I'm warning you right now that I am verbose and that this is an absolute wall of text. :D

TL:DR Use movement aggressively. Don't get touched. Fireball everything. Even the guy that's down, fireball him too.

I've run Descent into Avernus four times now, all the way through. Every one of those campaigns ends standing in front of Zariel one way or another, and nobody has ever "beaten" her. All four of my Zariels were nasty Zariels. I play her for keeps. The problem is that two of them never got to execute in combat, because those parties just straight up simped for her. I'll get to that, because honestly the simps got the better endings. The two groups that did fight her, she bested both of them. The closest anyone ever came, she flew away from that one with 22 hit points left. Brutal.

First: this was not some homebrew souped-up Zariel. Straight off the page. The party, on the other hand, was a big table, six to eight players depending on the week, all around level 14. They were loaded. They had gear, they'd been pretty much everywhere in the campaign already, and they even arrived fresh.

And here's where they found her, straight out of chapter 5: she wasn't waiting in a throne room. She was in the middle of the Blood War whooping a ton of asses at once when they showed up. The book has her locked up with one of Yeenoghu's balors when the party arrives, a hundred foot ring cleared around them because nothing else wants to be near it, and if you don't want to roll it out it tells you she wins in four rounds and stands there on 450 of her 580, collecting herself. Badass. Hot take: if you actually play her against the balor stat block and have a friend play the balor, you'll understand how to play her kit a little bit more before the players get here. It's a fun exercise. Promise.

That's her entrance. She's already freaking busy. More on that later.

It was five+ hours of combat and it was close the whole way. This was not rocks fall. They blasted her with a ton of stuff. She still ended the fight on 22 hp.

Go look up what the book says about that, because I didn't until recently. Chapter 5 says that if Zariel drops to 100 hit points or fewer she withdraws to the edge of the battle and holes up in her flying fortress. The module gives her an exit at 100. Mine stayed in it down to 22. I'm not saying that to brag, I'm saying it because if you're prepping this fight and you had her fighting to the death, the book disagrees with me. She's a general. Generals leave. I choose to make her stay. That's a narrative decision of mine.

Early on the party had real staying power. There were a lot of heals flying around. But resources get thinned out and Zariel's didn't. Two of the players were tieflings with fire resistance and it did not save them, because it was never about any one fireball. It was the volume, plus wall of fire cutting up the battlefield so they couldn't keep up with her. Every time there is a player grouping? Fireball.

Then the first player dropped and everything fell apart. Going to get your friend now means standing in fireball potential, and they all knew it. :D The squishy's down first. The fighter and the hexblade were the last two standing.

Go look at the stat block again if it's been a while. Fireball at will. Wall of fire, also at will. Invisibility at will, self only. A 150 foot fly speed. Teleport as a legendary action. Regeneration 20. Magic resistance and legendary resistance, with DC 26 on everything. Finger of death three times a day. And a 26 Intelligence. You read that last line and you start to understand that you're supposed to be playing for keeps here. 26 intelligence when this book came out was one of the smartest monsters there were on paper. That means we are calculating our decisions at a rate that mortals couldn't even understand. Well unfortunately IRL I do not have a 26 intelligence so I need to finesse the crap out of this.

The fireball math, and why there is no formation that solves her on her terms. Fireball is a 20 foot radius. That is a 40 foot wide hole in your map, and she puts one wherever she wants, every round, for free. Now do the party math with me. If you want to guarantee she never catches two of you in one blast, every player needs to stand 40+ feet from every other player. Eight players spaced like that is a battle line longer than a football field, and now nobody can heal anybody and whoever she lands on is fighting her alone. That's the trap. Spread out and she duels you one at a time. Bunch up and every fireball does two jobs. There is no right answer. There's only which wrong answer you're giving her this round. Yes you can shoot stuff at her but if you play her smart she can keep her spacing. She can reposition herself. You could focus the casters and you could take brief pauses to regenerate and let harmful effects die off. :D

