Baldur's Gate (Descent into Avernus) is Dumb
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มี.ค. 2021
- a good DM can make any game fun.
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I like how Baldurs Gate III starts in Avernus, and Descent into Avernus starts in Baldurs Gate.
heh
Ironic
time loops are fun
Oo hadn't noticed that.
Wasn't this module basically a tie-in to the video game, a prequel of sorts?
I've run this campaign for two groups, and I completely agree with you. The Baldur's Gate section was poorly written and felt like an unnecessary, overly long and grindy railroad (especially the Dungeon of the Dead Three - giving an enemy Fireball when the players are level 2 is just a cruel joke), and if I were running it again, I'd cut it out entirely. In fact, I'd have the characters start at level 5 in Elturel and get dragged into Avernus along with the city. That's much more dramatic and gives them a more immediate and convincing plot hook.
Once we got into Elturel and Avernus though, it was fucking awesome.
EDIT: Wrote this before I saw you recommend starting in Elturel at the end of the video. Great minds think alike.
I've played in it and honestly the whole Baldur's Gate section is so unpleasant. You are outgunned and controlled by someone who will kill you for as much as backtalk.
.
Honestly I don't know why the Baldur's Gate section didn't take place in, I don't know, in Elturel (Have it be the few days before the event to make the players care)... or like what you suggested... Just skip straight to the Avernus section.
.
Believe it or not I actually WON the dang bandit fight... But I can't say I did so clean. I had to abuse cover mechanics like mad and use "Fight defensively" every single turn... blocking a slightly open door so the bandits can't rush it... while my party did hit and runs to hit the other bandits before running behind me for cover. (and we STILL almost lost).
I like starting at level 1. so i agree with the modification players go to avernus directly at level one and are helped by this seasoned adventurer with a devil shield that helps them out of Eltrun. (He's meant to gain a mortal wound and die)
Hey! Stop watching YT and finish that Mulan review dammit!
Would going from Waterdeep to Descent into Avernus be possible? I just got both.
@@floopthevolcano2330 That book spoken about earlier (tale of two cities) actually has suggestions on how to transfer characters from Waterdeep into Descent into Avernus.
8:01 "There's just people in there, bathing. What else would you expect?"
I don't know, maybe the king rising out of the water to give you a map printed on laminated paper?
The main reason to play this now, is to have a homebrewed Karlach to appear for your players.
Karlach does have official stats, her sheet is on the expensive version of the game
Should've prolly just named this "The Intro to Descent into Avernus is Dumb".
It'd more accurate, but it wouldn't get more views than the current name
shoot, you're right. can everyone please look at this when clicking on the video? it's the new title of the video now.... I don't know how to change it please help
@@XPtoLevel3 I'm sorry, but you didn't talk about my queen, Reya Mantlemorn
@@willmena96 IM sorry I meant to and completely forgot. I find it dumb that she show up as a hellrider in Baldurs Gate only for her to STAY in Elturel when the players go down to avernus to... ya know go hellriding.
@@XPtoLevel3 yeah, I'm heartbroken :( my group said bye to her last friday
At the start of the video:
Hey, the Baldur's Gate stuff is pretty good. We've literally JUST played through it as a noob party, and had a blast.
By the end of the video:
Oh. Our DM changed almost everything. I get it now.
If you don't mind me asking, what did your DM change?
That Flaming Fist captain zael or whatever, was holding the gates closed and stopping all refugees (Party Included) from entering. So we needed to find another way in. Traveling to the coastline, stealing a boat, and smuggling ourselves into the city via the Tavern in a perma-docked ship. Where we made friends with the owner.
Back at one of our player's residence within the city, the Fist captain found us and took issue with us being there. Fight started. He killed one us, then fucked off. (TBF though, the guy he killed did cast Charm on him earlier.)
That player made a new character.
We're summoned by the Flaming Fist Commander to give witness testimony as to the Captain abusing his power.
As sheer coincidence (Or perhaps some light DM poking during character creation), my character happened to be basically gender swapped Raya Mantlemorn, in background origin story. So my dude is super invested in saving Elturel, and after the Trial's concluded, he requests assistance from the Commander in investigating the city's fate.
Fist Commander makes us a deal, that if we help them investigate the murder cult, that they'll do what they can to help us with our investigation after.
After that, it more less played out as described. Really hard dungeon crawls, in which we need to keep having long rests inside the dungeons (With barricaded doors at either ends of corridors). And Plenty of Drama (Not all of it welcome) surrounding the discovery that Evil Bishop, as my character's tie to this fella, as a Hellrider, caused plenty of friction.
Except the scene in the Tavern Ship went a lot smoother, as one of our charismatic characters talked to that particular brother to interview him. Then we waited until nightfall and ambushed him on the city streets as he returned home. Capturing him, and questioning him some more.
We ended up turning a good number of NPCs into the Flaming Fist for imprisonment and interrogation. The Large Vanthampr Brother, to recover from his wounds in the first dungeon. The Brother on the Ship, who had been fleshed out to be a Loan Shark of questionable business ethics, bound and beaten and to be tried as a Conspirator. A handful of Cultists who were beaten and bound, to similarly stand trial as co-conspirators. The Severed Head of Lady Vanthampr, cos something needs to stand trial as the leader of all of this. And plenty of servants from the Vanthampr estate who might have witnessed plenty of shady goings on.
After all of that, my Hellrider character cashed in on the Deal with the Fist Commander, for support in saving his city. Then left the party to go save the city himself. (Character leaving the party, I made a new guy with less of a stick up his ass) Leaving the rest of the party to investigate that puzzle box.
God bless creative DMs.
@@XanthIllion That is a great change that your DM did... and I wholeheartedly agree that it is a much better way of handling the intro stuff than what was previously written.
I think the best way to run the game, would be to have the party start in Elturel as normal adventurers of whatever level you'd like; get them to like various NPCs and features of the town. Once they hit level five have their beloved city get pulled into Avernus.
