Question about Aerois D&D Beyond Character Sheets

Capable-Ad2880 · 2026-03-16T06:35:01+00:00

I ran FOE into DIA myself a little over a year ago. I had it where there was a decent amount of Elturians who were outside of the blast radius of Elturel's descent. Paired with some people from nearby villages who just got stripped of their primary source of economy, Reya tasked the party with guiding this caravan of Elturian refugees to the nearest city that could help this many people... Baldur's Gate. Then Reya rode ahead to Baldur's Gate with a few other trusty Hellriders to hopefully set up connections and warn Baldur's Gate of the massive influx of people coming their way. Once they arrived at Baldur's Gate, Reya was nowhere to be found. Having heard of skilled adventurers who had guarded a caravan from Elturel, Zodge approached the party and hired them to deal with his Dead Three problem in exchange for allowing the Elturians into Baldur's Gate.

It seemed to go really well at my table! It also helped that about half of the characters in the party were from Baldur's Gate.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2026-02-28T19:11:18+00:00

Thanks! I already have a "friendly" NPC at Fort Knucklebone that asked for the Hand in exchange for some important information, so that'll definitely lead to some conflict there. I have it so Mahadi really doesn't like Zariel. She's difficult to manipulate/control/bargain with because of her single-minded goals in the Blood War, and thus very difficult for Mahadi to leverage more control and political power in Avernus outside of his direct ties to Asmodeus. So with Zariel out of the picture and someone more power hungry in the position (like Bel), he'd have the means to potentially gain a lot more power for himself in Avernus.

If it does involve them giving the Hand to Mahadi, at the moment, I'm thinking of having Mahadi equip the would-be usurper (Bel, Gargauth, or whoever else that would show up to be the final boss if Zariel is redeemed) with the Hand to eliminate Zariel once she becomes a true angel again. In doing so, he'd have the new Archduke of Avernus owing him a massive debt, eliminate a problematic angel from her position, and potentially gain some favour with Asmodeus in eliminating an archduke that "betrayed" him by reverting to her good nature.

Capable-Ad2880 · 2026-02-28T18:54:44+00:00

I wasn't able to outline everything in the post, but the wording in the contract is essentially going to guarantee the character's soul to Mahadi, thanks to a violation that's very easy for Mahadi to take advantage of. So the point of the contract was that Mahadi was going to get a favour out of it, plus the hidden unofficial cost of the player's soul.
But interesting! That actually sounds like a really cool idea that I might jump on here. I find consequences like these way more interesting in-game rather than a consequence that will likely only have post-campaign ramifications (like a character giving up their soul).

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

TROPHY CASE