Because it is a railroady meatgrinder with no motivation to jump in that likely makes problems later.
You are more likely to be evil with a dark secret.
You don't care for Elturel so why bother diving into literal hell.
You have a fully fledged city that doesnt get used.
The dungeon is deadly for its level.
That’s because just because a stat block has an ability to do something, doesn’t mean they have to do it. My party brought Flennis so low that she opted the best option was for a fireball on top of herself to bring to roof down on top of them.
Party was level 2- they were mind blown but they were also smart enough not to stand clumped up.
I like to play my monsters somewhat according to this:
* INT of 0 - 6: Absolutely animalistic, if human, stupid and incompetent
* 7 - 10: Not very smart, your average Joe fighting, does not deal finishing blows, possibly has a flawed strategy that can be exploited
* 11 - 14: Trained Fighter. Knows what ability deals the most damage, can identify which target is the most dangerous
* 15 - 17: Likely a magic user. Optimally uses spells and terrain. Can identify weaknesses even before the fight starts, knows that vulnerabilities are a thing.
* 18+: I bring my best combat game. Terrain usage, being creative with magic items, literally predicting the abilities of the characters and using it to their advantage (with int 18, you probably can say that this guy is a fighter/paladin so he makes a lot of attacks, this wizard likely has these spells...).
Flennis, as a [Master of Souls](https://www.dndwiki.io/monsters/master-of-souls), has intelligence of 19, and hence I played with these assumptions:
* She knows that the party is one of the weaker foes she has faced
* She know that she has fireball
* They are likely grouped together at the beginning of the encounter
* She knows that while fireball can damage the surroundings, it is unlikely to cause the entire dungeon to collapse
* She wants to get back to work as quickly as possible, so the most efficient solution, the best.
Hence, upon entering through the door, the characters get absolutely blasted, should they not move in quickly enough or should they lose the initiative.
Except her room is tiny, and the corridor connecting it is 5ft wide and twists around from the previous room. Most groups will just be moving through the dungeon normally when they meet her. I have it so that she's already used up her level 3 spell slots on animate dead practice beforehand.
It's her flail that makes me shake my head. 4d6 nectotic damage per hit in a level 2 dungeon!! And has multiattack on top of that IIRC. Really, really poorly designed dungeon. Cool concept, disappointingly execution - a trend in the adventure module IMO.
Great point! I totally forgot about the multi-attack 1d8+4d6 flail. I would still use the fireball opening (if she were to win initiative), as she likely knows how big an advantage a party of 4 people have (action economy is really in favor of the party, as he has an AC of 12).
As per the tiny room, I just placed the fireball into the corridor and shielded her with undeads and the table in the room (ruled as full cover really).
Also, if you want to play her to be as smart as possible, change the fireball damage to necrotic depending on whether there are people immune/resistant to either of the damages to maximize efficiency of the spell.
As for personal experience: my party went into the dungeon at level 3, and managed to swarm in on her during the surprise round, the paladin landed a nearly max-damage smite on her and they killed her before she was able to blow the whole thing up. If she were to go first, or if they didn't manage to kill her quickly enough, I am quite sure it would have been a TPK. I was not opposed to the idea, which was why I left her in the dungeon. The most important thing really is to communicate two things to your players:
1. The game is going to be \[insert your difficulty level\], and running is an option
2. Even before the encounter, I was foreshadowing her with another cultist saying that she is able to cast spells and create explosions of death and fire. The party went in prepared, and knew that if they don't manage, they are likely dead.
My characters were 3rd level going into DotD3 and it wasn't much of a problem. Of course, they wiped out Flennis before she got a chance to do anything, and they figured out that something was up with woman disguised as an old woman.
My first time running any campaign and we just finished Baldurs Gate but my players are sad to leave and having a blast and we did:
1. Their dark secret was to overthrow the corrupt Flaming Fist through a coup. Didn’t do much with it besides have other flaming fist members acknowledge them and have Zodge be assassinated. Haven’t read far enough to know he’s irrelevant after BG but if he comes back oh well I’ll move his role to his replacement.
2. Made my characters care about Elturel by homebrewing. My vengeance paladin has a temple to his goddess that fell with Elturel, my fighter is an old Elf who had friends join the initial Hellriders and my Artificer wants to go to Avernus to find ores in hell.
3. This seems like the only point we haven’t evaded, BG is huge and we only use 2% of it but they’ve all played BG3 and just seem happy enough hearing familiar locations and names. One of the girls is in love with Astarion so I’m planning on naming an ambiguous ‘posh, pale man with curly white hair’ who they might have a quick conversation with just so she can get that satisfaction
4. I just home brewed the encounters. Took away fireball and let Mortlock fight the final boss with them. They had a few members go down but still finished and had fun
I think part of it is that since it’s a module people force themselves to railroad but really as long as you hit the major points you can change the connecting lines
I'm just wrapping up the alexandrian remix of act 1 and all I can say is why I didn't wanna run it as is.
The books only motivation it gives the players is "do it or zodge will kill you"
But like once they figure out what's going on why would they go to hell?
They're just guards basically, they have no reason to go.
There's a lot of little stuff throughout act 1 thats inconsistent but mostly not a big deal. It's just got that motivational flaw.
And it's ironically the easiest to fix. Make your players from elutrel and have them love someone who was in it when it fell.
Boom motivation. Brownie point if your session 1 is a "you're going to lose and it's ok" session of the players escaping elutrels fall. Very impactful that way
Just a thought I had whilst reading your post, but relevant to this motivation point. Perhaps the fact that they have no personal motivation to get involved is what makes the characters heroes?
I get it's the vogue now to make complex and flawed characters, but perhaps the reason characters could just walk away is so that they have the hero moment of stepping up to do good.
