One of the things I had to learn the hard way when it comes to running campaigns is that you need to know what works and to make sure to include that in almost every session.

For me, players like it best when I run downtime stuff and advance all of the mini-stories with the NPCs.

I am right now running a big war. In theory, the group should be camped with the devil army, marching across the dusty, bleak realm of Thanatos for weeks at a time.

In the past, I would have done that. The group wouldn’t have seen their NPC friends. In past campaigns, every single time I cut the group off from that stuff, the game turned into a slog. It was almost like the players were showing up, filling time until they got back to what they really wanted to do.

Now, even if it doesn’t make sense, I make sure to let them go back every single session.

What has worked for me when laying out a session is to do one big action scene/scenario, some little scenes, and then plenty of time for the group to go to the city of Sigil and check in on all of their friends, businesses and homes. That formula works!

Find Your Formula: I would think every DM will find a different formula. It all depends on what your strengths are. It’s hard, but when you think about your sessions, objectively decide what the group liked best. Not what you liked best, not what you want to do, but what got the best reaction. What were the things that the players talked about. When did they light up? That’s the stuff you should focus on. Throw everything else in the garbage!

It’s painful. When you come up with a campaign, you envision the big moments and the twists that will blow the group’s mind, but a lot of times they don’t grab onto the things you expect them to. If you try to fight that, forcing your vision and your tempo on them, it just doesn’t work.

Once you identify what the group responds to and what generates fun/hilarity/excitement for your group, build on that. Try to avoid making everything negative. For example, a bad guy army is rampaging across the land. Every development shouldn’t be: “They took this town”, “They enslaved these people”, etc. There should be a variety of things, good and bad. Last Session, I talked to the players about their characters for the new campaign.

I'm going to wait until Xanathar's Guide to Everything comes out, so they can use the options in that book if they want to.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

Last time, assassin devils killed all of the groups employees at their main festhall. The group immediately went about bringing their dead NPC buddies to temples and paid to have them raised. The group spent almost all of their remaining money on this.

Some of the NPCs did not want to be raised – they’re ready to move on. This was a way for me to dump NPCs that had becoming boring.

The group hired some new employees, which allowed me to cook up some new goofballs to throw into the mix. A ninja, a librarian, a dude named Kyle Docker, and a mysterious sparkling women with a big pile of treasure. She drinks a lot. The group was quite suspicious of her but didn’t figure out her deal.

She’s a shape-shifted elysian dragon. They drink a lot. Seems like a fun thing to throw into the mix!

Devil Scam: The group learned that somebody admitted to hiring the assassin devils. He’s a bearded devil named Jimmy Neverlearner. The group’s ally, the succubus Red Shroud, dug up dirt on him. It tTurns out that Jimmy has made a career out of taking the blame for crimes he didn’t commit.

The group visited Jimmy in jail and I got to bust out my stupid line I couldn’t wait to use. A guard shook his head when he looked at Jimmy’s rap sheet, and he said: “You’re just never going to learn, are you, Jimmy Neverlearner?”

I should point that prior to this, I had the group make perception checks as they wandered the streets of Sigil. They kept failing. Over and over. Red Shroud was tailing them, having taken the form of a bauriar (a goat/centaur). Finally she just approached them and dumped the info on them, which the group found very funny.

The group figured that their enemy, Vordiklot Krapple, had paid off Jimmy to take the fall. The group decided to go get their friend, Drokkarn the pit fiend, to deal with this. Drokkarn outranks Vordiklot and can get him in big trouble. I was pleasantly surprised, as that’s what I had in mind and they came to that conclusion all on their own.

Fiend's Embrace: They went to hell and saw that Drokkarn was off in a cave by himself. He was talking. The group listened. Drokkarn was answering a sending spell to Iggwilv, pledging his loyalty. When the group found Drokkarn, he was a magic cloak named the Fiend’s Embrace. He pent a long time on Iggwilv’s shoulders, and he was in love with her.

So now the group has realized she’s trying to use that to her advantage. Drokkarn’s plan is to betray the devils and become a demon lord. Iggwilv obviously can help with that. The group isn’t sure if they can trust him or not.

The heroes brought Drokkarn to Sigil, and he beat up Vordiklot and let group beat on the corruption devil as well. He ordered Vordiklot to go back to hell and never to return. Vordiklot, trembling, agreed to do so. Vordiklot paid the group off to leave him alone. He gave them a big pile of soul larvae, and a bag of holding.

Groups love bags of holding! Always! Now, each hero in this game has one.

The soul larvae are planar currency. Demon lords can eat them to gain power. Eating enough soul larvae can bring a demon to demon lord status.

Basically, I was handing them the option to power up a demon lord if they wanted to. They have a lot of options. They didn’t decide what to do until the end of the session.

Downtime: We did a bunch of other stuff in town:

Haagenti

Society of Luminiferous Aether: Theran spent a few days adding every second level spell to his spell book. In one book, he learned the legend of Haagenti, the mother of minotaurs. This is from the 3e tome of magic. The group will be going into Baphomet’s maze soon and I want them to run into her vestige.

Skyshrine: A simulacrum of Iggwilv was waiting here for the group. She was done messing around. She wanted Theran’s Talisman of the sphere. Theran was extraordinarily cocky, telling her he would kick her ass again if she didn’t watch herself. The last time they fought, Iggwilv used low level spells against him. She held back! She is ridiculously powerful and I think she could kill him very easily. One Melf’s minute meteors spell from her took him down.

At that point, Theran’s loyal ally the succubus nurse burst into the room with a pile of Graz’zt’s babies. One baby lunged at Iggwilv, and Iggwilv got a look at it. It looked like Graz’zt and Lamashtu. Iggwilv realized that Graz’zt was having relations with Lamashtu and she had a temper tantrum.

Graz’zt and Iggwilv have a very dysfunctional relationship. Technically, she’s his prisoner. But she immediately became jealous and left to go get revenge. So Theran was spared a sorcerous duel.

Blibdoolpoolp

Allagash: At Bidam’s demon-making farm, he met a kuo-toa who worshiped Blibdoolpoolp – the god who is a naked lady with a lobster head. The kuo-toa was looking at the nephrotic demons that were being made at the farm. They are demon crustaceans! They look quite like Blibdoolpoolp!
The kuo-toa wanted to bring some to his goddess. Jessie thought for a minute, and agreed to sell some. The kuo toa bought 6 and went on his merry way.

I think Blibdoolpoolp is funny and this seemed like an opportunity to work her in and see what happens.

Burningwater: The heroes went to the 9th layer of the abyss, hoe of heir buddy, Bazuuma, demon lord of positive energy. Their new friend, Korb, the three-headed demon spider, has been doing research on the wells of darkness. It’s an abyssal layer that many entities are imprisoned on. I’m building up plans to have the group go there down the line.

Destroying a Layer of the Abyss

With all that done, it was time to get down to business. The archdevil ruler of the 1st layer of hell was ready to pull off her scheme. She was going to try to pull a layer of Abyss into hell.

The plan:

1. Cast a planar breach spell to connect Avernus (1st layer of hell) to Onstrakkar’s Nest (The abyssal realm that Lamashtu once owned, but the devils had overtaken).
2. The heroes would bring massive hooked chains through the breach and hook them to the abyssal layer.
3. Thousands of devils would pull on the chains and try to drag the entire abyssal layer into hell.

"General Goreletch"

The group met a few high-ranking devils involved:

• Armaros, Resolver of Enchantments: He makes magic items. Normally Asmodeus doesn’t let people talk to him, but in this case it’s OK. He made these giant magic chains.
• Mordukhavar: The two-headed dragon, son of Tiamat and a pit fiend. He’s a general of hell.
• General Goreletch: I wanted to use the pathfinder version of Moloch, so I changed his name. The group thought he was awesome. That's because he is awesome! He can make a 90-foot tall tower rise out of the ground whenever he wants.

So each character had magical control of a hooked chain. It would follow them, hovering. When the character spoke a command word, it would plunge into the ground and the hook would extend deep into the abyssal layer.

Yaenit

The heroes went through. They made their way to the center of the layer. A few yaenits rose up from the ground. Yaenits are lamashtu’s devils, taken right from Pathfinder Bestiary 6.

They have a hallucinatory aura. The group had to make saving throws. Bidam failed. He saw Lamashtu herself rise up out of the ground and freaked out.

Theran realized it was an illusion and within a few rounds, the group was able to shake it off.
I ran this like a normal combat. For the first time EVER, Bidam got a critical with his sword of sharpness and rolled a 19 on the follow-up, meaning he beheaded the yaenit in one shot.

The heroes took down the demons and Bidam implanted his hook. One down, one to go.

The other spot they were told to go to was by the “placental river”. It just so happened to be right by the front door of a demon-part place that I’d been trying to get the group to go to for about 5 sessions. They started laughing. This place lets you sew demon parts onto your body.

I ran a second combat, but I did it in a 4e “skill challenge combat” way to save time. They roll initiative, they tell me what they do, we make a roll to see how it goes. So basically, every round,  A yaenit with a weird body part stitched on came out of the building and attacked. The parts:

• A demonic scorpion tail
• Huge, demonic muscle arms
• Other lewd things.

The group did pretty well. When it was over, Theran declared he wanted to keep one of the items. Demonic genitalia of considerable size had landed right at his feet. Jessie and I started laughing. What did he want? The scorpion tail. The scorpion tail! Did not expect that!

We’ll sew that on him next time. They know a guy who makes golems, this is right up his alley.

The group had implanted the hooks. The devils started to pull. The abyssal layer reacted violently, rippling. Tendrils and mouths opened up. One dragged Bidam inside the layer. Theran was able to grab Bidam and pull him out. They ran, dodging tendrils, and emerged through the breach into hell.

The layer came spilling in, merging with the ground under their feet. A massive section of the realm split open as it came through the portal. Out of it spilled hundreds of demons – nascent demon lords!

I had established a while back that some abyssal layers devour demons who try to take control of a layer and fail. They are trapped inside the interior organs of that layer and suffer.

Now, they were all free! Unique nascent demon lords tore into the devil army, who were completely unprepared for this.

I used a bunch of creatures from the Teratic Tome for this.

Ahriman

A nascent demon lord named Ahriman attacked the heroes. He has this trident that is linked to a good god, but is covered in this demonic crust that has corrupted it.

As the group fought him, other nascent demon lords would interject somehow for a round and then get into it with the other devils fighting all around the heroes. The other nascent demon lords:

• Eremite: A woman with golden tentacle arms
• Vomitorian: He has three mouths, barfs up yellow demons.
• Querist: A creature with rotting flesh that exudes fear.
• The Seamstress: A demon woman who wears patches of skin of other creatures. She has the weird ability to fit into tiny spaces.

Bidam got hurt bad and used his ability to pee positive energy (my campaign is stupid) to heal himself. The group defeat Ahriman and the devils were successful.

As the devils mopped up and the abyssal ground solidified and was tamed by law, the group looked through the planar breach. Theran saw something in the void. Mist was coalescing – ground was forming. A new layer was growing!

The devils didn’t notice. Armaros waved his hand and canceled the breach.

So.. I asked the group what the wanted to do, here. They had a pile of soul larvae and they knew of a new abyssal layer that absolutely nobody else was aware of. What’s more, because Theran had seen it, he could get there via magic.

They could hand this place over to a demon lord. They could also hand over their soul larvae and empower a demon lord. I listed their options for them:

• Queen Ulandine: The queen of harpies, consort of Pazuzu. She had asked the group to get her some soul larvae. The group could make her a demon lord AND give her her own layer.
• Xanthopsia, Queen of Obscenity: A while back the group met this nascent demon lord who is trapped inside of Graz'zt’s triple realm. Theran knows her truename. The group could summon her, make her a demon lord and give her her own realm. She’s make a tower in the shape of a middle figure. Jessie loves this NPC, so I knew this was a major possibility.
• Bazuuma, Demon Lord of Positive Energy: Bidam’s wife! With the soul larvae, she’d gain the power to age their dragon children into adults and she could create oculus demons, who are from the 3e demonweb pits adventure and fit her perfectly (Bazuuma has 20 eyes).
• Pazuzu: The heroes could suck up to this vulture demon lord, who has helped them recently.
• Graz’zt: Give him a 4th layer!

