D&D 5E D&D 5e Night Below Conversion Question: Alternative ending?

Hi all.
I'm running a Night Below Campaign and I'm looking for some help for converting/changing the ending in 5e. Careful if you plan to play this campaign as there are some major spoilers in the rest of my post below.

[sblock]The Night Below campaign ends with an attack on Great Shaboath, the stronghold of the Aboleth where the PCs have to destroy multiple magical towers by overloading them with spells. That means that non-casters really don’t get to do anything at that point in the game other than watch the spellcasters have fun. That’s also not to mention the fact that the PCs have to pump a whole lot of spells into the towers.

I am looking for alternative ways for the PC's to destroy the magical spheres in the Aboleth towers in D&D 5e?[/sblock]

Here is a link to our Night Below Wiki site (http://wardsshed.wikidot.com/) if you fancy mining it for you own needs.

Thanks in advance for any ideas/help.

I don't remember anything about Night Below.

However, I do have ideas:

Arcana checks instead-of or in-addition-to spells
Waves of (easy) mooks to keep non-spellcasters busy and at the same time help them feel *awesome* as they mow down baddies.
Allow physical attacks to destroy the spheres - give them a DR such that Arcana checks/spells is still more effecient
Allow Channel Divinity to weaken them like a spell
Allow "rogues" (or the equivalent) a way to "Disarm" them in such a way as to exploit them for their own use (As an aside, I like giving rogues ways to do things but with a criminal/sinister/selfish catch. I think most rogue players appreciate it. Perhaps with a successful "disarm" the rogue can siphon off energy to empower an attack with energy...an extra xd6 <energy type. However, while empowered the rogue grants advantage to attacks from mooks you have keeping the melee guys busy. In this way, rogues are encouraged to disarm (helping to reduce the sphere), get buffed (who doesn't like that?), be targeted for attacks (eek! but I am a rogue! can't catch me), Deal a massive blow (Huzzah!), then rinse and repeat.

my 2 copper-cladded zinc pieces of local currency

Hmm. There are actually quite a few things to keep in mind in situations like these.

First and foremost - 5th edition adventures don't (should not) assume ANY spellcasters in the party. We've come a long away from the "classic" party where every party was assumed to have *at least* one arcane spellcaster and one divine spellcaster.

(That said, as long as the adventure is upfront with a need for spellcasting, and provides an alternative means to cast said spells - such as a NPC Mage or Priest for hire - this shouldn't be a huge problem. Most parties do contain several spellcasters, if for no other reason than EVERYBODY except a few subclasses is a spellcaster in 5E!)

On the other hand, allow physical attacks to work as well, and you might well see physical attacks REPLACING spellcasting. After all, swinging your sword is free - you don't have a limited number of sword swings per day. So take care or you end up with the spellcasters saving all their spells.

So the middle way is clear: allowing alternatives to spellcasting is good, since you can't assume any spellcasters. But these alternatives need to be rather expensive or difficult, or the spellcasters might simply save their spells.

In summary:
* just Arcana checks or Charisma checks needs to be a very slow process, or alternatively a dangerous one. Either have unlimited mook waves to make the party hurry up, or place guardians and have one appear/animate/reassemble each time you fail a check. (While parties with many fighters and no casters will have more difficulty making Arcana checks, at least they are better suited to actually fighting these guardians)

* DR (damage reduction/hardness) is problematic. It means the best fighter (the one with the greataxe and GWM feat) needs to be tied down to hacking the spheres and the others will have to deal with the mooks. But this character would probably love to fight the mooks, while the skill monkey would probably love to tinker with the spheres!

One alternative (suitable for a mid-level party):

Say you need 30 spell levels total (to shut down the spheres), but you have few casters. How about allowing characters to expend their "life energy" by reaching into the spheres, which will cause them damage and pain. This works when you don't want to spend any spell slots, but it is slower and for some players there is a roleplaying cost in taking all that pain and damage.

Now, 30 spell levels can be done quickly - just cast four level 5 spells and a few low-level spells and you're done. It's possible to do this in as little as two rounds.