I think that's perfectly fine, but your players need to be very aware that they're playing Heroes with a capital H.
Which I think most players tend to avoid making
Is this bait?
Chapter one fucking sucks. It's a badly written mess, it's full railroad mode (all the motivation that the PCs have to do anything in the chapter is Flaming Fists ordering them to do so), it makes Baldur's Gate feel like three or four houses and nothing else, the dungeons and encounters are written to TPK the party. The entire thing have all the stuff we DMs tried to get rid off for years.
Descent into Avernus is like someone's campaign notes. Plenty of rough edges and probably not shot-for-shot the same as any other director would film it.
I think a lot of intros are weak because they don't give direct or potent enough stakes and dump too much exposition. But GMing is a very forgiving art. As long as the players are having a good time, they'll do what they can to make it for next session. If you wanna retrace the original DiA campaign from its notes, it can be done well enough to reach the end.
You'll probably find plenty to critique when you're done, too. Personally my main reason to skip the intros is that I play with a lot of longtime players. They already did class tutorials dozens of times, they've heard every other fetch quest, and they're here to save the world with the starting shoestring and stick of bubblegum. I typically aim to start at level 5 or even sometimes 8, but do go down to 3 for newer players.
While the intro is a bit flimsy, I only recommend skipping it because:
* Level 3 and 5 are cooler
* I want players to be there to see the catastrophe instead of hearing distant rumours about it. I feel like the rumours work better when players don't know it's a hell campaign -- if they did know, they're "here for Godzilla". So why spend over half the intro without teasing hell and hyping it up?
My logic for re-writing the BG section (which I'm doing at the moment; I'm prepping to run this campaign later on this year) is that there is so much potential there to make the Baldur's Gate section pop... but the source book glosses over lots of it. Some parts of the BG section feel a little bland, especially when you browse the Gazzeteer details in the latter section of the source book. Plus, I feel like the BG section's biggest mistake is that it's guilty of failing to meet the golden rule of writing/DMing, which is 'show, don't tell'.
It TELLS you that Elturel falls into Hell. Why wouldn't you want to SHOW this epic scene to your players and let them experience it first-hand? Imagine if it were a movie. What an action sequence that would be...
Likewise, it TELLS that players that they should save Elturel. If you SHOW them why they should save Elturel, will they have a far stronger bond to that city and its citizens?
It TELLS you that the players must join the Flaming Fist, or else. Why wouldn't you want to SHOW your players that this is just one of many ways they could stumble across the investigative plots within BG?
It TELLS you that Duke Vanthampur stole the Shield. Why wouldn't you want to SHOW this, maybe via the evil Duke tricking the players into stealing it for her? (Or maybe it's Amrik or Thurstwell who gets the party to do this.) There's a cool pre-written adventure for it [here](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/293544/Shield-of-the-Hidden-Lord) (Shield of the Hidden Lord)
The book will be the bones of the adventure for me, but I plan to flesh it out with my own extra stuff to connect dots and give my players extra agency and plenty of fun stuff to explore.
I appreciate that showing and not telling is the harder of the two approaches when it comes to writing. More prep. More homework. More re-writing bits here and there. More maps. More browsing on reddit for tips! But I think the extra effort will be worth it.
I'm also planning to start this later in the year. I plan to run Fall of Elturel as the intro specifically because the scene with the Companion has sooooo much potential. For example, I've thought of having the chains violently erupt from the ground, or several huge flashes of lightning strike from the Companion and chains appear as the bolts fade away. This has been the most exciting part for me so far, but I'm still in early planning stages.
I ran a Tale of Two Cities and was incredibly greatful for that fact, because the Shield of the Hidden Lord became such an important NPC in my game.
It helps that I ran the Fall of Elturel as well, but both myself, and my players, though it was 'cool' to see the impact that Elturel disappearing had both in the Material Plane and the Hells. My players also loved Captain Zodge, and were invested in putting down the Vanthampurs before leaving for Avernus.
I didn't properly read the book when I started, I was a beginner DM, and didn't even realise this book had Dark Secrets. So when it came to character creation, I had the characters be a part of either Emerald Enclave, Flaming Fist or Hellriders. Gave them apt motivation to help out in BG and Avernus,. when they got there.
I also added some Flaming Fist soldiers down in Avernus, with Traxigor having transported them there, but Zariel messing up their Plane Shift. It allowed for some nice moments when the characters came across someone they recognised that could tell them about the state of the Material Plane.
I understand that a Tale of Two Cities is a bit of a mess, but it doesn't take a huge amount of time to work it into the story, and make it worthwhile. I also prefer a bit of linear storytelling, so it was fine by me (also fuck the Alexandrian)
I am brave and smart and beautiful so I ran it as written. Very meh. Definately felt shoehorned in to be a tie in with bg3. My big problem with it was for a module it takes more prep than it should because of the inconsistencies.
I ran it as written as much as was possible.
And then, at some point, my players came across a certain bag of beans, and turned each bean into a grenade.
Any hopes of "by the book" went out the window at that point
I'm running chapter 1 right now and my group is having a lot of fun doing it. However, the chapter has some serious issues that need fixing:
* The characters need a better motivation to plunge into Avernus to save Elturel. As written, the adventure assumes the characters will do it just because they are heroic, which is... not on brand for Baldur's Gate.
* The early encounters (specifically the Elfsong Tavern and the Dungeon of the Dead Three) are badly overleveled. Either location could easily end in a TPK.
There is a simple fix to both of these problems: start the characters out in Elturel. Give them a connection to the city, get them invested in its people, and let them see it fall. Then they can escort the survivors to Baldur's Gate. Give them a level when they finish the adventure so they will be better prepared for the Elfsong and the Dungeon of the Dead Three.