The heroes chose: Bazuuma. She now has two layers.

In some official books, it is said that only Graz’zt rules more than one layer, but other books contradict this. In my game, Graz’zt, Pazuzu and Lamashtu each rule more than one layer. I think Juiblex has two or three, also. Now we can add Bazuuma to the list.

So.. next time. Bazuuma will age her kids, form her layer, and Theran will get a scorpion tails stitched right on the tramp stamp region above his butt.

The group will also go back to Thanatos and visit the Valley of the crypt things, where they need to shut down the portal to Baphomet’s maze. They don’t know it, but lurking in that valley is a charnel god of Orcus – a statue containing a shard of the essence of the demon prince of undeath.
Should be awesome!!

Episode 52: Can't Hurt Sunshine

• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist

This last weekend was the Stream of Annihilation. It was awesome. I wrote a billion words about it already. The whole event kicked off with Dice, Camera, Action episode 51, where the group learned that Diath and Strix are dying.

Chris is starting to work in the story of the new adventure, Tomb of Annihilation. In it, every person who had been raised from the dead are no rotting away and will be gone forever in a matter of weeks. To stop it, the heroes need to seek out an artifact known as the Soulmonger.

I've never seen a D&D session like today's! Pretty amazing.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

We pick up where we left off. Strix and Diath are dying, and Van Richten has just told Evelyn that in order to save Strix and Diath, she has to die. Only Evelyn can save them, because she carries the blessing of Saint Markovia.

The group has a suite in an underground inn in Citadel Adbar. In this suite, the group discusses what to do. Evelyn is very up for it. The other two really don't want it to happen.

Van Richten intends to cast a vistani pagan ritual. He needs components! He'll try to take care of that himself. He needs three rings of pure gold.

Paultin will need to dress up as a raven. They'll need to make a raven costume. Van Richten notes that the ritual might not end the curse, it might just stave it off.

The max hp of Diath and Strix drops by 1 hp. That's going to keep happening until they are dead.

Paultin is in the other room, hung over. He wakes up and hears Van Richten. Paultin is none too please (Van Richten killed his parents)and he casts animate object the chair Van Richten is sitting on. Paultin screws with him a lot and once he gets up to speed, he feels like Van Richten is not telling them everything.

Paultin notices that Van Richten's shadow isn't acting normal. Hmmmm.

Van Richten's off to get the ingredients for the ritual. The group goes to meet the king to report to him on what happened at Ironslag. Standing next to the throne is his main adviser, Azon Bronzefire.

The king thanks the group for saving Jasper and he asks about the other dwarves. Diath says they didn't make it.

Azon demands to know where Krak is. Diath declares that Azon is a schemer - "Krak" (the earth genie in disguise) was an agent of the Bronzefires and he was up to no good. The court of dwarves are in an uproar.

As proof, the group releases the genie from the flask. The genie admits that he is bound to the Bronzefires and that they sent him to steal the golem.

Azon is taken into custody.

Doppleganger

The king kicks everyone out of the throne room except the heroes. The King explains that he's not really the king - he's a doppleganger (shapechanger). The original king was dying and put him on the throne so that the dwarves wouldn't panic.

This subplot is right out of Storm King's Thunder.

The doppleganger thinks someone is trying to kill him. He wants Strix to pretend to be king for three days, so he can go into hiding. That sounds incredibly amusing. Evelyn loves it, and points out that she did a great Strahd impression.

There are people from Yartar coming here soon and he thinks it's some kind of set-up or hit.
Ritual time?

Somewhere in here, Evelyn checks on the toymaker who is fixing Murderbot, the evil puppet. The toymaker goes on and on about Evelyn and how beautiful she is, and how it inspired him to create.

Evelyn is getting ready to die. This is not jokey at all, she's dead serious.

Evelyn hands out stuff:

• Diath gets most of her weapons.
• Strix gets juniper (Evelyn's mouse) and a book about manners.
• Paultin gets Treebane. She tells him to pick up Simon once Tyril Flamebane finishes making him. Her signet ring of her family crest.

She wrote them each a letter. She hands it to them. Anna wrote a bit about what was in these letters on the DCA subreddit right here. She clearly put a lot of time and thought into this, which is amazing because it's only been 4 days since the last game and she worked all weekend!

Evelyn gets sadder and sadder. She goes off to be alone. Paultin joins her. They talk a bit and she kisses him. Anna starts crying and the whole thing gets very emotional. Apparently most of the people who watched this live were crying, too.

We're doing this ritual. Right now! Paultin's in the raven costume. Van Richten is Evelyn is hit with radiant energy....

Suddenly, she's flying through the aether on the back of Mourning Glory. Three entities are waiting for her:

• St. Andral: Old white man with a staff. He's c cleric, a saint
• St. Markovia: She's a paladin with a hammer, missing a leg (her thighbone is a magic item in Curse of Strahd).
• The Morninglord: He is holding a baby.

Yeah, that's right! Her GOD is there. Why is he holding a baby?

Saint Markovia

OK.. going to go on a huge tangent here. I forgot about this stuff until I looked it up.

These saints are from Curse of Strahd and other old Ravenloft products. I wrote about all of the saints in an old article I wrote about the "prequel" adventures of Curse of Strahd.

Saint Andral is mentioned in Curse of Strahd on page 97. His bones are stolen.

Saint Markovia followed her heart and became a priest of the Morninglord shortly after her 18th birthday. On Curse of Strahd page 146, it says that Saint Markovia was a priest who took a stand against Strahd, but she ended up being destroyed along with most of her followers. Saint Markovia is buried in crypt 6 (Curse of Strahd page 86). I believe Evelyn actually found this crypt

• Saint Markovia's Thighbone: (Curse of Strahd page 222) is the equivalent of a mace of disruption.
• Saint Markovia's Abbey: This is where The Abbot and his creepy bride are in Krezk. It has all of those mongrelfolk in it.

Evelyn meeting those three matches up perfectly with Curse of Strahd. Here's a note I made in that old article:

"There is a stained glass window that depicts Saint Andral, the Morninglord and Saint Markovia on page 138 in Curse of Strahd."

Here's what I wrote about the time the waffle crew discovered St. Markovia's crypt in Castle Ravenloft: 

"Evelyn is magically drawn to the crypt of St. Markovia. This area is on Curse of Strahd page 86, Crypt 6. Chris changes this around quite a bit from what's in the book.

I always thought it would be cool if Evelyn became a saint. Maybe that will happen somehow. If she defeats Strahd, that's worthy of sainthood, right?

In the crypt, the group sees dust that might be the remains of St. Markovia. The group thinks that if Diath snorts it, he'll be cured. He declines. Strix quietly puts some of the ashes into a potion bottle and keeps it.

The spirit of Saint Markovia appears and blesses Evelyn's weapon, Lightfall. She calls Evelyn "Lady Marthane." Lightfall is imbued with the powers of a mace of disruption:

Lightfall:

• Sheds light.
• +2d6 radiant damage to undead and fiends.
• If the undead/fiend target has 25 hit points or less, it must make a saving throw or be destroyed."

Right after this, Diath actually drank the ashes of Saint Markovia. He was turning into a ghoul-thing thanks to his dark pact. Drinking the ashes actually did turn him to normal.

OK... back to the session.

Evelyn is about to greet her god and the saints. Suddenly, black tendrils suddenly snatch her. She's pulled into a green devil face! Wow... this is more Tomb of Annihilation stuff. The face looks like this:

Paultin's there in the ether, in the form of a giant raven! He sees Evelyn being stolen away by the tendrils. He flies after her. He is going to need to make a check to grab her. NATURAL 20!

That is just amazing. The crew rolls a lot of ones and not too many 20's. People are crying and holding their mouths.

Suddenly... Paultin is in the crumbled ruins of a citadel in a winter valley. There's torches on the outside. It is a grey, colorless place. He's in a hallway with doors on one side and windows on the other. All the way at the end of the hallway are double doors.

A voice hisses at him: "Get out!" He hears cracking twigs.

Paultin does not leave. He heads down the hallway. He's still in his bird costume.

He enters the room and finds.. a nest that takes on a living form..? A living nest? There's darkness where its face should be.

Birds come flying at him. The nest-thing presses a severed, rotted hand to his lips.

A voice fills his head. "Let it clutch the chalice." He takes the hand and the nest-thing collapses into a heap.


OK. Severed hand? Is this the hand of Vecna?! I think Chris is a Vecna enthusiast and I believe the Amber Temple is actually a temple of Vecna.

Back in Citadel Adbar, Van Richten has collapsed and Paultin has vanished. Chris says they can't tell if Van Richten is unconscious or dead. Evelyn vanished, too. Strix is certain Evelyn has moved on.

Back in the aether, Chris says that Evelyn was pulled away from.. the Soulmonger...! She finds herself in light.

Evelyn wakes up. Paultin is lying next to her, holding the severed hand.

They're in a toy store. She looks at her hands. They're different. She's in a toy body.. a body that looks like Evelyn.

She's the same height that she was when alive. Mecha Evelyn! That's where we stop?!?!

As they wrap up, Anna says actually sent the players her letters in real life (twitter DMs). Next episode, we will learn more about Diath's past.

Overall

Not sure even what to say about this one. It just ramped up and up and up. It got extremely emotional, more than I've ever seen in a D&D session.

As I have said many times before, Anna is an amazing player. For most of this session, Chris could just sit back as Anna played out what Evelyn would do in this situation. She puts so much thought and effort into her character, she's just top notch all the way around. She actually sat down and wrote out letters. Not many players do stuff like that.

A very remarkable session! If you've been watching this show for a length of time, it's a pretty big deal. It showcases why D&D is so awesome and utterly unique. It's so much more involving than a TV show or a movie, because you're actually "in it." When you play D&D, you're an actor and the audience.

I busted out my 9th level sorcerer for some more 5th Edition Eberron stuff on Saturday. I love the staff of power that I have, but in the back of my head I worry that it’s making things difficult for the DM.

We’ve been collecting gems. We needed one more, and then we would be able to go to another world (the campaign world of our 4th edition campaign!).

I opened up my well of worlds and once again we rolled for a random Eberron plane. It was Shavarath the Battleground, a realm that was an endless battlefield. Devils, demons and angels all at war, taking and re-taking fortresses that littered the realm.

I thought that was pretty cool (I don’t know anything about Eberron) and I asked the DM if there were demon lords and archdevils here. He said that in Eberron, most entities like that are distant, if they even exist at all.

It seems like a great place for the Blood War. You could probably come up with a lot of cool stuff for this place.


We spotted the tower that we needed to get to. There was a trench between us and it. Our fighter tried to jump the trench, but barbed devils lurking in it grabbed him and pulled him in. We had a quick battle where I levitated a dude and we blasted the others with spells. Our fighter got hurt very badly.

We entered the tower and found a golem guarding the gem we needed. I’m kind of torn about what to do in these situations. I know that I can just use telekinesis to pull the gem to my hand and then cast dimension door to get back to the portal. But as a fellow DM, I feel a bit weird about it.

Powerful Characters: I feel like the DM might have to scramble, and a lot of time in the past when I ran into situations like this, I’d sort of block the player’s actions in a way that felt a bit unrealistic or heavy-handed. I think that when you’re a DM, you need to know the capabilities of your players and take them into account when you make an adventure.

In this case, though, I have so many tools at my disposal that it’s hard to design around it. It’s almost like you can’t run “item snatch” scenarios because I can pull them off so easily.