I was thinking that they start as mercenaries to help the overextended Flaming Fists to find Duke Ravenguard, and after they resolve it, BOOM - Hell.
Funny you say this-I'm getting ready to run this, and I found "Fall of Elturel" as a module to do exactly this!
Avernus is literally "Do what the NPC tells you to do, or you instantly die." That's it. You may as well not even have the players pick their actions, just sit around a table rolling when told. "Okay so you go to the mansion to kill people and see a person. You attack... roll initiative. Okay. Your move, you attack with your greatsword, roll.... you miss, you are then attacked... you die."
Or they might as well play a video game.
I feel like a good DM would be able to fix this, But the DM for my game is kind of lazy. I feel like my choices don't even matter
@@AFanOfCinema but thats the thing..i you need to heavily modified it why buy it. You buy a very expensive book for a ready made edvantur
@@yuvalgabay1023 might as well homebrew it with renamed items and towns. I know enough about the main cool stuff by looking it up and just adding it in to a future quest
Me: sees title "oh... I'm about to end this man's whole career"
His first words after intro: "I'm not talking about the video game, the video game is awesome"
Me: Oh, ok we good.
Lmao I thought he was talking about the game and was sad but then started watching the vid
You really need to move past this "me:" "him:" "jesus:" crap. We know who is speaking. Your youtube comment is not a script for a play. Thanks
@@grilledleeks6514 It helps the reader to know who is saying/doing what. Didn't you ever consider that maybe a format becomes popular for a reason?
@@grilledleeks6514 who says its not a play? Its a play now... Im gonna find actors and we will do this...
@@gingercore69 I'll be "me" and you be "his".
"Tarina knows this information, so the players have to save her."
"But my players would never trust pirates. In fact, why does Tarina know where a murder cult is, and is doing nothing about it? Shouldn't she be in hiding, or trying to flee if this cult is so dangerous? There's clearly something more going on here, so why would they trust her?"
"Okay, fine! Someone gives them a letter telling them about the Bathhouse."
"Is it heavily guarded?"
"They wouldn't know."
"Okay, my players would contact the guards and have them clear the bathhouse for them."
"Wait, what?"
"My players aren't going to rush in at low level to fight an unknown number of murder cultists probably related to hell."
"..oh."
"..."
"..F it, let's just do Dragon Heist and have Halaster Blackcloak teleport the party into hell."
Honestly, I would reward my players pretty hard for being so reasonable.
So what you're telling me is that you _didn't_ put your dump stat into wisdom?
Adventuring is too dangerous, let's take up turnip farming and let the guards and heroes of the land do everything.
@@charlesjones1535 Avoiding combat is an entirely legit approach to adventuring: I've had a few games where the players spent most of their time as merchants, only getting violent when they either have no choice (getting attacked, blackmailed, etc,) or because they actually want to (looking for loot, helping an NPC they like, etc.)
A good game will account for that possibility, and will give players the chance to talk people down, find allies, or sneak in, with combat as an option if they fail. A great game will also take character history and inclination into account, giving players reasons to worship gods and join factions for reasons beyond immediate reward.
A bad game will force players to act in a certain way, because the guards will literally send human wave attacks against them if they don't.
@@bubbasbigblast8563 that stuff is fun, but there are better game systems for it, how much of the phb is devoted to combat and combat adjacent stuff? It's a rpg based on a wargame after all. If you don't want to fight,play something else and have more fun than you would trying to stretch dnd to be something it's not
I believe my group had 3 TPK's across the introduction dungeon. The aura of murder at level 2 is brutal and can easily bring about instant character death
I'm in a descent into avernus campaign right now, and my group barely got through that dungeon alive. And that's with us equipping a random tiefling commoner with amazing luck to fight with us (Vendetta did so well she became a meme in our group), and managing to handle the fireball flinging miniboss with seduction (our dm described the Myrkul priest as a fairly attractive woman for some reason.) The introduction seems like a TPK machine, but somehow we've been lucky enough to make it to lvl 4 without losing a party member.
I had to baby my players so much through that part
Dm’d it and I had my players lvl 3 before entering since I add other content to smooth and flesh out the story and because fireballing lvl 2s is unplayer friendly
Remember to play Tieflings for the fire resistance.
@@freman007 That won't do any good, this particular enemy's fireball is necrotic damage for some reason
Seeing this, I realized how much my DM changed about the beginning. We started as Hellriders, Tarina is our Sergeant, we cleared out low-lvl cultists outside the city as an intro, and are altogether super invested in Elturel's salvation. The Vanthampur's were also way more intelligent in their motivations to the point where the party has established a moderately friendly relationship with them.
Honestly, Avernus feels pretty boring compared to our entire BG experience.
This is based on Fall of Elturel book that fixes the beginning. It just ddn't have Tarina as a Hellrider so that sounds like your DM's doing.
man i wanna run this one
just starting at level 5 seems super optimal too. Helps speed up the game a lot. I love DMing but man campaigns can go on and on and on.
Only tip, start direct into Avernus and re-think about the player hook.
I always start at level three to give people characters more flavor
My plan: Run Dragon Heist first as its both awesome and builds in reason for the players to go to Hell for the main portion at level 5. Skip the intro crap entirely
@@jester9215 Yes. Imo, levels 3 and 5 are the best levels to start at. They're when you start getting your cool powers, and you also don't die because of bad rolls or because a baddie sneezed on you.
The big thing why I wanna start at level 5 isn't just for letting people start with more early customization, it's also less of the campaign i have to run lel
the game doesn't really start til level 5 anyway, so sticking to just the main part of the campaign in Avernus seems smart.
I’m literally starting Descent into Avernus tonight
check out the Eventyr Games DM Resource! Link in the description!
Well it's gonna be dumb apparently...
Jk. I'm sure you'll have a blast it's fun
You'll be fine
Too bad
Bailey Morton same!