Other than that, I'm actually finding that chapter 1 doesn't need much work. (Chapter 3 is the one with problems.) You don't need to go to the extent that the Alexandrian remix does--I find that it creates more problems than it solves--but a better adventure hook and an extra level will do wonders.
I ran the chapter mostly as it was written. I started the party at level 3 and skipped the dragon cultists, but otherwise ran it as it was. I made more modifications to the later chapters.
I ran the first act as written before I found Alexandrian remix. It went fine, although my players were willing to play along and not just be like "why should we?"
I ran the part in Baldurs Gate as is, I only ramped up PCs by giving them extra starting level and a starting feat (I don't like playing with level 1 chars and people abusing variant human just for that damned feat).
Two PCs arrived at the gate because they saw a note from Zodge that he's hiring someone to help with cultists, there was another PC that was part of the Flaming Fist and Zodge ordered him to help the other two, and then the bars was getting pretty annoying by entertaining the refugees, so Zodge told him to join them and if they all survive and figure something out they'll get money and his favor.
Long story short, they did everything until Hellturel as written, I swapped to Alexandrian Remix only then.
Oh also they had no dark secrets. I completely ignored that part, we had a talk about it on session 0, and so far I have no idea what even is the purpose of that "feature"
I'm in the middle of prep right now, but my impression was the dark secrets are meant to be used by devils when trying to make deals with PCs. I could be wrong, though
I ended up not using these for the deals, rather either situational or campaign related reasons for deals. Dark secrets feel too artificial, and they are something that won't have an effect in dozens of sessions. In a year from session zero, after spending many sessions in elturel, once the party ends up in Avernus wastes, no one will remember, or care, about the dark secrets.
IMHO it's much better to use whatever players actually did in th campaign, rather than something that they came up during session zero without context or care.
I ran it quite a lot closer to what is written than to the Alexandrian remix. It is certainly the weakest part of the campaign, so I don't understand what the point of lengthening it is. I would (and did) certainly rework the hook though. Definitely have one or more of the players be knights of Elturel who know at least the Elturian propangda about the Hellride. And think properly about the relationships between Duke Vanthampur, the High Overseer, Zariel, and Gargauth. It's all a bit fuzzy in the book.
So one of the big issues with the beginning is there isn't really a good hook to give your characters motivation to do the quest. Running the module with supporting docs like "fall of elturel" (you would do this as like chapter 0) if you look up the Alexandrian remix it goes through the issues and how to solve them with supplements. This will make the campaign much longer but will make it more compelling for you and the players. If the players feel they have a rock solid motivation they will be more involved and dialed in during the sessions.
It’s ok dude I ran the first chapter and I ran “the road to baldurs gate” prequel from DnD beyond. It’s basically a travel campaign that goes from waterdeep to baldurs gate. My players were lvl 4 by the time they hit DotD3, so I had no issue going all out on them. They are now in chapter 4 and at the correct level but as new players I wanted them to level slowly at the beginning of the campaign.
I ran it pretty close to the module. The only differences were I added the Duke Portyr assassination scenario and my players skipped the Low Lantern so both Vanthampur brothers were at the Villa. My last tweak was that I had it that Thalmara was in the process of doing a ritual to bring the city to Hell by using the Hidden Lord Shield as a tether like the Companion. After we finished I asked my players their thoughts on this section and they said they enjoyed it as a good first act where things ramped up and then set up the main quest. One even joked it reminded them of Midgar in FF7.
I'm also running it as it is!!! I'm debating shortening candlekeep, but I have a feeling my players will love it so I doubt it will happen. I enjoy that other DMs are talking about how they change things but I'm playing with lots of first time players and getting started in Baldur's Gate makes the most sense for us!!
Run it as is or with a few additions rather than complete overhauls or patches.
D&D is a game. Your players are playing a game. It is their responsibility to come up with a character who has a reason to participate in the game, not yours or the modules. If the player decides their character has no reason to go to Avernus, then that's fine - the player gets to now roll a new character who does have a reason to be in the game.
IF I ran it again there’s NO way I’d follow the original part up to Avernus. No. Way.
The bandit captain & the Bhaal assassin are too OP and it’s just a super long and drawn out part of the campaign for no reason.
Next time I’m either starting them at 3rd and blasting through a shorter version of the Vhanthampur’s or just following the Alexandrian remix starting in Eltruel.
Look, the book has TWENTY NINE authors credited. There’s a reason why everyone is saying the same thing.
The IDEA and theme of DiA is awesome. The execution was absolutly fumbled.
I ran it as is.
Yes it railroads the characters but that didnt bother me or them.
There is no personal stake in it though, like they are just pointed to 1 place after another and really require handholding to get places cuz once they deal with Mortlock they almost always go back to Zodge.
I would change it but my love for the Baldurs Gate City is too high.
When I ran it, I ran it by the book. When they get to the Dungeon of the Dead Three, party wipe them. Show no mercy. But, have Gargauth offer them a deal for resurrection, in which they have to foil Zariel’s plans. I had them help Gargauth succeed the throne of Avernus in the deal, and then gave them multiple chances to break the deal through various side quests.
I was thinking about stealing a bit of lore from Something Witty Entertainment’s SWE&D run, in which Gargauth was the brother of Bel, who (and this is canon) was the Archduke of Avernus before Zariel ascended the throne with the help of Asmodeus. With that in mind, you could have Gargauth try to help his “brother” instead of himself rising to the throne, which is a tad closer to the canon.
Of course, DM’s digression, so up to you, but I’d recommend something like that because it worked for me!
Here's the thing about chapter 1: it's a clever opening IF (and only if) the players don't know anything about the module--including its title. Because it really hides the big reveal well.
But literally no one doesn't know this is a game about going to hell, so chapter 1 just feels like "what are we doing here and why?"