It turns out I was worried for nothing, as I realized I couldn’t dimension door, because that would leave one party member – our injured fighter, in harm’s way and he would die. So I telekinetically snatched the gem and then got stabbed! I turned our fighter invisible so he wouldn’t be a target.

We ran, and the golem caught up to me and breathed poison gas that dropped me to 4 hit points. Then I dimension doored to the portal and climbed in.

Once the gem was off the plane, the golem was confused and kind of malfunctioned. The others got through and we were successful.

We had a lot of options a far as what to do next – this campaign has a lot of storylines that we get to kind of pick through and decide what we want to do.

There’s one I am quite keen on handling. We let a succubus NPC draw from our deck of many things and she drew the donjon card – she’s trapped in a prison somewhere.

That takes a backseat for now. We wanted to use these gems and see what happened. 

Return to 4e


The next day, we used them in conjunction with my well of worlds and went through. We appeared in the Nentir Vale! The 4th edition setting! I found it very amusing. We were in 4th edition! Do we get minor actions? Don’t burn your dailies!

We were in the village of Fallcrest. In our 4e campaign, things happened and it ended up where during the day, the world crossed with the Feywild and at night it crossed with the Shadowfell.

It was daytime, so it was fey-time. We explored Fallcrest and were trolled by a number of pixie-type things that we did our best to ignore. Eventually we met the rulers, who were centaurs. They were linked to someone called the first warden.
The Transaction of Doom: Eventually we figured out that it was possible that this warden was something of our own creation. In 4th, we ended up with an extremely powerful, evil item. I think it was the headless horseman’s scythe.

We had one player fully-immersed in 4e optimization-think. He was very statistics-oriented. He decided on his own to sell the scythe for whatever he could get for it, since it didn’t fit his “build”. He did not consult us on this.

He sold an artifact of evil so he could get the next item on his magic item wishlist, a thing that gave him an extra +1 in certain conditions. Remember.. he was going to get that item soon, anyway. We were basically allowed to get one item off of our wishlist per session.

Back then, the DM found this very funny and we soon learned that the merchant that bought the scythe sold it for an incredible profit.

So now, in 5e, we all started laughing when we realized that this entire region is probably ruled by the person who bought the headless horseman’s scythe. It’s sort of like buying the Wand of Orcus for $20 and an olive garden gift card.

We ended up realizing the centaurs were not our allies. We hid out with some drow.

The Raven Queen: Long story. Basically, we learned we needed to get these feathers of the raven queen (one lesson I learned long ago - everyone loves the Raven Queen). In 4e, our characters used the feathers to kill Lolth. The feathers have the power to make sure that when somebody dies – they’re dead. That’s what we thought, anyway.

These feathers will allow us to kill the rakshasas who have been messing with us for the whole campaign. Normally, rakshasas re-form in Hell when they slain and can come back. With the feathers, we can obliterate them for good.

Where are the feathers? Kobold Hall! The introductory dungeon from the 4e DMG. I died laughing. I ran that thing a bunch of times.


What was cool was the DM re-designed it. There’s a feywild version and shadowfell version. We had to go through both! Immediately, we were all wondering about the white dragon at the end of it.

This Kobold Hall had no combat – it was all puzzles, many of them relating to our old characters. We had to obtain 6 keys – 3 silver and 3 gold. We had to figure a bunch of stuff, like giving tea to effigies of our old characters and putting roses on coffins.

One of the big rooms in Kobold Hall is this place where a boulder endlessly rolls around the room. We went through two versions of it – one with a huge singing skull rolling around (it sang a song about 4e that the DM actually made up, was very funny) and a rolling seashell in the feywild version. There was a key inside each.

Our fighter got inside the skull, but had no luck with the shell. We eventually shattered it.

Then we went below to the icy lake. White dragon? Nope. A portal.

We passed through the portal and appeared in a dark forest. Nearby was a path lined with tombstones. We followed the path and came upon a statue of the raven queen holding two feathers. The feathers we were looking for!

Then, something flew above us. It was the white dragon – in undead form. It was a dracolich!
That’s where we stopped!

Very fun session, hilarious stuff. I love 4e (though I don’t want to play it again) and I really enjoy poking around in it through a 5e lens. Really cool, this DM always has good ideas!

We got a late start for this one, so I had to cram a lot into a short period of time. I know a lot of DMs run things at a different pace and I think that a lot of people would have just let the group go at their own speed, but I like to chop through it and honestly, I don’t think it hurts the game too much. Nobody seems to mind, anyway.

In D&D I feel like there’s a lot of wasted time at the table. If you watch people play, it tends to be pretty boring. I’ve developed this spastic style where a few phrases get uttered many times per session:

• “Anybody doing anything else special?”
• “Do you go do X or do you want to do something else?”

Waffling: When you let the players sit there and haggle over what to do next, a lot of weird things happen. Sometimes the players wait for someone else to decide. Sometimes one person wants to do something, but isn’t heard. Sometimes a faction of players get into shenanigans because they’re getting bored or annoyed that a decision hasn’t been made.

I want to run a full session in under two hours. To do so, I have to set fire to all that stuff. Let’s cut to the chase! Give them the chance to do whatever they want and then move on.

I went overboard with preparing again, so this one was crammed with material.

We started off with a bunch of downtime stuff.


Scorpion Tail: Theran had a demonic scorpion tail attached to his above-butt region. I gave him the tlincalli (from Volo’s Guide to Monsters) power. It paralyzes! He’s 13th level, what the hell.

High-Pitched Metal: In the neighborhood where the group lives, there’s a mad scientist-type who makes golems. He sewed the tail onto Theran.

His name is “Dr. Stein”, which is a reference to a song by a band called Helloween. When I was a kid, I found this song to be both utterly ridiculous/delightful. My friends used to ask me to sing the one part in a thick German accent: “Dr. Shteen grows funny creatures! Lets them run – (super-high 80’s metal voice) into the niiigghhtt!"I timestamped it for you.

I should mention that Bidam got a demon scrotum sewn on, so now he has two sacks and four balls  – 2 dragonborn, 2 demon. Personally I thought it would have been cooler if there were four balls in one sack, but it’s not my character! My campaign is stupid.

The group did a bunch of goofy stuff with the new employees at their main festhall. Jessie finds it hilarious that their talking cat (Jysson, from the very 1st session of the campaign) is attracted to the new tabaxi (cat-lady from Volo's) so I’m milking that for all it’s worth.

I made sure to show Eravamont Glask canoodling with ladies. He’s my Sean Connery NPC. I realized the group has a huge pile of female NPC allies and not-so-many males, so I’m using him to try to even things out a bit.

Red Shroud: The succubus known as Red Shroud, who is a fairly major NPC from earlier editions, lives in Sigil now and is running something of a spy/information-dealing business. I am thinking of building up a sort of secret war between her and Shemeshka the Marauder.

She tipped the group off that the devil festhall had a new owner – Lilis, wife of Dispater (the lord of the second layer of hell). I think technically, she’s an archdevil and can’t enter Sigil, but for my campaign I’m saying technically she’s not an archdevil.

Honestly I am very confused in general about which devils can leave hell. Many supplements infer that none of them can, but then a whole bunch of other supplements have them coming and going all the time.

The group met with Lilis and I got to introduce her three male erinyes minions. One is her bodyguard, one is her messenger, and one is a super-handsome guy that Lilis adores name Sintelis. Jessie seemed very interested in this dude and I got the feeling she’s got something up her sleeve. I’ll keep dangling this guy out there and we’ll see what she does with it.

Lilis tried to get the group to give her information on the 1st layer of hell. The group knows one of Zariel’s secrets – she’s nuts and she talks to severed angel heads. I wanted to see if the group would spill it. They didn’t.

Demon-Making Farm: The group picked up more adult nephrotics (demon crustaceans). The heroes found out last session that the nephrotics taste delicious, and reluctantly sold four of them to Red Shroud so she could sell them to restaurants.

Iggwilv

Skyshrine: At Theran’s floating castle in the Abyss, there was a problem. They could hear the babies crying. These babies are all children of Graz’zt, and one of them is clearly a child of Graz’zt and Lamashtu.

They went into the nursery and found that the succubus nurse had been turned to stone, and Iggwilv was here glaring at the baby! Iggwilv is angry that Graz’zt made a baby with Lamashtu.

This was a tricky little thing, here. I wanted to show that Iggwilv was now on their side, sort of. She wants Iggwilv dead. I also reminded them that Iggwilv knows Lamashtu’s truename – Lamashtu is under her control, to a degree. Iggwilv might be able to summon and bind her! Lamashtu is the big villain of this whole thing, so it’s kind of a big deal.

I also wanted to show that Iggwilv is powerful. She had a sorcerous duel with Theran a few sessions back, and Theran was a bit cocky about it. She was using low level spells! I decided she wanted to show him how powerful she was and that he’d better do as she says. I looked up her 3e stats and just grabbed a few spells:

• Counterspell: I read up on it to make sure I ran it right. As a reaction, you can just shut down a spell. If you use a higher slot, you can auto-shut down almost any spell with no roll!
• Dispel Magic: I grabbed this in case Theran created some sort of effect
• Banishment: I thought it would be awesome to use this spell on the group and send them back to my homebrew setting for the 1 minute duration of the spell.

For the purposes of this encounter, her DC was a 16 and her spell attack bonus was a +10. I took these numbers right from a CR 22 mind-flayer alhoon from Volo’s. I have statistical wiggle-room because this Iggwilv is actually a simulacrum – a clone made of ice and snow.

The 3e stats give her a staff of power, so I pulled out the staff of power sheet I use for my Eberron character and I was good to go.

The group got nervous that she was going to hurt the baby. She ranted and raved, and I dropped all of that Lamashtu info. Then she cast fireball on the heroes, not hitting the babies, but setting the place on fire.

Bidam charged and she banished him.

Theran cast disintegrate. Counterspell. She cast cone of cold… he was hurt really bad. He cast something else. Counterspell. She dropped him with magic missile, I think.

Bidam appeared in my homebrew city of Olwynn. In my previous campaign, Bidam had a job taking care of a slow-witted goblin named Slurp, who lived in a tower owned by Pollidemia the Wicked, a reformed villain who’s been in my campaigns for many years.

This went over well, as I had hoped. The winged wolves barked and jumped around excitedly. Slurp yelled “Daddy!” and ran over. Pollidemia took a look at Bidam. Bidam originally was a dragonborn who picked through trash to eke out a living. Now here he was with gleaming golden armor and a massive sword of sharpness. She was most impressed. Then.. Bidam vanished. He was back at Skyshrine.

Iggwilv was gone. Bidam healed Theran and they put out the fire.

I had mixed feelings about this because I don’t like it when the heroes fight creatures that they are no match for. I justify this one by saying that it is all to build anticipation for the day when they do take her on and defeat her. It should make it feel rewarding and well-earned.

Sigil: The nurse had been turned to stone. The group brought her to Sigil and paid to have her restored. She was first enraged and began trashing the temple she’d been restored in. They politely asked her to leave.

Then she realized the group had saved her. Demons are not used to acts of kindness, so the group has earned her loyalty.

Burningwater: The 9th layer of the Abyss, home to Bidam’s wife, Bazuuma – demon lord of positive energy. The heroes had given her a pile of soul larvae. She consumed them, and gained greater power!

She used it to transform her kids – abyssal dragons named Pyranicus and Pyranica – into Young Adult Dragons. They were quite excited and asked Bidam if they could fly around and go on adventures with him. The kids were told in no uncertain terms that they were never to leave this plane without permission.

New Demon: Bazuuma gained the power to create a more powerful demon type! The chain of progression goes like this:

1. Jovocs
2. Red Unicorns with foul mouths
3. Oculus Demons!

Oculus demons are from Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which is a pretty great adventure that, like many others, goes unheralded.

Oculus Demons

These demons look really cool and they have a bunch of eyes, including eyes on their fingertips. They can shoot three rays per round. The rays are of negative energy. They do damage and slowly paralyze you!

