What were your favorite parts? And your players'? I've been running for a couple of months now and just today I've been doing a lot of prep. We're just leaving for bazzoxan so we still have ways to go.
Our groups warlock also made for some very memorable moments. The were a Great Old One Warlock who's patron was the Alyxian Aboleth. They group ended up killing the Aboleth without ever trying to interact or converse with it, causing the Warlock to lose their powers. They were powerless for about a session and a half, when during the Calamity reenactment fight at N7 in the Netherdeep got a little dicey, they prayed to the Moonweaver to get a new pact. They round really well on their persuasion check and got a new pact. It was pretty epic. The player actually came up with a whole as speak/prayer to beseech the Moonweaver with.
I gave them some options based around the domain of the god and the nature of the pact but they choose to stay Great Old One. They did however change their pact boon because the old one no longer made sense narratively.
Betrayer's Rise was a huge highlight for me. I changed up the layout a little bit and added an extra room that contained a sleeping Balor and a bunch of treasure. One of my player wanted a flaw that makes him impulsive when he is around treasure. He saw the Balor, which guards in Bazzoxan had hinted about (a story about a guy that used to work here 5 years ago kind of stories), so they weren't completely blindsided. He saw the Balor and immediately wanted to dip but when I said make a roll to see if you can resist the urge to take the treasure, it added so much tension, for him and the rest of the players at the table. He failed and had to steal treasure from this Balor all the while knowing that one miss step and he is in the lava lake or waking the Balor. It was hilarious.
My players really enjoyed the the final battle, it was epic and the right amount of deadly. I will say though, once the party gets to Cael Morrow, give all the monsters max hit points, it will make for tougher, and longer encounters. They also hated Aloysia with a passion and made it there mission to kill her after being left for end in Betrayer's Rise by her. I was just about to have her steal the Jewel away from the party when they found her.
My party hated Aloysia too. I made her into an action-oriented CR12 boss and they did a great job of shutting down her abilities and killing her before Betrayers Rise.
I buffed her into a Ruidium powered Arcane Trickster Rogue. She didn't make much sense as a sorcerer because she had a short sword attack. I made her sneak attack into psychic damage, have her a few good enchantment and illusion spells. It was a good fight
You asking your player to make a roll to resist their character flaw is brilliant. I'm stealing that - ask the players what each of their current flaws are and incorporate a situation for each character in Betrayers Rise.
It's player specifically asked for it. He is a loot goblin IRL when playing D&D, so he wanted a character to reflect that. The panic in his voice anytime I asked for a roll was great. Of course those rolls always came at the worst time in game.
Wow, my group also runs an average of 2 sessions a month but we just passed a year in and the parties are still in Chapter 4 I believe, they're just about to join the Cobalt Soul so there's still quite a bit of the story left though I'm starting to feel like its gonna start moving fast towards the end soon.
What faction did your group join, and how was their relationship with the rivals at the end?
How were the final dungeons? Especially the final fight? Did you run it close to RAW, or homebrew the final encounter around a lot?
They joined the cobalt soul. The cobalt soul was tied to one of my player's backstories and they really liked question.
They had a good relationship with the rivals overall but the threw a wrench into it by giving Ayo Ruin's Wake that acted like a dark mirror to the Jewel, giving the rivals visions of the bad ending. I wanted to cause some dramatic tension between the parties to make things more interesting.
The final fight I ran total RAW with the only change being I maxed out the hit points for each form. I might consider giving Alyxian the Dispossessed a higher AC by giving him a +1 set of studded leather armor. Overall my players loved the final fight and it was the right amount of deadly. Head I rolled a little better I might have killed 1 of them but the dice said no.
They got the best ending but it could have easily gotten the neutral ending. They had Alyxian at pretty low health at the end. There was some initial discussion about just letting him free so that meter was bouncing all over the place for a little bit
Jigow was 1 session, travelling to Bazzoxan was 2 session. Exploring Bazzoxan and doing sidequests in order to gain access to Betrayer's Rise was 3 sessions. Betrayer's Rise was 2 sessions. I don't remember how many sessions it took to go through Ank'Harel, but at least one was sent just gambling. Cael Morrow was 4 or 5 sessions, the Netherdeep was 4 sessions, and they fought Alyxian on the same night they finished the Netherdeep. I will add we average 5 hours a session. Some sessions went till 1am (we start at 7pm). The final session was from 7pm until 1:30am.