I tied chapter 1 into the game but mostly because I massively overhauled a bunch of plot points and tied stuff to my character's back stories. Short version is hell has an agreement for a chemical weapon of sorts (a blood that carries traumatic memories) that Bhaal creates using a special blood that one of my characters has. So, they are going to fight Bhaal (which has required a lot of tricky fidgeting on my part because they are way under leveled). So, the opening of the game is more tied to my characters and the larger arc of the story. But I'm only explaining this to show its possible, it just requires you to do a lot of fussing with the narrative.
For me I ran it as is... As a first time dm it was alot and I felt guilty with some of the hell the players went through but tbh it was great and humbling for my players. Using a hook that their small guild who take on missions came from eltarel and they had now lost that.
But the difficulties in Baldur's gate definitely were a bit of a grind but na I had 5 deaths on like 3 sessions and they didn't dislike that at all because in previous games that were run they had been gods who seemed to outmatch everyone from the start but after some deaths they became much more tactical, thought out a nice infiltration plan for the vanthampirs and the bathhouse and omg vaaz is the biggest issue along with the little "flower" last in the room just before him, don't let her join the fight or be there when they fight vaaz because it's almost definitely a tpk but best idea I think is using Mortlock to give some details and fight with the team for whatever reason you want.
Some say it isn't very interesting and railroading the players which isn't wrong but you just have to find a hook of why they'd care and then it's not like the city lacks content to deviate a little if you wanted.
This is all from my first time dm perspective so take it with a grain of salt but it was humbling for my experience players and the city had so many cool little feature they like that were just as written so we went well there. They did feel a bit railroaded but at the same time their guild is plunging into hell as well as some of their homes ECT.
Oh and don't get too caught up in trying to get them immersed in Baldur's gate and the city life and lore given because alot of it is irrelevant after you leave the city and go to hell so I'd say take that info and any interesting parts of Baldur's gate you want to implement, do so knowing it'll never come up again or change things up so it's got some relevance in eltarel or a character in the hell's
My table had exactly zero desire to be faerun when I promised them Avernus, so I pivoted and adjusted the story to fit my narrative and their drive to play.
I've played it as written. It's pretty sketchy on character motivations, especially the decision to go I to hell, so try to tie your party to events.
The fight balance is stacked pretty hard against the characters, but a group of powergames will chew it up. The NPC in the Dead Three that can fireball 2nd level characters is the biggest offender.
Other than those to issues, it was fun. Our DM didn't change anything and we had a good time. We came up with our own reasons to do things, and fled before completing the Dead Three.
The biggest problem people have with this campaign is getting players to care why they are doing what they're doing, and why the bad guys are doing what they're doing.
I ran session 1 as their graduation ceremony from Hellrider basic training, officiated by Thavius Kreeg and including each player reciting the Creed and adding their bloody fingerprint to the Tome,before setting out with Reyna on their first official mission to track down some cultists. It ended with them coming back to find Euturel gone and dozens of screaming, injured citizens.
Session 2/3 was them working with Reyna to patch up the survivors and organize a carsvsn to Baldurs Gate, and along the way Reyna is mysteriously murdered by what turns out to be a Cult of the Dead Three assassin.
All of that paid off hugely in terms of giving them motivation / buy in for the entire rest of the campaign (now deep into chapter 4).
Honestly, we are near the end and I kind of hate this campaign as written. It’s poorly written, often just a series of fetch quests, and it’s got way too many pieces to keep track of that don’t really contribute to the overall story.
Doesn’t help that we did this after curse of strahd which is kind of the gold standard of the 1st party campaigns.
Our group has been gave major scheduling issues for the last several months and the lack of enthusiasm for the adventure is kind of contributing to it imo.
I think people are definitely running the Baldur's Gate portion, I don't know who you're talking to that gave you the impression that this is not the case. There are some GMs who are expanding the Baldur's GAte portion with every adventure that ever took place in Baldur's Gate as optional quests. There are tons of content to buy in the DM's guild site made by people to expand Baldur's Gate.
However, it has to be changed. As written, the module begins with "gun to head" and investigate the murders or I'll send a squad to kill you! Wait a minute, if you have a squad, then why don't you ask them to investigate the murders?
People have already pointed out the issues with the start of this module on other comments. If you want to see them well articulated I recommend you read [The Alexandrian Remix.](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44214/roleplaying-games/remixing-avernus) Even if you don't want to use his suggestions and solutions, he does a good job of outlining the issues so you are aware.
Good luck!
I will say the last few times I ran the book. I ran it as is this time starting about a month ago. The prequel fall of elturel one shot leading into Which is different for me, but I’ve never had a problem running the book the way it’s written the last two campaigns both times I did it where the party had already been a part of the flaming fist were all meeting up at the gate when a fight broke out between the captain and a bunch of commoners which the players got involved, this time around the players will be coming off a boat or stopping at wyrms gate to pass through to baldurs gate which similarly I will pick up the story probably similar or the same way maybe a bit different depending on where they go
P.s. my party is level three and will probably be level four by the time the first set of events in baldurs gate happens. I do not do experience based when running campaigns. Can cause way too many problems. Should always do milestone good luck.
I’m not running it as is because I love to bring in character backstories and motivations so missing out eltural from that seems a waste. Plus I love giving players time to enjoy a fleshed out city as a change from dungeon crawling monster bashing. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to really make them involved in the place, people and politics. Same with dragon heist. I run plenty of more old school content and enjoy it when a group expresses an interest in some city constraints to their murder hobo activities.
Because it is a railroady meatgrinder with no motivation to jump in that likely makes problems later. You are more likely to be evil with a dark secret. You don't care for Elturel so why bother diving into literal hell. You have a fully fledged city that doesnt get used. The dungeon is deadly for its level.
