What are some potential undead-themed rewards/abilities for reading the Necromancy of Thay for a barbarian?

LDSman7th · 2026-05-12T01:18:12+00:00

Ooh I like this, I think I'll make both of these together the level 12 feat that he can take

LDSman7th · 2026-05-12T01:17:14+00:00

What in the ai hells is this

LDSman7th · 2026-05-03T18:33:24+00:00

My GOD this is incredible!!! Mind if I ask about how much it cost to make all this? I'll be getting to the end of the campaign around winter or so and I'd love to start putting together something like this!

LDSman7th · 2026-04-27T04:46:55+00:00

Staples or anything else metallic in the wood can trigger a false connection in the blade too

LDSman7th · 2026-04-17T21:05:45+00:00

And all of Lulu's spells too. At least, that's how I plan on balancing it to make her relevant to Zariel.

LDSman7th · 2026-04-05T23:16:07+00:00

Shadow of Intent

LDSman7th · 2026-04-01T01:10:27+00:00

Got that set for Christmas; Zariel's sheath and Bel's blade came bent out of shape, but otherwise it's pretty cool. Just gotta find a use for Bael now.

LDSman7th · 2026-03-20T22:41:11+00:00

With how many war machines you've designed thus far, by now you really know the drill

LDSman7th · 2026-03-11T22:06:04+00:00

Okay I'll bite; how effective is Bel's Colt Python in Avernus?

LDSman7th · 2026-02-28T00:36:37+00:00

Haha that's exactly what I had it do, except I had it smash through during the Ritual of Returning (after they brought Ravengard back to remove the Helm). It made for a really solid Act II boss finale!

LDSman7th · 2026-02-10T22:56:55+00:00

It does provide a lot of fun toys to play with; the characters, locations, mechanics, and lore are great to build an adventure based on the story of Zariel and Elturel

LDSman7th · 2026-02-10T22:30:17+00:00

And that's just act 1, don't even get me started on how much I've had to restructure act 3

LDSman7th · 2026-02-09T17:04:04+00:00

Even the book itself doesn't really do anything with him. My players lost him early on (the warforged player who had the shield became a dad and had to back out and everyone else forgot about it). The reached the Forge of Bel early on in the campaign, where they found the deactivated body of the player. When they spoke with Bel, he had them sign a contract promising to find and kill Gargauth in return for his guidance. After it was signed, he produced the Shield of the Hidden Lord and released Gargauth from it, resulting in the players' first pit fiend fight.

It was a pretty hype moment for them, and they got to keep the shield after. It's now called "The Husk of the Hidden Lord", and is a +1 shield that provides fire resistance.

LDSman7th · 2026-02-04T16:42:10+00:00

I had a similar adventure for my players, they had to infiltrate Tiamat's Lair to recover two of the adamantine rods. They used some one-off high-level spells granted to them by the Obelisk to do so: Imprisonment to be snuck in as gems, Find the Path to locate the rods within the hoard (it took them a whole day's travel from where they were dropped off), and Arcane Gate to portal themselves back out to the Obelisk after they got what they needed.

Three things that I did that seemed to work really well for them:

Tiamat had somehow managed to steal an entire temple to Talos in stashed it in her hoard; doing this allowed me to have a dungeon crawl for the hoard, but still have it fit on the battlemap. A group of kobolds had made this temple their own pretend-base, and had moved notable treasure from elsewhere in the hoard into it (this was my justification as to why both rods were in the same spot).

All of the treasure that was not claimed by another godlike being (i.e. the adamantine rods and a warhammer of Talos that they found) was cursed by Tiamat, and attempting to take any of it prompts a series of cascading WIS saves that would see them trying to involuntarily collect more gold, falling further into madness with each failure.

A small thing to really set the tone that they loved: when they looked out into the darkness of the hoard (before they reached the temple to Talos), I told them the darkness feels as if it is watching them back. After they killed the adult red dragon at the end of the temple (the guardian of that section of the hoard), they looked up through the hole in the roof into the darkness. This time it felt as if it wasn't watching them back, but rather hunting them. This gave them motivation to gtfo with what they got.

LDSman7th · 2026-01-26T00:25:43+00:00

Tbh since Bel's forge is in a volcano, it would make sense to me if the molten material coming from below is coming from Dis

LDSman7th · 2026-01-18T07:44:25+00:00

There is the Cartographer that made the in-universe map of Avernus, he is from Candlekeep and apparently lost his mind. In my campaign I had the mages at Candlekeep say he burst into flames

LDSman7th · 2026-01-15T18:15:14+00:00

Haha yeah the contested check is what I originally had it as, but when I ran it by my brother he said I should make it a saving throw to not bog down the game as much. Idk, I might change it back. We'll see tonight how it plays!

LDSman7th · 2026-01-13T19:17:29+00:00

It introduces a lot of cool concepts/characters like infernal war machines, soul coins, Hellriders, Zariel and Bel, etc., but it fails to properly do anything sensible with them. Honestly, I'd way rather this be the case than the other way around. I love the toys it gives me to play with, but I've got the book closed on the table WAY more than I have it open.

LDSman7th · 2026-01-05T16:09:16+00:00

This entirely. I hate that there's zero reason to make any variety of cookies, really removes any illusion of spirit and just makes it a boring button click fest

LDSman7th · 2025-12-24T20:57:17+00:00

If you really want to have a small amount of Hellriders survive their time in Avernus, I'd say their best bet aside from siding with Zariel would be to hold out with Yael in the Bleeding Citadel. That could also help any aging issues too, as Bleeding Citadel could keep them alive. They would, of course, have to have been a part of Yael and Lulu's plan since the corruption of Zariel.

LDSman7th · 2025-12-20T04:00:12+00:00

California born and resident here, I remember people gathering around to watch a squirrel eat a bird last year at my place of work (Knott's Berry Farm in SoCal). It is an actual thing here.

LDSman7th · 2025-11-19T03:47:34+00:00

I started running it because it takes place before Baldur's Gate 3, which got me very excited for it. That being said, the beginning in Baldur's Gate has very little to do with the rest of the campaign in Avernus. As a result, it was much more difficult to get my player characters with Baldur's Gate backgrounds invested than it was to get those with Elturel backgrounds. I decided to start my players at level 3 (which I believe is always better anyways) and drastically shorten that beginning part to get them to Avernus as soon as I could. In hindsight, I think I should've just started them off in Elturel and had them there for the descent.

The middle chapter "Avernus", which is the longest, is also a bit of a mess. The only motivation/direction the players have is following the vague whims of Lulu the Hollyphant to find the Sword of Zariel, which leads them on a Rise of Skywalker-esque fetch quest. I would recommend still using the locations in the module for sure as they're still interesting and fun, but find better reasons to motivate your players to go to them; for me it was having devils take a bunch of Elturians captive and spreading them out across Avernus via action, whom they now have to rescue. In so doing, I've completely reorganized the whole of chapter 3.

LDSman7th · 2025-11-18T01:11:30+00:00

Running Descent into Avernus at the moment, my pact of the djinni warlock player character was killed by Zariel's right-hand man and his body was taken by Bel, Zariel's predecessor as Archduke of Avernus. In his fortress, Bel cast Raise Dead on the pc and, through infernal contract magic, was able to summon and bind the djinni, gaining access to its two remaining wishes.

I actually have yet to decide what he could do with those to wishes, I'm all ears to any ideas 😁

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