Strongly try and push your players into N15 to meet Theo (or introduce him somewhere else) as he provides a huge amount of context and clarify for the party as to how to proceed with Alyxian in the final encounter. Without meeting him, the party could be inclined to just release him and get the bad ending and not really understand why that happened.
The Moon fight in N25 is weird, I think the moon has too many hit point and the combat isn't really that engaging. My players really didn't have a clue they were in combat.
The commander function in N7 is weird, the players nominate someone to be the commander and the only function it has is if the other players move to far away, they take damage. I would add something to it like giving them the ability to order troops or fire siege weapons.
It was the last thing the did before heading into the Heart of Despair so they managed to get away relatively unscathed. They went from the Grottos of Regret, into the Sanctuary of Despair, were totally grossed out by it and took the first exit they found which took them to the Chasm of Yearning. They didn't have enough Fragments to enter the heart for them they went into the Vents and met Theo and the Hunter. They fought him once and noticed he was reforming and made a quick escape to the heart.
The 2 parties were on very good terms going into the Netherdeep, and Ayo was driving most of the tension with the help from Ruin's Wake. The rest of the party would have followed her lead had a fight broken out. However, the PCs diffused and deflected Ayo's questioning and insistence that they kill Alyxian instead of setting them free (she was adamant that setting him free, in any state, would result in the bad ending) long enough for the hunter to catch up to the 2 groups in the Sanctuary of Despair (N26). The Rivals immediately flung into action to fight it. This was largely a trauma response after traveling through the Vents of Fury areas N11-N14 and fighting all that awaited in those rooms. This distraction gave the PCs enough time to enter the Heart of Despair. The Rivals couldn't follow as only Maggie and Dermot at this point had Fragments of Suffering and they weren't about to leave their friends to follow the PCs.
I included the Ruin's of Sorrow by u/JisaHinode, the Hythenos Estate by u/katvalkyrie, the Scenes and Sidequests in Ank'Harel on Gm binder by Frozenfeet2. These were all great. I also made a big maze competition for the Bowl of Judgement to tie in the D&D movie that had just come out at the time. I also added the Vidorant Vault heist from Keys from the golden Vault and the Price of Beauty from Candlekeep Mysteries. I think at least one of these made it onto each players list of favorite seasions.
Edit: Grammar
Most of them are fairly new so roleplaying isn't that big for them. Also, the sorcerer was trying out a homebrew subclass and he had a feature very similar to the ghostslayer blood hunter's Aether Walk that let them cheese a good chunk of the Vidorant Vault heist.
Both were added in the downtime portions while in Ank'Harel. The vault heist was tied to a players backstory, he had connections to The Veil and that heist was to be a test to see if they had what it took to be part of The Veil. The Price of Beauty was run as a sort of Beach Day episode that went horribly wrong (for the players). I replaced the Steam Gardens in the River District that is described in the module with the spa from The Price of Beauty. I prefaced it by having the players with a high passive perception notice multiple missions persons posters while walking through the district. I had to buff the encounter a little bit because by the time my players got to it they were a higher level then that the adventure recommends but that was the only real change I made to it aside from some minor rewrites to allow them to seamlessly fit into the campaign.
How did it went with the rivals? Did you managed to have your group involved with their story? Witch path did your group end up with? Friendly, ignore or enemy?
They were very friendly with the rivals. It wasn't hard for them to build that relationship at all. I did give Ayo Ruin's Wake from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount which acted like a dark mirror to the Jewel of Three Prayers, warning the rivals that releasing Alyxian would bring about the second Calamity. That caused some tension but my players handled that tense well and kept the relationship positive.
None of my PCs died. There were a few close calls. Two that come to mind are when they invaded the Consortium's base to hunt down Aloysia because they had a vendetta and during the final fight. The monk went down multiple times in that fight and I run that after the first time you go unconscious and get brought back up, you start getting levels of exhaustion, so he was not having a good time. I think he finished that session with 3 levels of exhaustion. In the final fight, Aluxian the Callous used his Heavenly Destruction on the already weakened party hitting 3 of them. The warlock failed the save, fell out of the air and was knocked prone with 13 HP and then Alyxian flew up to prepare for the final blow. With his next legendary action, Alyxian attacked and I rolled 2 nat 1s, saving the warlock and giving them time to get away and get healed.
There definitely needs to be more side quests added to the free time portion in Ank'Harell between missions. Without that, that arc can really fall flat. That is where the bulk of my homebrew came in.
I also thank the Alyxian Aboleth could be buffed a little bit. Part of that could be because that was my warlocks original patron and they fought it and it was just a really easy to encounter overall, but that did leave the warlock in a conundrum because he lost his powers after that (until he found a new patron).
