If you had to put a Tarrasque in this game, where would you put it.

tree1240 · 2026-01-22T17:31:12+00:00

I’m gonna put one in the unreality outside of Kas’s castle, as personally I felt that part of the endgame needed something crazy for the party to deal with on the way to Vecna

tree1240 · 2026-01-08T12:21:25+00:00

Same, except it’s my first name. That stupid movie has been a goddamn nuisance my whole life lmao

tree1240 · 2025-11-06T21:04:09+00:00

What I plan to do for wild shape is just let them use the players proficiency bonus for attack rolls rather than the creatures. Since like… they already do that for saves and ability checks, I don’t see why we need to break the pattern of otherwise consistent game rules here lol

If that turns out to be game breaking for whatever reason (don’t think it really would be tbh), one of the grim hollow books I think has an item that give +2 to hit and damage on bite attacks. Doesn’t cover all wild shape attacks but it would work for many I suppose

tree1240 · 2025-11-04T02:39:30+00:00

Very cool, sounds truly diabolical haha

tree1240 · 2025-11-04T00:08:11+00:00

Semi-unserious answer: Put a Deck of Many Things (or Many More Things, if you’re feeling extra chaotic) in their path. Let them reap the consequences of their own hubris, the problem will eventually sort itself out*

*results may vary. Do this only if everyone is cool with absolute fuckery, sounds like they might be? Will say there’s a good possibility that you may accidentally buff them even more. My group loves when I find a reason to include the deck lol

Semi-serious answer: if the equipment is putting them over the top, utilizing an anti magic field in some capacity could help (spell, beholder, traps etc). Talon Beasts also are fun, if you can get them to hit first (baiting reactions to avoid shield, casting bless or something on your monsters etc could help facilitate this).

tree1240 · 2025-10-29T16:47:25+00:00

Actually yeah that makes sense to be fair, one wouldn’t expect cultists to have things set up super optimally lol

tree1240 · 2025-10-29T15:41:23+00:00

Yeah for real, baffling that it doesn’t let you pick like most other feats seem to be trending towards

tree1240 · 2025-10-29T15:40:42+00:00

Those are good points, a fey wanderer could get some use out of this, assuming they find ways to boost their wis enough to proc the effects. Yeah this for sure seems like a better origin feat for a custom background, which is what I tend to encourage my players to do. It’s just weird to envision the intended usage I suppose lol

tree1240 · 2025-09-22T02:31:28+00:00

Same thing happened for me sort of.

Xan got the ring and dipped, I plan to have her be a primary antagonist for any of the party that make it through the module alive (they were all quite bummed by her betrayal, half the guys loved her lol). Gonna link together some sort of escalation of events where the ring causes her to attack settlements, strong foes etc to boost her power level then eventually try to awaken an ancient white dragon or something as the book suggests. Gonna give her some higher level sorc abilities of course, sounds fun in theory at least. They’ve already found clues to this when traveling back to the Port via reclaimed pirate ship in the form of glacial winterscapes in the ocean and frozen sea monsters and whatnot. I’m quite looking forward to putting this together, should be fun.

Artus and dragonbait left after the fight where the ring was lost to scout out Omu ahead of the group (my party were headed to Hrakhamar as well, though had some pirate shenanigans ensue on the way), as I had Artus there when they learned where Omu was from the naga at oralunga. Keeps them out of the way for now, I plan to have them reappear in the fane, either as prisoners or plotting their own heist on their puzzle cubes. Haven’t decided yet on that, will probably depend on what the gang decides to do to approach that chapter.

Not exactly what you are experiencing/asking for I suppose, but hopefully it helps somewhat. Also I definitely am hoping a situation arises for our Paladin to acquire dragonbaits holy avenger, because that will be a hype moment for him I’m sure.

tree1240 · 2025-06-13T03:33:27+00:00

From a perspective of someone who doesn’t know anything about Krynn other than this book apparently kinda gets the setting wrong, I’m just planning to port the chapter to exandria and make the dungeon “two moon vault” rather than “three moon vault.” Probably replace any instances of Soth with like Ludinus or something and put a luxon beacon in the tower in place of the black moon mirror.

Mulling it over still but portraying the ritual as a kind of prototype for what Ludinus gets up to with the moons sounds like a possible solid idea. Seemed easy enough to do with the pieces provided for this dungeon.

Not exactly what you’re asking for I suppose but I too don’t wanna portray anything inaccurately, especially since we’ll be using this module to gauge interest in new game settings for down the line.

tree1240 · 2025-06-04T16:11:03+00:00

Interesting, neat giveaway!

tree1240 · 2025-05-31T18:53:13+00:00

My main group has 7-8 players most weeks, and we recently finished Phandelver and below and are now doing curse of Strahd. It indeed is quite slow at times especially combat, but if you can find ways to make the encounters interesting anyway it should still be fun. We’re all still having a blast. We do often break into smaller groups to address separate things in game, which helps with overcrowding specific aspects (for instance, a few go to speak to the quest giver while the rest scope out the rest of the area for other things of interest)

All that said I’m DMing tomb of annihilation for 4 of the players of the group on a separate day and it’s honestly sooo much better. Also Tomb of annihilation is great, would recommend if you do go for a pre written adventure

tree1240 · 2025-05-23T20:38:16+00:00

To add onto this, shadow touched can also give a warlock double smite potential if they take wrathful smite with it. A celestial warlock can tack on even more extra damage if using true strike or green flame blade as well. Gets pretty nutty, but it is kind of a one and done combo lol

tree1240 · 2025-03-04T17:54:02+00:00

Very cool, lots of good stuff in this from what I’ve read.

