Chains of Asmodeus Review | Nerd Immersion 

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And back to the hells you go.

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If you ever feel like it, have a second generation adventure with this book to keep in your back pocket or the reverse where Asmodeus found a way to stop the blood war and has a full scale invasion on the mortal plane

@@lasonris8934 Thanks for the suggestion, but I feel like I have given them enough Hell. 😄

This would explain a lot!

This or i thought about that Hasbro is not okey with Devil and Hell stuff - because toy/kids company does not want to upset the christian community…

@@ringhofnope, descent into avernus

@@codymarshall587 true!

​@@ringhofthey're comfortable enough tackling slavery and demons in Out of the Abyss. They definitely aren't worried about Hell and Devils.

They are in middle of a press tour for other stuff. I think they might cover it when their current press tour stuff is done. Not like they need to sell a bunch of copies opening week. They can wait.

Idk, I was under the impression Hasbro/Wotc were struggling with the IP. Its a strange business move to not push this forward to the front page. Especially with the Book of Many things blunder@@Alex-pu5dx

Far from it. Starter kit, ROT, COS, Xanathar and Yawning Portal should be the standards. Minsc and boo was great for crunch that got skimmed, but bulk of chains is a sore disappointment RAW almost as much as Radiant Cidadel and Spelljammer content was. At least for Phleg, Stygia and Cania, the challenges are already easy for 4 man party 2-3 levels lower than recommended level and bulk of DCs is in the 12-16 range except for the archdevils that are pale imitations on threat level to the Demon Lords from Out of the Abyss and MTF after CR adjustment.

Yeah this is basically just what you're looking for

I don’t see this “op spells” as an argument. First of all, they do not have to put the FEW spells that are too strong or complicated ( hello Simulacrum ). Second, it’s not like we have ALL the spells from 1-6 anyway. I think it caps at lvl 12 because that’s what most adventures stop at (11-13).

@@valentinrafael9201 It isn't just spells that are an issue, but other abilities, power scaling, narrative focus, game length, etc. Basically all the same problems DMs have with higher-tier play beyond just throwing down with strong monsters lol.

@@valentinrafael9201 Well you could just cast regenerate on Karlach and completely invalidate most of the conflict of her storyline

@@RnGDuvallDivine Intervention for healing is already accessible, so its not like we don't have solutions to the problem in BG3 already.

they cant keep just making the game. at some point you need, as a project, to determine what teh scope wil be. IT would probably be years more to add another 8 or so levels of content, etc. EVen older D&D based games were broken up into multiple games (bg series, gold box, etc)

I had a Styx Dragon in my home game a few weeks back but I didn't have a statblock since I didn't know it exists 😅

@@backonlazer791 Haha, always happens like that. Our group ran a whole adventure with Zariel as the BBEG, a year before the Descent into Avernus book came out. Would have been dope to have some of those stat blocks.

Print on Demand is promised soon.

What is print on demand?

I'm already planning to DM adventure for my high lvl characters in outlands/sigil with heaven vs hell war and all those books releasing really come in handy

A module that reprints a good portion of 'Mordenkainen's Tomb of Foes.' That was published in 2018 and delisted in 2022. How convenient.

@@josephpurdy8390 If you meant "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes", there's basically no overlap with it except for a couple of stat blocks (and you're referred to "Monsters of the Multiverse", so they don't take up page count). Everything else is new, all nearly 300 pages of it. It's INCREDIBLE.

@@tibot4228 I just love watching cynics being wrong.