I remember playing Descent into Avernus in a year-long campaign with some friends, and our DM ended up having to cut out and skip a large portion of the source book because at some point it just becomes fetch quests that lead into more fetch quests into more fetch quests and once those are all done the plot picks back up.
I’m running this right now and essentially had to rewrite the whole first chapter to address some of these problems. First, I tied all their backstories to elturel somehow, (one lived there as a child, one had a lover there etc,) they didn’t know that the rest of their party also had ties so it was a surprise. Second, I had the city fall on camera. While they’re going around Baldurs Gate catching cultists, they find out a cultist camp is stationed outside of elturel, and after they deal with that, they witness the fall from nearby. Now they all have stakes in figuring out what happened, and they got to actually watch the thing that drives the whole plot. It took a lot of fadangling to make work with what’s written, but it’s doable.
I also have obviously added a bunch of extra encounters, fun npcs, and items, as well as changing some established npcs motivations n such, but this was the main change I made to try and fix what I think is a big plot issue. And it worked for us. But yeah... also had to balance the encounters cus damn..
Happy to explain anything in detail if people have questions :)
Can tell you're a good dm.
This may be to late but could you possibly tell me a small bit bout how you ran your npc like what there connections to the story is? I really like your idea and kinda wana steal it
If that’s ok
There's an adventurer's league module that starts with the character seeing a massive crater that used to be etulgard and having to lead a rescue effort to get refugees to baldurs gate and i feel that's where it should have started for the actual game
What is it called?
That sounds perfect.
@@Menzobarrenza DDAL09-01 Escape from Elturgard. Its ending leads the adventurers to Baldur's Gate.
@@ashrunzeda4099 Thank you.
I played it. It's nothing that wild and has a pretty anticlimactic conclusion, at least when I played it. Though as a campaign starter i guess it's fine? Pretty difficult at times though.
@@zeterzero4356 in this case that anticlimatic conclusion would be more of a starting point though. I guess it depends on how heavy on roleplay your group is.
I like the idea of escorting these refugees to Baldurs gate and then being told theyre actually looking for people to send to elturel.
A big addition I added at the start of my campaign was having my players go to Elturel BEFORE it disappears, giving them a chance to explore it and interact with some homebrew NPCs. Then after they have a good time and are heading back to BG yoink Elturel just as they leave. Gave them a lot more connection to the place, a reason to want to know whats going on, and an excuse to give them early levels.
Great idea. I'll probably steal it.
I just changed everything to be in Elturel, then when they find the puzzle box, they head off to Candlekeep to get it opened, then they learn Thavius Kreegs betrayal, and as they're rushing back Elturel gets pulled into hell, along with the party.
Part of me wishes I had looked up ideas for the second go round of DiA for my group (covid knocked the first one out and we all forgot the majority of what happened). Starting in Elturel is a really solid idea, and could have worked for this party. Oh well. The Eventyr supplements helped me make it less railroady in any case. Skipped everything before the Low Lantern and coincidentally the party got a lead from a shopkeep about finding a "Flaming Fist captain" to talk to about what was happening. Reya found them first though, since they were loitering around too long for my liking.
Death House was so batshit insane for low levels that even with our DM reducing the difficulty and heavily nerfing the house (plus having MORE than the recommended party size), we still barely made it out alive. Honestly as a newer player to the game downing ~4 times in the span of 2 hours was extremely mentally taxing and it showed in my attempt to maintain my roleplay.
Death House was the only time I've lost a character because we TPKed (it's okay, we got better) and it was mostly because my party refused to let my character martyr themselves for the group. TvT I was so pissed no one was listening to me but ah well.
@@silversugar2140 Suffering due to not being listened to is always a pain.
How though. The only danger is the big slow brute with it's 20 ft move speed. Run away.
babies
Death House was great
the horror is real;
TPK isn't horror
I paid for horror, and got more than my money's worth
@@bongosmcdongos4190 isn’t the shambling mound in a room you can’t escape from without killing something though? Kind of hard to run away when you literally can’t run away.
In conclusion, Play Waterdeep: Dragonhiest: Decent into Avernus.
me who literally bought baldurs gate 3 less than 5 minutes ago lol
Go play a druid
@Douglas Bonbeck Steam or GOG
@@arrowodd7695 yeee, thinking either druid or warlock
THE GAME IS SO GOOD PLAY IT
A wise choice. Enjoy.
They should've just done two books: One about Baldur's Gate (the first chapter of the adventure could've even been a short adventure in the setting book) and one for Avernus.
Yeah cause when your reading/running the module it just feels like two different books sowed by literally a couple of McGuffin's
And then the Avernus book can go up to level 20!!!
@@jacobjensen7704 Uhhh, I would rather they stuff it with extra side content, similar to Icewind dale, with more rando encounters and non-quest based locations. Cause honestly the two biggest problems I currently have with Avernus is: A) Chapter 3 can feel like a goose but that could be mostly a nickpick(and probably my fault as the GM) and B) for an entire PLANE, it lacks a lot of non-main quest based side content.
Hearing that most official campaigns have an underwheling level 1->3 section, in the future I may just run Sunless Citadel if I absolutely need to start with level 1 characters. Portal to wherever the rest of the adventure is just happens to be right at the end of the dungeon.
Sunless Citadel isn't that great to be honest, it is kinda meh, just another dungeon crawl, this is not how I want to introduce an adventure - which does not change the fact that the 1-3 levels are kind underwhelming in a lot of official stuff indeed. Here we have two huge dungeon crawls in the 1-4 level range, which is not much better, but at least we have a couple of sparse encounters in between. Honestly, and that is something Jacob should have mentioned in more detail, the book gives you A LOT of tools to make the initial section better - literally 50 pages of it, you have a whole Gazeteer worth of stuff to make Baldur's Gate good. This still adds a bunch of negatives, because if a literal quarter of the guiding content in an adventure book is to make your own adventure, similar to a campaign setting, the marketing of said book should have been slightly different and let you know that there is more work in it for you. I love Baldur's Gate: DiA, but it is not the adventure I would want to have if I just wanted an adventure I can run easily, which is the point of this book.