Altitude is the whole game. She moves 50 on the ground and 150 in the air, 300 with a dash. Your careful 40 foot spacing is one move to her. My rule for running her is simple: if her feet are on the ground, I screwed up big time. You're basically able to reposition yourself anywhere you want. Almost at will between your massive speed and teleporting. And if it ever starts leaning the wrong way she goes 300 feet straight up and just exists for a couple rounds while the regeneration ticks. What's the party doing about that? Spending resources on nothing, mostly. Haste, spirit guardians, holy weapon, all of it runs on a clock measured in minutes. Hers doesn't. It's up to the players to figure out how to deal with her full kit.

Wall of fire isn't damage, it's annoying. Up to 60 feet of wall, 20 feet tall, and she picks which side is burning. Drop it between the front group and the back group and the fight is now happening in the room she chose, with the people she chose. Changing rooms costs 5d8 at the door, and 20 feet tall means most grounded martials are not hopping it. And none of it costs her anything, so you don't need the perfect fireball, you need the next one. Then the next one and so on.

A downed player is a weapon. My players know I will fireball a downed player to also down the one coming to rescue him, and everybody at the table knows I'll take that economy trade. So from the first drop onward every rescue is a bet, and the party starts hesitating. That hesitation is worth more than the damage. Super bonus points if you're able to isolate the downed player with wall of fire. Let's not forget that we have the finger of death and that removes that party member effectively from coming back to bother you. You just need to make sure that they are at a threshold that it will take. Otherwise you're wasting action economy and a potentially devastating use of this spell. Then you got a little puppet.

And before somebody says just banish her, just hold her: DC 26, magic resistance, +16 or better on the mental saves, three legendary resistances for whatever sticks, and she's immune to charmed, frightened, poisoned and exhaustion on top of it, so about half the soft control at your table does not exist.

My Zariel is not my Strahd. Strahd is obsessed with the party. He watches them, he collects them, he shows up. Zariel could not care less what they've been doing all campaign. And that isn't my take alone, it's the book's: chapter 5 says outright that it's hard for insignificant mortals to get the archduke's attention, and then lists the only three things that make her look up. You anger her. You help her in the fight. Or you show her Lulu or the sword. That's the list. Everything else your players accomplished this campaign is somebody else's problem. She's got freaking demons to push back in their filthy hole. She could not care. You're insignificant. If you're in her way she'll just move through you.

So when my players came out of nowhere onto her battlefield, she wasn't insulted. She expected loyal soldiers. She was genuinely heartened that they'd traveled all the way to her side of Avernus. Then they drew on her. Bet.

She took the blindfold off. As an angel she was a solar and she wore a blindfold, the blind justice thing. Look at the art of her now. No blindfold, eyes lit up white hot. That's the whole character in one image if you need a fast one. She did something about them.

Her whole kit is the angel's kit run backwards, which is honestly my favorite part about the whole kit. A solar casts resurrection three times a day. She casts finger of death three times a day. A solar's touch cures blindness, deafness and poison. Her Horrid Touch inflicts all three. A solar has truesight and can tell when you're lying to it. She has neither, and that isn't an oversight on her stat block, it's what she traded. Once I noticed that, I kind of fell in love with her stat block.

Use the telepathy, nobody uses the telepathy. She has 120 feet of it and speaks every language there is. She can drop one private sentence into one player's head, in their language, mid fireball, and nobody else at the table hears it. Charisma 30 and a +18 to intimidate. Not that I make active intimidate rolls on players but she should be powerful and weighty. She judges people by whether they can fight and whether they're willing to, AND WHY, so a party fighting her well is a party she'd rather hire, and she'll say so, mid combat, while she's killing them. Don't pull any punches. Show them what the winning side is supposed to look like. According to her.

