Baldur's Gate (Descent into Avernus) is Dumb 

I like how Baldurs Gate III starts in Avernus, and Descent into Avernus starts in Baldurs Gate.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Should've prolly just named this "The Intro to Descent into Avernus is Dumb".

The main reason to play this now, is to have a homebrewed Karlach to appear for your players.

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."

"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."

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 :)

I’m literally starting Descent into Avernus tonight

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

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.

In conclusion, Play Waterdeep: Dragonhiest: Decent into Avernus.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

I like the idea of starting out like a standard D&D game and then ooopsing into Hell.

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!

Getting to meet an otter wizard is best reward coming out from running through this heck of the introductory level imo.

me who literally bought baldurs gate 3 less than 5 minutes ago lol

You're playing with fire with that title, wizard ain't gonna like that, only he plays with fire.

"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)

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Skipping Baldur's Gate and starting at lvl5 in Elturel was literally what I did

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.

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

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.

I’m starting my party out as hell riders stationed just outside of elturel while it is sucked down into hell

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.

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.

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!

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.

A puzzle box that leads you to hell, I wonder where they could've got that idea from?

Hi, first time poster on this channel and I've enjoyed a lot of the content. That said, I've been running this campaign for a year now and we're still in Baldur's Gate. So far my players seem to be having a good time. That said, I do agree that out of the box it has issues with balance and motivation. That is why a good session 0 and interweaving character stories becomes pretty important. I've had to go off script a good bit, but thankfully I enjoy doing that. I also had the players one level ahead of where they were supposed to be and they've been doing just fine. Granted, I've also been extra lenient when it comes to clever solutions. They survived The Elven Song by a well placed Silent Image ended up cutting the pirate encounter in half for just long enough. I'd also recommend that DMs new to running this take a look at the "Alexandrian Remix" I've taken some great ideas from there. If I had to start over I'd probably use that intro setup instead.

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

When you've already started running Baldur's Gate and you see this video...

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!

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."

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.

I know it's not necessary but I feel like if the intro adventure can be fixed, it could actually make the campaign even cooler... So here's how I would fix it: The Cultists are in league with Zuriel and are trying to bring as much of the city into Hell as possible. To do this, they're using the various puzzle boxes as one way tickets to open the portals/gateways into hell and take the city in. Drop the family altogether as they have dumb motivation. The Pirates are either in the Cultists pocket or are part of the Cult themselves. Have the Captain be a high ranking member of the cult even and they're looking for Tarina not because of a petty squabble but because she stole the Puzzle Box which she has mistaken to be a normal treasure box with some sort of valuable gem or item she can sell on the black market. The Box now becomes the thing that matters so even if Tarina dies, if the Group can run off with the Box, it's not so bad and also give them the ability to open the box with either a skill check using Investigation, Sleight of Hand, or using Arcana or Religion since the box is clearly magic and related to Demons. Now the group can decide whether to go find the rest of the Cultists, open the box to Hell, or Both with a warning. The dungeon can be tweaked by making the traps and encounters more manageable with the excuse being these are the dregs of the Cult who are waiting for their turn to Descend themselves or are here to guard in case a troupe of adventurers show up. Simple fix but you can still obviously just start in hell as a level 5 group.

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.

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).

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*

I love the choice of music when describing the bathhouse dungeon. Really good job 👍🏻

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.

During the part where you described the Dungeon of the Dead Three, I started panicking even though my players already beat the dungeon fine

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.

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

I was running this adventure before the pandemic put it on indefinite hiatus (I couldn't get the players onboard with online play). I don't know if it was the skill level of my players or the fact that I was including my own additional encounters and bonus roleplay experience points to accelerate their level advancement slightly, or maybe the dice gods were just on their side, but they had very little difficulty making it through the encounters you described in this video. In fact, I was worried that the game was too easy and not satsifying enough. Party composition was: Yuan-ti Pureblood Fighter (Battle master), variant human fighter (gunslinger), variant human paladin, variant human blood hunter, and high elf druid. If you want to give the players hooks and motivation for their characters, I would highly recommend that groups use the Dark Secret option described in the Baldur's Gate Gazeteer at the end of the book. If you use it well, such as by having captain Zodge be aware of the secret and using it to blackmail the PCs, it can pull a lot of weight. It may also provide a basis for additional encounters and scenarios for the DM to include. In my case, I had the players discover a conspiracy when they walked in on a group of mind flayers taking control of one of the city's patriars. The mind flayers then became a background menace that would pop up now and again, using their secret influence over key members of the government to track the party down.

Ooff, that ad is something...

Are you ever gonna do more of the class history videos?

I like this video format much more than the others. Is there going to be more of this type of video.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ah, another video started with a song.

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.

We started this campaign at level 1 in Baldur's Gate (two seshes in Hell so far). The Baldur's Gate Intro is actually great for character building. Our personalities and development are pretty set now at level 6, and the dynamic is way more fun. Though, I will say, the Doom Box shite did get a bit overcomplicated for being essentially unessential. None of us have died, and our DM didn't hold back (we did have 5 players though, maybe the difference). Can't wait to really get into Avernus and experience the epic part of the story. Good video as usual, thanks for the content.

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.

I actually soloed the bandits. Nearly died doing it but I did. That said, it is not a well balanced encounter at all.

Ronald mcdonald says hello

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.

I ran this as my first foray into D&D, and was confused when you mentioned the Baldur's Gate part because our DM did not run that part at all and did indeed have us in Elturel when the Descent happened. Now I see why.

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)

6:30 - My DM gave us an Orc fighter as a help for that fight, because I critted on Persuation. There's also a living armor downstairs (no idea if that was in the script or not), but we didn't use it. What I remember was the DM fudging the dungeon, because the witch cultist had fireball and the end boss was super broken too, apparently.

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.

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.

OH boy! Cant wait to complain about the video based on title alone before watching! Edit: fuc u its good

4:35 Oh so this is why I keep on having my party die accidentally in lost mines of phandelver

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.

BETTER NOT BE TALKING ABOUT THE GAME