I just use the Lv 1-3 adventures from the DMs Guild if I have new players. There are some great ones out there and specifically written for those levels. And there are so many of them, that you always find one you can somehow fit into your campaign. Just poot some of the info and loot from the original 1-3 into this and no one will notice.
Here's the funny thing, the FIRST adventure is a low level adventure that works. It's the starter set, it feels like there's risks, it's got some stumbling blocks but it's actually a-ok. Go play mines of phandelver.. that magically happens right before any of the other adventures you want to run.
@@yavorvlaskov5404 I liked running sunless citadel as an intro to Strahd (to avoid Death House nonesense), there's some fun ways to tie the two Gulthias Trees together, and unlike a more standard "dungeon crawl", I felt it went a long way to encouraging my (mostly brand new) players to think more creatively and get them in a good mindset. They made deals with both the Kobolds and Goblins to let them through, and ended up fighting very little until the encounter with the wizard at the end, and handled a lot of the encounters in the dungeon in creative ways, which I think the dungeon does a good job of enabling.
Overall was a fun time :)
@@normieguy3803 you and your players made it fun despite the adventure rather than because of it, sounds to me
I like the idea of starting out like a standard D&D game and then ooopsing into Hell.
True, a much better alternative beginning would be to have the players be in Elterel, have them be recruited to look into corruption with Thadeus Krieg and then have the city just suddenly drop into Avernus.
Could even work in the most memorable parts of the intro by having their secret patron who is tipping them off to the corruption be the wizard polymorphed into a weasel, and have them get referred to that crazy Holyphant at the Hellrider barracks. Just swap the Valthampurs to be related to Thadeus Krieg, and have them be embezzelling money because they know the city is about to be dragged to hell and destroyed anyway.
I'm really glad this wasn't just me. This was the first module I ever tried to run and I never even got to avernus. The players were all new and I even levelled them up a bit more to make up for this, and they were still almost killed on the first turn in the bandit encounter. They ended up running away so as not to die, and I didn't want to punish them for fleeing a fight they clearly couldn't win, so I had a friendly NPC I made up do it for them. I felt bad taking away the players victory, but they were just happy to be alive. I wanted to skip to the avernus part but I didn't know how much of the intro was important to the rest of it and I eventually ended up dropping it.
Yeah, I'd always recommend that new DMs start with guided homebrew instead of modules, because for most of the modules, if you play it as written, THE PARTY DIES. My brother ran the intro to the Dungeon of the Mad Mage and we TPK'd at the 3 kenkus, literally the first session.
@@knightsilverthesoulsenjoyer I recommend Sunless Citadel.
Why can't low level characters that you aren't attached to yet die by the barrow load? Why can't new players learn right off the bat that the life of a rookie adventurer is dangerous and thrilling? Isn't death part of drama? The song of ice and Fire series is built on how cheap life is. If they are new players, you can shape their expectations, so shape them to enjoy the early game struggle. Make every goblin a deadly fight that they barely come out of. Then when they reach a higher level and become Heroes, they have earned it, and they know it
@@charlesjones1535 That's fine if that's how you want to play, but in my particular situation I didn't start the campaign with the Avernus stuff. They were all already attached to their characters, and one of the players had already died like 1 session ago. I do think the threat of death can add a lot to dnd, but I didn't want these brand-new players to die every encounter. Especially because they weren't dying because of things they chose to do, it was cause I was bad a balancing encounters.
@@charlesjones1535 DND 5e has no quick character creator- if you look at Call of Cthulhu, almost everyone dies every game, and then you can make their sheets again real quick.
Not in DND. In older editions, it was much more common because all you did was explore dungeons! Not much story, and you still got to have fun playing as a wet rag. However, in 5e, the first encounter you have can be so overwhelmingly against you that everyone is going to be pissed at the DM if they spent all of that free time thinking of a character and going to your game, just to be killed before any development happens.
Oops, sorry, the game ended in 20min, I guess you guys can take the 3hrs to chill, yeah?
Getting to meet an otter wizard is best reward coming out from running through this heck of the introductory level imo.
"If the players decide to attack someone, they're gonna suffer the consequences" Yeah I got a taste of this when my barbarian got knocked unconscious by the troll in like 2 hits (it was my first proper game sue me)
In my current game of DiA I completely skipped the intro and had the party arrive in Elturel just as the city was dragged to Avernus. The characters in real time tried to evacuate citizens as best they could, while battling fiends that were now running through the city.
Definitely better motivation than “go hell to find a guy, I guess”.
You're playing with fire with that title, wizard ain't gonna like that, only he plays with fire.
Baldurs Gate fans are gonna be worse. Just see how the hardcore nostalgia corps of the fan base attacked Larian for being true to the table top game gameplay wise.
@@lupisvolk2420 either way it's gonna be a nightmare in the comments.
@@feralchangeling97 so gather the popped corn and sit back.
@@lupisvolk2420 I'm not mad at Larian for making their game closer to tabletop, I'm mad at them for naming it Baldur's Gate 3, even though it has little to do with the first 2.5 games, at least the other knockoffs had the decency to use a subtitle instead of numbering it as a direct sequel. I don't even have nostalgia, I only played the games a few years ago and they are still some of the best games of all time. The Bhaalspawn's saga ended with Throne of Bhaal, and that saga IS Baldur's Gate.
@@owenfischer8228 we have less than a quarter of the game available so far since its early access. From that we have hints that the dead three, which includes bhaal, will play a major role in the story, not to mention larian have said they wouldnt call it bg3 if it didnt relate back to the previous games in meaningful ways (though of course take that as you will). From my understanding it's built off of the plans for cancelled bg3 from 2004(?) and will focus on the the mind flayer plots touched upon in bg2. to claim it has little to do with the previous games at this time is disingenuous.
