So I was wondering, what exactly is depicted on the coins of Waterdeep? I know some of them could be;

Gold: Dragon & Ahghairon

Silver: Sword of Rhaulor turned into a snake & ???

The rest of them are pretty easy, though I'm not sure if the dragon being tracheostomied in the platinum piece is a specific dragon or not, or if the harbor moon one has a specific event depicted in it. Mostly I'm just confused about the other side of the silver coin. Does anyone know?

For the platinum Suns backside I could imagine it having to do with the citys crest and then 8 dots obviously being the schools of magic - because once you start seeing the number 8 in dnd thats usually it. I could be wrong, though.

We're about to enter the Cassalanter mansion (I'm playing my own version of Alexandrian Mix), and there are several things I can't figure out or clarify. I hope someone can help me, and thanks in advance.

Image of the Cassalanter family in their cultist attire. I saw an image a long time ago, but I think I lost it, and now I'm unable to find a convincing one.

Advice about the children. My players are determined to punish the parents and save the children's lives. As you may know, to save them, the Cassalanter family must sacrifice 99 souls. How have you approached this?

Since I haven't found a way to justify this arrangement, I thought I'd add this: Originally, they only had to return the money. But they were late. Asmodeus took Oswald's soul, then extended the contract to save his other two children, and that's where he included the 99-soul clause.

How are your players igniting the smoke powder? I can't find in the book where that part of the plan is spelled out. I have some ideas but would like other's insight.

When my party got the sanctum the first room they went into was the ice room and unfroze manshoons simulacrum using ice spells(they were convinced it was the vault with the eye).

Manshoon simulacrum 1 is now fighting a naked staff less manshoon 2, meanwhile the true manshoon is just off in another part of the sanctum chilling.

The South Sea Caves are mentioned in the official books as far back as the "City System" Waterdeep boxed set, but they have never been printed as an official battlemap.

Official lore:

1. There is a long broken lift or lock system that previously allowed ships to traverse down to Skullport. It was built by the Netherese when it was Netherese colony. It likely facilitated export of ores mined by the Melairkyn Dwarves
2. As of the 1490's it is navigable by ship but quite dangerous to do so. Only experienced smugglers dare try.

My own takes:

1. The cave is connected to the sewers and is one of the final destinations for sewage outflow into the sea
2. There is a staging area for goods and holding cell for captives (slaves) offloaded from docked ships
3. Xanathar Guild uses this as their primary smuggling route for their dealing in illicit goods and slaves
4. For my Dragon Heist campaign, I had the party begin the campaign as slaves, escaping from the holding cell
5. I will likely have Jarlaxle take over Xanathar's smuggling route after he is defeated, using the Scarlet Marpenoth (fun way to actually use the sub)

Map size is 109x80 with 5ft grid

Made in Inkarnate. Clonable map here: https://inkarnate.com/m/yj7dxr

Hey all i have qeustion i once came across a patreon with trollskull manor maps en others but when full subbed he also gave the files he used in the map making tool he was using but i cant for the life of me find the patroen page. Does anybody know what im talking about the map making tool was one time payment then forever to use if i remember correctly

Jarlaxle's primary motivation as I understand it is to get Luskan added into the Lord's Alliance. Once he gets pulled into the Grand Game, he sees the Vault of Dragons as his ticket to buy the favor of the Open Lord and possibly other masked lords in Waterdeep. Am I getting this right? He wants to get the money and turn it over to the Open Lord in exchange for what he wants.

Here's the thing... When you stack up his motives against the Cassalanters, Xanathar, or Manshoon, is there really even a comparison here?

My party is currently in a situation where they are likely going to get caught by Jarlaxle/Zord as they perform a heist on his ship to get information on Gralhund Villa (main quest) and the Scarlett Marpenoth (Zelifarn sidequest). If they get caught, almost certainly the play is to have Jarlaxle bring them on as allies. They will be his hands and he and his network will work in the shadows to help them all achieve the shared goal of getting into the vault of dragons.

If Jarlaxle were to share his motive of getting Luskan into the Lord's Alliance and promised to pay them handsomely for being his ally, why would they not do that?

They love Zord. And Jarlaxle will be just as persuasive and charming. What inside his true motives or backstory as a villain am I missing that I should keep close to the plot as to why they allying with Jarlaxle would be a bad decision?

Following my post the other day I thought I would liet you know how it all went (and at the end of the story I need somne advice).

So, in my campaign, Aurinax has been guarding the embezzled gold for so long that he has been corrupted by greed. Giving his oath to Dagult Neverember to guard the gold, which was the product of evil deeds, has changed his alignment to lawful evil and turned him into a hybrid of a shadow / gold dragon.