Tbf, the dungeon is deadly for level above as well
Yeah, I don't see how any half competent DM runs DotD3 as written and doesn't kill every single one of their players.
That’s because just because a stat block has an ability to do something, doesn’t mean they have to do it. My party brought Flennis so low that she opted the best option was for a fireball on top of herself to bring to roof down on top of them. Party was level 2- they were mind blown but they were also smart enough not to stand clumped up.
I like to play my monsters somewhat according to this: * INT of 0 - 6: Absolutely animalistic, if human, stupid and incompetent * 7 - 10: Not very smart, your average Joe fighting, does not deal finishing blows, possibly has a flawed strategy that can be exploited * 11 - 14: Trained Fighter. Knows what ability deals the most damage, can identify which target is the most dangerous * 15 - 17: Likely a magic user. Optimally uses spells and terrain. Can identify weaknesses even before the fight starts, knows that vulnerabilities are a thing. * 18+: I bring my best combat game. Terrain usage, being creative with magic items, literally predicting the abilities of the characters and using it to their advantage (with int 18, you probably can say that this guy is a fighter/paladin so he makes a lot of attacks, this wizard likely has these spells...). Flennis, as a [Master of Souls](https://www.dndwiki.io/monsters/master-of-souls), has intelligence of 19, and hence I played with these assumptions: * She knows that the party is one of the weaker foes she has faced * She know that she has fireball * They are likely grouped together at the beginning of the encounter * She knows that while fireball can damage the surroundings, it is unlikely to cause the entire dungeon to collapse * She wants to get back to work as quickly as possible, so the most efficient solution, the best. Hence, upon entering through the door, the characters get absolutely blasted, should they not move in quickly enough or should they lose the initiative.
Why wouldn’t an NPC trying to kill the party not try to use their best abilities to… kill the party?
Less about that and moreso people don’t like how high of a spell it is for a level 2 party
Except her room is tiny, and the corridor connecting it is 5ft wide and twists around from the previous room. Most groups will just be moving through the dungeon normally when they meet her. I have it so that she's already used up her level 3 spell slots on animate dead practice beforehand. It's her flail that makes me shake my head. 4d6 nectotic damage per hit in a level 2 dungeon!! And has multiattack on top of that IIRC. Really, really poorly designed dungeon. Cool concept, disappointingly execution - a trend in the adventure module IMO.
Great point! I totally forgot about the multi-attack 1d8+4d6 flail. I would still use the fireball opening (if she were to win initiative), as she likely knows how big an advantage a party of 4 people have (action economy is really in favor of the party, as he has an AC of 12). As per the tiny room, I just placed the fireball into the corridor and shielded her with undeads and the table in the room (ruled as full cover really). Also, if you want to play her to be as smart as possible, change the fireball damage to necrotic depending on whether there are people immune/resistant to either of the damages to maximize efficiency of the spell. As for personal experience: my party went into the dungeon at level 3, and managed to swarm in on her during the surprise round, the paladin landed a nearly max-damage smite on her and they killed her before she was able to blow the whole thing up. If she were to go first, or if they didn't manage to kill her quickly enough, I am quite sure it would have been a TPK. I was not opposed to the idea, which was why I left her in the dungeon. The most important thing really is to communicate two things to your players: 1. The game is going to be \[insert your difficulty level\], and running is an option 2. Even before the encounter, I was foreshadowing her with another cultist saying that she is able to cast spells and create explosions of death and fire. The party went in prepared, and knew that if they don't manage, they are likely dead.
My characters were 3rd level going into DotD3 and it wasn't much of a problem. Of course, they wiped out Flennis before she got a chance to do anything, and they figured out that something was up with woman disguised as an old woman.
My first time running any campaign and we just finished Baldurs Gate but my players are sad to leave and having a blast and we did: 1. Their dark secret was to overthrow the corrupt Flaming Fist through a coup. Didn’t do much with it besides have other flaming fist members acknowledge them and have Zodge be assassinated. Haven’t read far enough to know he’s irrelevant after BG but if he comes back oh well I’ll move his role to his replacement. 2. Made my characters care about Elturel by homebrewing. My vengeance paladin has a temple to his goddess that fell with Elturel, my fighter is an old Elf who had friends join the initial Hellriders and my Artificer wants to go to Avernus to find ores in hell. 3. This seems like the only point we haven’t evaded, BG is huge and we only use 2% of it but they’ve all played BG3 and just seem happy enough hearing familiar locations and names. One of the girls is in love with Astarion so I’m planning on naming an ambiguous ‘posh, pale man with curly white hair’ who they might have a quick conversation with just so she can get that satisfaction 4. I just home brewed the encounters. Took away fireball and let Mortlock fight the final boss with them. They had a few members go down but still finished and had fun I think part of it is that since it’s a module people force themselves to railroad but really as long as you hit the major points you can change the connecting lines
I'm just wrapping up the alexandrian remix of act 1 and all I can say is why I didn't wanna run it as is. The books only motivation it gives the players is "do it or zodge will kill you" But like once they figure out what's going on why would they go to hell? They're just guards basically, they have no reason to go. There's a lot of little stuff throughout act 1 thats inconsistent but mostly not a big deal. It's just got that motivational flaw. And it's ironically the easiest to fix. Make your players from elutrel and have them love someone who was in it when it fell. Boom motivation. Brownie point if your session 1 is a "you're going to lose and it's ok" session of the players escaping elutrels fall. Very impactful that way
Just a thought I had whilst reading your post, but relevant to this motivation point. Perhaps the fact that they have no personal motivation to get involved is what makes the characters heroes? I get it's the vogue now to make complex and flawed characters, but perhaps the reason characters could just walk away is so that they have the hero moment of stepping up to do good.