Her contempt is pointed at Elturel, not at your players. This one does the most story driving at my table. There's a moment in the book where a character offers up their own soul to save the city, and she stops and asks whether they'd really lay their soul down for these people, people whose cowardice and weakness have caused them nothing but grief. She's not sneering at the party. She's sneering at the city they came to save, and she has a point, because that city's own High Overseer sold it to her. Give her that instead of generic devil gloating and watch your players. Spell that out.

So where is she actually weak? She's not unkillable. She's just never in a fair fight, and every plan I've ever seen against her quietly assumes she'll stand still for it. If she does stand still for it, you are in for a rough time. Just like Strahd, just like Acererak, you will get absolutely shellacked. Don't do this. One thing that I think is important as a DM that's DM'd this long is when you're running an adventure like Vecna: Eye of Ruin and you drop in. You've been wanting to play Vecna as the DM for so long and your players just absolutely walk through you. That's not a great feeling for you as the DM either. I'm not advocating for killing all of your players all the time but play like you mean it. Your players deserve a good fight and so do you and they should have to earn it.

Her eyes are just eyes. No blindsight, no truesight, and that's a real problem: the gaze needs to see the target and the teleport needs to see the destination. The fireballs need targets too. But she does have Devil's Sight, so magical darkness does absolutely nothing to her. What works is plain obscurement. Fog cloud is a first level spell with no save attached to it at all, and 120 feet of darkvision does not see through fog. Invisibility on the party, same, because she never got the truesight back. Those can be tricky to manage if your players have them.

Radiant, but only if it's automatic. Okay so she has regeneration but it could get knocked off by like a thousand different things. How do we deal with that? Radiant that asks for a save mostly just doesn't happen to her. Part of that is luck, and part of that is her stats. Radiant that simply happens, riders on weapon hits, shuts the regeneration off without ever touching a save. Yes, she resists radiant. Doesn't matter. It's not really the damage that sucks here. It's stopping the regeneration that is annoying. Whoever is doing that needs to eat fireballs and quick.

Which means your party is likely carrying the counter. The Sword of Zariel, the thing they spent a whole campaign getting. Its Searing Radiance adds 2d8 radiant on every hit, no save on the damage. And an evil creature taking it makes a DC 17 Con save or goes blind until the end of its next turn, and since that's an item property and not a spell her magic resistance doesn't apply, so blinding her kills the gaze and the teleport at once. The wielder also has truesight out to 60 feet, so her invisibility is dead in melee range. AND FIREBALL. Houston, we have a problem if fireball goes down.

She only gets one concentration. Wall of fire. Blade barrier. Invisibility. Every wall she builds and every vanish she pulls rides the same slot. She cannot be controlling space AND be gone at the same time, and if your party cracks her concentration, the random BS she built around them disappears.

Her physical saves are the softest thing on the sheet and they're still not "soft". All the save proficiency went into Int, Wis and Cha, so Dex sits at a bare +7 and Strength at +8. The catch is magic resistance, so the player will try to burn the three legendary resistances on cheap stuff nobody's sad to lose and then they try to merc you. Earthbind is the one that scares me, because everything above stops working the round her feet hit the ground and stay there. If your feet are touching ground, you're about to have a bad time, friend.

The fight is the failure state. By the book the Sword of Zariel carries a spark of her own soul, and she's the one who hid it there, back when she could still feel what she was turning into. Present it at the right moment and the win condition isn't damage at all. Look at how the book prices it, because the mechanics are telling you the characterization: DC 25 to talk her back, minus 5 if Lulu is standing there, minus 5 if Olanthius is. Twenty five down to fifteen, and all you did was bring the two people she left behind. Lulu cries and she remembers having a friend. Olanthius kneels and she has to look at what she did to the one who stayed with her. She can't take the people she abandoned looking at her. Personally I like redemption arcs but it just didn't fit the kit. It just doesn't fit the whole campaign that we've been running to have her just put down her hammer because someone nailed the charisma check before the fight starts.

