D&D 5E Descent Into Avernus & Mad Max: Why the adventure ultimately failed (to me!)

[TheSword]

I have to say it. The stupid, cutesy, forgetful, baby elephant creature Lulu was particularly annoying. Dragging PCs around by the nose and being the driving force behind the adventure progression. I really hated playing it.

 

[Yora]

I actually like the idea of having to run away from a more powerful foe. It just has to be powerful enough and telegraphed that they can’t defeat the enemy. While at the same time they still need to interact with it otherwise it’s a nameless threat that serves little more than a device. That’s a difficult needle to thread.

I think making encounters tailored to be unbeatable is still a poor approach. Ideally you would want to make it undesirable and unsustainable to keep facing the pursuers, and make fleeing more attractive and efficient to advance to whatever goal you have.

Which again comes down to the adventure needing a good structure.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think making encounters tailored to be unbeatable is still a poor approach. Ideally you would want to make it undesirable and unsustainable to keep facing the pursuers, and make fleeing more attractive and efficient to advance to whatever goal you have.

Which again comes down to the adventure needing a good structure.

That may be so, but an encounter slant like that is pretty much what you need in order to get the kind of rolling vehicle combats wotc clearly wanted to put in. Absent some kind of fate style taken out mechanic there isn't much reason beyond "let's give it a try" novelty of the car not to just stop the vehicles and fight like normal if the persuant doesn't just drive away.

Dia wasn't as bad as frost maiden but that's a hideously low bar & doesn't say anything about the severe screw the mage bias it has with monster & treasure setup on top of the mediocre disconnected fetch quest plot.

 

[ECMO3]

Your DM must have seriously beefed up the encounters then. By a couple of orders of magnitude. Which was probably quite sensible.

I actually like the idea of having to run away from a more powerful foe. It just has to be powerful enough and telegraphed that they can’t defeat the enemy. While at the same time they still need to interact with it otherwise it’s a nameless threat that serves little more than a device. That’s a difficult needle to thread.

Bear in mind that in 5e running away is rare for all the reasons discussed in other threads… and PCs are as like to fight to the death rather than surrender or flee. At least until it is too late. It causes problems.

They were actually not that powerful. They were just stirges but there were like a thousand of them. We were trying to kill these knights that were being kept alive and crucified on trees by Zariel. We wanted to put them out of their misery. Each time we killed a knight dozens more stirges joined the melee. We ended up using AOEs to waste the knights and then fled on the rover.

The stiges are not powerful alone but their numbers would have overwhelmed us if we did not flee.

To be honest though that particular DM is the best I have ever played with, like Matt Mercer good.

 

[TheSword]

They were actually not that powerful. They were just stirges but there were like a thousand of them. We were trying to kill these knights that were being kept alive and crucified on trees by Zariel. We wanted to put them out of their misery. Each time we killed a knight dozens more stirges joined the melee. We ended up using AOEs to waste the knights and then fled on the rover.

The stiges are not powerful alone but their numbers would have overwhelmed us if we did not flee.

To be honest though that particular DM is the best I have ever played with, like Matt Mercer good.

Well a thousand stirges is several orders of magnitude more than anything described in the books.

Sounds cool though.

 

[ECMO3]

That may be so, but an encounter slant like that is pretty much what you need in order to get the kind of rolling vehicle combats wotc clearly wanted to put in. Absent some kind of fate style taken out mechanic there isn't much reason beyond "let's give it a try" novelty of the car not to just stop the vehicles and fight like normal if the persuant doesn't just drive away.

Not counting when we fled, most of the other cars we fought had great ranged weapons and I think we would have done worse if we stopped.

Our party was a Ranger/Cleric, Barbarian, AT/Bladesinger (me), Monk

Me and the Barbarian were both melee oriented builds. Being a wizard I would have been ok at range with spells if we stopped, but my spell selection was definitely geared toward melee, not slinging spells at range, and I don't think I had anything that matched the range of the harpoons and such on the vehicles we fought. The Barbarian would have been nearly useless if we stopped and the Monk and Ranger were pretty good using the harpoons and other weapons we had on our vehicles, so I don't think they would have been any better if we stopped.