Time to plug the Alexandrian Remix! Justin Alexander basically reworked the entirety of DiA, including the beginning. It actually fixes the whole thing to the point that I forgot how bad the original was. It ALSO gives them an actual reason to go into Hell -- freeing the city needs both halves of the contract to be brought together (among other things). One is in Zariel's fortress, and the other is in the puzzlebox. The puzzlebox is appropriately foreshadowed so the players will be going into the Vanthampurs' mansion in part specifically to locate the puzzlebox. So the players have one half of the contract, which is the only thing that can save Elturel. The rest of the game is devoted to trying to figure out how to save Elturel -- a part in Elturel proper, stabilizing the city, and part finding the stuff needed to actually bring it back to the Material Plane. My players found the Sword of Zariel just a couple weeks ago, so they have 1/3 things required to free Elturel. (Obviously redeeming Zariel will fix everything in one fell swoop, but if they don't want to do that, they have the ability to fix things themselves.) Now they're planning an epic heist on Zariel's Flying Fortress, which is revamped such that such a thing is actually possible instead of "Fuck you, if you sneak on to the Fortress you get spotted by Truesight and get brought before Zariel."
Part of the excitement is that I literally don't know how the game's gonna end. Are they gonna get brought before Zariel and redeem her? Are they gonna successfully sneak the other half out and break it, and then engage in a race against time to finish the rest of the process before Zariel figures out what happened and comes after them in force? Are they gonna do something else? I dunno, but I've laid the groundwork for a lot of possibilities.
As for Thavius, my group and I took him with us to Candlekeep, where he was "judged" and arrested while we descended to Avernus. I didn't even know he had no major role whatsoever in the first chapter
Integration. It's one of the most important facets of a good module, or any campaign and I feel it gets overlooked too often. Modules like Descent and Curse of Strahd have amazing ideas, and all they need is a little shaping to be an amazing cohesive whole. Sometimes I think we forget that the connecting of plot threads and story beats can be just as important as the plot points themselves.
In my waterdeep campaign the cassalanters were the villains so when waterdeep ended I had my party go to baldur’s gate to continue the whole plot of devil intrigue while skipping the flaming fist cultist section. I brought them straight to Reya and avernus shortly after and it worked really well
Great to see another Cassalanter enjoyer here! I'm currently playing as a descendent of the Cassalanters in an Ice wind dale campaign and I love their lore.
Fun fact from my group and the first encounter in Baldur's Gate. My DM flat out told us that the bouncers in the tavern basically only get in on a fight if the workers are involved, so the party's sorcerer, after hearing that we'll be fighting some pirates soon, convinces the halfling druid to get himself a temp job in the kitchen, so that when we fight the pirates, the druid is technically a worker, and so therefore, the bouncers get in on the fight on our side and help us bonk the pirates to death
My DM ran this game for my group who were mostly new to D&D and surprisingly none of us died to these encounters. At the tavern we paid 2 flaming fist guards who were sitting around having drinks to help us fight the bandits, nobody was seriously injured. In the dungeon underneath the bathhouse most of us got knocked down by the wizard with fireball but 2 of our party members were out of the spells range and easily killed the wizard in 2 hits along with the other cultist beside him. I guess we were pretty lucky without knowing it because we mowed through most of the dungeon without any problems besides that wizard. The only reason one of us died in the bathhouse dungeon was because we found a bag of beans and one of my party members ate a bean. A treant grew inside of him and he just exploded. Other than that nobody died before we got to Avernus.
Glad to see someone vocalize my groups thoughts on that part of the module. Honestly, I think the reason they even included it in the module was to be able to add "Baldur's Gate" to the title and serve to advertise the game. It probably was just an afterthought someone told production to shove in the last minute.
I dont think so because Avernus is the start to BG3. I just think the writers were hyped to do Avernus, but not so much Baldur's Gate.
8:47 NO! Not yellow mould! That isn’t covered by my landlord’s lease agreement! Imagine the embarrassment I’ll receive at my next dinner party!
You say that till the yellow mold starts doing poison damage to your dismally low hp.
@@ArmoredChocoboLPs I'm pretty sure that was a direct quote from another DnD video.
@@DankLordDemaar Well, paraphrased, but yeah
I remember hearing from someone (take with a grain of salt!) that developers wanted to focus on Avernus but due to the new baldur's gate game getting announced, they wanted to drum up some hype to get players excited and interested in the city.
It would explain why everything felt so tacked on and hastily put together which is a shame! There was so much heart put into describing the nasty gothem-esc city of Baldur's Gate!
I've had a blast Dming this module for my players and since then have always given the option to skip the intro quest. I offer the B.G. segment if they want to get a better understanding of some of the people who have their thumbs in the pie, but traditionally, I just fling 'em into the abyss with weapons in hand to get straight to hacking and slashing some devil spawn!
Great video and solid recommendations within Jacob. Always a pleasure to see your feelings towards the game!
I'm really proud of my party for being able to get through the baldur's gate part of the game as it was written. Very creative group. Proud of them.
The Alexandrian remix is the way to go. Literally. it improves the adventure so much.
Can't stress this enough. Its honestly a godsend for this campaign and makes it so much better.
What’s that? I’m running Avernus soon
@@screwtapee basically, this guy went through the trouble of discussing and filling in the gaps for the full adventure. If you google for Avernus Alexandrian Remix, you'll find it.
@@screwtapee look it up, it'll be like the first result. i was surprised how easy it was to find
@@screwtapee like everyone else said, its easy to look up and follow. I went with a few suggestions he had and my players ended up coming across the empty pit of the city and linking up with a surviving hell rider (another player). They had the trip to baldurs gate with the refugees and the city section was much more of a mystery. By the time they got to hell, they were pretty invested in saving the city, especially since one of the players had a direct tie to it.
