The Dungeon Masters Guild is a truly fantastic resource for 5th Edition games, and when it comes to supporting published campaigns utterly unique in the annals of the RPG industry. The ability to draw from and tap directly into Wizards of the Coast’s books is incredibly powerful, and it means that every time a new campaign comes out a whole flood of well-developed and professionally presented support material springs up.
While working on Descent Into Avernus, I made it a point to periodically survey the available material on the Guild and grab anything that looked interesting or potentially useful. (This was made possible by both my Patreon patrons and also those who click on the DriveThruRPG affiliate links here at the Alexandrian. I wouldn’t be able to justify this cash outlay without you, and as a result you’re supporting not only me, but also these other creators!)
Many of these books I have already recommended or referenced in the Remix itself. But I thought it might be useful to also offer up some capsule reviews of the various books and other products I looked at.
A few quick provisos before we begin:
- I’m generally aiming for a capsule review, which means just a very high overview of my thoughts/impressions of the book.
- Unless otherwise noted, none of these reviews represent actually playtesting the material.
- I was reading these books with a specific agenda: Can I use this in the Remix? I’ve not specifically reviewed or graded them with that in mind, but it’s probably worth your while to keep that bias in mind.
You may also want to review this Guide to Grades at the Alexandrian. The short version: My general philosophy is that 90% of everything is crap, and crap gets an F. I’m primarily interested in grading the 10% of the pile that’s potentially worth your time. Anything from A+ to C- is, honestly, worth checking out if the material sounds interesting to you. If I give something a D it’s pretty shaky. F, in my opinion, should be avoided entirely.
ELMINSTER’S CANDLEKEEP COMPANION: The Candlekeep Companion is great. Ed Greenwood himself does some writing on the book and served as a Creative Consultant, giving it a very impressive imprimatur. But where the Companion really excels is relentlessly keeping the focus on play-oriented material. In Part 4A: The Road to Candlekeep, I already described how the book’s delightful random tables can be used to instantly bring the PCs’ journey through the Castle of Tomes to life, and really the whole book is like that. It is constantly about what the PCs can do (or will want to do) in Candlekeep, what the DM needs to do to run those things at the table, and a nice set of tools to empower the DM while they’re doing it.
M.T. Black presents a “Director’s Cut” of the Candlekeep chapter from Descent Into Avernus that was actually what got me excited about buying the book, but I was ultimately underwhelmed by it. The scenario ends up just being a bunch of NPCs dragging the PCs around by the nose to little effect. There are a couple of ideas here (using the Prophecies of Alaundo to push the PCs towards Avernus and using the original gateway used for the Charge of the Hellriders to reach Avernus), but they both need a bit of TLC.
The book is rounded out with some PC character options that look very interesting to me (albeit with maybe a few too many dissociated divination mechanics for my taste) and a rich selection of original spells and magic items that just beg to be used ASAP.
Also of note is the absolutely gorgeous poster map of the castle by Marco Bernardini. The book is probably worth buying for this poster map all by itself, and I’ll almost certainly be hanging a copy of it on my wall when the PCs head to Candlekeep.
- Grade: B
SHIELD OF THE HIDDEN LORD: Written by M.T. Black, one of the co-authors of Descent Into Avernus, Shield of the Hidden Lord tweaks the continuity so that the Vanthampurs are still looking for the Shield. Following leads from Vanthampur Villa, the PCs can go racing to an abandoned temple beneath Hhune Villa and grab the shield first. I don’t really grok this hook: Since the PCs don’t find out about the Shield until the Villa, they won’t go looking for it until after the Villa… which mean the Vanthampurs have probably been eliminated and there’s no urgency in their search for the Shield. It would make a lot more sense, in my opinion, to seed the clues into the Dungeon of the Dead Three and then have the PCs race the Vanthampurs to get the Shield. (This would even allow you to add a Vanthampur delving team to the adventure.)
The design of the sealed temple is pretty good. The key is filled with a lot of evocative ideas. But it can be tricky to do a dungeon that’s been sealed up for a hundred years, and this unfortunately becomes clear as the adventure becomes overly dependent on creatures who have, totally coincidentally, all managed to accidentally stumble into the place within the last few weeks just before the PCs arrive.
I really don’t like the fact that the maps are only located as separate files (and not included in the PDF layout), but including versions both with and without numbers gets two huge thumbs up from me. (Hard to believe in an era of virtual tabletops people are still getting this wrong.)
Since the Remix gives the Shield of the Hidden Lord a different history, you’d obviously have some continuity issues here. With a little elbow grease (and some problem-solving) you could swap out the Shield in this adventure for the Tiamat relics.
