D&D 5E (2014) Enhancing Vecna: Eve of Ruin *SPOILERS*

[Shardstone]

And as long as I'm necroing this thread (get it) I'd like to roll a knowledge (high level campaigns) by @ECMO3 for advice.

Sidebar: I actually read through all 49 pages of this thread: D&D (2024) - Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts and what I saw was the original observation about issues with a high-level 2024 game get ridiculed repeatedly by several people, and then the rest of the thread was ECMO3's (impressively) calm and reasonable responses that showed not only their level of expertise in every raised concern, but also that the people trying to point out "obvious" errors had zero/near-zero experience or objective evidence for their complaints, all of which turned out to be incorrect.

To anyone with experience running or playing this game or other up-to-20 5.5 games:
Given that Eve of Ruin is a 5.0 campaign and I'm running it with 5.5 characters (and using 5.5 monsters whenever I can), broadly: what would you do to change things if you were running it?

We have an Oathbreaker Paladin, Moon Druid, Battle Master Fighter, Assassin Rogue, and Lore Bard (who is the least power-gamey of the group). None of my group are multi-classers, nor do I think they'll bother with it down the line (maybe the rogue?). I'm cutting chapters 3 and 6 (Spelljammer and Krynn, just for story reasons) and completely changing chapter 2, so no worries with that material. Some ideas I've read from other posts include:

• Don't allow Vicious weapons, or houserule them as Very Rare (I'd probably do the latter)
• Don't give unrestricted free reign to PCs to buy or craft whatever they want (which will be hard to do as there is a central city hub that is specifically for that purpose)
• I'll probably houserule the 3.5 rule that you can't have more than 2 magical rings
• I'm going to use Dave2008's excellent "Apostles of Ruin" update to the bosses, which make them at least 6-10 times harder
• I know ECMO3 talks about Tasha's Hid. Laughter and Command as being the most broken spells in 5.5; would you change the spells or just try to play around them?

What else should I be looking out for, given these classes and that material?

5R characters are going to tear through encounters starting in Tier 2 and beyond. I don't think most of your houserules for limiting power do especially anything to 5R charactes, since most of their power is derived from their boosted class abilities. You should instead boost damage of "tanky" monsters by 50-75 points for T2 and onwards, and boost damage by another damage die. I don't think Hideous Laughter, Command, etc are necessarily broken; they're used in my games and they just aren't that special. I don't think you need to do anything especially difficult about them.

Apostles of Ruin can be used as is with 5R characters, with no damage or HP boosts.

 

[Clint_L]

It's weird that this wasn't in the book by default.

Right? Especially since WotC has already done a deal with Stranger Things.

This entire adventure seems to be built assuming that the players will be significantly composed of giant nerds like us who immediately recognize why Brynn is significant, etc.

 

[plecostomus]

And as long as I'm necroing this thread (get it) I'd like to roll a knowledge (high level campaigns) by @ECMO3 for advice.

Sidebar: I actually read through all 49 pages of this thread: D&D (2024) - Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts and what I saw was the original observation about issues with a high-level 2024 game get ridiculed repeatedly by several people, and then the rest of the thread was ECMO3's (impressively) calm and reasonable responses that showed not only their level of expertise in every raised concern, but also that the people trying to point out "obvious" errors had zero/near-zero experience or objective evidence for their complaints, all of which turned out to be incorrect.

To anyone with experience running or playing this game or other up-to-20 5.5 games:
Given that Eve of Ruin is a 5.0 campaign and I'm running it with 5.5 characters (and using 5.5 monsters whenever I can), broadly: what would you do to change things if you were running it?

We have an Oathbreaker Paladin, Moon Druid, Battle Master Fighter, Assassin Rogue, and Lore Bard (who is the least power-gamey of the group). None of my group are multi-classers, nor do I think they'll bother with it down the line (maybe the rogue?). I'm cutting chapters 3 and 6 (Spelljammer and Krynn, just for story reasons) and completely changing chapter 2, so no worries with that material. Some ideas I've read from other posts include:

• Don't allow Vicious weapons, or houserule them as Very Rare (I'd probably do the latter)
• Don't give unrestricted free reign to PCs to buy or craft whatever they want (which will be hard to do as there is a central city hub that is specifically for that purpose)
• I'll probably houserule the 3.5 rule that you can't have more than 2 magical rings
• I'm going to use Dave2008's excellent "Apostles of Ruin" update to the bosses, which make them at least 6-10 times harder
• I know ECMO3 talks about Tasha's Hid. Laughter and Command as being the most broken spells in 5.5; would you change the spells or just try to play around them?

What else should I be looking out for, given these classes and that material?

Something I don't see in your list but that is in almost every thread on reddit about VEOR+2024 PCs is that for any unique 2014 monsters without a 2024 MM counterpart, use their max HP instead of average. Many posts also mentioned damage adjustments like what @Shardstone describes above.

But a lot of people also described VEOR being easy even with 2014 characters, aside from Windfall and possibly Vecna.

 

[GwaihirAgain]

Here is my plan to run this campaign, already in progress. Feedback welcome.

• PCs have the Vecna ritual mark from an altercation with the cult of Vecna in Neverwinter.(EoR)
• Vecna has conquered Sigil, largely off screen, though the PCs saw the manifestations of this. The point of this is to stop the Gods from interfering in the ritual. How I'm not sure but that's the story I'm selling.
• Vecna has converted the Feywild and the Shadowfell into a new plane, the Feydark. The energy generated by the combining of the planes is what Vecna is planning to use to empower his ritual. PCs were involved in this and were present when both Mab and Titania were defeated by Vecna. In the Feywild, During this battle, a NPC was revealed to have the Eye of Vecna. The PCs had previously saved the archfey Zybilna (and her Cauldron), and discovered she was Tasha aka Iggwilv. T

This is how far we are.