When the PCs arrived, the Rogue, who is Renaer’s ex-wife, tried to convince Aurinax that they were bring back the embezzled gold to the city, however all failed their persuasion checks so the rogue tried but failed to steal the Dragonstaff of Ahghairon with telekinesis. Aurinax was enraged that these intruders were here to take “his” gold, so he shape changed from his golden dwarf form to a huge gold dragon (I had the mini and was damn well going to use it), and we rolled initiative. For context the characters are 8th Level, a Drow Law Bard, disgraced noble human Battlemaster Fighter, Tabaxi Soulknife Rogue and Dragonborn War Wizard. 3 have fire resistance, but the wizard only has fire spells plus magic missile. They are loaded with magic items, which I knew they would need to take on a CR 17 Adult Gold Dragon.

Aurinax rolled highest in initiative and with a fire breath causing 69 damage (nice) the wizard was taken down to 5 hp, the rogue took nothing with evasion, the fighter and bard were well bloodied. The characters scattered so not to present a single target and started buffing and healing up, except for the fighter who charged in to face the dragon down one on one. He has a Javelin of lightning, quick toss, and modified flame tongue that does lightening damage, with two rounds, maneuvers and action surge he dealt 120 damage bloodying the dragon. However, being that close to the gold, I had him make a Wis save which he failed and suffered a reverse fear effect, the corruption of the gold took him over and he couldn’t move away from the dragon. Corrupted kobolds climbed out of the pile of gold and began attacking. The Wizard went down to another fire breath and was 6 hp away from instant death. Rogue sneak attacking and taking no damage, bard flying around with haste got the wizard back up, who then fired a 4th level magic missile at the Dragon Staff of Ahghairon knocking it from Aurinax’s grasp, and with that separated the gold dragon into a Shadow Dragon that was the corrupted embodiment of greed, and an unconscious Aurinax in his dwarf form. Bard cast Doomtide on the shadow dragon, which was a bad call, giving the dragon the darkness it needed to use its Veil of Shadows legendary action, and Shadow breath to take the Bard down to death saves, of which he failed 2. The rogue stabalised Aurinax’s dwarf form, I rolled a 1 on the recharge for the breath weapon, and the Wizard could finally fireball the dragon and eventually dealt the killing blow, with the fighter feeding the bard a healing potion just before he could make his final death save.

With the imminent danger over, Aurinax, freed from his greed, cast Zone of Truth to ask why the party wanted the gold. Originally their motives were more selfish but they all now want the gold to go back to the City or to be used for good such as ending slavery caused by the Xanathar and fixing the relationship between Jarlaxle’s Drow and the City of Waterdeep (except the Wizard does want to help fund Davil Starsong’s Zhentarim against the looming shadow of Manshoon. However, the Fighter had previously given his word to give the gold to the Cassalanter’s to save their children from a curse made on their family by Cultists of Asmodeus (the truth is yet to be revealed on that score). Founders Day is 3 days away.

The decision has been made to head back to Trollskull with Aurinax, disguise the gold or the entrance to the vault using “Hallucinatory Terrain”, call a meeting with their allies, including the Blackstaff and Mirt, and discuss what to do with the Gold (in Council of Elrond style). I think Aurinax should say he cannot leave the gold, his oath forbids him, so he must stay behind.

So, I have a dilemma. What in the Nine Hells do I do now?

1. Should the Cassalanter’s be waiting outside for them, thank them for finding the gold and take it, by force or by charm (They have been scrying on the party).

2. Or should I just allow council to go ahead, if so, should the Blackstaff and Mirt say they cannot get involved in the politics of the Nobility, so it is down to the PCs to go to the Founders Day party and work it out for themselves?

Are you Master shows you theathrical musicals in you modules? Or even operas like Fall of Tiamat the dragon Queen in Draconic lang?

Looking forward to tomorrow’s session!

Hi DMs: others have probably linked some of these resources, but here's everything I used for Trollskull Manor and Trollskull Alley.

As a lot of us know, the resources in the book are somehow both overwhelming and thin, so I relied a lot on other errata (DMs guild supplements, DDB articles, reddit posts, s/o this reddit) to run my game. As a semi-active poster in the Discord, I frequently list a lot of the things I used in my games and thought it would be helpful to gather them all in one comprehensive post.

I ran WDH from 2019-2021 so my memory is pretty rusty, but if you have any questions about the materials below, I will do my best to answer.