Negative energy! Bazuuma is a demon lord of positive energy, it feels like it fits so well to just flip their beams to positive energy. They fit this NPC like a glove! I should probably have an oculus demon NPC sidekick for a few sessions to get another male in the mix and to kind of reinforce that they exist and that Bazuuma’s power is growing.

New Abyssal Realm: Last session, the group pulled a layer of the Abyss into Hell. They saw a new abyssal layer forming in the void where the old one had been.

Theran bought a scroll of plane shift and cast it (casting off a scroll is a rule I can never remember!).

I should note that Theran had to buy this scroll in Sigil. He went to the Society of Luminiferous Aether. Bovina came along. She wanted to check out a book that Theran found there last session that had details about Haagenti, the mother of minotaurs.

Bovina is a member of a faction that believes anyone can become a god. She wants to become the god of minotaurs. This was a way of setting the table for that. I got plans!

They floated in the void and saw the heart/core of the new layer. Bazuuma stuck her hands into it and crystals grew out of it.

When I was preparing this, I kept asking myself where the heck I was going to get a cool new abyssal layer from. I had no ideas! I dug through a pile of D&D stuff, and was flipping through a 3e book by Bruce Cordell called When the Sky Falls, a whole sourcebook about meteors hitting your campaign world. This is one of a billion books I’ve only flipped through and never read.

Then I remembered a pdf I have from the same line: Beyond Countless Doorways. This is a 3e book, a “planescape reunion” where people who worked on the planescape setting made up 20 new planes for you to use! New planes!!

So I dug through it and chose one. Bazuuma grew her new realm in an instant…

The Crystal Road of Deluer: Crystalline roads 30 feet wide, 6 feet thick spanning a seemingly endless blue sky. The roads connect to giant circular rocks made of a certain mineral. For now, there’s copper, bronze and mithral, among others.

On the mithral “lode” is.. The Mithral City! A city of mithral. Pretty awesome, right?

I decided Bazuuma could create a few portals, since she was forming the whole realm.

• Plain of 1,000 Portals: Pretty much every abyssal layer has one of these, not Bazuuma’s choice.
• A crystal tower in the plane of positive energy.
• Deadbook Square: A secret portal hidden in a rarely-used building. The key to activate it is hair from Jysson, the talking cat.

With all that done, we finally got to the adventure.

The heroes needed to go to Thanatos, the abyssal realm that once belonged to Orcus but now is ruled by Lamashtu. Their devil army is invading.

The group made their way through the abyssal undersump. Devil guards are stationed here to hold the place, but that’s tenuous at best. They had to pay the toll to the Fulsome Queen again, which they did gleefully. She’s an official NPC from Pathfinder, a demon woman made of waste.

We got into a thing about wiping with slime which you probably don’t want to hear about.

They arrive in Thanatos. They had a mission to accomplish: Go shut down the portal to Baphomet’s Realm. If Baphomet, demon lord of minotaurs, popped through that portal and attacked the devils, the whole invasion would be ruined.

Crypt Thing

The group got on their abyssal griffons (Theran is reluctant to ride on his flying throne, for whatever reason) and they flew to the Valley of the Crypt Things.

They came upon a circle of thrones facing each other. Seated in each was a skeleton in robes. When Bidam stepped in the circle, they all stood and pointed at him. They whispered in his mind that the charnel god was loose in the Valley, and that they’d be rewarded if they dealt with it.

The charnel god is a pathfinder thing. When orcus died, shards of his divinity rocketed through the cosmos and landed in places connected to him. A shard entered into a fifteen foot tall statue of Orcus and came to life – a charnel god. Charnel gods hate their former followers, because they think it is the fault of the followers that they died.

So this charnel god of orcus is rampaging through this maze of mausoleums, causing the crypt things endless headaches. The group had to go in and find the portal to Baphomet’s maze (flying is no good due to a deadly hovering cloud of necrotic mist), so they were on their toes.

The group was going to go through three planned events, and there were three optional locations they could visit. Each location had piles of treasure. I decided that the group needed more money – cash money – so I thought this was a nice way to dump it on them.

For the optional areas, I used modified traps from the unearthed arcana traps thing. It worked fine!

Crypt of the Demon Lords: This crypt had some orcus faces on the wall, fire-breathing traps. The group did a great job of figuring it out and avoiding them. They found some stuff made of gems worth 10,000 gp, I’ll leave it to your imagination. They also found a ring with a stylized “CU” on it.

Temple of Orcus: The group had to traverse a huge temple of orcus with ornate, lode-bearing pillars. Suddenly, the charnel god exploded into the temple. It roared and charged Bidam. Bidam has the orcusword, a powerful relic of Orcus. It’s like a magnet to the charnel god.

It ran through a bunch of lode-bearing pillars and the whole ceiling collapsed. Bidam got out, but Theran was buried. He was able to misty-step out of the rubble. The charnel god was gone! Would it be back? Yes.

Crypt of The Angels: The classic Indiana Jones rolling boulder trap! The heroes made some epic die rolls and dove out of the way Treasure: Crystal chimes and a golden hourglass worth a total of 10,000 gp. A ring with a stylized “S”.

Temple of Doresain: The group needed to go through this place to keep going. They were cautious, and listened at the door. This huge temple was full of zombies! The ceiling was too low for flight, dangit. No problem, Eravamont Glask has turn undead. He was turning like crazy, creating a circle that was safe for the group to stand in.

Suddenly, the far wall exploded. Like the kool-aid man, charnel god had returned. The group smartly exploited a hole in the floor. The charnel god fell in and the group got the heck out of there. Would the charnel god be back? Yup.

Crypt of the Devils: This had a complicated trap from unearthed arcana, with slashing blades and crushing pillars. The heroes tried to ride on Theran’s flying throne to get to the treasure at the far end, but got hit by a pillar and they went hurtling in all directions. They scrambled and got the treasure: A huge pile of platinum and an emerald marital aid worth a total of 10,000 gp. Also, a ring with a stylized “OR”.

They sat there for a minute, thinking about the rings. “CU”, “S”, and “OR”. Jessie yelled “Orcus!”
Yup!

Portal to the Ivory Labyrinth: Finally! The group arrived at a weird clearing – a circle of statues of orcus. All of them looked exactly like the charnel god. The portal was an archway with engravings of minotaurs and a maze design on it and appeared to be inactive. The entire area was carpeted with bodies of slain minotaurs. Apparently the charnel god was killing anyone who came through the portal.

The group scanned the area, nervous. They rolled perception checks and rolled incredibly low. I rolled for the NPCs (Eravamont and Bovina the cow lady). They rolled low, too. Dammit!

One statue came to life. The charnel god! It pounded on Bidam with a stone wand of orcus. Theran fired off a disintegrate spell, cracking it open. The group saw a swirling shard inside of it.

Somehow the group finally made a perception and they saw glowing runs on three of the statues that matched the statues of orcus. They put on the rings and took control of them!

Their statues beat the crap out of the charnel god and then Bidam reduced it to ash with two swings of the sword of sharpness.

The shimmering crystal plopped to the ground. Theran realized that it was a divine shard. With no prompting, Jessie said.. “Bovina could use that to be a god!” Yep! Sort of!

I asked them who touches the shard. I did that on purpose to give them a meta-game heads-up that maybe touching it would have consequences. They very, very carefully mage-handed it into their bag of holding.

Bad guys will want that shard! Acererak will want it! Graz’zt will want it! I’m going to base the shard’s properties on Nahyndrian crystals from Wrath of the Righteous, which I’ll talk about next time.

Next session, the group goes into Baphomet’s Maze.

I just put out the second adventure in my Litany of Arrows path, Warpath of Gruumsh. I put in a whole section of “downtime adventures” at the end that I think does a good job of simulating what I do in this campaign every week. For the adventure, I made a bunch of mini-charts for specific carousing scenarios. It’s very joke-y, but I figured it was bonus content, so DMs can just throw it in the garbage if it’s not their style.

DM Burnout: While I was preparing this one, I was thinking about writer’s block. I think most of us DMs have, at one time or another, hit a wall, creatively.

Back in middle school, I ran my first campaign, which was well-received. In high school, I ran my second. Also well-received! 10th grade hit, and I hit a wall. I had some ideas for the third campaign, but everything felt very stale and I just couldn’t come up with anything worth running.

I actually stopped running games for the group, and other players filled the void. I still ran a few long term side campaigns (Al Qadim and 2e Ravenloft), but I just couldn’t get my own homemade setting straight.

The First Campaign: I think everybody has that big storyline they want to run. Usually it’s a variation of the "big bad guy out to take over the kingdom, the world, the multiverse, etc" story. Once you run your first campaign to completion, some DMs can pull off a follow-up campaign that builds off of the events of the first one.

The Second Campaign: Usually, this second one places in comparison and the DM starts to feel a bit of pressure. You can’t compete with the memories of the “golden time”, the first 7 or 8 sessions of D&D people ever play.

As a DM, the pressure can build and you start to press yourself to match what you did before. It can become stressful, almost like a grind.

The Third Campaign: When that 3rd campaign hits, you might find yourself in a weird spot. You’ve told the story you wanted to tell. Twice! All your life, you had these ideas. You used them. What now?

The Cure: That’s the spot I was in. It took me a long time, but by the end of high school I figured out the solution. For me, it was a combination of 3 things:

1. Use published adventures and campaign settings
2. Use your players. Most players have a vision of their character and the cool things they want to do. Do those things!
3. Build off of each previous session. The things the group did last time determine what happens this time. That story never ends, and it’s exciting because nobody knows where it’s going.

I haven't been burned out since that time. In fact, I have a backlog of stuff I want to run.

Pathfinder Trouble: Preparing for this one was not what I expected. I was set to run a simplified version of Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth, an adventure in the maze of Baphomet, demon lord of minotaurs! This will be awesome!

But I read it, and it wasn’t what I expected. Most of the adventure takes place in a prison. There are very few encounters set in the actual  maze. I dug up the 4e Baphomet article and read about the maze. Nothing too useful!

So I sat there and asked myself if I could make a maze in the time I had before the session. I tried to jot down some cool ideas, but I drew a blank. So I turned to google. I found the one page dungeon site, which was a huge help. I looked at their encounters, which got the wheels turning.

But what really helped the most was the 3e Book of Challenges. That is an absolutely fantastic book full of encounters for you to pull out and use.

I got rolling and ended up with too many ideas! I combined some and eliminated others, and I was excited.

Detour: But then, as I was polishing this up, I started having awesome ideas for stuff that could happen two sessions from now. It would take forever to explain. By the end of my preparation, I was dying to run that and was almost bummed I had to run this maze instead.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

Baphomet, Demon Lord of Minotaurs

Last time, the group had obtained a divine shard that contained godly power inside of it. The heroes decided to go home and rest before heading into Baphomet’s maze to see about shutting down the portal that connected to Thanatos.

Employees: We did a bunch of joke-stuff with the group’s employees. Their talking cat is in love with a tabaxi and the group hired a new worker – she is an ooze para-elemental (a lady made of lime jel-o, basically) named Doot Fluidia. I couldn’t wait to say that name out loud.

The Greatest Thief in Sigil: The group ran into Ash Vodiran, a thief who stole a huge pile of money from them way back when. He was hitting on Theran’s baby mama! I just wanted to see if the group still hated him. They do!

Theran quietly handed Bidam his arrow of demon slaying. Bidam crept up on him and tried to stab him with it, but his stealth roll was not good. Ash immediately turned into a shadowy wisp and fled.

The group has ghost-grinding dust that can force Ash to remain substantial, but they keep forgetting that they have it. I’m in a weird spot here where I have this NPC that the group absolutely despises and I can’t figure out how to fit him in to all of these stories. He is one of the many children of
Graz’zt and Iggwilv, so I should definitely get on the ball.