Ah yes. The game were I began as a level 1 celestial warlock that turned into a fiendslayer bloodhunter that died to a pit fiend with 3 levels of exhaustion and came back as a half dead vengeance paladin who wiped out the rest of the campaign because...well, paladins.
Paladins in Avernus are OP I love it
I’m playing a Drow Celestial Warlock with Pact of The Tome and Book of Ancient Secrets and Drow High Magic. Don’t need no damn spell slots lmao.
@@TheHandgunhero who's your character's patron
I am so glad I watched his video, I'm about to run a game of DIV and I was concerned about how they could possibly beat any of these challenges. I'm still planning to run the baldur's gate section but I'll definitely use that guide to help scale difficulty.
It’s funny because the introduction module for Adventurer’s League literally has you start at Elturiel when the event happens, then afterwards you just go to Baldur’s gate for some reason.
I agree. 100% Driving the hell machines was the best part. We totaly spent too long in those things and drove our DM nut because we wernt doing anything else lol
Skipping Baldur's Gate and starting at lvl5 in Elturel was literally what I did
Instant Heroes, just add laziness
@@charlesjones1535 I mean by the time the city got dragged into avernus they'd been investigating cult activity within the city for some 4 session, working for Ulder who in my game was a paladin of Elturel and loyal to Thavius (until he found out he was behind all of it). That way they felt part of the city because they knew places and people there, it made the whole thing a lot more dramatic. "Do we go save these citizens or do we go check on that barkeeper we love?"
But they started at 5th level, already being heroes, already overcoming hardships behind the scenes, but it was just done with a hand wave behind the scenes. No journey
@@charlesjones1535 Its not like this "journey" can only happen between lvls 1-5. By starting at 5th lvl we a) skipped the badly designed and boring part of Baldur's Gate and b) made more mechanically powerful characters. They had background, of course, but the journey really was going through Avernus and saving the city, not lvling up by killing random cultists. It was during their adventure through hell that their backstories came into play and that their characters really made got to know each other. As the person who DM'd this, i can tell you nothing was lost by starting at a higher lvl.
@@f.persch2342 how can they have background? They should each be the sole survivor of a meat grinder that chewed each other players failed characters, one a great dungeoneer, another a hunter, another an investigator, etc
I would love to see a video on how you would run Avernus completely and what you think is the most fun for your players and what you found the most fun to DM. It’s funny you decided to do this video now when I just started prepping to DM Baldurs Gate as well. Thanks!
The bit about introductory adventures is spot on. Almost every officially published campaign seems susceptible to grinding to a halt before the players get to the good parts, or to the party falling off the available-material-rails when they decide "no, this doesn't seem like a good idea."
I think the most powerful motivator my party had that they got from Baldur's Gate was Reya. She was a super important piece to humanize what is happening in Elturel.
Baldur's Gate Descent into Avernus is my second favorite adventure I have ever played with my main D&D group. I do like the Baldur's Gate section but seriously though whose idea was it to make the dead three dungeon it's actually insane.
Honestly, I loved running the tavern fight. My party’s paladin shield bashed the captain down the stairs and based on a highly unlikely roll, broke his neck upon landing. Another day in the city of blood
When I ran this, I weakened down the first two encounters and it was a struggle to beat the scenario. I think the characters are supposed to TPK, and have to enter into a bargain with a Devil for to make the journey in Avernus more complex
I almost always start my parties at level 3, that's when you get the cool shit, but if I have new people, I start them at 0-1.
How is level 0 in dnd? 🤔
@@alioth7260 you are a single cell organism that has to fight its way out of the gene pool
Eat & Escape (aka: Spore 2)
I’m starting my party out as hell riders stationed just outside of elturel while it is sucked down into hell
Nice my man
Ya know seems like the baldur’s gate portion could be a fun epilogue. The players get the box from Avernus and they figure out not only is the guy who started all this still up stairs but also baldur’s gate is in danger of eventually facing the same fate as El Turrel. Of course they are by this point, more than capable of amending the situation but it serves as a reflection moment to see how much the characters have grown like in LotR books when the hobbits return to the shire and stomp Saruman.
This module reminds me of the first 2 paragraphs of the Castle Amber module. The rest of the module was the best adventure I've ever DMed, but the first two paragraphs of the story made no sense. I ended up scrapping them and the party didn't even notice.
Yeah, the first couple of encounters in Decent into Avernus are pretty brutal. I ran my group through the whole thing and almost nothing in Hell itself put their lives in peril as much as the Pirates in the Tavern or the Basement Cultists.
I'm running this campaign now and I just started my players at lvl5 in Elturel. It's taken some creative rewriting to make it work as everything in elturel is written as it's been there for a while already, but my players had some real fun sheltering people from devils flooding the city and have now snuck down to the graveyard as high hall was beset by devils. It's a bit backwards but so far it's been really good fun. Tomorrow in the next session, they'll meet lulu.
The Shield of the Hidden Lord can come in handy if the players encounter Zariel early (mine did) as it’s the only thing she is willing to bargain for other than killing demon lords or swearing fealty to her.
Also, visiting the Vanthamphur’s villa could mean recruiting Slobberchops, the Tressym. Tressym can detect invisible creatures, and there are a number of parts of the adventure where something follows the party invisibly. A loyal Tressym invisibility alarm can be quite useful.
I love the choice of music when describing the bathhouse dungeon. Really good job 👍🏻
My friends and I have played the campaign from Level 1-15
The first portion of the game was indeed one of the hardest dungeon crawls I've ever been a part of. when we finished the bathhouse we felt like first badasses ready to jump down into Avernus.
My party got so overwhelmed by the vanthampler mansion that they didn’t even meet Fisk or get halfway through the basement. They had to leave to survive.