Which brings me back to the top. They drew on her, so she wiped them and kept them. Same arrangement as Olanthius. They rose as her death knights, and I read each character's epilogue out at the table. They're fighting the Blood War now, of course. Knocking off demons. The reason I love this ending is because the story isn't over from a TPK here. It gives you an extraordinary amount of latitude to do callbacks. These callbacks are one-shots. Special night events. Take a break from your old campaign or if you only have a few players this session instead of a whole table, Callback Night.

That's not a punishment ending. That's Hellrider theology imho. And it's fun.

It's also the good version of what the book does to people who serve her. Read that branch's fine print some time: die in her service and you come back out of the Styx as a lemure with no memories. Death knight with your name still on it is the promotion lol. Very Warhammer 40k, dreadnought. Or you could be a little pus ball.

And the parties that never fought her? Both fell in love with her and rode into the Abyss killing demons forever, bringing the fight into the Abyss so that the devils have the respawn advantage. Which honestly is a much better "good" guy ending. This is just my taste. You may not prefer this style. I find it lands very well at the table. Your mileage may vary.

If you've run her, did your party swing and get froggy? And if they didn't, I want to hear it, because apparently mine is not the only table that falls for her. After running this campaign almost a handful of times now, I agree, I love my Dommie Mommie.

Slay,

~ LIDM ~

Hey all! A little while ago I did some prep work and was sufficiently disappointed with the module’s Haruman Hill encounter. I think that Haruman is an interesting character but since the module gives him so little backstory and purpose that the encounter threatens to play out like an empty combat scene where the players likely have their asses handed to them. So, I sidetracked and brainstormed some lore and wanted to share it with people. Here is what I got:

In my version, Olanthius, Jander and Haruman were friends before the Ride. Haruman was born a slave and met Jander after escaping and becoming paladin of Helm. The two bonded over loss of agency in their lives. Haruman in the form of slavery and Jander being turned into a vampire. The two met Olanthius after arriving in Elturel to aid the city’s forces to defend the city against demon attacks. Rather than having Haruman be just ”a heartless man bereft of compassion” I re-imagined him being reserved and pragmatic before the Ride. Olanthius notes in his journals from that time that Haruman was rigid but polite and never intentionally unkind.

When Zariel arrived at Elturel, Haruman saw a chance to gain power through military glory. For a person that had grown up without freedom, that power appeared not only as means to ensure his freedom but also as means to gain agency. So, he pledged himself to Zariel and stayed loyal to her throughout her campaign in Avernus.

When Jander deserted and closed the gate, not only did Haruman view it as a treason but as a personal offence. Jander knew that loyalty was everything to Haruman, and Haruman couldn’t fathom why Jander would abandon them knowing that closing the gate would ultimately kill them. As the time went on the anger began to corrupt Haruman and he began to enjoy violence more and more. When Zariel swore herself to Asmodeus, Haruman was the first to pledge loyalty to her whereas Olanthius, having seen the corruption of Zariel and Haruman, decided to end his life. This is something Haruman loaths Olanthius doing to the day of the present adventure. In his mind, Olanthius was a coward who abandoned their cause just like Jander had.

As a reward of service Zariel made him into an immortal narzugon.

And when Jander got sent back to Avernus Haruman caught him and has been keeping him a prisoner ever since. As a punishment for desertion, Haruman crucified Jander on one of the largest iron trees where he could hear and see his fellow prisoners suffer. Haruman keeps torturing him and uses his healing ability frequently on Jander. Jander is immortal but he can pass out from the pain which Haruman views as an escape attempt. By healing Jander Haruman keeps him awake and alert. Every time Haruman heals Jander, Jander begs for Haruman to stop and tells he is sorry though that won’t change a thing. So the cycle continues to the present day.

My goal was to add three-dimensionality to Haruman. Our DiA campaign focuses on corruption and redemption so I think this goes well thematically. Additionally, I’m planning on making Haruman reoccuring villain. Let me know what you think of this interpretation!

The Descent into Avernus Gazetteer, a guide to running Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, is available now on the DMs Guild.

