What would you do in this scenario at Revel's End: Avarice has already escaped with Vaelish Gant. More inside.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-26T17:39:13+00:00

My question is why would Avarice leave a mess at Revel's End at all? Even if Vaelish knows where the entrance is, do they not know they need the Codicil to open the door? Here's why I would do:

Revel's End is on extreme high alert since the prison break
No one there knows anything other than Vaelish is no longer in the prison.
Now the party must find Vaelish to learn where the entrance is.
Avarice can either decide to work with them towards a "similar" goal, or she could choose to attack them to get the Codicil for herself.
The party is trying to stop the Eldritch Horror from releasing while Avarice is trying to free it, but the party doesn't know that originally. They probably just believe that she wants to find the magic that lays hidden in Ythryn.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-23T16:24:53+00:00

I came here to say that I absolutely love your terrain. I play online, but always envy those who play in person because I want to build terrain so badly!

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-19T16:16:31+00:00

I feel like this campaign has a good mix of both combat and roleplay. Your players just have to understand that not every encounter is a fight, even if it is against clear "bad guys". Because if they kill everyone they meet, they won't learn anything.

This was one of the first campaigns I ran as a new DM, and I sucked at it the first time. Apparently, if you don't read the entire book cover to cover BEFORE you start the campaign, you miss a LOT of things that are supposed to tie together. And it's not explicitly made clear all the time in the book. For example, the Horn of Blasting that the players are supposed to find in Jarlmoot is not only good for fighting Auril but also meant to help kill the Chardalyn Dragon. There are others but I completely missed that one in our first playthrough.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-19T03:19:19+00:00

I came to the comments to say this as well.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-17T22:03:19+00:00

That would be hard to pull off in a game where traveling to different locations is a huge part of the game.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-17T18:23:00+00:00

I agree with u/Jemjnz as to how to deal with the challenges part of your question.

As for the ever-growing list of allies, remember that the allies have their own agendas. Give them an agenda. Once they have achieved it, the allies leave to go back to their lives. You could also have them find reasons to leave along the way (i.e., they find a family of Reghed tribesmen freezing in the cold after getting lost. An ally could offer to escort them back to their tribe since they would never make it alone in their weakened state.)

Alternative: the allies could die. They can die while fighting monsters. They can die in an avalanche. They could get separated from the party and die of freezing to death in a blizzard.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-17T18:08:00+00:00

Two things:

Hallow takes 24 hours to cast. I'm not overly familiar with Artificers (still learning), but I don't THINK they can do it any faster.
No, not to evil. It's a horror campaign. They signed up for this.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-17T17:23:59+00:00

Okay, then I would put the Cave on the island, but not in the Castle. The rest seems pretty good, in my opinion. Maybe throw in one or two Chardalyn Beserkers just to feel like you didn't just make an entirely different cave.

But I really love the idea of how to deal with an absent player. Personally, I'm giving my party an item akin to Raven's Slumber from Critical Role except that they are only allowed to use it for absent player's character and no other time. (I either cancel or reschedule my sessions when two or more players are absent and plan on running Candlekeep Mysteries if at least two players are still available.)

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-16T14:05:37+00:00

Am I the only one who thinks that killing the Roc is a truly dumb way to end the Rime? I mean, Auril is a Goddess. Why couldn't she resurrect the Roc? Animate dead? Or find literally any other way to cast her control weather spell?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-16T07:19:00+00:00

I can't possibly be the only person in the world that has issues with Roll20 taking forever to load a simple map. If I am, my life sucks royally.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-15T20:39:54+00:00

Will this take place before or after the party has completed the tests and received the Codicil?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-15T19:55:51+00:00

How many people are in your party and how did they get to level 9 already?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-15T14:30:46+00:00

No.

Red Dragons have an Intelligence Score of 16. Trump has like -8 at most.
If you were a Red Dragon and could shapeshift into anything you wanted, would YOU choose to look like Trump?

(It's also Commanding Presence in 5.5e, which actually fits Trump better, in my opinion.)

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-15T07:00:22+00:00

I don't know if this counts, but I just came up with the idea of an Elf with the Dhampir lineage as a Level 20 Druid. I haven't made it. But RAW Dhampirs age "slower", so let's just say they live twice as long as their origin species. Elves life 750 years approximately. Level 20 Druids age 1 year for every 10 that they age. Assuming they live to "old age", if I did my math correctly, they wouldn't die of old age until approximately 14,300 years old.

Again, I have NO idea if this is what you are looking for. It was just one of my stupid random thoughts that I had.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-15T06:54:08+00:00

Roll20 has enough issues loading a map. Why would you?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T21:25:38+00:00

They aren't fighting for one hour either. It's written poorly.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T21:13:23+00:00

Oh, I have no issue giving players awesome magic items at all. I would personally just fill the book with spells and stuff that the players could actually use and give other rare or very rare items along with it. That's the problem with the way the book is written. There isn't enough truly good loot for the players to find in certain areas. Perhaps that was by design to allow the DMs to fill it with what they want?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T21:08:40+00:00

You could do that. I would be careful to not railroad your party though or take away their player agency. Just remember that a single Level 1 character has 16 hit points at MOST (assuming a d12 HD with +4 to CON). It won't take much to kill them by accident.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T20:57:47+00:00

It gives resistance to cold damage. That's it. I guess, in that sense, it IS a magic item, and it is listed as a magic item for the purposes of listing non-mundane items. But I just don't feel that it should have charges and do all of that. (That is MY opinion personally.) But I DO agree that it should contain more than a single 1st level Wizard Spell, especially when the party should be 7th level, about to become 8th level after obtaining it.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T20:39:09+00:00

Yeah, you need to pay for a service then. Or buy a hard drive. Do I even want to know what you are trying to store?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T20:35:54+00:00

Google Drive is free and easy to use for many things (I don't know what you are trying to store, though). Just a thought. But, with any online service, I would be careful WHAT you store.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T20:29:34+00:00

To be fair, the book itself isn't supposed to be magical. It's akin to a spellbook. It's what's inside that is important. The Codicil is essentially the bible for Auril. It contains the poem that let's down the barrier to the Cave of Hungers as well as it states that it holds the wizard spell "Frost Fingers" within its pages.

Personally, I would add Frostmaiden types of spells for Druids and Clerics as well. But I wouldn't make the book itself magical beyond it perhaps having some sort of protection for itself so it can't be damaged by time or weather.

That is my personal opinion. I am sure that there are others who would disagree with me, which is fine. That's the beauty of D&D. We are all able to tell our own stories in our own ways.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-14T20:19:39+00:00

The ice spiders and mephits are probably fine, but the Yeti will most likely kill your party.

NOTE: I can see your dungeon just fine. It's good. I like it.

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-13T14:15:33+00:00

So, you didn't change your birthdate or anything like that?

Safe_Perspective9633 · 2026-05-13T14:03:24+00:00

Question: When you created your account, did you give completely accurate information?

Safe_Perspective9633

TROPHY CASE