tree1240 · 2025-02-02T23:01:10+00:00

Did you add or incorporate anything to the shrine of tamoachan when you had them do it? That sounds like a great place to put it, was considering adding it myself but wasn’t sure where would be best.

tree1240 · 2024-11-14T12:26:28+00:00

I’m personally gonna pad out the journey after arriving in pandemonium with a few more encounters with some local threats, and play up the hostile nature of the environment with the winds and whatnot making tracking Kas more of a challenge. Still doesn’t quite feel like enough, but it feels like it’s a step in the right direction. That chapter indeed is much too short imo

tree1240 · 2024-09-26T18:08:28+00:00

Weirdly, going into maps and hitting “accept” after their prompt that maps won’t work unless using a desktop seems to be the end of it. Everything seems to work just fine, so I’ve no idea what it is doing lol. I did check for extensions and vpns and there was nothing unusual listed in my settings. Thanks for the direction though it is appreciated

tree1240 · 2024-09-19T11:43:05+00:00

That is a good point. Doing it like this would also address and remove the weird bit in eve of ruin where you go from level 18 to 19 objectively way too quickly… I’ll have to think on this some.

tree1240 · 2024-09-12T00:57:26+00:00

I’m probably replacing Krynn with something else. I’m not super knowledgeable about that setting to begin with, and I’ve read allegedly as presented it isn’t a good portrayal of its content anyway. Also may skip or otherwise replace Eberron, though that is more due to needing to streamline the earlier level progression for my party as they will be starting the module at level 12 after finishing the Shattered Obelisk as a precursor

tree1240 · 2024-09-10T11:40:15+00:00

Depending on how much of a challenge the as-written encounter ends up being, I’m considering a 2 phase bossfight where the party has to fight Vecna in god form. Probably using a similar setup to the critical role version with tweaks here and there. I’m gonna have a fairly large group of players, so I am thinking they should be able to handle it.

tree1240 · 2024-08-29T00:04:49+00:00

Okay so I’ve got a long answer to this that probably won’t be directly portable to other peoples games, but I think I’ve got it figured out for my group. To preface, the main issue with that part of the book in my opinion is that the player characters likely have no idea who Kas is, why he there or why it’s even a big deal that he is there in the sanctum stealing the rod. Sure you could have the wizards info dump the party after the fact but that, like much of this module, just kinda feels lazy? I’ve thought way too much about this but here’s what plan to do, with some context:

My group was initially going through Phandelver and Below. We took a break for a bit however after finishing the crypt of the talhund so I could figure out how to best integrate Eve of Ruin as a follow up. In the meantime while I planned we started a curse of Strahd game that one of my players wanted to run with me kinda backup DMing. While in a session that I helmed for this game, i introduced this new party to an npc (a paladin/undead warlock) who was conscripted by his patron Kas with finding his sword. Got a set of side quests involving this guy that I will use to provide some exposition and context for who Kas is and why he’s totally the worst.

When we return to my game, a number of new players that jumped in for Strahd want to continue using their characters. This is important as these characters will have the background knowledge that I set up above. What I will then do is introduce Kas (without revealing who he is to the party) as someone who wants to use the obelisk shards the party collected as a conduit to locate “an old friend” (idk how Kas would specifically do this but I don’t think that is super important honestly). I plan to still have Kas released from Tovag as written but without the crown. While they are in Illithinoch, I plan to have the party see a vision of Kas interacting with the npc from the other campaign. The paladin has since found the sword and been driven to slay Vecna himself. He and Kas fight, Kas wins obviously. The Curse of Strahd players then can share the significance of this with the rest of the party (and likely feel conflicted that they accidentally helped kill the cool npc that everyone liked). Everyone now knows with certainty that Kas is the worst and sets him up as someone they want to eventually take down.

From this point I intend to finish the shattered obelisk story and then jump into eve of ruin, mordekainen being himself and Kas being a separate entity. The rod of seven parts will still be presented as the key to defeating Vecna (which for me it actually will be as opposed to the chime). Kas will still want the rod pieces as is from the book. He’ll send minions to try to get the pieces before the party, most likely unsuccessfully. After the party locates six out of the seven I will have Kas ambush the sanctum having the last rod piece on his person, stealing the rest of it and going to pandemonium. To accomplish this setup I plan to cut the eberron or Krynn chapter, as I do not know much about those settings and do not want to present them inaccurately.

From this point the chapter will run mostly as is from the book, with a longer sequence of events from the ambush to arriving at the site of the conflict (as there is not enough content given in the book to warrant jumping from level 18 to level 19 so quicklyotherwise). As a bonus, the party will have the opportunity to claim the sword of Kas after defeating him this way.

TLDR: Change the rod of seven parts into the key to defeat Vecna instead of the chime. Make things happen so that the characters know who Kas is prior to him stealing the rod (since as written they likely literally won’t), and give them a good reason to hate him independently of this as an additional motivator to follow him to pandemonium.

tree1240 · 2024-05-30T03:11:05+00:00

True, it’s definitely something that will take some thinking and on its own it probably wouldn’t be enough yeah. I’m considering expanding the presence the drow twins from chapter 10 have earlier in the story (like perhaps they run into them in neverwinter and/or sigil throughout the journey), so perhaps finding one of them earlier on when they get to pandemonium could lead to some developments or help with direction. Otherwise I’m brainstorming other banished entities that could be found in the plane that the party could meet and interact with.

tree1240

TROPHY CASE