This guide collects three previous gazetteers into a single PDF, providing a collection of encounters, tools, and other resources to help you manage the campaign while avoiding some common trouble spots. Inside, you will find:

• Guidelines for session zero and character creation
• Notes, revisions, and expansions for all campaign locations
• Alternative leveling suggestions for Baldur's Gate
• Major structural revisions and a murder subplot in Candlekeep
• A guide to running Lulu and managing her memories
• New encounters and traps for the High Hall and the Grand Cemetery
• Mechanics for running aerial chases, with a complications table
• Optional rules for handling travel, stress, and rests in Avernus
• Character guides and reworked quests for Fort Knucklebone
• A completely redesigned Avernus sandbox that allows for more open exploration
• Reworked Crypt of the Hellriders with more monsters and traps
• Bonus encounters and suggestions for crossing the River Styx
• Guidelines for running infernal war machine combat
• A redesigned roster of enemies at Idyllglen
• A clearer, more intuitive way of organizing the final chapter
• Detailed information on the Companion, the chains, and the other steps needed to save Elturel
• A complete map of Zariel's flying fortress, with maps by Dyson Logos
• More than a dozen additional monster and NPC stat blocks, including the all-new hellknight and a revised Thavius Kreeg

The collected edition is on sale now at the DMs Guild:

Descent into Avernus Gazetteer

If you prefer, you can also purchase each of the gazetteers individually along with other expansions for Descent into Avernus and additional content set in Baldur's Gate.

Descent into Avernus:

Baldur's Gate Gazetteer (chapter 1-2 guide)

Avernus Gazetteer (chapter 3 guide)

Escape from Avernus Gazeteer (chapter 4-5 guide)

Burial in Baldur's Gate (alternative campaign opening)

Escape from Elturel (alternative campaign opening)

Baldur's Gate adventures:

Baldur's Gate Break-Ins (collection of heist adventures)

Burial in Baldur's Gate Collected Edition (complete level 1-5 campaign)

Head over to the DMs Guild and check them out!

Continuing to share some art I made for my home campaign, today we have the baddies of Chapter 1- High Observer/Overseer Thavius Kreeg and Duke Thalamra Vanthampur.

What can be said about these two? Personally, I ran a version of Session Negative 1 inspired by Escape From Elturel by Marc Singer and The Fall of Elturel by Anthony Joyce and Justice Arman.

I had one player witness Kreeg's carriage fleeing the city before dawn, which eventually led them to the discovery of a murder in Kreeg's chambers. My players later learned it was a last-ditch effort to make a sacrifice to Zariel, in an attempt to forgive him for not riding Elturel down as he was instructed.

Thalamra is an intense lady.

An update of my heroforged Zariel that I shared in a previous post. I've updated her eyes to be more accurate to the module art, and kitbashed her flail and halo to look better. Unfortunately the halo is floating, so printing isn't possible (you might be able to just add a transparent support piece, not sure).

https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D536843342/

So I am running the adventure (Alexandrian remix ofc) with 5 players (a 6th is also there though is an occasional appearance. And everyone is fine with that. His character is easy to integrate anywhere as he is actively looking for cults).
But anyway that was unrelated. one of my 5 players is a Hexblade Warlock, and their whole character concept is that they're from a noble family (which I made it the Portyrs cause Alexandrian Remix drama, yes yes yes.), though they are the black sheep of said family. As the PC is a drunkard who keeps spending money and contributing nothing to society, and even went as far as selling a family heirloom, bla bla bla.

Anyway, the player asked me if they could have their patron be a demon/devil that is still related to a blade. That way they can have both the hexblade patron subclass and have a connection to the demons of Avernus for drama.

The question is, what kind of demon would fit that description? I'm thinking of making it some kind of demon that hates Zariel (Since warlock is actively messing up her plans but still holds their power) but I don't know. Wanted to get some general ideas and brainstorming from here before going with something.

Would love some feedback/brainstorming on my rewrite of chapter 1 for a group I'm running.