Four Balls: I’m guessing you don’t want to hear to much about this, so I’ll keep it brief and vague. Bidam attached a demon scrotum to his undercarriage, so now he’s got four balls. The demon balls are BALOR BALLS that pulse with energy. He went to take a leak and his stream was so powerful that it shattered the thing he was peeing into.

Graz'zt, Demon Lord of Azzagrat

Skyshrine: At Theran’s floating castle, they walked in on Graz’zt threatening the group’s succubus nurse friend. Graz’zt was flipping out on her, because he was telling her to charm the group and she was refusing.

She got turned to stone last session, and the group paid to have her restored to normal. They saved her! She is loyal to the heroes, now.

Graz’zt drew his blade, wave of sorrow. Acid dripped from the blade to the floor.

The heroes sprung into action. Graz’zt glared at them and demanded that the group convince the devils help Graz'zt's army get into the layer that Verin (a demon who betrayed Graz’zt) is hiding in.

The group refused. Graz’zt made an ominous threat - “There will be consequences.”

This sets up what I want to do in two sessions. Graz’zt is going to do a bunch of crazy crap that will lead to a chain reaction of epic madness.

Demon-Breeding Farm: The group is in a moral quandary. They’ve been making demon crustaceans known as nephrotics. It turns out that the nephrotics are delicious, and there’s a lot of money to be made in selling them to restaurants as if they were lobsters. The group firmly decided against it. I honestly wasn’t sure what they’d do with this, that’s why I threw that out there.

The group found out that Graz’zt had been here, too. He actually stabbed Areelu, the NPC that runs this place. Graz’zt is in a bad mood because Iggwilv found out that he’s been messing around with Lamashtu (Iggwilv found the Graz’zt/Lamashtu baby in the nursery last session).

Divine Shard: The heroes studied the divine shard. I based this off of the Nahyndrian crystals from Wrath of the Righteous. Basically, they can make it into an elixir and keep it in an iron flask. Once opened, it must be consumed within one minute or it EXPLODES for 15d6 in a 30 foot radius. When you drink it, you must make a Con save:

• Fail: In Pathfinder terms, you take 4d6 points of Constitution damage – if you drop to 0 Con or less, you die. I haven’t exactly figured out how to handle this in 5e rules, I might just leave it like that.
• Success: You gain MYTHIC POWER. That’s a pathfinder thing. For this game, I’m saying that it takes you on the road to becoming a god. The group’s friend, Bovina, wants to become the god of minotaurs. Now they have a thing to do it. The problem is that if she drinks it, she might die.

Soul Larvae, Pathfinder-style

Soul Larvae: The group went to the Gray Waste to rustle up a herd of soul larvae. They did so, having an encounter with a mega-popular NPC from previous campaigns: Burba Larga, the not-so-smart stepdaughter of Baba Yaga.

The group got a huge pile of larvae (keeping them in a herd by using chromatic orb spells and other magic). They split half with their hag friend, Virinis (who lives in the screaming tower from “Umbra”, which I ran way back when).

They had to decide who to give it to. Whichever demon lord got it, could use it to gain power. The choices:

• Pazuzu: Demon Lord of the 1st layer of the Abyss. Nope.
• Graz’zt: Get on his good side? Nope.
• Xanthopsia, Queen of Obscenity: Was it finally her time to shine? Nope!
• Uralinda, Queen of the Harpies: She’s the one who asked them to get the larvae in the first place. The group decided not to give it to her, because they were afraid she’d break up with Pazuzu and then Pazuzu would be angry at the heroes.
• Bazuuma: Yes, they gave more soul larvae to Bazuuma, demon lord of positive energy. With her new power, she created a massive floating complex in the plane of positive energy that is safe for demons to inhabit. This is a sort of emergency lair to flee too in case things get dire.

The Endless Maze

Odeenka the Marilith

Finally! Let’s do the maze! The group went through the portal and met Odeenka, a really cool-looking marilith from the ivory labyrinth adventure. In that book, she pretty much attacks the group.

In my game, she was very, very open to being bribed. She netted herself a javelin of lightning and other fabulous prizes.

The group ended up wandering the maze for about 10 days. This adventure was an opportunity to build up Bovina, the female minotaur. She helped the group navigate the maze, getting advantage on survival checks (every day you have to make a DC 15 survival check to make progress in the maze). She rolled ridiculously well, so it worked out perfectly.

They actually ran out of rations and were getting worried about food. The maze has all sorts of different sections, some I used from Pathfinder and some I just made up.

NPCs: In the pathfinder adventure, Baphomet periodically releases prisoners in the maze so that he and his minotaurs can hunt them. I had found this list of characters from Whose Line is it, Anyway? and I modeled some of these prisoners after them. As the group traveled, they added these people to their group:

• Old Man Glorm: Cowardly old bystander in a western.
• Dakra: Middle-aged woman who is proud of her body.
• Eo Kaplan: Michael Jackson turning into a werewolf (he’s a gnoll).

They met Eo Kaplan almost right away (“Captain Eo”) and I started doing the high-pitched Michael Jackson voice. This guy was an instant hit.

The Bone Maze

• Wall Trap: A wall panel smeared Bidam and Theran, crushing them against the opposite wall. They took 4d10 damage per round! Bidam smashed through it and pulled it back enough for Theran to slip out.
•  Ettin: A sleeping Ettin completely blocked their path. Stealth checks: everyone rolled extremely high!! Did not expect that!
•  Michael "Hee Hee" Jackson: Hi I’m Eo Kaplan. I’m not like other guys.

The Endless Towers

Oostarix, Eater of Men

A maze of towers connected by elevated walkways over a misty void.

• The Iron Door: This door had a mouth and bragged that nobody had ever solved is two riddles! You can’t go through the iron door until you do so. I googled two easy riddles and George was all over this thing! He nailed both in seconds.
• The Minotaur: Old Man Glorm was being chased by a minotaur. The idea was for the group to run down this hallway, while portcullis traps dropped. The heroes might have ended up trapped between two portcullises while the minotaur tore the bars open and came at them. Instead… Theran disintegrated the minotaur in one sizzle. He was Oostarix, Eater of Men! He has cool art, he deserved better.
• Rotating Bridge: Bovina and Eravamont Glask (Sean Connery) fell into the void. I had this whole thing where there’s gnomes and catapults down there. The NPCs catapulted back up, and the group barely caught Eravamont. He almost went over the bridge and back down.

The Silver Stairs

Stairs up and down, spiral stairs, etc. The walls were mirrors.

• The Reflections: Their reflections tried to get the group to touch the mirrors, but the heroes refused.
• Circular Room: Baphomet himself appeared in the mirrors. He questioned the group. He realized that they were working with the devils, and relished the idea of killing them. He told them that the device to shut down the portal was in his tower, the Lyktion! It, too, is a maze. Next session, the group will try to navigate that maze while Baphomet himself hunts them.
• Trap: The central part of the floor dropped out beneath them. All of the new NPCs except for Eo failed their saves and fell to their death. Way down there was a hedge maze full of labyrinth minotaurs… but the group avoided it. They continued on.
• Haagenti’s Bridge: They came upon a bridge outside lined with statues of minotaurs with glowing eyes. At the middle was an amber statue of Haagenti, other of minotaurs. Inside it was a black flame – the vestige of Haagenti. Like the vestiges in Curse of Strahd, you could make a pact with her and receive a boon.

Bovina decided to do so. Haagenti forced them to go through three tests to prove that Bovina was worthy of the honor! An ice maze formed around them.

Haagenti’s Ice Maze

• The Slide: The group ended up on a slide with three giants froze in massive blocks of ice sliding after them. Eo got squashed by the cubes, totally dead. The group immediately began brainstorming ways to bring him back to life. He rose up as an undead gnoll (now he’s even more Thriller-like) and we continued.
• The ice maze was melting and the un-frozen giants were chasing them! They came to a hallway with a series of sheets of ice blocking their path. The idea was that Bovina could try to minotaur-charge through them, but Theran immediately dropped a fireball. This melted the sheets, but also melted the dungeon!

The group freaked out and ran, making it to the final room.

The exit was a swirling portal on the other end of a frozen lake with thin ice. The group tried to daintily cross. Theran cast levitate on Eravamont and handed him a rope, pulling the floating dustman across as if he was a birthday balloon.

Theran failed his save and the ice gave way beneath his feet. He tried to hold onto the rope to dangle, but he was unable. He fell into the freezing water.

The three giants jumped into the pool and lunged at Theran. Bidam, Bovina, and Eo were at the portal, but didn’t want to leave without the other two. Theran ended up swimming over to the heroes, but Eravamont was still dangling by the ceiling.

The giants had passed by him and were adjacent to Theran. Bidam tried to pull him out but took three devastating opportunity attacks while doing so.

Theran tried a maneuver. He misty stepped to Eravamont. They both fell in the water. Then Theran cast thunderwave to create a sonic blast to propel them through the air and over the giants. Arcana check! His roll: A 20!

Boom, the group escaped and the test had been passed.

The portal too them right to the front doors of the Lyktion, Baphomet’s tower. They’ll go through that next time!

Today, I’m going to go over what is known about oozes, slimes and jellies in Dungeons & Dragons. This should be a decent resource for you if you want to use slimes in your game, or if you are thinking about whipping up a slime dungeon of some kind.

I will start off by covering published slime adventures/slime-related NPCs, and then I’m going to list and detail all of the slimes, oozes and jellies from the main D&D monster books from each edition. I also grabbed some cool ones from other products.

Massive List: If you want a list of many, many slimes and where they came from, check this ENWorld thread right here.

Exclusions: I already wrote about Juiblex, demon lord of slimes, so I’m leaving his stuff out of this.

I am not including fogs and living spells, but I do feel the need to talk about one:

In the 3rd edition Monster Manual 3 there is a monster called a chilling fog. If you do dad jokes, I heartily endorse plopping this entity into an encounter and telling the group that it is a chilling fog. Then you say: "Hey guys, you know what this ooze is doing?" Awkward pause. "Just chilling."

Put that one in your back pocket and save it for later.

Slime-Related NPCs

The Pudding King

There are a number of weird people linked to oozes in D&D.

(Dragon #124) Haptooth: A wizard who studies gelatinous cubes and was able to use gelatinous digestive fluid to create a concoction that can protect you from the cube's acid. Haptooth explored Undermountain and he knows a lot about gelatinous cubes. He has a gross wound where his ribs stick out.

(Dragon #127) Lord Xador: An evil noble who punished miscreants by pouring a slime on people that hardened and turned them into living statues for 5-8 days while the ooze consumes the victim's fluids.

(Dragon Annual 1999) Volhon: A slime wizard who invented a slew of really cool slime spells.

(Dragon Annual 1999) Shandrila (human rogue), Fedrico and Javorik (gnome illusionists): A band of adventurers who survived a harrowing encounter with a gray ooze.

(Inner Planes) The Warlock of Ooze: A wizard from Krynn who was accidentally infused with the essence of chaos. He watches over a town in the paraelemental plane of ooze.

(Dungeon #132) Morbion: An ooze master who worships Juiblex. He considers humanoids to be "Slaves of Shape". Morbion teams up with an olive slime and is based out of the “sickstone caves” in the Greyhawk setting.

Ghaunadaur: A Forgotten Realms god of slimes. He’s a drow who was once allied with Lolth but split off to do his own things. His followers are outcasts and rebels. He is an ancient entity, and apparently some people think Juiblex might be an aspect of Ghaunadaur. Tons of info here.

(Dungeonscape) Bol Darus: A drow wizard who worshiped Ghaunadaur. Bol was eventually killed by an ooze, and oozes took over his sanctum. Supposedly the sanctum has treasure stashed in secret rooms and warded areas that the slimes can’t get to.

(Dungeon 192) Kyrzin, Prince of Slime: This is an Eberron NPC. He is linked to the far realm and is something of a godlike entity. Creatures who worship him do so out of fear more than anything.