• Upon escaping from the Feydark, and returning to Faerun, the PCs will encounter a darker reality, one in which Victorio Cassalantar is the Open Lord of Waterdeep, and serves Vecna; the party has previously pissed him off. One PC is a despised nephew of the Cassaltars.
• Tasha, at the moment of the creation of the Feydark, used her Cauldron to make a small pocket plane shielded from the reality warping effects of Vecnas ritual. She summons the party to aid her in undoing the Vecna effects.
• First mission is to enter Ravenloft and save Mordenkainen (mad mage). Once he is saved, He suggests tracking down the Rod of Seven Parts.
• Party Travels to a place of knowledge TBD, and discovers the location of two pcs of the R7P and chooses which one to go after, Adventures may include a couple from the EoR book or custom ones based on homebrew campaigns we've played as a group. Upon arriving at the location of the other part, they find it acquired by the Cult of Kas. Repeat. Various confrontations with both a Kas cult and a Vecna cult occur until all pieces are accounted for. Discover both the Hand of Vecna and the Sword of Kas.
• Confrontation with Kas/cult of Kas to recover all the remaining parts of the Rod, Kas seeks to defeat Vecna as well, asks the party to join him.
• Party with R07P confronts Vecna but at their moment of triumph is betrayed by Tasha/Iggwilv. In the final confrontation they banish Vecna to Oerth
• Confronting Vecna on Oerth, they finally slay the lich god.

Thanks
G

 

[Distracted DM]

Here is my plan to run this campaign, already in progress. Feedback welcome.

• Vecna has conquered Sigil, largely off screen, though the PCs saw the manifestations of this. The point of this is to stop the Gods from interfering in the ritual. How I'm not sure but that's the story I'm selling.

The gods can't enter Sigil, supposedly because of the Lady- but maybe he did some finagling there.

 

[dave2008]

The gods can't enter Sigil, supposedly because of the Lady- but maybe he did some finagling there.

An interesting twist might be that he relinquishes his god-hood to make Sigil his base?!

 

[dave2008]

Here is my plan to run this campaign, already in progress. Feedback welcome.

• PCs have the Vecna ritual mark from an altercation with the cult of Vecna in Neverwinter.(EoR)
• Vecna has conquered Sigil, largely off screen, though the PCs saw the manifestations of this. The point of this is to stop the Gods from interfering in the ritual. How I'm not sure but that's the story I'm selling.
• Vecna has converted the Feywild and the Shadowfell into a new plane, the Feydark. The energy generated by the combining of the planes is what Vecna is planning to use to empower his ritual. PCs were involved in this and were present when both Mab and Titania were defeated by Vecna. In the Feywild, During this battle, a NPC was revealed to have the Eye of Vecna. The PCs had previously saved the archfey Zybilna (and her Cauldron), and discovered she was Tasha aka Iggwilv. T

This is how far we are.

• Upon escaping from the Feydark, and returning to Faerun, the PCs will encounter a darker reality, one in which Victorio Cassalantar is the Open Lord of Waterdeep, and serves Vecna; the party has previously pissed him off. One PC is a despised nephew of the Cassaltars.
• Tasha, at the moment of the creation of the Feydark, used her Cauldron to make a small pocket plane shielded from the reality warping effects of Vecnas ritual. She summons the party to aid her in undoing the Vecna effects.
• First mission is to enter Ravenloft and save Mordenkainen (mad mage). Once he is saved, He suggests tracking down the Rod of Seven Parts.
• Party Travels to a place of knowledge TBD, and discovers the location of two pcs of the R7P and chooses which one to go after, Adventures may include a couple from the EoR book or custom ones based on homebrew campaigns we've played as a group. Upon arriving at the location of the other part, they find it acquired by the Cult of Kas. Repeat. Various confrontations with both a Kas cult and a Vecna cult occur until all pieces are accounted for. Discover both the Hand of Vecna and the Sword of Kas.
• Confrontation with Kas/cult of Kas to recover all the remaining parts of the Rod, Kas seeks to defeat Vecna as well, asks the party to join him.
• Party with R07P confronts Vecna but at their moment of triumph is betrayed by Tasha/Iggwilv. In the final confrontation they banish Vecna to Oerth
• Confronting Vecna on Oerth, they finally slay the lich god.

Thanks
G

I like a lot of the general ideas. My one caveat is that everything seems predetermined. I would prefer failure to be a real possibility and for there to be more than one potential avenue to victory.

Also, what is the effect of Tasha's betrayal and what is her goal. As written it makes no sense. What is her motive?

Thank you for sharing, it seems like a good start!

 

[pukunui]

An interesting twist might be that he relinquishes his god-hood to make Sigil his base?!

Doesn't the adventure already establish that he's given up much of his godly power to fuel his ritual? One could argue that that would be enough to make him not count as a god when it comes to entering Sigil.

 

[dave2008]

Doesn't the adventure already establish that he's given up much of his godly power to fuel his ritual? One could argue that that would be enough to make him not count as a god when it comes to entering Sigil.

Yep. The only difference is the suggest was that Sigil was a base of operations before the ritual takes place. Though, IIRC the ritual spans many years so you point still stands. I guess I just suggested what was already established!

Spoiler

In the adventure you don't actually fight a god level version of Vecna, he is reduced to his Archlich version.