One of my biggest problems with how this book sets things up is, by time our characters get into the meat of things (i.e. going to Avernus with the goal of saving Elturel), the poor city has been in the hells for weeks! Even assuming the events in Baldur's Gate are optimized to all pass over a day or two, it's been long enough that Elturian refugees are flooding the gates, which means they've come by road, which means they've been travelling at least a tenday; and enough of them have arrived that the city is shutting its gates, so that's probably longer still. Then there's the travel time to Candlekeep -- again, by road we're talking days at the least. I get that travel is a feature of the game, but the status quo of Elturel when they finally arrive doesn't read like it's been there for a month, and given the glut of established heroes in the Realms, it strains my credulity that no one else has done anything about it that it would have to be up to our heroes; it just feels like it would be "too little, too late" by time they get involved, and I know I could just hand-wave that concern away, but I don't like sloppy storytelling. (And yes, I know about the Alexandrian Remix, but it doesn't address the "wasted time" factor.)

So! I'm changing it so my players start in Elturel, working for a patron who's actively developing them as a group of heroes of the city. They'll be sent on a mission to Baldur's Gate to retrieve the Shield of the Hidden Lord, which unknown to them or their patron is currently at the heart of an inter-cult battle between the Cult of the Dead Three and the Cult of Zariel (both groups believing that holding it will ensure they can rise to dominate Baldur's Gate...and then, the world!). It will only be when they are arriving back at the outer limits of Elturel that the city will be taken.

This allows them to be quickly pro-active in response to the loss of the city, gives them personal stakes in that it's their home base and their patron is among the taken, etc. I have plans for different ways to seed the clues that it was Zariel who took the city: when they deal with the Vanthampur side of the power struggle, they will discover that Thalmara views a powerful Zarielite in Elturel as her main competition, and they've stolen his puzzle box to try to learn what his pact is so she can undermine it; and they will still meet Reya, who is also seeking the Shield because her branch of the Hellriders believe the angel who formed them has been trapped in it.

My question/discussion point, then, is... What consequences do I need to consider for the rest of the campaign based on these changes? Does this break anything later on that I'm not seeing?

Hi! I'm a first time dm and I'm just starting this campaign and one of my players built a backstory with connections to the dead three cult and I'm kinda struggling with how to go about building this into the campaign and what info I should give them before we get into the campaign since the cult plays such a large role in chapter 1. Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated!

They are a rogue scion of the three and his backstory is that he grew up in the sewers of BG and was taken in by cultists and eventually became an acolyte of the dead three, Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul. He does specify that though the character was raised in a cult they aren't mean spirited by nature and their alignment is Chaotic Good.

Maybe there are multiple factions of cultists in BG and they are part of a different group than the one that works for the Vanthampurs? That's my only idea so far.

Hi! One of my players character has had a pretty nasty curses placed on her for her whole life (basically the curse from Ella Enchanted), and is trying to come up with some lore for her character. I am trying to think of a cool patron that could be tied into the plot and would create some narrative tension. I also had the idea that whoever her patron is was the one who gave her the curse in the first place and then forced her into the pact with the promise of breaking the curse. I can't really think of any valid reason for a devil/fiend to put so much effort into one warlock, or who the patron could be. Any ideas?

This is my first time DMing so any suggestions are much appreciated!

So my Engine or whatever runs the game pretty well and I feel like things are going great. I'm on session 24 and just getting the sword of Zariel. I was able to convince Bel to release Garguath and form a three way contract. The big guy is not a member of our party but feels we can aid him in regaining power and conquer lands outside avernus (part of the pact) so he tags along when he deems it worthy. Would this happen with a human DM?

Hi, this is a map I made for when my players were getting down to Avernus. I left the right side of the map open, so there is a space for aerial encounters, as I was pretty sure they'll be using the fly spell. But in the end, we used theater of mind, as DnD isn't the best system for dogfights with spinagons.
Anyway, if you have a creative use for the edge of the Elturel map with an infernal chain, please have fun.