(Dead in Thay) Therzt, Champion of Ghaunadaur: He’s an evil, insane drow who punishes himself when he fails.

(Out of the Abyss) Glabbagool: An intelligent, somewhat friendly gelatinous cube.

(Out of the Abyss) The Pudding King: An unhinged, slime-covered deep gnome who amassed an army of hundreds of oozes. He actually tears away his human guise and transforms into an ooze.

Bwimb and Bwimb II: The Paraelemental Plane of Ooze was ruled by an “ooze baron” named Bwimb. Bwimb was slain by Tenebrous in the classic adventure, Dead Gods. Bwimb II took over rulership of the realm, and she is believed to be either the spawn or the congealed remains of Bwimb I.

Neither of these entities have ever been statted out. There’s all of these tiny nuggets of information in old products, just one scattered idea here and there. The biggest notes are that Bwimb II is a fairly minor entity and is quite aware of it. She has forged some sort of pact or alliance with Juiblex, and she pines for Ben-Hadar, the good-aligned elemental prince of water. Bwimb is linked to the classic adventure “The Mud Sorcerer’s Tomb”, where it is revealed that she is worshiped by mud sorcerers, who built special boats that can sail on and in mud.

I made this guide to research and prepare to write a DMs Guild ooze-based adventure. I'm definitely going to stat out and write up Bwimb II in it.

Where Do Slimes Come From?

The 5e Monster Manual tells us the deal. It says that it is written in the Demonomicon of Iggwilv (!) that oozes are scattered fragments or offspring of the demon lord Juiblex. Juiblex can control oozes and imbue them with intelligence.

In older editions, it is said over and over again that some are created by wizards, and some are the results of spells gone wrong.  From the 2e Monstrous Manual: "Warped wizards seek to create life or fashion efficient dungeon scavengers." The origin of the 3e summoning ooze: "The result of a bizarre summoning ritual gone awry".

Ooze Characters

You can be an ooze person! In 3rd edition, at least.

(Dragon #297) Ooze Para-Genasi: Ooze para-genasi are repulsive and slimy. They are most often neutral with a slight tendency toward evil. They are usually heavy-set, with flabby bodies and sallow skin. Most exhibit a mall number of traits that hint at their ancestry, such as greasy skin or unusually flexible limbs.  They have darkvision, a high constitution, resistant to acid and can cast grease once per day.

(Masters of the Wild) Oozemaster: Wizards who have mastered ooze! They have special ooze powers:

• Minor Oozy Touch: Their hands secrete ooze, make things glow, do acid damage, etc
• Oozy Glob: Throws oozy globs!
• Slithery Face: A master of disguise!
• Malleability: Squeezes through cracks with the greatest of ease.
• Indiscernable Anatomy: Your innards are a mystery.
• One with the Ooze: You have blindsight, ooze immunities, and you can't be polymorphed.

You can also learn a special spell:

(lvl 7) Slime Wave: 15 ft radius cone, covers the targets with green slime.

Forsooth! A 4th edition oozemaster!?

(Dragon #413) Oozemaster: These spellcasters live alone, save for Ghaunadaur's insane whispers that keep them company. They like scouring enemies with acid. They’ve got powers:

• Sudden Slime: A sudden explosion of green slime covers your opponents in corrosive acid. Does acid damage and slows them.
• Experts at foraging and surviving.
• Blessed with protection from oozes and slimes, resistant to acid.
• Scouring Palm: You can secrete acid from your hands. You can melt locks and metal bars, etc.
• Celerity Jelly: You smear the nearby ground with a slick jelly. The zone is difficult terrain for enemies and aids the movement of your allies.
• Pudding Sight! You gain the senses of a pudding!!! Tremorsense until the end of the encounter.

(Dragon #382) Ooze Familiar: I love this idea. In Dragon #382 we get a tiny gelatinous cube familiar. “This palm-sized ooze tickles you with its weak acid.” It moves really slow and grants you acid resistance. It consumes nonliving organic objects that it touches at a rate of 1 pound of material per round.

Ooze Adventures


I’m sure there’s many more out there, but here’s the official D&D ooze adventures that I found.

Out of the Abyss

Out of the Abyss has two ooze-related scenarios.

The Oozing Temple: There's a mini adventure in Out of the Abyss where the group ends up stuck in a temple. Their air supply is running out and water is starting to fill the whole place. This is basically a two page dungeon but it feels like a full adventure, it’s pretty amazing.

The group meets Glabbagool, a gelatinous cube that gained intelligence and the ability to communicate telepathically when Juiblex showed up in the Underdark.

The Battle for Blingdenstone: Later in the book, the heroes might have to deal with The Pudding King. He lives in the Pudding Court, a cave inhabited by hundreds of ooze creatures. The group needs to raise a force to come in and take care of the Pudding King.

(Dungeon Magazine #132) Caverns of the Ooze Lord

This is set in Greyhawk. There's a cleric named Morbion who worships Juiblex. He has been using an olive slime to infect villagers, turning them into slime zombies. According to this, olive slime and green slime neutralize each other.

(Dungeon Magazine #193) The Gauntlgrym Gambit

In this one, the group is looking for the fabled dwarven city of Gauntlgrym. They're checking out a dungeon in a sinkhole and get up to their neck in oozes.

There's one encounter called the Sea of Slime, where the group has to walk on a toppled statue to cross a chasm. "Viscous sludge fills the abyss beneath the statue, its quivering surface of mottled yellow, green and brown. Worse, there are ooze tendrils coming out of the cracks of the statue!

Dead in Thay

There’s an entire section of the Doomvault devoted to slimes. The wizards are experimenting on them. They’re trying to bind slimes to undead, they’re trying to make them intelligent, all sorts of stuff. There are two memorable ooze entities in this:

• The White Maw: A tall white column that is intelligent, but insane. It can communicate telepathically.
• The Ooze Master: A red pillar that flows like viscous fluid. It can pull you into it and turn you into an ooze puddle.

City of Oozes

In the Forgotten Realms, there’s an Underdark city named Llurth Dreir. This place is a wreck, home to Ghaunadaur worshipers who fight each other over food. People avoid this city mainly because the avatar of Ghaunadaur actually lurks near this place. More info here.

Slimy Doom

This is a special slime disease from the 4e DMG. "Abyssal parasites devour the internal organs of the victim, turning them into quivering slime." Once this disease gets into the final stages, you turn into infectious slime from the inside out, dying horribly.

Slime Spells

There is an awesome article in Dragon Magazine annual 199: The Slime Wizard by Lloyd Brown III.

Volhom the Slime Wizard apparently lives in Erelhei-Cinlu (a drow city in the Greyhawk setting) and he rides a giant slug. “At home, he crouches amid a court of slimes and jellies that would make Juiblex proud.”

Volhom made a million new spells. Here are some of the ones I liked best:

• (lvl 3) Volhom's Minute Missiles: You fire off small balls of acid, one per round for at least 5 rounds. Does a lot of damage to inanimate objects.
• (lvl 4) Slime Guardian: Your skin glistens with a chromatic sheen, like a soap bubble in the sun. You are covered by a symbiotic slime, bumping up your AC.
• (lvl 4) Wall of Gel! It’s translucent. Creatures trying to pass through must make a save or be paralyzed!
• (lvl 5) Gelatinous Form: The caster becomes a fluid gelatin. You can shift between your form and a shapeless blob.

List of Major Oozes, Slimes and Jellies

OK! This is not a complete list, but it should give you a look at the main oozes from each edition, plus some cool weird ones from other sources.

Some oozes appear in many editions, so I compiled the info into one thing. Judging from which entities get put in the first monster manual of each edition, it seems like the main oozes, slimes and jellies are: Gelatinous cubes, ochre jellies, black puddings and gray oozes.

(3e MM3) Arcane Ooze: "Glowing veins throb and pulse with eldritch light." Known to drain arcane magic from nearby spellcasters, an arcane ooze is 15 feet across and 3 feet thick. If you try to cast a spell within 30 feet of this thing, you make a save or lose a random spell of the highest spell level that you have available!

Assassin Jelly: An urban predator that lurks in sewers near intersections, using tremorsense to pick out lone city dwellers after dusk. They actually follow people to their home and kill them in their sleep. It looks like a street puddle and has an intelligence of 10.

(Dragon #367) Azure Jelly: Living creatures are food for this thing, which freezes prey and devours them. Azure jellies emerge spontaneously from icy places, infused with arcane energy. They have the power to let out a wave that freezes all nearby

(1e MM) Black Pudding: A compound 5 feet in diameter that is composed of groups of single cells. It can flow through narrow openings, under doors, travels on ceilings etc. It has “tiny mouths and silica” that do 3-24 dmg (a lot of damage for 1st edition!). It splits into two when chipped/struck.

In the 4e MM2, it says “this mercurial ooze slithers on the ground like a massive pool of tar, waiting to turn anything it encounters into sludge.' There are also stats for black pudding spawn, which are minions (1 hit point monsters). In a few older books, there’s an elder black pudding, which is a massive, more powerful version. 

(4e Open Grave) Blood Amniote: This ooze is composed of the blood of hundreds of creatures that died in close proximity to one another. It has tendrils that grab you and drain your blood. Legend has it that priests of Orcus once unleashed a storm that rained burning blood on two armies. They died and became blood amniotes.

(4e Underdark) Blood Ooze: Spawned from the blood of Torog (a massive, bleeding god-thing that crawls around in the Underdark), the touch of a blood ooze is toxic to living flesh. It can inhabit a living host and has great ability names like "fetid caress" and ”blood infiltration”.
(3e MM 4) Bloodfire Ooze: A lot of the 3rd edition oozes are fantastic. This 15-foot tall ooze reeks of brimstone and looks like a pool of blood with faces twisted in torment. They are made of burning blood and they can let out flame bursts.

These creatures are created in cauldrons through a ritual requiring the blood of at least 100 good or neutral humanoids, and all of the ichor from a powerful demon ("10 HD or more").

(4e Open Grave) Bloodrot: Undead jellies that form when humanoids are melted by acid. A vaguely humanoid-shaped mass that reeks of blood that squeezes you with 'blood tendrils'. They crave blood of the living.

(4e Open Grave) Bone Collector: These undead oozes kill and scavenge, collecting bones to increase their mass. Three massive bone collectors, said to be over 25 feet in diameter each, inhabit the Underdark.
(3e MM 2) Bone Ooze: This thing is extremely powerful! CR 21, 320 hit points. Also known as a "rolling graveyard". It's an undulating mass of goo the color of bleached bone that is roughly spherical, over 30 feet in diameter and weighs over 40,000 pounds! When it hits you, it absorbs some of your bone structure and heals itself at the same time. It can try to absorb the skeleton of an engulfed creature into its own mass.... good gawd. These things are awesome.


(3e MM3) Conflagration Ooze: Check that out! It contains a roaring inferno, flames and fluid swirling throughout it. Gouts of flame erupt from it skin. These creatures are intelligent, they can talk and they even hoard treasure. Anyone who comes in contact with a conflagration ooze must save or be infected with a fiery toxin and your blood begins turning into liquid flame.

(1e MM2) Crystal Ooze: This ooze is a variant of Grey ooze that is 75% invisible underwater.  Blows from weapons do only 1 point of damage per hit to it.

In the 2e MM, it says that crystal oozes can exist out of water for several hours. They spawn pods, which hatch in 7-10 days. They will eat their own offspring.

(1e MM2) "Deadly Pudding" This is a category that lists brown puddings, dun puddings and white puddings. All of these things do a lot of damage., anywhere from 5-20 (5d4), up to 7-28 (7d4).

• Brown Pudding: Dwells in marshes. Tough skin, doesn't destroy metal, does destroy leather and wood.
• Dun Pudding: Found in arid regions, dissolves leather, eats metal half as fast as black puddings.
• White Pudding: Cold-dwellers, 50% chance they are mistaken for snow and ice. Do not affect metal, dissolve animal/vegetable in one round.

