D&D 5E Avernus Any Good?

[Zardnaar]

For the last 4 weeks at the gamestore I have been running for 5 or 6 players.

There's roughly a $3 cover charge that goes on store credit of which the DM gets $2.40.

So basically I get a free book. I've got a choice of another phb or Avernus. They're roughly $50 at full price.

So at that price point is it worth it? They don't have Theros yet but I've got a birthday coming up for that.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

From my own experience running it, I'd say it's a great story that gets diminished by bad adventure writing. It's a Ferrari running on ethanol, unfortunately.

That said, it's still a very good book, with the vehicle rules and the Baldur's Gate writeup being enough to justify the purchase, in my opinion (but I got it from Amazon, I don't know if I'd be willing to pay the full price for it after owning and running the module). Also, an experienced DM can easily salvage the story, maps, NPCs, and everything else to create a better campaign.

 

[jasper]

As homebrew it is excellent if you use milestone leveling. Chapter 5 could be laid out better as it depends on the choices the pcs make in Chapter 4 and what choices they want to make in Chapter 5. However if the party is over the level for the encounters some of the big bad boss battles will be cake walks.

 

[dregntael]

It's unlikely you'll find any good creatures in Avernus. It is one of the nine layers of hell, after all.

Or that was my first thought upon reading the title of this thread, at least.

 

[Shardstone]

From my own experience running it, I'd say it's a great story that gets diminished by bad adventure writing. It's a Ferrari running on ethanol, unfortunately.

That said, it's still a very good book, with the vehicle rules and the Baldur's Gate writeup being enough to justify the purchase, in my opinion (but I got it from Amazon, I don't know if I'd be willing to pay the full price for it after owning and running the module). Also, an experienced DM can easily salvage the story, maps, NPCs, and everything else to create a better campaign.

This is my experience with it.

The Mad Max aesthetic is amazing. As a sandbox, avernus is great. As an adventure, my players literally planehopped into Sigil out of Baldur's Gate because of how eeeh it was.

 

[Zardnaar]

If I get it probably won't run it.

Might get a new phb and give old one away.

It's basically for collecting. Anything worth mining?

 

[Helldritch]

The vehicle rules are fun to get. The additional critters are nice to have. The adventure in itself is quite good and can easily be expanded upon to bring a lot more planar hopping if you wish. But the real gem is the Baldur's Gate section. This one is almost worth the entire book. I did not run it so far and it will take a lot of work to make it work in my FR campaign as the companion is a god blessing from Lathander and Amunator. But otherwise it is a solid product.

 

[sim-h]

Yes, it's a shame more of the module was not based in Baldur's Gate although there are plenty of hooks there in that section. Way too many to fit into the campaign itself. I added in a few extra encounters and they worked pretty well, although one was stock from the book (Dead Three murder squad) I set it in the alleyways of Little Calimshan en route to an NPCs house that is part of the plot, so it was quite flavorful.

The group were about to enter chapter 2 but I paused until lockdown ends, since I have a lot of props for this campaign (think Beadle and Grimm) and I'm not wasting them! So I can't comment on the later chapters.

 

[jasper]

The monsters are worthy stealing too.

 

[tommybahama]

Our DM rewrote a lot of it. From him and elsewhere it seems like the campaign was written by several writers and never playtested. There are enough resources out there to make something enjoyable. The Alexandrian is a good place to start.