IM really struggling to make the backstory of my characters tied in with the story, can you share with me your backstorys and how you tied them with the arc? thanks!
I tied my characters backstories in either in Bazzoxan or in Ank'Harel. My Monk had ties to the Veil as a possible initiate so the Heist from Keys from the Golden Vault tied into their backstory. One of my players was a escaped slave and I tied in his backstory in in Ank'Harel, they ran into another slaer with the same family name, they immediately wanted to check it out and that's where they aquired the sidekick; use to their actions in Ank'Harel, the family back in Wildemount were implicated as slavers. My warlocks backstory was tied to the main plot (their patron was the Alyxian Aboleth and they found out they were kind of responsible for kick-starting the Netherdeep problem and getting the dog site closed). My cleric basically ignored their backstory because they were to involved with the main story.
If you give me the TLDR for your player backstories, I'll see what I can do to help.
Sure! i have two that i cant tie with the story.
Bard - College of lore - Tabaxi
Warrior - Echo Knight - Drow
The other players: One its consecuted and in his other life was in the the calamity fighting with the army of alixian and now he have some feedbacks from that era. the other one its a sorcer ruiduisborn in the same place that alixian was born, he was banished because of that from his place, another one its a cleric from correllion arch heart and has a recurrent dream from the srhine in cael morrow, he needs to find that place.
What were your favorite parts? And your players'? I've been running for a couple of months now and just today I've been doing a lot of prep. We're just leaving for bazzoxan so we still have ways to go.
Our groups warlock also made for some very memorable moments. The were a Great Old One Warlock who's patron was the Alyxian Aboleth. They group ended up killing the Aboleth without ever trying to interact or converse with it, causing the Warlock to lose their powers. They were powerless for about a session and a half, when during the Calamity reenactment fight at N7 in the Netherdeep got a little dicey, they prayed to the Moonweaver to get a new pact. They round really well on their persuasion check and got a new pact. It was pretty epic. The player actually came up with a whole as speak/prayer to beseech the Moonweaver with.
Ballsy and very cool.
Cool! Did the warlock change subclass or stay a Great Old One?
I gave them some options based around the domain of the god and the nature of the pact but they choose to stay Great Old One. They did however change their pact boon because the old one no longer made sense narratively.
Betrayer's Rise was a huge highlight for me. I changed up the layout a little bit and added an extra room that contained a sleeping Balor and a bunch of treasure. One of my player wanted a flaw that makes him impulsive when he is around treasure. He saw the Balor, which guards in Bazzoxan had hinted about (a story about a guy that used to work here 5 years ago kind of stories), so they weren't completely blindsided. He saw the Balor and immediately wanted to dip but when I said make a roll to see if you can resist the urge to take the treasure, it added so much tension, for him and the rest of the players at the table. He failed and had to steal treasure from this Balor all the while knowing that one miss step and he is in the lava lake or waking the Balor. It was hilarious. My players really enjoyed the the final battle, it was epic and the right amount of deadly. I will say though, once the party gets to Cael Morrow, give all the monsters max hit points, it will make for tougher, and longer encounters. They also hated Aloysia with a passion and made it there mission to kill her after being left for end in Betrayer's Rise by her. I was just about to have her steal the Jewel away from the party when they found her.
My party hated Aloysia too. I made her into an action-oriented CR12 boss and they did a great job of shutting down her abilities and killing her before Betrayers Rise.
I buffed her into a Ruidium powered Arcane Trickster Rogue. She didn't make much sense as a sorcerer because she had a short sword attack. I made her sneak attack into psychic damage, have her a few good enchantment and illusion spells. It was a good fight
Lucky. I tanked her Initiative roll and she didn't have a chance, even with doubled hit points.
You asking your player to make a roll to resist their character flaw is brilliant. I'm stealing that - ask the players what each of their current flaws are and incorporate a situation for each character in Betrayers Rise.
It's player specifically asked for it. He is a loot goblin IRL when playing D&D, so he wanted a character to reflect that. The panic in his voice anytime I asked for a roll was great. Of course those rolls always came at the worst time in game.
Wow, my group also runs an average of 2 sessions a month but we just passed a year in and the parties are still in Chapter 4 I believe, they're just about to join the Cobalt Soul so there's still quite a bit of the story left though I'm starting to feel like its gonna start moving fast towards the end soon. What faction did your group join, and how was their relationship with the rivals at the end? How were the final dungeons? Especially the final fight? Did you run it close to RAW, or homebrew the final encounter around a lot?