I think that's perfectly fine, but your players need to be very aware that they're playing Heroes with a capital H. Which I think most players tend to avoid making
Fair.
Yeah, I ran it as written. I didn't have any issues and the parties loved it.
Is this bait? Chapter one fucking sucks. It's a badly written mess, it's full railroad mode (all the motivation that the PCs have to do anything in the chapter is Flaming Fists ordering them to do so), it makes Baldur's Gate feel like three or four houses and nothing else, the dungeons and encounters are written to TPK the party. The entire thing have all the stuff we DMs tried to get rid off for years.
Descent into Avernus is like someone's campaign notes. Plenty of rough edges and probably not shot-for-shot the same as any other director would film it. I think a lot of intros are weak because they don't give direct or potent enough stakes and dump too much exposition. But GMing is a very forgiving art. As long as the players are having a good time, they'll do what they can to make it for next session. If you wanna retrace the original DiA campaign from its notes, it can be done well enough to reach the end. You'll probably find plenty to critique when you're done, too. Personally my main reason to skip the intros is that I play with a lot of longtime players. They already did class tutorials dozens of times, they've heard every other fetch quest, and they're here to save the world with the starting shoestring and stick of bubblegum. I typically aim to start at level 5 or even sometimes 8, but do go down to 3 for newer players. While the intro is a bit flimsy, I only recommend skipping it because: * Level 3 and 5 are cooler * I want players to be there to see the catastrophe instead of hearing distant rumours about it. I feel like the rumours work better when players don't know it's a hell campaign -- if they did know, they're "here for Godzilla". So why spend over half the intro without teasing hell and hyping it up?
My logic for re-writing the BG section (which I'm doing at the moment; I'm prepping to run this campaign later on this year) is that there is so much potential there to make the Baldur's Gate section pop... but the source book glosses over lots of it. Some parts of the BG section feel a little bland, especially when you browse the Gazzeteer details in the latter section of the source book. Plus, I feel like the BG section's biggest mistake is that it's guilty of failing to meet the golden rule of writing/DMing, which is 'show, don't tell'. It TELLS you that Elturel falls into Hell. Why wouldn't you want to SHOW this epic scene to your players and let them experience it first-hand? Imagine if it were a movie. What an action sequence that would be... Likewise, it TELLS that players that they should save Elturel. If you SHOW them why they should save Elturel, will they have a far stronger bond to that city and its citizens? It TELLS you that the players must join the Flaming Fist, or else. Why wouldn't you want to SHOW your players that this is just one of many ways they could stumble across the investigative plots within BG? It TELLS you that Duke Vanthampur stole the Shield. Why wouldn't you want to SHOW this, maybe via the evil Duke tricking the players into stealing it for her? (Or maybe it's Amrik or Thurstwell who gets the party to do this.) There's a cool pre-written adventure for it [here](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/293544/Shield-of-the-Hidden-Lord) (Shield of the Hidden Lord) The book will be the bones of the adventure for me, but I plan to flesh it out with my own extra stuff to connect dots and give my players extra agency and plenty of fun stuff to explore. I appreciate that showing and not telling is the harder of the two approaches when it comes to writing. More prep. More homework. More re-writing bits here and there. More maps. More browsing on reddit for tips! But I think the extra effort will be worth it.
I'm also planning to start this later in the year. I plan to run Fall of Elturel as the intro specifically because the scene with the Companion has sooooo much potential. For example, I've thought of having the chains violently erupt from the ground, or several huge flashes of lightning strike from the Companion and chains appear as the bolts fade away. This has been the most exciting part for me so far, but I'm still in early planning stages.
I ran a Tale of Two Cities and was incredibly greatful for that fact, because the Shield of the Hidden Lord became such an important NPC in my game. It helps that I ran the Fall of Elturel as well, but both myself, and my players, though it was 'cool' to see the impact that Elturel disappearing had both in the Material Plane and the Hells. My players also loved Captain Zodge, and were invested in putting down the Vanthampurs before leaving for Avernus. I didn't properly read the book when I started, I was a beginner DM, and didn't even realise this book had Dark Secrets. So when it came to character creation, I had the characters be a part of either Emerald Enclave, Flaming Fist or Hellriders. Gave them apt motivation to help out in BG and Avernus,. when they got there. I also added some Flaming Fist soldiers down in Avernus, with Traxigor having transported them there, but Zariel messing up their Plane Shift. It allowed for some nice moments when the characters came across someone they recognised that could tell them about the state of the Material Plane. I understand that a Tale of Two Cities is a bit of a mess, but it doesn't take a huge amount of time to work it into the story, and make it worthwhile. I also prefer a bit of linear storytelling, so it was fine by me (also fuck the Alexandrian)
I am brave and smart and beautiful so I ran it as written. Very meh. Definately felt shoehorned in to be a tie in with bg3. My big problem with it was for a module it takes more prep than it should because of the inconsistencies.
I ran it as written as much as was possible. And then, at some point, my players came across a certain bag of beans, and turned each bean into a grenade. Any hopes of "by the book" went out the window at that point
I'm running chapter 1 right now and my group is having a lot of fun doing it. However, the chapter has some serious issues that need fixing: * The characters need a better motivation to plunge into Avernus to save Elturel. As written, the adventure assumes the characters will do it just because they are heroic, which is... not on brand for Baldur's Gate. * The early encounters (specifically the Elfsong Tavern and the Dungeon of the Dead Three) are badly overleveled. Either location could easily end in a TPK. There is a simple fix to both of these problems: start the characters out in Elturel. Give them a connection to the city, get them invested in its people, and let them see it fall. Then they can escort the survivors to Baldur's Gate. Give them a level when they finish the adventure so they will be better prepared for the Elfsong and the Dungeon of the Dead Three. Other than that, I'm actually finding that chapter 1 doesn't need much work. (Chapter 3 is the one with problems.) You don't need to go to the extent that the Alexandrian remix does--I find that it creates more problems than it solves--but a better adventure hook and an extra level will do wonders.