The way we are currently handling Baldur’s gate with our D&D group is that we are essentially using the avernus part as a sequel to Waterdeep Dragon Heist, mainly using homebrew subplots to link the two modules together. So essentially we got rid of the Baldur’s Gate problem by just replacing it with Waterdeep and throwing a bit of homebrew in for it to make more sense and it’s going really well so far
This is the same as most of the prewritten modules, I always change the character motivation in the beginning to personalize it to the adventure. have the players make backgrounds as natives of Baldur’s Gate, Elturel, researchers heading forwards Candlekeep because they want to meet Sylvira Savikas, or maybe they’re already members of the Flaming Fist.
Love this lmao. Can’t wait to finish my Vincent Cosplay
bro, it hasn't even been 3 minutes
@@lpmatthews7387 I’ve been looking to cosplay Vincent for a while now, and I was pretty certain what it was gonna say anyways as I’ve read through that campaign 😂, sorry
Yes Dragon heist is awesome. The best adventurer. (Also, I remember sending in one game a bandit captain full health at my group of 5 players lvl 3, the captain didn't want to die. It was a reference at my table).
The remix at The Alexandrian actually does a lot to make this adventure make more sense and be more cohesive thematically.
It's not done yet, but the first 2/3rds are, and I've been running it
My DM runs this campaing and the way he runs it gets me so thankful. We actually had two introductory campaings with two groups (which consisted of multiple adventurers basically answering a call fron Volo), we managed to reach level 4 before arriving to Baldur's gate. This part wad basically the way up to WaterDeep to meet Volo. And after that, the two parties merged together and thats when things went sideways. As a player, what made thid whole part enjoyable to me was the time I had to establish a character (we've been at this camping for a year now and were only on act 3). We sunk the boat tavern, we charmed Thalamra VamThampur, we had time to build up out personality and traits so the stressful fearful setting of avernus can actually have an impact on the characters we build. We arent heroes trying to save el turel, were a suicide squad with each their own agenda in... Well... Hell. And its very much fun cuz this is not a story about avernus at all. Roleplay encounters, player characters coming back (as both friend and foe).
My GM must just be a genuis.
During the part where you described the Dungeon of the Dead Three, I started panicking even though my players already beat the dungeon fine
A puzzle box that leads you to hell, I wonder where they could've got that idea from?
Man, the editing keeps getting better and better.
I've not yet run DiA yet but it is on the list for adventures we are running in my 5E campaign, and this was so helpful I had to watch it twice. Also the song.
When you've already started running Baldur's Gate and you see this video...
Same, just finished the under bathhouse dungeon, dunno how we lived, almost tpk'd twice.
Yeeeeeeah my party is nearly done with chapter 3 at this point. Really wish I had discovered the remix before putting a bunch of time and work into prepping the game. It's so fetch questy and I've tried to run it as more of a sandbox game for this chapter since there are a lot of encounters between the adventure and the pdf on dmsguild
My players just made it to Avernus so I'm excited to see where things go!
Are you ever gonna do more of the class history videos?
I preparing this campaign for my group and what I did to motivate them to go to Elturel was to tie their backstories to Elturel in a way that they will want save it once they find out that it has been pulled into the Nine Hells.
My homebrew western Dungeons&Desperados starts with the party bringing back a town’s water supply that’s actually just been stopped up by vulture bees (half vulture half bee). Building a hive in a dead sand worm (graboid) that blocks the water. If they find the source of the water being blocked they get paid, and if they bring the water back they get paid again. As for rewarding creativity, the party currently has their carriage being pulled by bees.
Definitely ran this as a suicide squad mission with a Templar esc. Theme. They are currently outside the swords temple. Found some cool demon dm guild guides to add some Yeenough and Baphomet encounters. Everyone seems to enjoy the game so far and Avernus itself is pretty free for you to play with as the dm. Defiantly saw levels 1-4 and was like this is dumb next.
Ooff, that ad is something...
I started my group at lvl 3 and the bath house was still a brutal slog. I also told the party the shield is a imprisoned angel and the tiefling at Candlekeep didn't say otherwise
An absolutely epic video! I ran a lot of the BG section homebrewed because I felt it was not a compelling story. If I had started like you suggest, in Elturel then had the city fall, or make BG the city that falls, that would have been a phenomenally more streamlined adventure. Appreciate the advice/opinions!
Ah, another video started with a song.
Lmao they just said "add darksouls" to the encounters
I'm actually running this with my brother and his best friend. The two alone managed to practically kill all the bandits before my "sidekicks" actually managed to join. (Not dmpcs, actual sidekicks based on the system dnd made). The companions were essential to get through the Dead Three dungeon, but victory over such odds became that much sweeter. They made bank with the treasure at the end.
Yes, the whole Baldurs Gate intro is a bit too long, but it managed to let the two players develop themselves and their relationships with Reya, the sidekicks, and Gaurgath in the shield. Now they are in Avernus and having a blast.
A college of Glamour bard in the Baldur's Gate section gave some really amazing role-playing opportunities. In the city against humanoids that bard got most of the "screen time". After the prologue adventure though he was nearly useless.
Tbh, I like the idea of starting in a city like Baldur's Gate, but Descent into Avernus did nothing with it other than have players fight unfair odds and kill off a cult. I as a DM decided to put a new spin on it. I entirely changed names, reasons, and encounters to make it feel like the city of Baldur's Gate was important. I made it so the city by the end of Chapter 1 is getting pulled into Avernus with the players just managing to escape and learning that this threat must be dealt with now. It led to the campaign being longer but I felt that the stakes were higher and the players had more fun because of it. Not being TPk'd from encounters they aren't prepared to handle.
I love starting at level one, but I almost always level them up after the first real fight then again after the first boss. Starting at 1 aint bad, but staying at 1 for any length of time sucks.
I like it, IF the DM allows lots of adventuring items, like Caltrops and such. Those are fun items that fall off pretty quick
Maybe it’s not in the source books but my DM ran the shield as an important MacGuffin that Bel and Zariel were trying to get their hands on, and after a couple members of the party ended up making conflicting deals it resulted in some fun intrigue.