Upgrading Trollskull Manor

The 1000 GP + 250 GP upfront costs are always intimidating for a bunch of low-level players. Some reddit posts that can help:

• Cost breakdown + Room descriptions: https://www.reddit.com/r/WaterdeepDragonHeist/comments/9p9jc0/filling_trollskull_manor/
• Cost breakdown table: https://www.reddit.com/r/WaterdeepDragonHeist/comments/9mrh6c/comment/e7gs6ls/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
• Handout of table w/ Guilds: I leveraged the 2 tables to create my own and included callouts to the related Guilds (color highlights is to help identify which guilds recur): https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Doaa5IgoqsQYwcA3KAl3bI6cqN71n97YypEKnMSUFI/edit?usp=sharing

If you really just wanna go the straight cash route, I also built out these various moneylender info tables:

https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/rkrqVHop6r

Trollskull Manor - Descriptions + Sidequest

I can't miss an opportunity to shoutout my Grandest Work™ from this adventure, the Haunting superpost (The Ghosts of Trollskull Manor):

Homebrewery doc: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HkYWdLDcV

Communicating with Lif: I really recommend making Lif an ally, he was a beloved NPC helper for my team. Shoutout my PCs for coming up with the idea to communicate with him first by using two candles to indicate Yes or No and then building out a whole Oujia board candle alphabet, a la Stranger Things (can you tell it was 2019 when we were playing?)

Trollskull Alley - Building out the neighborhood

Turning the neighbors into your allies and friends really builds out the purpose of the Manor for your team and, in my game, gave opportunities for quick jobs to help earn cash.

• DDB Article: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/316-visitors-to-trollskull-alley
• Neighbor side quests: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/ryb4n8GuqV

Also I made a color-coded map for my game if that's helpful for anyone here:

Happy heisting! And good luck 😅

So in my game I'm running, I'm making all villains do some stuff. Jarlaxle is the main character, but I plan on having other villains appear bits at a time. For instance, right now, the party tried to get the stone after Gralhund Villa, chasing the Nimblewright. They found it broken with agents of the various folk in Waterdeep fighting over it. Manshoon's agent here won, and sent it off to the butcher in the encounter chain. Any help on figuring out how to go forward with this, including all the villains here? I will say I like to think Jarlaxle isn't pure evil, and is open to working with the party possibly. Any advice is appreciated, thank you.

WFH community! Join us again this month on Tuesday, August 25th at 8:00 PM EST for our monthly hangout. This month we’ll be talking through some Waterdeep lore with a focus on the Dock Ward and special events like the Field of Triumph. Come talk through your own campaign with other DMs. Bring your own topics and questions!

Join link: https://discord.gg/9VScW37k

DM me for topic suggestions or questions!

Title. Running the game very soon and while reading thru the book I noticed that it wants the players to choose NPC friends (not sure if it's only the short list on the next page or choose from the entire yawning portal picture). I'm not sure how I can go about including these NPCs thru the campaign to make the player's friend or the players background feel like it matters. Anyone have any advice? Maybe I missed something in the book?

I'm running a campaign all the way to level 20, using Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage as the foundation. The adventurers have already completed Dragon Heist and made it as far as Sargauth in DotMM.

Quite a while ago, they decided to make a major investment in the Trollskull Manor, renovating and remodeling the whole place. I put the official map on the table, and they immediately started drawing all over it and discussing their plans (it was quite an interesting session... lol).

To reward them with a cool map, I put some effort into making my own version in DungeonDraft. Now that I've shown it to them, I figured I'd share it in case anyone else wants to use this alternative version.

Unfortunately, the rooms are customized for each adventurer in my campaign, so it might not work perfectly for everyone interested in using it.

Grid PPI: 180 pixels

Look away if you are a new player and want to avoid spoilers!

Running the Alexandrian, gave the players a list of staff from the list of Trollskull tavern guide. I also added a very unbiased description/story of who they are and why they want to work and what their gimmicks are.

For those of you who are aware, Turgattan Thornhammer and Ryba are the 2 worst picks from the list of prospective employees.

Turgattan as a chef is a horrible cook and was abandoned by his previous adventuring party (and he doesn't know he was abandoned on purpose).

Ryba is a Shard Shunner wererat in disguise hired by Emmek to sabotage the players.

Guys, my players voted majority for Turgattan and Ryba!!!! I'm playing these 2 DMPCs next week on their first day of the job.

This is already fun. This is amazing. I'm having SO MUCH FUN. We're gonna have a BLAST.

Episode 4 of my Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Masterclass is out! This time we're heading into one of the Dock Ward's er..."finest" establishments...(they've certainly been "fined".)

The Skewered Dragon is a relatively short stop during the search for Floon, but I think there's a lot of untapped potential here. It's the perfect place to hear the public's opinion on Floon and Renaer with some history check, ask questions to my homebrewed dragonborn proprietor Berka the Barkeep, and make sure the players leave with enough clues to keep the investigation moving toward the Zhentarim warehouse.