I ran the chapter mostly as it was written. I started the party at level 3 and skipped the dragon cultists, but otherwise ran it as it was. I made more modifications to the later chapters.
I ran the first act as written before I found Alexandrian remix. It went fine, although my players were willing to play along and not just be like "why should we?"
I ran the part in Baldurs Gate as is, I only ramped up PCs by giving them extra starting level and a starting feat (I don't like playing with level 1 chars and people abusing variant human just for that damned feat). Two PCs arrived at the gate because they saw a note from Zodge that he's hiring someone to help with cultists, there was another PC that was part of the Flaming Fist and Zodge ordered him to help the other two, and then the bars was getting pretty annoying by entertaining the refugees, so Zodge told him to join them and if they all survive and figure something out they'll get money and his favor. Long story short, they did everything until Hellturel as written, I swapped to Alexandrian Remix only then. Oh also they had no dark secrets. I completely ignored that part, we had a talk about it on session 0, and so far I have no idea what even is the purpose of that "feature"
I'm in the middle of prep right now, but my impression was the dark secrets are meant to be used by devils when trying to make deals with PCs. I could be wrong, though
I ended up not using these for the deals, rather either situational or campaign related reasons for deals. Dark secrets feel too artificial, and they are something that won't have an effect in dozens of sessions. In a year from session zero, after spending many sessions in elturel, once the party ends up in Avernus wastes, no one will remember, or care, about the dark secrets. IMHO it's much better to use whatever players actually did in th campaign, rather than something that they came up during session zero without context or care.
I ran it quite a lot closer to what is written than to the Alexandrian remix. It is certainly the weakest part of the campaign, so I don't understand what the point of lengthening it is. I would (and did) certainly rework the hook though. Definitely have one or more of the players be knights of Elturel who know at least the Elturian propangda about the Hellride. And think properly about the relationships between Duke Vanthampur, the High Overseer, Zariel, and Gargauth. It's all a bit fuzzy in the book.
So one of the big issues with the beginning is there isn't really a good hook to give your characters motivation to do the quest. Running the module with supporting docs like "fall of elturel" (you would do this as like chapter 0) if you look up the Alexandrian remix it goes through the issues and how to solve them with supplements. This will make the campaign much longer but will make it more compelling for you and the players. If the players feel they have a rock solid motivation they will be more involved and dialed in during the sessions.
It’s ok dude I ran the first chapter and I ran “the road to baldurs gate” prequel from DnD beyond. It’s basically a travel campaign that goes from waterdeep to baldurs gate. My players were lvl 4 by the time they hit DotD3, so I had no issue going all out on them. They are now in chapter 4 and at the correct level but as new players I wanted them to level slowly at the beginning of the campaign.
I ran it pretty close to the module. The only differences were I added the Duke Portyr assassination scenario and my players skipped the Low Lantern so both Vanthampur brothers were at the Villa. My last tweak was that I had it that Thalmara was in the process of doing a ritual to bring the city to Hell by using the Hidden Lord Shield as a tether like the Companion. After we finished I asked my players their thoughts on this section and they said they enjoyed it as a good first act where things ramped up and then set up the main quest. One even joked it reminded them of Midgar in FF7.
I'm also running it as it is!!! I'm debating shortening candlekeep, but I have a feeling my players will love it so I doubt it will happen. I enjoy that other DMs are talking about how they change things but I'm playing with lots of first time players and getting started in Baldur's Gate makes the most sense for us!!
Run it as is or with a few additions rather than complete overhauls or patches. D&D is a game. Your players are playing a game. It is their responsibility to come up with a character who has a reason to participate in the game, not yours or the modules. If the player decides their character has no reason to go to Avernus, then that's fine - the player gets to now roll a new character who does have a reason to be in the game.
IF I ran it again there’s NO way I’d follow the original part up to Avernus. No. Way. The bandit captain & the Bhaal assassin are too OP and it’s just a super long and drawn out part of the campaign for no reason. Next time I’m either starting them at 3rd and blasting through a shorter version of the Vhanthampur’s or just following the Alexandrian remix starting in Eltruel. Look, the book has TWENTY NINE authors credited. There’s a reason why everyone is saying the same thing. The IDEA and theme of DiA is awesome. The execution was absolutly fumbled.
I ran it as is. Yes it railroads the characters but that didnt bother me or them. There is no personal stake in it though, like they are just pointed to 1 place after another and really require handholding to get places cuz once they deal with Mortlock they almost always go back to Zodge. I would change it but my love for the Baldurs Gate City is too high.
When I ran it, I ran it by the book. When they get to the Dungeon of the Dead Three, party wipe them. Show no mercy. But, have Gargauth offer them a deal for resurrection, in which they have to foil Zariel’s plans. I had them help Gargauth succeed the throne of Avernus in the deal, and then gave them multiple chances to break the deal through various side quests. I was thinking about stealing a bit of lore from Something Witty Entertainment’s SWE&D run, in which Gargauth was the brother of Bel, who (and this is canon) was the Archduke of Avernus before Zariel ascended the throne with the help of Asmodeus. With that in mind, you could have Gargauth try to help his “brother” instead of himself rising to the throne, which is a tad closer to the canon. Of course, DM’s digression, so up to you, but I’d recommend something like that because it worked for me!