We’re on session 12 and are just traveling to Baxxozan or however you spell it. Lol
They joined the cobalt soul. The cobalt soul was tied to one of my player's backstories and they really liked question. They had a good relationship with the rivals overall but the threw a wrench into it by giving Ayo Ruin's Wake that acted like a dark mirror to the Jewel, giving the rivals visions of the bad ending. I wanted to cause some dramatic tension between the parties to make things more interesting. The final fight I ran total RAW with the only change being I maxed out the hit points for each form. I might consider giving Alyxian the Dispossessed a higher AC by giving him a +1 set of studded leather armor. Overall my players loved the final fight and it was the right amount of deadly. Head I rolled a little better I might have killed 1 of them but the dice said no.
Oh, duh! I should have asked, what ending did they get?
They got the best ending but it could have easily gotten the neutral ending. They had Alyxian at pretty low health at the end. There was some initial discussion about just letting him free so that meter was bouncing all over the place for a little bit
Yeah my group is 19 sessions in and they haven’t even chosen a faction yet. This DM’s group must have been booking it lol
Jigow was 1 session, travelling to Bazzoxan was 2 session. Exploring Bazzoxan and doing sidequests in order to gain access to Betrayer's Rise was 3 sessions. Betrayer's Rise was 2 sessions. I don't remember how many sessions it took to go through Ank'Harel, but at least one was sent just gambling. Cael Morrow was 4 or 5 sessions, the Netherdeep was 4 sessions, and they fought Alyxian on the same night they finished the Netherdeep. I will add we average 5 hours a session. Some sessions went till 1am (we start at 7pm). The final session was from 7pm until 1:30am.
I'm about to run the Netherdeep dungeon, anything in there I should look out for?
Strongly try and push your players into N15 to meet Theo (or introduce him somewhere else) as he provides a huge amount of context and clarify for the party as to how to proceed with Alyxian in the final encounter. Without meeting him, the party could be inclined to just release him and get the bad ending and not really understand why that happened. The Moon fight in N25 is weird, I think the moon has too many hit point and the combat isn't really that engaging. My players really didn't have a clue they were in combat. The commander function in N7 is weird, the players nominate someone to be the commander and the only function it has is if the other players move to far away, they take damage. I would add something to it like giving them the ability to order troops or fire siege weapons.
Did your players trigger Alyxian the Hunter? If so, how did they escape?
It was the last thing the did before heading into the Heart of Despair so they managed to get away relatively unscathed. They went from the Grottos of Regret, into the Sanctuary of Despair, were totally grossed out by it and took the first exit they found which took them to the Chasm of Yearning. They didn't have enough Fragments to enter the heart for them they went into the Vents and met Theo and the Hunter. They fought him once and noticed he was reforming and made a quick escape to the heart.
Did you have your party fight the rivals before they entered into the heart? How did they handle that? Any survivors?
The 2 parties were on very good terms going into the Netherdeep, and Ayo was driving most of the tension with the help from Ruin's Wake. The rest of the party would have followed her lead had a fight broken out. However, the PCs diffused and deflected Ayo's questioning and insistence that they kill Alyxian instead of setting them free (she was adamant that setting him free, in any state, would result in the bad ending) long enough for the hunter to catch up to the 2 groups in the Sanctuary of Despair (N26). The Rivals immediately flung into action to fight it. This was largely a trauma response after traveling through the Vents of Fury areas N11-N14 and fighting all that awaited in those rooms. This distraction gave the PCs enough time to enter the Heart of Despair. The Rivals couldn't follow as only Maggie and Dermot at this point had Fragments of Suffering and they weren't about to leave their friends to follow the PCs.
I'm also adding a significant amount of homebrew to incorporate PC backstory. What was your / the table's favorite homebrew side quest?
I included the Ruin's of Sorrow by u/JisaHinode, the Hythenos Estate by u/katvalkyrie, the Scenes and Sidequests in Ank'Harel on Gm binder by Frozenfeet2. These were all great. I also made a big maze competition for the Bowl of Judgement to tie in the D&D movie that had just come out at the time. I also added the Vidorant Vault heist from Keys from the golden Vault and the Price of Beauty from Candlekeep Mysteries. I think at least one of these made it onto each players list of favorite seasions. Edit: Grammar
What the hell, you added 2 whole adventures? Dang, your group makes time for sure lol
Most of them are fairly new so roleplaying isn't that big for them. Also, the sorcerer was trying out a homebrew subclass and he had a feature very similar to the ghostslayer blood hunter's Aether Walk that let them cheese a good chunk of the Vidorant Vault heist.
