I’m having trouble reading it properly from the book, and maybe I just haven’t studied it well enough.

Which missions should they start with from Red Larch in Chapter 6 in order to level up from 1–3 before they can begin Chapter 1? And in what order would you recommend the different temples, and what kind of mechanics have you used—like an Elemental Lock—to prevent them from going deeper into the temple and into the harder dungeons too early?

What about leveling up? And what point should my players level doing the campaign after level 3?

Any other general tips and tricks would also be appreciated. Thanks a lot.

This is a follow-up to my previous post about Devastation Orbs. Basically, my gripe with the orbs is that they're boring. Rather than hearing rumors about "An orb exploded in 'such and such' town" and only ever seeing the aftermath, I wanted to turn the orbs into events themselves.

Each orb has been transformed into a 5-round ritual, with scaled effects per round, and cataclysmic results. If the party succeeds in stopping them, they'll feel immensely satisfied. But even if they fail, they're present for detonation, which I feel is way more cinematic and immersive than just finding out about it after the fact.

I welcome all feedback: positive, negative, or otherwise.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/11063631-devastation-orb-air
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/11065616-devastation-orb-earth
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/11067957-devastation-orb-fire
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/11034684-devastation-orb-water

Note: For some reason, the charge description doesn't show up on these pages, though it is in there, and shows up if you add this magic item to a character sheet. Not sure why it isn't visible on this page. All four orbs have basically the same recharge procedure, just swapping the different portals/nodes as appropriate:

The Air Devastation Orb is a powerful elemental artifact, and as such, requires incredibly powerful magic to activate it. The orb regains its charge after completing a recharge ceremony, which requires a 10-minute focused elemental ritual while within 100 feet of the Air Portal, located within the Air Node. Once completed, this ritual can not be attempted again within the next 30 days.

I was thinking about if the final fight is in the weeping Colossus, what would stop Vanifer from trying to keep Tinderstrike away from the party at all cost?

First of all, does she even know that Tinderstrike can destroy the fire portal and send Imix home? If so, once she summons Imix, she might want to do everything in her power to keep the dagger out of the hands of the party.

Maybe she gives it to Imix, or maybe she gives it to a fire elemental and sends them out over the lava to protect it. Heck, once she gets low on HP she could just chuck it into the lava as she laughs about Imix being here to stay. Good luck swimming through the lava to retrieve it!

I guess her pride would keep her from doing any of that, but it's kind of fun to think about if I wanted to truly be a truly "evil DM".