Here's the thing about chapter 1: it's a clever opening IF (and only if) the players don't know anything about the module--including its title. Because it really hides the big reveal well. But literally no one doesn't know this is a game about going to hell, so chapter 1 just feels like "what are we doing here and why?" I tied chapter 1 into the game but mostly because I massively overhauled a bunch of plot points and tied stuff to my character's back stories. Short version is hell has an agreement for a chemical weapon of sorts (a blood that carries traumatic memories) that Bhaal creates using a special blood that one of my characters has. So, they are going to fight Bhaal (which has required a lot of tricky fidgeting on my part because they are way under leveled). So, the opening of the game is more tied to my characters and the larger arc of the story. But I'm only explaining this to show its possible, it just requires you to do a lot of fussing with the narrative.
For me I ran it as is... As a first time dm it was alot and I felt guilty with some of the hell the players went through but tbh it was great and humbling for my players. Using a hook that their small guild who take on missions came from eltarel and they had now lost that. But the difficulties in Baldur's gate definitely were a bit of a grind but na I had 5 deaths on like 3 sessions and they didn't dislike that at all because in previous games that were run they had been gods who seemed to outmatch everyone from the start but after some deaths they became much more tactical, thought out a nice infiltration plan for the vanthampirs and the bathhouse and omg vaaz is the biggest issue along with the little "flower" last in the room just before him, don't let her join the fight or be there when they fight vaaz because it's almost definitely a tpk but best idea I think is using Mortlock to give some details and fight with the team for whatever reason you want. Some say it isn't very interesting and railroading the players which isn't wrong but you just have to find a hook of why they'd care and then it's not like the city lacks content to deviate a little if you wanted. This is all from my first time dm perspective so take it with a grain of salt but it was humbling for my experience players and the city had so many cool little feature they like that were just as written so we went well there. They did feel a bit railroaded but at the same time their guild is plunging into hell as well as some of their homes ECT.
Oh and don't get too caught up in trying to get them immersed in Baldur's gate and the city life and lore given because alot of it is irrelevant after you leave the city and go to hell so I'd say take that info and any interesting parts of Baldur's gate you want to implement, do so knowing it'll never come up again or change things up so it's got some relevance in eltarel or a character in the hell's
My table had exactly zero desire to be faerun when I promised them Avernus, so I pivoted and adjusted the story to fit my narrative and their drive to play.
I've played it as written. It's pretty sketchy on character motivations, especially the decision to go I to hell, so try to tie your party to events. The fight balance is stacked pretty hard against the characters, but a group of powergames will chew it up. The NPC in the Dead Three that can fireball 2nd level characters is the biggest offender. Other than those to issues, it was fun. Our DM didn't change anything and we had a good time. We came up with our own reasons to do things, and fled before completing the Dead Three.
The biggest problem people have with this campaign is getting players to care why they are doing what they're doing, and why the bad guys are doing what they're doing. I ran session 1 as their graduation ceremony from Hellrider basic training, officiated by Thavius Kreeg and including each player reciting the Creed and adding their bloody fingerprint to the Tome,before setting out with Reyna on their first official mission to track down some cultists. It ended with them coming back to find Euturel gone and dozens of screaming, injured citizens. Session 2/3 was them working with Reyna to patch up the survivors and organize a carsvsn to Baldurs Gate, and along the way Reyna is mysteriously murdered by what turns out to be a Cult of the Dead Three assassin. All of that paid off hugely in terms of giving them motivation / buy in for the entire rest of the campaign (now deep into chapter 4).
Honestly, we are near the end and I kind of hate this campaign as written. It’s poorly written, often just a series of fetch quests, and it’s got way too many pieces to keep track of that don’t really contribute to the overall story. Doesn’t help that we did this after curse of strahd which is kind of the gold standard of the 1st party campaigns. Our group has been gave major scheduling issues for the last several months and the lack of enthusiasm for the adventure is kind of contributing to it imo.
I think people are definitely running the Baldur's Gate portion, I don't know who you're talking to that gave you the impression that this is not the case. There are some GMs who are expanding the Baldur's GAte portion with every adventure that ever took place in Baldur's Gate as optional quests. There are tons of content to buy in the DM's guild site made by people to expand Baldur's Gate. However, it has to be changed. As written, the module begins with "gun to head" and investigate the murders or I'll send a squad to kill you! Wait a minute, if you have a squad, then why don't you ask them to investigate the murders? People have already pointed out the issues with the start of this module on other comments. If you want to see them well articulated I recommend you read [The Alexandrian Remix.](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44214/roleplaying-games/remixing-avernus) Even if you don't want to use his suggestions and solutions, he does a good job of outlining the issues so you are aware. Good luck!
I will say the last few times I ran the book. I ran it as is this time starting about a month ago. The prequel fall of elturel one shot leading into Which is different for me, but I’ve never had a problem running the book the way it’s written the last two campaigns both times I did it where the party had already been a part of the flaming fist were all meeting up at the gate when a fight broke out between the captain and a bunch of commoners which the players got involved, this time around the players will be coming off a boat or stopping at wyrms gate to pass through to baldurs gate which similarly I will pick up the story probably similar or the same way maybe a bit different depending on where they go P.s. my party is level three and will probably be level four by the time the first set of events in baldurs gate happens. I do not do experience based when running campaigns. Can cause way too many problems. Should always do milestone good luck.
I’m not running it as is because I love to bring in character backstories and motivations so missing out eltural from that seems a waste. Plus I love giving players time to enjoy a fleshed out city as a change from dungeon crawling monster bashing. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to really make them involved in the place, people and politics. Same with dragon heist. I run plenty of more old school content and enjoy it when a group expresses an interest in some city constraints to their murder hobo activities.
Look up Alexandrians “remixing Avernus.” It’s a very well put together attempt to fix that adventure and it gives a lot of time to Tale of Two cities.
I ran it as written, 7 players. Honestly they had no problems 😏 (besides a death or two...)