- Grade: D
BALDUR’S GATE – THE FALL OF ELTUREL: The Fall of Elturel provides an alternative starting point for either Descent Into Avernus or Tyranny of Dragons. Conceptually it’s not bad: You start in Elturel, head out into the wilderness to deal with Tiamat cultists and Dead Three cultists, and go back to find Elturel a smoking crater in the ground. Along the way they stage several encounters with Elturgardians so that the PCs will have at least a light personal connection to the city’s inhabitants.
But there’s just nothing terribly exciting about the content, and the structure is problematic. The initial hook is weak and the adventure immediately saddles you with Reya Mantlemorn as a GMPC who constantly tells the PCs what they’re supposed to be doing at every single step (right down to prompting them for specific skill checks). If you’re going to use Reya later it makes sense to introduce her here, but doubling down on her as a railroading GMPC obviously doesn’t work.
It should also be noted that the adventure’s alternate hooks into Descent and Tyranny skip significant chunks of both campaigns. (The hook for Descent is only intended to skip a small chunk of material, but it missteps by immediately identifying Duke Vanthampur as being behind the Dead Three cultists, completely short-circuiting and/or deflating the whole first act.) These hooks are also completely incompatible with the Alexandrian Remix, so if you’re using the Remix I’d definitely skip this one.
- Grade: D
LULU’S GUIDE TO HOLLYPHANTS: Written by Kienna Shaw & Donathin Frye, I already recommended Lulu’s Guide to Hollyphants in the Remix because it includes a playable PC hollyphant race that will let one of your players take up the role of Lulu. The rest of the book is a little thin (although it does have a good selection of hollyphant NPC stats, including an evil variant, so you can easily add more of them to your campaign). The interpretation of hollyphants is quite twee and full of sparkles, which may limit the utility for you.
- Grade: D+
CHARACTER SHEET BY SHELBY ROSMYTH: Shelby Rosmyth designed a really nice Avernus-themed character sheet. I wouldn’t use it until the PCs actually head to Hell, but once there I think it will offer a really nice thematic feel at the table. The major drawback is the lack of equipment and spell list support, but the package does include a form-fillable PDF.
- Grade: B-
MARISA’S BLADES: Marisa’s Blades by Justin M. Cole came to my attention as being a tie-in for both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Descent Into Avernus, potentially serving as a bridge between those two campaigns. This turns out to not actually be the case, so the adventure was somewhat wrong-footed for me from the start. Cole does a very interesting job of taking elements from a lot of other DM’s Guild supplements and mixing them together into an original adventure (an approach which, in my opinion, enhances the value of both Marisa’s Blades and the other material). Unfortunately, the actual adventure itself is somewhat incoherent: Marisa’s brother has made a deal with a devil, so she arranges for their whole gang to be arrested by the PCs to “solve” this problem… only it’s not at all clear how it would solve anything. The tone is set early with one of the hooks: “Laeral Silverhand walks up to the party on the street.” That doesn’t quite work does it? Multiple hooks, though! That’s smart! Cole has a lot of potential, but this is, unfortunately, unusable.
- Grade: F
ABYSSAL INCURSION: The basic concept of Abyssal Incursion is that Avernus is the front line of the Blood War; thus demonic armies should constantly be pressuring the defensive lines of the Styx and occasionally making deep raids onto the Avernian plains. Thus we have three such demonic incursions designed to be injected into an Avernus-based campaign. Where the supplement excels is Introcaso’s creativity: A gargantuan, demonic worm that serves as a living troop transport/tank. A war barge that carries maze-gates linked to the Abyss which can spit out demon strike forces onto the banks of the Styx. These are fantastic concepts.
Where Abyssal Incursions comes up a bit short for me is its actual utility: Billed as a supplement for Descent Into Avernus (a campaign for 1st to 13th level characters), both Baphomet’s battle barge and Yeenoghu’s worm feature impossibly difficult demon armies. Despite this, they are both primarily (and almost exclusively) presented through the lens of combat. For example, the notes for roleplaying the CR 23 Baphomet (who is accompanied by a literal horde of demons and can summon even more three times per day) are: “Unless the characters find a way to gain the upper hand, the Horned King attacks them on sight.” and the story hooks include things like, “The characters want to kill … Baphomet.”
(And if the PCs do kill Baphomet, it causes the battle barge to immediately spit out three more demon hordes.)
This would be very useful for a higher level campaign in Avernus, however. (Or perhaps scenarios in which the PCs can gather a horde of their own to go demon hunting.) And, as of this writing, I’m planning to use the third incursion (a crashed elemental galleon from Eberron that’s crashed on the banks of the Styx) in my Avernian hexcrawl. So very much recommended.
- Grade: B-
I ran The Fall of Elturel before the rest of the remix with some slight modifications.