(3e MM 2) Flesh Jelly: This one is very powerful. CR 19, 237 hit points. That is a truly repulsive creature. It rolls over foes and absorbs them into its mass. You make a save. Fail: You die! "A successful save prevents absorption that round". It expels your belongings from its body after it absorbs you. You can't be raised from the dead! Only a wish spell can bring you back. I love this one.


(1e MM) Gelatinous Cube: These clear cubes of ooze clean carrion from underground passageways. They are transparent and difficult to see. They can't digest potions, daggers, such material remains in body for several weeks before being cast out. It can paralyze you. You are "anesthetized for 5-20 melee rounds" as digestive secretions digest you.

In the 2e MM2 it says that sometimes, they reabsorb their spawn. In this article on the wizards site, we get a few variants:

• Half-Farspawn Gelatinous Cube: So… a being from the far realm mated with a cube. How about that? This cube can assume the form of a grotesque, tentacled mass.
• Gelatinous Cube Monk: This cube trained in a monastery for years, honing its skills and achieving inner peace. Speed 45 feet! Flurry of blows! Maybe it learned this stuff by consuming a monk?

(Dragon #124) The Ecology of the Gelatinous Cube

This is written by Ed Greenwood and is framed inside a scene where a wizard named Haptooth is holding a lecture on gelatinous cube to other wizards and sages. Haptooth claims to have created an antidote to the gelatinous cube paralyzation effect. Stuff we learn:

• Gelatinous cubes are also known as an “athcoid.”
• The Zoo of Amn has or had a gelatinous cube for at least 12 years.
• Gelatinous cubes have no thoughts, respond automatically
• They are attracted to vibrations and warmth.
• Merging: Two can merge into one greater cube. Double cubes are 10 x 10 x 20, more of a rectangle. Eventually it divides again. Contact with a third cube causes division, they can't combine more than two.
• To Reproduce: A cube must grow to sufficient size, then split into two.
• They anesthetize their prey via a gummy secretion which is absorbed into the bloodstream through the skin of the victim. 
• They can't digest metal.
• They can move about underwater with ease, but their poison is diluted.
• Haptooth's Antidote: It removes the paralysis within 1-4 rounds. Has no effect on other forms of paralysis. Not magical! Derived from the digestive juices.

(Dragon Magazine Annual 1997) Ghaunadan: These are intelligent ooze creatures that serve Ghaunadaur, god of oozes, slimes and jellies. These creatures have full control over their semi-liquid bodies. can pass through cracks. They can assume a humanoid form for up to 15 hours at a time, taking the form of a human male or a female drow. They have a paralytic slime attack, they’re resistant to bludgeoning and they can actually form around a weapon trying to strike it, capturing the weapon. And trapping it like a fly in amber. Their humanoid form is pleasing! CHA 15 or grater. If they look into someone's eyes, their gaze is equal to a friends spell.

(3e MM 5) Graveyard Sludge: When this sludge kills a creature, that creature’s remains rise up as a slightly more powerful than normal zombie in d4 rounds. It can give bonuses to nearby undead. They form spontaneously in graveyards, and suck spiritual energy from cadavers.

Gray Ooze: This ooze resembles wet stone and corrodes metal. It is immune to spells! The largest ones are intelligent and develop psionic abilities.

(Dragon Annual 1999) The Ecology of the Gray Ooze

This one contains a story about two gnomes and a human trying to loot a chest in a cave, but a gray ooze kicks the crap out of them. Factoids:

• No Surprise: You can't sneak up on a gray ooze because it "sees" everywhere at once.
• Gray oozes reproduce asexually by budding. They eat a large meal, and release a pod the size of a small stone. In 2-3 days, the stone hatches a new gray ooze. The ooze absorbs the stone shell and wanders off in search of food.
• Gray oozes are roughly oval in shape and they can climb stairs, but not walls. They move very slow and can go for weeks between meals.
• Their surface is covered in pits and grooves. It is like a pit viper, detects heat at a range of 30 feet.
• In combat, it strikes like a snake. It devours carcasses completely. Once at you’re -20 hp, you can't be raised or resurrected.
• It cannot detect cold-blooded creatures such as reptiles, insects, and arachnids.
• Psionics: Some grey oozes have psionic powers.
• Their mucous coating is a valuable ingredient in making oil of acid resistance. It must be harvested within 5 rounds of its death.

In the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, we learn that they are up to 12 feet long. Weapons striking them corrode and break. Metalworkers of great skill keep very small gray oozes in stone jars to etch and score their metal work.

In the 4th edition Monster Manual 2, it says that gray oozes are major nuisances in archaeological expeditions. In 4e, their main attack is called "bone melt". Each time a gray ooze hits you, your defenses go down by 2.

(MM) Green Slime: A strange plant growth found in subterranean places. Although they cannot move, they slowly grow. They can sense vibrations and attach to living flesh. In 1-4 rounds after attachment, the victim becomes green slime and can’t be resurrected. Green slime can be scraped off, frozen or burned. Cure disease spells kill them. Other forms of attack don't harm it. There are reports of huge slimes and colonies of dozens of them.

In the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, we learn that sunlight dries green slimes out and eventually kills them. They are an infestation that all creatures avoid. Once a green slime has infected an area, it tends to grow back, even after being frozen or burned away.

(2e MM) Mustard Jelly: A young wizard tried to polymorph herself into an ochre jelly and her spell failed. She became the first mustard jelly. Mustard jelly is yellowish-brown, translucent and has a faint odor of mustard plants. They can secrete a vapor in a 10-foot radius that makes you lethargic – you move at half-speed. It can divide itself at will. Cannot move through tiny spaces or climb ceilings. Immune to normal weapons. Magic missiles cause a mustard jelly to grow and heals it. Cold does half damage, and it is harmed normally by other attacks.

(2e MM) Ochre Jelly: A giant amoeba that seeps through cracks, devouring flesh and cellulose. They travel on walls and ceilings. Lightning bolts divide them.

(MM2) Ooze Paraelemental: Also called a mud elemental, this is a liquid mass of dark, writhing tendrils. It uses its tendrils to constrict.

(MM2) Olive Slime: A strain of monstrous plant life akin to green slime. Olive Slimes feed on animals, vegetables and metal. It exudes a numbing poison and spreads over victim's body. sending tendrils into the body to feed on the host. It ultimately attaches to the spinal area and the host transforms into a slime creature in 1-2 weeks.

The 2nd edition Monstrous Manual says that the victim might not notice that the slime is on them. in 2d4 hours, the victim's main concern is how to feed, protect and sustain the olive slime. The victim keeps its bond with the slime secret from allies.

(Plane Below) Primeval Ooze: A weapon made by the primordial built to consume agents of the gods, primeval oozes roam the elemental chaos. A primeval ooze is ever-hungry and it envies advanced creatures. It uses pseudopods to pull you inside it. When you hit it, a cyst pops and sprays burning acid. It can eject a torrent of slime that immobilizes. They can't speak, but understand the primordial language.


(3e MM 2) Reason Stealer: This thing is brownish-yellow. It steals your intelligence and then it can roughly mimic your shape, in a vague and blobby way. It can't talk, but can randomly mumble words in that creature's language. That is awesome. All of that lasts one day. It can even cast your spells, use your ability score/skills/plus to hit! I think this one is my favorite.

(Planar Handbook) Shadow Jelly: A pool of undulating darkness, a non-sentient shadow that feeds on life and light. Made from concentrated shadow-stuff, shadow jellies drain all of the warmth and life from its target.

(Dragon 367) Shadow Slime: These slimes dwell in the Shadowfell and they can extinguish lights and drain your lifeforceA shadow slime attaches to a victim, and when it is struck, the victim takes half the damage. They are cunning and stealthy.

(MM2) Slime Creature: These are the metamorphosed hosts of olive slimes, vegetable creatures linked symbiotically with the olive slime. When they hit someone, there is a 10% chance that they infect their opponent with olive slime.

In the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, they are also known as "slime zombies". The symbiotic bond to their host is secure within 200 miles. To return a slime zombie to normal, you need a limited wish spell! When dropped to 0 hp, they become a puddle of olive slime.

(2e MM) Slithering Tracker: Transparent plasma-draining jellies that move silently, seep through cracks, and prefer to attack sleeping or unconscious creatures. They secrete a substance that paralyzes you for 12 hours, during which it devours your plasma. Your corpse will look dehydrated. These things are actually created in a hideous process involving a living human being wherein dark wizards remove the bones of their enemies, turning them into hulking masses of jelly-like flesh.

(3e MM3) Snowflake Ooze: This does not need a safe space and it is not a "cuck". It's pretty much just a snowy ooze with a cold aura that does d6 cold damage to creatures who start their turn next to it.

(3e MM3) Spirit Ooze: Ravenous, incorporeal creatures created when wisps of matter from insubstantial undead congeal into a single amorphous entity. They have little sentience and are elusive.

Stunjelly: Relative of the gelatinous cube. These were originally designed by a forgotten mage to resemble a stone wall. Light passes through it and it smells like vinegar. They reproduce by fission, making a horrendous rending sound. It carries around undigested metals and can't slither under doors.

(Monstrous Compendium Annual 2) Stone Pudding: Solid and sluggish, a thick lump that hides on ceilings. It drops on you and absorbs your flesh over 1-10 rounds. They can't eat metal/wood/leather. Their remains are used as ingredient in oil of acid resistance.

(Monstrous Compendium Annual 2) Subterranean Pudding: A colony of hundreds of living organisms in a single pudding that has sensory organs on its underside. Sages believe that they are all altered black puddings. They don't divide, they split into two, each half just as powerful as the original.

• Gray Pudding: More corrosive than black pudding, gray puddings dissolve their victims completely. They are susceptible to flesh to stone spells – it slows them.
• Dense Pudding: These puddings are slow, dark blue, easy to spot, and ooze secretions that corrode  living flesh. Those hit by a dense pudding must make a save or succumb to a "debilitating disease" (which is not described).

(3e MM3) Summoning Ooze: An ooze with glowing arcane symbols. It can summon monsters. That is a really cool idea.

(3e MM3) Teratomorph: Another huge, powerful ooze. It lives deep underwater, but sometimes it washes up on the beach. Portions of it flickers with light. These things are infused with chaos, their very presence can tear holes in the fabric between the planes! When it hits you, you roll on a chart for a special effect, such as causing "tiny portions of the opponent' anatomy to vanish" or being polymorphed into a random new form.

Every round that you are close to a teratomorph, you make a save or be shifted to another plane! When it moves, it fires off random spells. There's a chart for that too. My first instinct was to ignore this thing because its name doesn't match the others (maybe they should have called this a Chaos Ooze or something) but I'm glad I didn't overlook it.

(Dragon Magazine #127) Xador's Fluid: If it hits, it combines with living skin, hardening to rock. The victim is solidified, as if coated with plastic. Make a save - success keeps it out of your nose and mouth. Fail: You pass out in one round, die d4 rounds later! While attached, it drains 1 hp per turn. After 5-8 days, it reliquifies and divides in two. Barkskin spells destroy Xador’s Fluid. A blow with a weapon shatters Xador’s fluid, but it also harms the victim.

Xador’s Fluid was named after Lord Xador, an evil noble who used this stuff to punish miscreants. Their hardened forms were displayed as statues until they died. You can use Xador’s Fluid as armor if carefully apply it to yourself for five rounds to apply. You can wear only normal clothing under it. It’s painfully tight and you can't sleep while wearing it.

Links

DMs Guild New 5e Ooze Stats (pay what you want)
Dungeon Dozen Ooze Table
Awesome ideas for oozes - Alchemical oozes, Violet Ooze, etc.
5e Slime Creature Stats

Episode 53: The Double-Edged Sword

• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist

The audio on this episode was very low for me. I couldn't make out some names and other stuff. Still, a very good show!