If I was the DM and we stopped, I would have just moved the enemy vehicle a couple hundred feet away and sniped at us from there outside of the range of the "crowd pleasing" spells. If we tried to close with them on foot I would drive further away. This would also separate the party as the best ranged weapons we had were actually on the vehicle, so if we stopped our ranged folks would have been immobilized essentially. Add to this that you had cover on the vehicle and not on the open wasteland.

As it was we were constantly trying to close, the barbarian would leap on to their vehicle. If I was not trying to ram them or something I would misty step on to it while the other two shot at it.

 

[Alzrius]

For those interested, The Alexandrian gave DIA a poor review, saying that its concepts didn't live up to its execution:

Review: Descent Into Avernus

SPOILERS FOR DESCENT INTO AVERNUSDescent Into Avernus begins by having the PCs stand around doing nothing while the GM describes an NPC doing awesome stuff.If then proceeds to “if they don

thealexandrian.net

There's also a multipart series on how to "remix" the adventure, making it into something better than the published work turned out to be:

Remixing Avernus

SPOILERS FOR DESCENT INTO AVERNUSIf you’re a local player in my campaigns, you might want to steer clear here. I may be running Descent Into Avernus in the future, but not for people who’ve

thealexandrian.net

 

[TheSword]

Not counting when we fled, most of the other cars we fought had great ranged weapons and I think we would have done worse if we stopped.

Our party was a Ranger/Cleric, Barbarian, AT/Bladesinger (me), Monk

Me and the Barbarian were both melee oriented builds. Being a wizard I would have been ok at range with spells if we stopped, but my spell selection was definitely geared toward melee, not slinging spells at range, and I don't think I had anything that matched the range of the harpoons and such on the vehicles we fought. The Barbarian would have been nearly useless if we stopped and the Monk and Ranger were pretty good using the harpoons and other weapons we had on our vehicles, so I don't think they would have been any better if we stopped.

If I was the DM and we stopped, I would have just moved the enemy vehicle a couple hundred feet away and sniped at us from there outside of the range of the "crowd pleasing" spells. If we tried to close with them on foot I would drive further away. This would also separate the party as the best ranged weapons we had were actually on the vehicle, so if we stopped our ranged folks would have been immobilized essentially. Add to this that you had cover on the vehicle and not on the open wasteland.

As it was we were constantly trying to close, the barbarian would leap on to their vehicle. If I was not trying to ram them or something I would misty step on to it while the other two shot at it.

So I hate to contradict you but maybe your DM had changed quite a bit of stuff there as well. The harpoon launchers on the vehicles have 120 ft range and there are generally one per vehicle. They do an average of 11 damage each on a hit. There is no earthly way a typical party at 7th level could be out ranged or out gunned by a fleet of them let alone one. Your Firebolt cantrip alone would almost match that javelin thrower!

It sounds like your DM seriously beefed them up. Sensibly. Maybe I should have done the same. Although to be honest the opponent outranging you is an argument for turning around and engaging them in combat, not having a running battle at distance.

 

[TheSword]

I think making encounters tailored to be unbeatable is still a poor approach. Ideally you would want to make it undesirable and unsustainable to keep facing the pursuers, and make fleeing more attractive and efficient to advance to whatever goal you have.

Which again comes down to the adventure needing a good structure.

I do agree with you. I’m not a fan of unbeatable combats. My preference would probably be a selection of side encounters and opportunities that if the party takes advantage the pursuing horde becomes greater. The more locations the party travel to the more hangers on the horde gathers and the more challenges and obstacles the party has to overcome. With opportunities to delay or degrade the horde at certain points instead. I would have liked a set piece battle at some point as some kind of climax.

 

[Stoutstien]

I personally redid the entire hell portion to focus on belief that the balance needs to be maintained for the fate of the know planes. So it's a shift form a series of fetch chains into a game of complex deal making and breaking to just keep the war going. Added in some major players like Mordekainen and a elder evil to put the scope and scale of what the party is up to in its place.