I REALLY Wanted to Love This Adventure... | Baldur's Gate: Decent into Avernus Review

[@SakraIgor0qNomoko]

Pretty good take. I ran this from start to finish, and I'd recommend the Avernian Remix by the Alexandrian and Avernus As A Sandbox by Eventyr games. Suggested fixes: Start the party on the way to Elturel back from saving commoners from bandits. The night before they arrive, Elturel vanishes, so the nearest city to escort the refugees is Baldur's Gate. On the way, give hints that they're being followed. When they arrive, they hit level 2. Getting into the locked down city requires being deputized by Zodge to solve the crises of refugees with Tarina as the first point of contact. They go to the Elfsong to talk with her and are attacked by the remainder of the gang that has been trailing them. After the fight, let them long rest and hit level 3. From here, run as the module has it and include some letters from the Low Lantern to Mortlock instructing the cults what to do. After the Low Lantern bit, give away that the "crows" are behaving unnaturally and have them fly toward the Vanthampur mansion. Let the party approach from the sewers if they want with party survival checks to figure out the way forward, history checks to remember the way back, and manhole covers so they can check their progress. Run the mansion as in the module, and if they managed to keep the refugees alive from earlier, put one of them as a servant there to help the party as a reward. Make sure Thurstwell or Amrik escapes. After the mansion bit, Zodge sends to Candlekeep for Traxigor while the party tries to open the puzzle box. Here, ignore the module and put puzzles on the box (riddles, patterns, and logic puzzles are all great here, include hints as needed). Once the party opens the box, write out the plates message in Avernian script from the module (there's a custom font for you to do that from Reddit, once the protest is over). Give them the letter by letter decoding key from the module, so that it turns into a fun decoder ring type of puzzle. Once they figure everything out, have chains surround Baldur's Gate with Candlekeep mages holding them back with a magic force field. Traxigor pleads with the party to help him, and they all go to Avernus. Like the module says, character fears become a reality, so make Traxigor's fears so Cthulhu-esqe that he has no choice but to retreat back to the material plane. From there, run like the module says except turn it into a sandbox via the Eventyr games articles. If your players dislike sandboxes, pick the most fun route from the sandbox flowchart and go with that. For extra flavor, use Matt Mercer's Corruption Rules for when the characters do deals or take long rests, with the players picking which corruption effect they take and Mahadi's spa treatments removing 1d4 corruption points. This opens up the world of choice while keeping a sense of urgency, resulting in them not trying to long rest after every fight. All in all, the module has great bones and just requires some minor plotline tweaking and GM foreshadowing to make it come alive.

[@74gould]

Great video! :) I’m running this campaign next for my group, and planning to make a LOT of changes. Haha

[@dragonfan8647]

I second the recommendation of the Alexandrian Remix. He fixes everthing wrong with the module. It actually got me excited to hopefully run it one day

[@EscapedApe3]

Yeah that pretty much sums up how my avernus game went, although I thought the best part was the Baldur's gate part but I do agree it pales compared to just being lvl5 in eltarel

[@FlintFireforge]

Fantastic! Kudos to the editing and the adventure breakdown.

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching ^.^

[@ranekeisenkralle8265]

I've been in an Avernus-game, but what stuck out to me even before we got to the fetch quests (at which point i basically dropped out because it was so atrocious) was that the encounter-balance is completely and utterly out of whack, unless you go at it with a small army of ten or so PCs. And even then you are going to struggle. It went as far as our DM giving us the equivalent of a long rest at the start of each session, and sometimes even in between encounters, so that the group had at least a chance of surviving. And when the dice had a moderately bad day, we frequently got close to TPKs - so no thanks. Add to that the fact that the NPCs frequently stole the spotlight from PCs because of how underpowered player characters at the respective levels are - compared to the threat-level they are faced with. Ranking for me is a flat D. The ONLY saving grace I have seen with the adventure was the overall theme of the Avernus-setting because of how different it is, which keeps it from being an F. If an adventure esentially forces the entire party to min-max the hell out of their characters instead of playing what they want to play, then the adventure is a failure in my book.

[@bearthegenxgm]

We never made it past Baldur's Gate, but out DM started us outside Eltauril when it vanished and then had us to with refugees to BG... it was Hell on the Sword Coast lol I despised this adventure.

[@WinglessValkyrie]

I’m sorry to hear you had a rough time with it 😓 hope you had better adventures afterwards!

[@bearthegenxgm]

@@WinglessValkyrie It was our DM's first ever campaign, and let me be clear he was not the issue. He did great, just the source adventure is endlessly opening doors in Baldur's Gate. We moved away from D&D and I am now running Against the Darkmaster and having way more fun

[@hellsbreach]

I was planing on an entirly diffrent comment, but now I just have to ask....why are you in your bathtub?

[@WinglessValkyrie]

I was hot 🙂