My group at Adventurer's League played Descent into Avernus, and we were able to get to past the part with our first battle in the armored vehicle, before Covid shut Adventurer's League down.
Our Adventurer's League location only had room for four tables at a time, and we usually had enough people to fill them all with at least 5 people each, not including the DMs. For Avernus, we had 6-7 people for the majority of our playthrough, which is what really helped us to survive it.
Also, we had a rather merciful DM.
For example, in the dungeon under the bath house, I believe it was room D13 on the map shown in the video at 9:16, where we battled a cultist that had used Burning Hands (a level one spell) that managed to instant kill our monk, who had already taken some damage from another enemy. After we managed to kill the cultist with only the one party member killed, our DM told us that cultist had access to Burning Hands and Fireball.
Fireball.
A THIRD level spell.
To be used against a bunch of SECOND Level characters. In a very tightly passaged way dungeon. Where it took a couple of turns to just get everyone into the room with the cultist, due to us being in single file line because that was the only way to traverse the hallways. So the cultist spotted the person in front of the line, and caused combat to initiate while our entire party was in single file in the hallway. Due to how we were lined up and the initiative rolls received, we were tripping over each other just so we could get into the room so we had space to attack the cultist who could have used Fireball while we were in the hallway and TPK us.
Fortunately our DM choose not to use Fireball on us.
We continued to have some close calls throughout the rest of the bath house dungeon, because the module kept trying to do it's damn best to kill us all. The module doesn't even need any help from the DM to murder everyone. Another area of the Bath house dungeon had a hallway full of gas that would ignite from a torch and cause a cave in of rocks to crush the players. Fortunately our characters either had Darkvision or the Light spell, so we weren't using torches and didn't trigger that death trap.
My take away from our playthrough was that Descent into Avernus seemed to be designed for players who want a "hard mode setting". From the limitation on the amount of gold you can receive, resources found or obtained being limited, how the party can't really seem to take any kind of short rest through a dungeon/area when they desperately need it, and just how almost any enemy encounter can easily kill someone unless you made a very strong build.
It's like those video games where, instead of making the harder settings require some skill or lots of practice to complete that really challenges the player, but rather, bombards the players in such ways that the difficulty lies more in the area of unfair gameplay than trying to challenge the players' skills.
Bottom line, you probably will not want to use Descent into Avernus for regular players unless they have a very strong team composition, and absolutely do not use for new/inexperienced players.
Baldur's gate is dumb
*So you have chosen D E A T H* -
"I'm not talking about the game"
*So you have chosen L I F E*
Note from the future, at the time I posted this the video was titled "Baldur's Gate is Dumb."
I actually soloed the bandits. Nearly died doing it but I did. That said, it is not a well balanced encounter at all.
If you're starting as a fighter/barbarian/paladin it'll be a hard fight.
If you're anything else you're fucked.
Care to give some more details? There's like 6 or 7 of them, one of which has 50 hp. That's at least 100 hp to beat down, before level 3 so without any effective AoE spells. If we take you at your word that you soloed them that's also 7 to 1 in action economy. The only semi-reasonable explanation I'd have is that you managed to kill on the trash ones first turn after winning initative and nuking them with... a very lucky thunderwave (they all failed saves, did enough damage on 2d8 to kill), because DM positioned them in a way that made them all fit somehow? And than had unreasonable amount of luck against the strong one?
@@Linvael In all fairness I was a Draconic Sorcerer with a couple of lucky rolls. I used blur to force them to roll at disadvantage and with my dex capped out at 20 (I got very lucky with my rolls that game), it meant they had to get lucky to touch me. That plus sword burst and they started to get weakened. The big boss was the part where I almost died but I was able to shadowblade them with booming blade to burst them down. Mostly had to rely on blur and quickened spell. But it was a close fight and I barely got out of it alive.
If you want more context as to why I was doing it alone I would be happy to explain but it is a **long** story.
@@beckaldo8741 you had to be overleveled for the bandit fight. You are supposed to be level 1 and Blur is a 2nd level spell
@@jamesgaston2745 Yeah I was level 3. I guess then I was over leveled.
totally agree about the intro adventure, i started running this for a 50/50 split of veteran and new players at the start of the year and although the players had fun in the baldurs gate section, it was freakin miserable to run. The bathhouse zombie room is the worst. its really. bad.
elturel onwards seems fun so far though.
I plan on doing this campaign. The first 5 levels will take place in a homebrew village based on Baldur's Gate, and transition into Avernus which leads to the end of the campaign dealing with a villain I homebrew based on a hellfire Tiefling Fighter I played as
This makes Boo sad, you wouldn't like Boo when he's sad.
My dad would be pissed to see this (he loves baldur's gate)
So, I just finished my first ever D&D campaign, and it was Decent into Avernus. And I still remember the time that our fighter was double crit by the bandit captain in Elfsong during the first round of combat.
I love this series so damn much. Please, go through more modules that are out there. Have you ever tried the old TSR H series, Bloodstone? Its such a weird but amazing concept. Would love to watch your take on it.
I actually really like the beginning of the book. It's like Dark Souls for DnD. The fights are hard and metal AF. I think it sets the tone for going to hell later.
Ronald mcdonald says hello
Yo Mac
@@ruansasa289 yo
if you could only save your company or your gaming career, which would you save?
@@notanalien5496 i would nuke the earth if i had to make that choice
I am running this adventure and this video was a good warning about it, I did the Baldur's Gate section about learning a little bit about the city and the people they met would accompany them to make like a "Caravan" like in Diablo, to provide different bonuses as they go.
But I think the rest of the Avernus adventure looks pretty nice.
This is good to know to start at level 5 if I run this campaign. I did run Death House for my players in my COS campaign but it was renames "Durst Manor" and I followed the tips from Lunch Time DM and they really had a good time with it and it was a nice intro for them into the world, little hints at Strahd and that things aren't always clear cut.
OH boy! Cant wait to complain about the video based on title alone before watching!
Edit: fuc u its good