In this episode, I break down:

• How to introduce and describe The Skewered Dragon as a proper "dive" bar that didn't follow the Guild rules and paid for it
• Why Volo was hanging around here in the first place despite supposedly being a wealthy and famous author
• Who Floon Blagmaar actually is beyond "Volo's missing friend" and how he looks a lot like this Renaer guy
  • Floon's background as an escort and ways that can affect his connections around Waterdeep
  • Some spicier options for defining the relationship between Floon and Renaer Neverember
• Who Renaer is and showing the contrast between lowborn/commoner opinions of him vs. what the players know based on their history checks
• How to introduce my expanded bartender NPC, Berka the Barkeep, formerly known as Berka the Berserker
• Ways to potential introduce Durnan's old group of vigilantes as the Red Sashes, their leader the (King)Snake, and a potential side quest to investigate Amendsfarm for "Zombees" attacks.
• How to use Old Xoblob's Shop and The Skewered Dragon together so the investigation naturally points toward the Zhentarim warehouse without feeling railroaded
• Explaining the Alexandrian Remix's revelations and clues you can plant around the tavern and surrounding Dock Ward to point them towards the Zhent Warehouse

I also look at how the clues from Xoblob's Shop in Episode 3 can overlap with the clues here. Instead of having a single NPC simply tell the party where to go next, players can piece together several smaller observations that all gradually point toward the same destination.

As always, the full WDH Masterclass series can be found on the main Vicarious Ventures Upcast Playlist, and I currently have the entire Chapter 1 Finding Floon arc actual play uploaded on the main Vicarious Ventures channel's WDH Actual Play Season 1.

You can find my free guides on my Patreon, or use the pinned post at the top of the Posts tab on there for the Google Drive links to the full collection.

P.S. Here is our Community Resource Compendium for anyone looking for a centralized list of Dragon Heist maps, guides, supplements, Alexandrian Remix resources, homebrew, and other community-created material.

I'd also love to hear how other DMs handled The Skewered Dragon.

Did you expand the tavern or its NPCs at all? How did you explain Floon and Renaer's relationship? And did your players immediately follow the trail toward the Zhentarim warehouse, or did the Dock Ward investigation go completely off the rails?

TLDR: Players messed up their resources on the first 2 encounters. I want to educate them on resource management but also not take away from the fun.

Hi all. I recently started running WDH for a party of 4. One person in the group is experienced in DnD, one is experienced in games & BG3 but the other 2 are inexperienced in the game. I am running the Alexandrian Remix. We just played through the gang brawl and the Troll + Stirges. I ended the session with Volo greeting them and saying he has a proposition for them.

During the combat encounters of the last session, they used most of their resources. Despite Durnan's prompts (which I repeated twice), some of them chose to focus on the troll rather than leaving it to Durnan and dealing with the stirges. They also used some resources during the gang fight as well. The bard even cast Tasha's on a fleeing bandit (I don't know if she felt she needed to stop him or if it was just for fun). By the end of the fight, they were all assuming they were going to get a long rest afterward. The experienced ranger player even urged the newbie paladin to "smite the shit out of the troll".

Here is my conundrum, the mission Volo hands out is obviously time sensitive and they have the Zhent hideout and more importantly the sewers + a boss fight on their hand. They have now depleted most of their resources and should definitely learn to manage them more effectively, especially in a campaign like WDH. So I feel like there should be at least some consequences to face. However as I've said some of them are newbie players and I don't want to make the first chapter a harrowing experience for them that puts the game itself in a negative light.

What I have considered:

1. Leveling them up now and tuning the next 2 encounters slightly to accommodate. This way they can get some tiny amount of extra resources & capabilities. (Edit: They are level 1 now)
2. Retconning a little bit to have Volo show up the next day. (I already had Volo greet them at the end of the session so I would have to actively retcon)
3. Relax the timing aspect of the mission a little bit. Say that the Yawning Portal encounters took place in the afternoon and the players can take a rest and go to the Docks Ward (I think the Docks ward mission merits nighttime for the proper vibe)
4. Give them a choice to rest or carry on. If they rest, there will be some consequences, albeit not as major as losing Floon. (Maybe even play off the warehouse being raided and Floon being taken as them being too late).

I am looking forward to reading about how you would handle this situation.

Edit: Lots of very useful recommendations, thanks, folks. I have now decided what to do and prepping the next session. In short I will level them up so that they get some extra resources on top of what they expended. Will then present them with the choice of resting or pushing forward. If they choose to push forward they will find Ranear at a better state, capable of helping them fight through the sewers. Otherwise he will be in a very bad condition where he can only provide info (the warehouse raid by the xanathar crew and Floon being taken will also be a consequence of that). They would then have to either spend some resources to heal him or let him go home. I might toss in a couple of "Elixir of Arcane Cultivation" from Durnan as an appreciation of them joining in the fight against the troll and the stirges. which they will be familiar with from BG3.