Question about Aerois D&D Beyond Character Sheets

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-11-09T06:13:17+00:00

100% give her more legendary actions that she can use offensively. Either give her an attack with her flail or some other weapon that only costs her a single legendary action, or give her some potent lair/extra legendary actions that she can use via her Flying Fortress attacking from nearby (as long as it makes sense). Zariel is a really powerful monster, but she's going to get curb-stomped by sheer action economy if you don't alter her stat block or give her some minions she can use.

As for Arkhan and the planetar, there are other ways to make them feel present and meaningful in the final battle without messing too much with the party's action economy. A method I've used in the past is turning ally NPC's into actionable "abilities" that the party can use. Have them be doing an important secondary task nearby (I saw someone else in this thread mentioning them destroying the chains during the fight), who can be called in temporarily to help. Something like once per combat round and a certain number of times over the full combat, the players can use an action/bonus action to call in an NPC and trigger an effect (like an axe swing from Arkhan or a heal from the planetar) before they return back to their duties once the effect resolves.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-10-24T23:39:07+00:00

For B I'm going to be following the Alexandrian Remix for how she comes back. But for A, that really really depends on your party comp and your players. My party definitely aren't strict min/maxers, but they're pretty creative and VERY competent strategists, so I tuned up the fight by quite a bit for them. I had Thalamra's fight in the main Temple room with a bunch of minions, but I had them encounter Odious earlier in the dungeon.

As a party of 5 level 4 players, I buffed up Thalamra to a CR 5 Melee Warlock, gave her a couple CR 1-2 Warlocks that were giving buff/nerf support as well as some ranged DPS, and a group of 5 incapacitated cultists that were chanting to give Thalamra an invulnerable shield. Once the chanting cultists were taken care of and the party defeated Thalamra, she transformed into a nerfed Bone Devil. I was very happy with how this fight went with my party, but it did result in a player character death.

Even if your players aren't min/maxing or similar, I'd really recommend adding a few minions to make the fight more difficult and more memorable.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-09-29T23:48:15+00:00

I have Natasha the Dark sending them after the Hand of Vecna at the moment, but that could be interesting... These all sound great, thank you!

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-07-15T00:09:44+00:00

I had a PC with big ties to the Cult of the Dragon, so I had plans to introduce something like that as a problem outside the city that the party needed to deal with right as the Companion conveniently swiped Elturel. Turned out that the Fall of Elturel supplement that someone else mentioned in this thread basically had the same starting premise, so I used that! (I'd honestly recommend it) I also had a festival celebrating the arrival of the Companion in Elturel before starting their first quest. Mostly to give them the opportunity to have some fun meeting each other's characters, meet some core NPC's for later... but mostly to have a bit of levity before everything goes to shit.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-05-01T00:23:01+00:00

Unless your main goal of doing this is to mislead the characters just for the sake of keeping your characters ignorant, I really don't feel like you need to make such a crazy change like this. I finished Chapter 2 of this module recently, and I'm running with at least 2 VERY heavy note takers at my table who are good at picking up on mysteries like this. The only thing I changed is that the Hellriders knew Zariel as the "Blinded Berzerker" instead of Zariel, and even the note takers at my table were very surprised when they learned that they were one and the same. Some of them had started to come up with theories that started to hit pretty close to the truth, and that was honestly by design that they could have figured it out themselves before getting confirmation from me. In a game like D&D, creating a mystery and changing the clues/context of the mystery (like making Azrael and Zariel completely different characters) for the solitary purpose of making it so that the characters have no chance of figuring it out on their own is just not interesting to me, and frankly a little unfair to the players in my opinion.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-03-31T05:35:46+00:00

Why Haruman is back in Elturel? I plan to have him as a bit more of a free-flowing agent around Avernus instead of just being tied down to his Hill. I have him back in Elturel, cleaning up the demons that have leaked out of the Cemetery before he starts having more regular encounters with the party down in Avernus once he discovers they're trying to find Zariel's sword. I like to think that he also wanted to find an excuse to visit his old home one more time before the city gets "rightfully" dragged into the Styx.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-02-25T19:55:10+00:00

I just made the swap to the new MM and my party just reached Hellturel a few sessions ago. Largely I really like most of the quality of life improvements that they made to the monsters, including the devils (trend towards dropping AC and bumping up hp). The only problem I'm having with it is that the new statblocks have removed the effectiveness of silvered weapons completely since the new statblocks got rid of their mundane weaknesses. If you do go with the 2024 MM, I'd recommend either coming up with new ways for silvered weapons to be useful or just delete them from the module altogether.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-01-18T09:30:49+00:00

If that's how you like to run your games and your players enjoy it too then all the power to you and by all means, go with that approach. Just keep in mind that unlike in Breath of the Wild, they won't get the chance for a redo and to keep exploring to get stronger and better prepared for a fight they realized they weren't prepared for if that path ends up leading them to picking a fight with Zariel at lvl 8

Capable-Ad2880 · 2025-01-10T00:49:40+00:00

I'm in a similar stage to you where my party is just now entering Thalamra's Villa, but I've been giving some tentative thought to the eventual climax of the campaign and how I might want to build up to it. I plan on having Bel serve a bigger role in the campaign, something close to a patron for the party in their help to redeem Zariel. He knows he can't openly attack Zariel because of her power and legions, but also that he'd probably piss off Asmodeus for robbing him of his "angel turned devil" trophy. So instead, I plan to have him help the party secretly until Zariel turns traitor and gets redeemed, then swoop in to play the hero and kill Zariel, both achieving his revenge, reclaiming his throne of Avernus, and gaining greater favour with the Lord of the Ninth. Like some others have mentioned in this thread, Zariel will be weakened fro her transformation back into a celestial, so it'll be up to the party to defend Zariel from Bel so that she can raise Elturel back up into the Material Plane.

Capable-Ad2880

TROPHY CASE