– Replaced the Dead Three cultists with Zariel cultists (to the eyes of the PCs, they just seemed like generic devil cultists at the time).
– Added an imp (who would have joined combat, but the PCs made such quick work of the cultists that instead it just went invisible and flew back to report to Thurstwell).
– Changed the note about Ultiss to not reference the Frolicking Nymph but instead say that he would have the treasure located by the time the Cult of the Dragon members met up with him.
– Added a note to a Zariel cultist leader about killing anyone who escaped from Elturel. It was signed by T.V. so as to not spoil the rest of chapter 1.
– Changed the description of the Companion and Elturel at the end to not specifically mention devils or Hell.
I’m glad I ran it because the refugees caravan part fizzled with my group, so The Fall of Elturel was our big level 1 accomplishment. They saw the refugees, decided it was more important to get to Baldur’s Gate quickly and report to them what had happened, and rode on. Checking my notes on what the caravan would have seen, I saw bandits were up next. This is my first time running 5e, and I balanced the bandits atrociously (lots of them and gave them terrain advantage at the start). One PC died, two PCs should have died but we hand-waved it because it was their second session playing 5e, and the rest turned tail and ran. We started the next session at level 2 outside Basilisk Gate.
What rating would you give Descent into Avernus itself?
@Giles: Good question! Checking my book log, I gave it a D.
Looking back, that was the same grade I gave Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I gave Dragon Heist a C- on the same scale.
@Keredy: Nice! Plan and backup plan! Content in depth!
I ran Fall of Elturel as a bridge between HotDQ and DiA, with some home brew added. I agree with your assessment. I skipped the wedding, and the rainbow scarfed NPC, and Reya, and the big meeting at the beginning with Ontharr Frume and pals. I kept the trek through the woods and the cultists, but made it an execution of the low level Dragon Cultists by some low level Dead Three Cultists as written, but my players don’t know the FR lore so they could have been Zarielites and I did not make it clear on purpose. I also substituted the letter with another one that I wrote that was instructing the higher level Dragon Cultists to go to BG to pick up their reward as agreed (the treasure), and for the lower level Dragon Cultists to go to this spot in the woods to pick up their reward, all praise to the Queen. I’ve also dropped hints that the PCs were railroaded by Zariel to kill the Dead Three cultists in BG, and steal the DC treasure to attract DC attention to them. They met Rezmir in BG who wanted the dragon masks from the treasure, and of course there was a fight that resulted in Rezmir’s death. Fun!!
Have you considered using any of the Adventurer’s League content in the campaign? Escape from Elturgard seems especially useful in introducing some refugees.
“the rainbow scarfed NPC”
A Doctor Who reference?
I am enjoying immensely reading this Remix and perusing your site. Fantastic systematic approach to GMing. Running Dragon Heist based on your Remix and although not really interested in the whole Hell and Heaven stuf, made me wanna run Decent as well. Made me think the following
You have expressed yourself on Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Keep on the Shadowfel as well. How about other modules of 5e? Curse of Stradh, Stomr Kings Thunder and so on.
I mostly wonder if they are just not worth your time bad or not worth the time because they are good enough
PS: I run Storm Kings Thunder. Needed to do some major revisions in timeline in order to make some character spontaneously sympathetics / unsympathetic to the PCs as well as foreshadowing, but really enjoying the sandboxy feelling it gives me
The DM’s Guiold Complete DM Bundle for DiA seems pretty good for a walk through and some other options and advice. I’m very impatiently awaiting the rest though! My players are in Hellturel already. 🙂
With these talks of grades and seeing how low your grades are on some books, I wonder: what book got an A from you?
@Firox From the “Guide to Grades at the Alexandrian” article linked near the top of this post;
“An A+, it should be noted, is reserved for a book which immediately finds its way onto my personal Top 50. That isn’t an exact science, since I don’t actually keep a precise Top 50 list, but if I’m giving a book an A+ its because I think it compares favorably with Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Kuttner’s Fury, Cherryh’s Cyteen, Howard’s Hour of the Dragon, Banks’ Use of Weapons, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Bujold’s Memory, or Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Take that as you will.”
I found Fall of Elturel to be a better start but did involve work. I found my players didn’t like the forced wonky start, or gel too well with the encounters, but very much enjoyed the forest section. I found it easy enough to pair with Fall of Elturgard caravan stuff, and also to then use the journey to BG as a way to get the party used to travel mechanics (as these will be important in Avernus). Dropped a homebrew ruined tower as a small plot point on the Knights of the Shield as well, to try and throw my party off the scent a little when the find the Shield of the Hidden Lord.