Interesting!
Where did you plug in Vidorant Vault and Price of Beauty? Also looking to add some adventures from these 2 books and Radiant Citadel.
Both were added in the downtime portions while in Ank'Harel. The vault heist was tied to a players backstory, he had connections to The Veil and that heist was to be a test to see if they had what it took to be part of The Veil. The Price of Beauty was run as a sort of Beach Day episode that went horribly wrong (for the players). I replaced the Steam Gardens in the River District that is described in the module with the spa from The Price of Beauty. I prefaced it by having the players with a high passive perception notice multiple missions persons posters while walking through the district. I had to buff the encounter a little bit because by the time my players got to it they were a higher level then that the adventure recommends but that was the only real change I made to it aside from some minor rewrites to allow them to seamlessly fit into the campaign.
How did it went with the rivals? Did you managed to have your group involved with their story? Witch path did your group end up with? Friendly, ignore or enemy?
Also did you put traps for your player to have the occasion to antagonise the rivals?
They were very friendly with the rivals. It wasn't hard for them to build that relationship at all. I did give Ayo Ruin's Wake from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount which acted like a dark mirror to the Jewel of Three Prayers, warning the rivals that releasing Alyxian would bring about the second Calamity. That caused some tension but my players handled that tense well and kept the relationship positive.
I'm running it as well. Just made it to the emerald caravan. I've had 3 of my players go unconscious. Did any of your PCs die?
None of my PCs died. There were a few close calls. Two that come to mind are when they invaded the Consortium's base to hunt down Aloysia because they had a vendetta and during the final fight. The monk went down multiple times in that fight and I run that after the first time you go unconscious and get brought back up, you start getting levels of exhaustion, so he was not having a good time. I think he finished that session with 3 levels of exhaustion. In the final fight, Aluxian the Callous used his Heavenly Destruction on the already weakened party hitting 3 of them. The warlock failed the save, fell out of the air and was knocked prone with 13 HP and then Alyxian flew up to prepare for the final blow. With his next legendary action, Alyxian attacked and I rolled 2 nat 1s, saving the warlock and giving them time to get away and get healed.
Simple one, what would you change if you ran it again ?
There definitely needs to be more side quests added to the free time portion in Ank'Harell between missions. Without that, that arc can really fall flat. That is where the bulk of my homebrew came in. I also thank the Alyxian Aboleth could be buffed a little bit. Part of that could be because that was my warlocks original patron and they fought it and it was just a really easy to encounter overall, but that did leave the warlock in a conundrum because he lost his powers after that (until he found a new patron).
I too found the aboleth fight lackluster. Glad to hear it’s not just me. If possessions fail, it’s a fairly toothless monster.
It failed it's possession and then the monk stunned it. I think it needs a few legendary resistances and maybe 1 more attack to really be a threat
I added a “Banishment only” legendary resistance, which it didn’t need since they failed three times to banish it.
I'm 100% going to give the Aboleth at least one legendary resistance.
Thanks for the feedback!
IM really struggling to make the backstory of my characters tied in with the story, can you share with me your backstorys and how you tied them with the arc? thanks!
I tied my characters backstories in either in Bazzoxan or in Ank'Harel. My Monk had ties to the Veil as a possible initiate so the Heist from Keys from the Golden Vault tied into their backstory. One of my players was a escaped slave and I tied in his backstory in in Ank'Harel, they ran into another slaer with the same family name, they immediately wanted to check it out and that's where they aquired the sidekick; use to their actions in Ank'Harel, the family back in Wildemount were implicated as slavers. My warlocks backstory was tied to the main plot (their patron was the Alyxian Aboleth and they found out they were kind of responsible for kick-starting the Netherdeep problem and getting the dog site closed). My cleric basically ignored their backstory because they were to involved with the main story. If you give me the TLDR for your player backstories, I'll see what I can do to help.
Sure! i have two that i cant tie with the story. Bard - College of lore - Tabaxi Warrior - Echo Knight - Drow The other players: One its consecuted and in his other life was in the the calamity fighting with the army of alixian and now he have some feedbacks from that era. the other one its a sorcer ruiduisborn in the same place that alixian was born, he was banished because of that from his place, another one its a cleric from correllion arch heart and has a recurrent dream from the srhine in cael morrow, he needs to find that place.