Shame that bulk of baseline encounters except for the final (optional) layer encounters (cant diss the fire-tentacles and oozefire even if they are optional) and 2 of the origin sin "puzzle" fights are between trivial to low end medium difficulty to compensate for badly balanced encounter tables that most likely wont even bother rolling for, making the recommended levels 2-3 higher than actually needed, corruption doesnt do jack if party doesnt intentionally fuck up or forget their patron group, magic items are by bulk shit short of the hut ring, ice rapier as elemental sorc buff source on a sorcadin, dispaters poke stick as replacement healblock weapon if one cant get a wounding (or on a fighter) and OHKO 10 min polymorph-bait based knife (no, rest of artifacts might be upgrades, but by core function are 2 non-attunement items+1 attunement worthy effect combined like how the ruby rod of asmodeus is a shitty +2 and best in the hands of a cleric to get extra lower aoe nova spells and compensate for the self damage with heals). Oh and all the archdevils are innate casting only wimps that the M&B Mephisto rapes turn 1 solely by ability to actually use RAW spell prep as wizard and buff in addition to having better version of the chains statblocks innate casting. Im not even mad at the items being meh and archdevils shit (beyond mephisto as same fucking authors wrote a good one and refused to use it), just that its marketed as if it were 11-20 when its closer to 8-15 except for a few random encounters that are mostly frontloaded (2 glabrezu at 8 would be dumb so 11 is at least reasonable enough, same for party fucked over by bad fleshwarping stumbling on more than 4 barlguras) with the bulk of non-combat challenges (and i do mean challenges, not discounts, self inflicted idiocy and "oh no you walked too close to x, roll DC 20 save or take 2d4-4d4/7 to 10 fire damage when hp average is over 85" in a context that by the book isnt happening during a combat encounter") also being in DC 14-16 range WITHOUT noting that its for a casual beer and chips play.

That'd be one hell of a book

an all tiefling warlock adventuring party JoJo style out to defeat their Lords enemies or Asmodeus's personal guard he sends out to torture through comedically timed one shots for his pleasure

What is print on demand?

@@brannenpfister2579 it's when you buy a book and a fresh copy is printed just for you.

I agree. I’d buy it.

Mostly as random encounters (abishai on first and seventh, a few as mercenaries, etc), but bulk of encounters are between trivial to medium difficulty for recommended level. Much like minsc and boos journal, doesnt use much of the secondary systems from main books beyond group patron rule at start.

You seem to want to go back down the road to the Nine Hells while seeming to have the best intentions. 😈

Grab the Minsc and Boo one. Mephisto as a non-caster/innate casting only devil whose objectively best option is to copy the basic dragon idea of flyby attacks, but with worse fireballed-version of a breath attack after self cast darkness and melee enemies with his poke fork is just disgraceful.

This PDF is already beyond 280 pages, and The Nine Hells has only nine layers. Do you have any idea how big the PDF would be for the 666 Layers of the Abyss? Even if you only focused on the major ones, that would be at least as many pages as layers!

Not a high bar to pass.

Pretty high price for 2 pages, but you do you, bud.

I'm wondering if this is confirmation that Asmodeus is Ahriman. The most popular orgin for him is pact primeval which they use in 5e but in this they use the serpent backstory

It does state Print On Demand coming soon. I will wit for that and get both PDF and Hardback. This will be the first thing I have bought from them since the OGL crap at the beginning of the year. It will probably be my last as I have wanted something like this for a LONG time.

Not sure if its RAW, but id roll once, rechargine any feature that would recharge given the die's result. Mostly for the sake of brevity.

Descent into Avernus is imo one of the most incomplete adventure books that WotC has released. That said, if you are up for essentially doing 80% of the work yourself and look at the module more as an inspiration for a very heavily homebrewed campaign, there are a lot of good ideas in there to work with. I ran the entire thing and did a lot of work to cover its many holes and my players mostly enjoyed it, but I still would never recommend it to any group unless the GM is majorly vibing with it and up for using the book more as an inspiration for the adventure than as the adventure itself.

​@@ASaladI highly disagree, there are much more incomplete adventures for 5e lol, descent is a breeze compared to OotA

Neat.

Yes, pretty much.

Print on Demand Coming Soon! Is there anythng preventing money generated by physhical sales, going to Extra Life? Else I could only imagine WotC looking for someone to print their product.

I assume there is a bit of Satanic Panic because of the title of the book

@@josukex42we literally have a book revolving around traveling to the first layer of Hell and another book featuring Demon Lords. The Satanic Panic has nothing to do with it

Exactly what I wanted to say! Why would they promote a book they didn't write. Book sounds pretty cool though.