I am considering running Shield of the Hidden Lord, either as a “you guys need to remove this from the city”, or at the request of Thurstwell as I’m planning to have him attempt dealings with them to backstab his family. I did also amend the handouts in DoDt3, as they were too on the nose about Gargauth for my party, and there is a good chance as written they’d leave it behind as some of them are very holier than thou.
I’d be interested to know if there are any side quest modules you would rate to fit in en route to Candlekeep? I’m considering Tasha’s Kiss as both my party and I as DM enjoy a bit of horror in the game, and it gives the party an idea of how twisted and chaotic demons are in comparison to the devils and their worshippers encountered so far.
I don’t know if you’re concerned about completeness, but it looks like you haven’t given a capsule review of Encounters in Avernus. Looks like you endorse it, since you keyed it into the encounters table for the Hellturel point crawl.
I’ll appeal the Shield of the Hidden Lord’s D to a B. While I did rework it, most of us DMs tweak modules, it was fun. I respun it to occur after “Under the Villa”, so 5th level. Thalamra had already hired the Kneehigh Knights to retrieve the Shield for her. They discovered the locale while contracting with the Silverymoon sister archeologists (referenced in Troy Taylor’s Baldur’s Mouth DM’s Guild product), who dismissed the place, it was not Siamorphe’s Treasure Vault. The Kneehighs shopped their info about this lost Temple of the Hidden Lord on the Black Market, and Thalamra bit. I don’t have Gargauth a prime player in the Elturel scheme, he has been locked up by the Hhune’s for decades, but Zariel wants him back as a powerful thrall. Gargauth wants none of that, nor or the Knights of the Shield.
His worship by them way back then fostered a demigodhood that created a demiplane within the Shield under his control. Those sacrificed to him and those killed near him are drawn into his realm, his “paradise”. He wants to get out of the Shield so his realm can manifest in the outer plans as a true godly plane. Inselm Hhune’s insanity perverted the Knights of the Shield beyond even Gargauth’s tolerance and Gargauth retreated into his demiplane, filled with souls he has given an illusionary afterlife to, and he busies himself fostering this society of his. When Inslem Hhune’s daughter killed him, and magically and physically sealed the Hhune Crypt, Gargauth was trapped.
The Kneehigh Knights broke that magic seal, caused an earthquake that opened cracks into the Temple that creatures crept into, and Gargauth had his chance to escape; he unleased loyal spirits from his realm to posses the dead Hhunes and bear him out, but two of the Kneehigh Knights managed get him out while their cleric and paladin held back the ghouls.
Three other Kneehighs had perished already. When the two returned to Thalamra with the Shield and tales of the library down there, she took one of them prisoner and made the other escort her allied incubus, Iuzakor, a bearded devil, and a few cultists back to research Gargauth and his defunct cult, while she and Thavius figure out what to do with Gargauth.
Gargauth was not expecting to be faced with a Zarielite planning to subjugate him. So when the PCs find him and Thavius, he wants to go with them before Thalamra and Thurstwell can figure out how to magically bind him to Zariel. The PCs rescued the imprisoned Kneehigh, Falaster, and Satir Thione-Hhune, who collectively convey that Candlekeep is their best bet to figure things out, they need rare books to get in, there is an old library in the Temple of the Hidden Lord with such books, and that the Shield was cursed and needs to be kept out of the city. Gargauth has been sending spirits out since the seal was broken, but they can only posses corpses, not the living (for long), so he agrees Candlekeep may give him an opportunity to learn more about escaping and keeping his realm intact.
One of the PCs is a cleric of the same god as the Kneehigh paladin, and his patron had heard the Kneehigh Knights took a job for Duke Vanthampur, so when the diabolical dealings of the Duke were revealed, she tasked the PC with helping them out if he came upon them. That help became recovering their bodies, and their magic items, from the ghoul infested crypt.
They turned Thalamra over to Zodge, but instead of bringing her to justice, Zodge made a deal with her, and subsequently Liara Potyr, and framed the PCs, (well they technically betrayed him first, but they had already grown suspicious of him), so they had to flee to Candlekeep knowing that Liara was to become Grand Duke, Zodge head of the Flaming Fist, and diabolic Duke Vanthampur pulling the strings. They will discover why at Candlekeep, and need to bring back Grand Duke Ravengard before Liara can enact a Loyalty Pledge for Baldur’s Gate citizens…
Iuzakor escaped Ethereally after they attacked him, but he saw them with the Shield, and had gotten them to share that they needed books to get into Candlekeep, so he now spires upon them.
The lost temple and its library offered some role play and lore collection.
So I just looked at the Fall of Elturel, and I don’t get the last text box. Can all of that really be seen from 10 miles away?
Any chance for a Chains of Asmodeus review? Maybe ideas for how to link it to the Avernus Remix?