But if you do it the hard way, each round you (that thrust your hand into the sphere) lose one Hit Die, and you take d12 damage, and you must make a DC 10 Constitution save or be hurled 10 ft backwards and effectively become Frightened (per the condition) of the spheres (DC 15 Will save at end of each round) and it only counts as 1d3 spell levels. Once you're out of hit dice, you take a level of exhaustion instead.

This means roughly two hit dice per 2 spell levels, and 30 hit dice total. That is sure to drain a four-man level 8 party quite significantly - they have exactly 32 HD among them - but it can provide a tense and exiting scene. Even if the mooks aren't particularly dangerous, they don't have to be when every single hit point counts!

Zapp

PS. Be sure to make the mook guardians "soulless" (undead, golems, elementals etc) or your smart players are bound to shove *them* into the spheres instead!

I ran this as 3e finishing at 21st level between 2000-2006, good times. I changed it a fair bit but kept the story largely intact.

The towers are a bit repetitive iirc. I changed them to make them a bit more individual. The important thing is to let your players know is that they can't get into the main tower without taking them down. I think when I did it there were special runes in each tower but destroying them simply required defeating the guardians then touching a magic item to the rune that is from the opposing school of magic (as defined by the aboleth rune magic) - I think I did towers of necromancy, conjuration, enchantment - can't recall the rest. So the necromancy tower had undead, death glyphs etc and to destroy the "Rune of Enervation" they had to touch it with a decent permanent (non charged) magic item from the school of enchantment - which was then destroyed. I think they used eyes of charming they had found along the way.
It got rid of some excess magic but it felt like it mattered because it was a real sacrifice.

When I ran it, I re-did the ending so that each of the end locations had a "school of magic" themed boss monster the PCs had to kill.

As long as the monster was alive the object was indestructible. Once the monster was dead, destroying the object just required a sledgehammer (or similar) and someone left alive to swing it.

ppward said:

Hi all.
I'm running a Night Below Campaign and I'm looking for some help for converting/changing the ending in 5e. Careful if you plan to play this campaign as there are some major spoilers in the rest of my post below.

[sblock]The Night Below campaign ends with an attack on Great Shaboath, the stronghold of the Aboleth where the PCs have to destroy multiple magical towers by overloading them with spells. That means that non-casters really don’t get to do anything at that point in the game other than watch the spellcasters have fun. That’s also not to mention the fact that the PCs have to pump a whole lot of spells into the towers.

I am looking for alternative ways for the PC's to destroy the magical spheres in the Aboleth towers in D&D 5e?[/sblock]

Here is a link to our Night Below Wiki site (http://wardsshed.wikidot.com/) if you fancy mining it for you own needs.

Thanks in advance for any ideas/help.

Click to expand...

I was running a 5e Night Below / OOtA mashup for my home game, on hiatus now. We didn't get anywhere near that far before we all got too busy with life, but I remember reading that part about the raid on Great Shaboath and thinking "dang, I'd need to change up these magical towers and the spheres inside, they'e too boring, and too dependent on spellcasters!"

I agree with [MENTION=55491]werecorpse[/MENTION] that the whole towers/spheres section needs a serious re-design.

After already destroying 2 of the 4 outer towers my players were all set to take on the final 2. Then we switched to 5e.
In my NB campaign I had decided that there were in fact 3 domination aboleth mind controlling devices. One in Calisham, one in Thay and one beneath the Heartlands (Misteldale).
The one on Calisham has already been activated and I have attributed the change from 3.5 to 5e to be connected with the second one in Thay going live. Elminster and Kelbem and Co. had failed to stop it in Thay in my Campaign.

So my players don't know what to expect as they return to Shaboath to destroy the remaining 2 outter towers. This gives me an opportunity to make the spheres conform more to 5e and this is the area I'm focusing on and need help with.

Thanks for the replies so far. Some great stuff in there already.

Hi again.
Re the central towers and time tracking. I stopped the countdown on the domination device (towers) being activated after my players destroyed the first of the outer four back in 3.5e.
How long do you think it would take the Aboleth to rebuild the towers after the players destroyed them?
I would like to put the players back on the clock and would do this the next time the players enter the city by having them see the rebuilding of the towers by the aboleth slaves.