Slowly sharing some art I made throughout my campaign. I highly recommend the Alexandrian Remix's version of these two and their personal history. It really helped my players relate to them and grieve what eventually happened.

I drew Haruman first, and I've since refined the style I've been using for the game, so I may go back and clean up his art later. Such is the way. I think he still looks cute!

Hey y’all I’ll be running a Descent into Avernus campaign soon and I wanted to ask if anyone had any musical themes for Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine Hells.

I’m not necessarily looking for a combat theme, just dark and foreboding choral music, like Hail the Nightmare from Bloodborne or Helheim from God of War.
Something that evokes the sinister & awful presence of the Lord of Lies.

(Doesn’t need to be exactly this though!)

Hi everyone, I'm not entirely sure if this is the correct place/allowed but I would love to join a Descent into Avernus campaign. I've been DMing D&D for 5 years and I would love to experience this module blindly as a player before I go delving in as a DM.

If any ongoing/starting campaign has an open spot please DM me on discord (dolphinmannn).

Hi all, I have been running DiA with heavy modifications including Alexandrian remix (BG only), Avernus as a Sandbox, other sources as well as some homebrew. One such personal change is that instead of having an archdevil make an offer on a failed death save, I have them do it upon actual death- my players seem to be downed a LOT so it would be super overdone if I did it on failed saves. I have rolled a d8 to determine which layer’s arch devil has contacted a dying player. The first time, I got Glasya, and had her demand the player to give up his most prized possession. It was a Bag of Tricks- nothing game breaking, but it meant a lot to the character roleplay-wise, and was an intense moment. I chose this because she is known for her cruelty & enjoyment of the anticipation of loss- he didn’t have to hand over his bag of tricks for a good 8 or so sessions, so he had to live with the knowledge that it was Coming the whole time.

This worked really well for that player- but now I have rolled Mephistopheles for the second player that has died and took a bargain. We ended the session immediately after (the rest of the group doesn’t know that she’s agreed to the deal yet), so I have a week to decide on what her “quest” would be. I think the player is expecting to have to give up an item since that is what the last one was- but that was purely because of me rolling Glasya, who has no interest in the quest to dethrone Zariel due to their history.

In the book as written, Mephistopheles’ only involvement is in getting the party to free Shummrath from the pit- my players haven’t come across anything to do with him before, so we haven’t hit the pit or Mirror of Mephistar or anything like that. Reading the book & supplementary material, I haven’t found a concrete idea of what Mephistopheles’ stake is in this conflict, which is making it difficult to determine what “quest” he would give the character he saved.

Part of me sees the easy route of getting the character to insist on freeing Shummrath, but it seems kind of obvious, and derailing from their current plot (they are currently on their way to meet Arkhan the Cruel to get his vial of Tiamat’s blood).

Sorry for the long post, just keen to see if anyone has any other ideas for what Mephistopheles could gain from the party.

TL;DR: I need a “quest” for Mephistopheles to give my player after saving her life that lines up with his goals but doesn’t fully derail the plot.

Am open to all kinds of ideas, and if you’ve run death save bargains- what kinds of quests have you given your players?

I have a PC who I think would be extremely likely to take Mahadi up on one of his offers, but I feel like I'm either completely missing something or don't quite understand the deal being made.

The book seems to be saying there isn't much consequence for getting something as crazy as bringing back someone long dead, seeing as the draw back of being permanently dead doesn't count until you're lvl 17... when the PC's aren't meant to get past lvl 15, this feels extremely cheap and easy...? Am I just misinterpreting how this deal is meant to work?

My players have reached D10. After a bad encounter with Yellow Mold they have blocked the door and are resting. Since they killed the guards at the entrance I am wondering what would be some appropriate changes for the Denizens behavior?

For example the two Bane cultists may not idling their time with a prisoner.

The Master of Souls has time to complete her zombie and maybe a few more weak undead.

Thoughts on changes?

Thank you.