There are a few things on this episode that are part of D&D lore. I'm going to explain them below. If you want to experience it fresh, maybe skip this review.

 The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

Last time, Evelyn died and was reborn as a life-sized puppet/construct. Additionally, Paultin was given a severed hand by a nest-person.


The group is separated in this episode. Strix and Diath are in the room of Citadel Adbar where the ritual took place, while Evelyn and Paultin are in the toymaker's shop.

Evelyn's soul is apparently in Master Flamebane's construct. She is not happy. She actually sort of threatens Flamebane.

Back in the ritual room, Van Richten is down. Is he dead? Nope. Van Richten is alive! They take off his goggles. He's got empty eye sockets! Smoke is billowing out of them. Jasper the dwarf picks him up and takes him to a temple. Strix and Diath are freaked out.

Diath and Strix head down a hallway, trying to figure out what to do. They realize that there are creatures lying in wait for them up ahead. Four bugbears step out of the shadows. They demand the iron flask (the magic flask currently has an earth genie trapped in it).

The heroes aren't giving up the flask so we are going to have ourselves a combat.

Jared has a new amethyst d20. He hopes it rolls well. Natural 20! Wow.

Waffles the baby owlbear has grown up a bit and wants to attack. Holly rolls for Waffles. Natural 20! This is very unwaffle-like.

Strix drops a fireball on the bugbears, using careful spell so that her allies aren't hit in the blast.

Meanwhile, Evelyn examines herself. Anna thinks she's a bit too much like a realdoll. I died laughing.

She demands answers from the toymaker. Evelyn wants Paultin to kill her so that the toymaker can reassemble Murderbot. Good gawd. Don't do that. Paultin actually leaves her and goes to get a drink. He just walks off.

Elsewhere, an invisible assailant comes at Diath and Strix. This person, a woman, is wearing some sort of gas mask. She hits Strix with a lightning bolt and Strix is down.

At one point, Diath makes a perception check. What did the amethyst die roll? Natural 20.

Then... Strix death save... natural 20! Their dice are a force of nature today.

The mysterious attacker turns invisible and flees. Strix busts out the iron flask and tells the genie to follow them. He does.

A dwarf (duergar?) approaches and asks if he's related to Ashton Woodrow. Diath says he doesn't know who that is. We eventually learn that this person is half-dwarf, half-orc.

The dwarf hands Diath a sword.. it has designs on it linked to.. Sigil! Wow. There's a word on it written in Abyssal: "Gutter." It has a keyhole in it. Hmmm.. So does one of Diath's keys work on it?

Diath takes it. The dwarf is disoriented... severed from a connection. He's upset. He wants the sword back.

The dwarf shakes it off. He says that he used to adventure with Ashton, and that the sword is meant for his descendants...

Meanwhile, Paultin goes to the bar. He's got the severed hand out. he plops it on the bar. It comes to life - it has attuned to him. It animates and moves around. It can't fly, but it can move around like a crawling claw.

Evelyn comes in and checks out the hand. It's not evil. She makes friends with it, gives it a fist bump.

Strix had told the dao to follow the bad guys. She realizes she never said for him to come back. Looks like he is free of the flask! Strix is quite perturbed about this. She seems to be rolling around on the ground, groaning.

Gutter, the magic sword, starts talking to Diath. It calls itself a "magic short sword of backstabbing." It wants Diath to use one of his keys in the sword's keyhole.

He does. A planar gate opens! What.. a creature steps through. An arcanaloth.. don't tell me this is Shemeshka.. IT IS! She's wearing the crown of razorvines!! This will be interesting.

Shemeshka the Marauder


Shemeshka is a pretty major NPC from the Planescape setting. She lives in the city of Sigil, and she's a shadowy information broker and slave trader. She is extremely clever and always has secret plans in motion. She operates out of a casino called Fortune's Wheel, and she has a weird, adversarial relationship with another of her kind named A'kin the Friendly Fiend.

There's more about her in my Guide to Sigil.

Shemeshka recognizes Strix. They've met before?! Strix remembers.. Shemeshka tried to buy her.

Shemeshka says she will answer three questions, and then Diath must hand over a key. Each time Diath summons her to ask questions, same deal. Once the keys run out, that's it.

What's the deal with that?

Diath gets three questions.

1. Who made this sword? "I did."
2. Why did you make it? It's was a gift for a descendant.. Dareth...? I couldn't hear.
3. He asks about the curse that is killing Strix and Diath. Shemeshka says that an evil god-thing might be doing this to rejuvenate itself. Learn everything you can about Acererak.

Diath gives her a key. She leaves through the portal..
There's a foppish dandy watching Paultin and Evelyn in the bar. Paultin comes over and demands to know what his problem is. This guy's name is Borgus Dreghand? Something like that.

Borgus says he's heard of the waffle crew. Their reputation precedes them.

The guy's food comes. Waffles! Evelyn realizes that she can't eat waffled. Anna says she sheds a single tear. Chris says: "No you don't." Everyone cry-laughs.

Paultin grabs a waffle and eats it. Con save! The waffles are poisoned?! Paultin makes his save.

It looks like this guy is a Harper, one of the secret band of do-gooders spread all throughout the Forgotten Realms.

Uhh... the bar is fading away. Evelyn had noticed Paultin's missing shadow - it stuck out to her more than normal for some reason. She was also sensing evil...

They're somewhere else. They're in a castle. Someone's coming. Paultin quickly turns Evelyn invisible.

Who walks through the door? It's Escher. WHAT. Did they just get sucked back into Barovia?!

With Strahd gone, did Escher take over Barovia? Does he now have the power to control the mists?

Overall

This episode is right up my alley. I really get a kick out of seeing Chris run "official" NPCs, and I love the mixing/combining of campaign settings. Right now, we're in a campaign that uses material from Curse of Strahd, Storm King's Thunder, Tomb of Annihilation, and the 2e Planescape boxed set.

Shemeshka will apparently be a recurring character, which I think is really cool. Any link to Planescape makes me happy. I guess Diath is from Sigil as well? I have absolutely no idea what the deal with his keys is.

Questions About the Keys: Sigil is called "The City of Doors" because it has portals to pretty much every plane of existence - The Abyss, Mount Celestia, Hell, Mechanus, etc. In Sigil, the key to opening these portals often isn't a physical key, it's a random item or gesture that is usually linked in some way to that realm. Activating a portal to Hell might require you to think an evil thought, and activating a portal to Mount Celestia might require a feather from an angel's wing.

So Diath has a ring of keys and Shemeshka, who lives in the city of doors, is taking them one by one. Is it possible she lied about making the sword and is after the keys? Were the keys planted on Diath to keep them away from her?

If she didn't make the sword, why is the portal linked to her?

Why is the sword called "Gutter"? Is it because it guts people, or is it a reference to a gutter in the Hive?

Could the group use the iron flask to trap Shemeshka? I think they can.

My favorite question: Could the group go through the portal that Shemeshka came out of? If the group gets trapped somewhere, like a cave-in or something, could they use it to escape to Sigil?

Good show!

City of Neverwinter (Forgotten Realms)

I have been getting a lot of emails from people asking questions about how I run adventures in the city of Sigil. Today I'll try to explain the pitfalls of running city adventures/campaigns and how to avoid them.

I know that running an adventure in a city is very disorienting, especially to a new DM. There’s all of these weird factors that you don’t have to worry about when the group is in a dungeon or traveling through a forest.

Cities are big! There are hundreds or thousands of businesses, and tens of thousands of people. How can you possibly be ready for everything when the players have so many options? How can you detail everything? That would take months of hard work!

Focus on the Obvious: You don’t have to detail everything. You just need to know what to prepare. You should prepare the places that the group is likely to go to and the people they are likely going to interact with. There are a few things you’ll always need to detail when making a city:

Taverns: 3 or more, preferably at least one for each district/section of the city.

Inns: 3 or more, same as above.

Shops: Stores to buy weapons and gear. Definitely make sure to have places that will fill the needs of the characters. If you use spell components, you’ll need a shop for that. If the group uses a wagon, you should make up a goofy wagon maker. That kind of thing.

Sage: A sage or wizard. Think in advance about what this person knows. The group is likely to ask questions of them that you didn’t expect, so it pay to know what topics the sage is an expert in.

Temples: A temple for healing, and temples associated to the gods that the group worships. You can do a lot of fun stuff with the church hierarchy. The party cleric can rise up in the ranks and maybe one day run the whole thing.

Come up with what spells the priests of the church can cast, and how much they request in a donation to cast it. You should probably just pick out 5 cleric spells and have those be the ones available (lesser restoration and raise dead being most important).

City of Brass (Al Qadim, Manual of the Planes, etc)

Library: A library or similar venue for research. I like to come up with a few books in the library related to details of the campaign world you want the group to know about, fun books relating to old adventures in-jokes, etc. Maybe a book with a few spells in it? Under lock and key? You need to schmooze the librarian to get at it.

Bank: Some DMs have banks in their games, some don’t. If you put one in, definitely think about the vault and how well it is protected. Also, be careful with the idea of criminals robbing the bank and taking the group’s stuff. If you do this kind of thing a lot, then your group is just not going to bother with it ever again.

You might end up going down the road where the group thinks that you’re introducing things like this just to screw with them. They’ll end up not interacting with anything.

Moneychangers: Adventurers get gems! They want to turn those gems into money! Make up some of these people who can do so. Also.. sometimes adventurers find exotic jewelry. Rich people would love to buy that stuff. Selling stuff to the wealthy is a good way for heroes to cultivate a relationship with some NPCs and it can lead to all sort of cool things.

“Home Base”: It’s tempting to pick out a location that you think would be cool for the group to live in. You might end up putting a lot of work into it. A lot of times, the players are into another location that you did not expect. They want to live there, not in your place. All that work you did might go to waste.

I think that if you get excited about an idea for a home base, just ask the players between sessions - “Is this where you’d want to live?” If they say yes, get to work! Make sure they understand that they shouldn’t go back on this, because you are going to spend some time creating it and if they ignore it, that’s time you could have spent making the adventure better.

Palace: The place the rulers live in. It’s hard to come up with something original. Usually it’s a palace with a throne room and a big hall where they eat. Definitely think about how the ruler is protected. What kind of guards? Spells? Is a court wizard nearby? The rulers of D&D settlements usually end up threatened, evil or dead. Half of the time, the heroes are the ones responsible for the death of the ruler.

Prison: A prison or jail. Sending characters to jail is a really tricky thing. Once the group becomes wanted by the man, the whole campaign is in question. If the group has to flee the city (or if they blow it up) your city campaign is over. But… there have to be consequences to their actions.

City of Gloomwrought (Shadowfell boxed set)

Guard Outpost: Maybe make a guard outpost? There is no question that the group will meet the guards of the city. If you can, try to give your guards something cool so that they stand out. In Waterdeep, the guard all wear magic helmets that alter their voices so that they all sound the same.

Thieves Guild: Some people use them, some don't. If you have a rogue in the group, the guild might want them to join or they might end up in opposition to them. Wealthy adventurers are going to be targeted by thieves, right? At least, in theory they would.

City NPCs

You will also need NPCs. You don’t need to go nuts with this. Just give each one 1-3 characteristics, and if possible, a secret. The secret doesn’t have to be something big. Whatever it is, when the group stumbles on it, the players light up. They realize there’s a lot more going under the surface in the campaign and they start digging deeper into everything.

I recommend making an NPC for each location. You don’t need to make stat blocks, all you need is the commoner stats in the DMG. Just write down their name, race, appearance, and a few qualities that make them stand out.

Backup NPCs: You’ll also want a bunch of NPCs that are not tied to a location. The group will interact with people on the street and all sorts of stuff you might not have anticipated. If they do go into a business that you didn’t have prepared, you can pull NPCs off of that sheet and run it seamlessly.

Just make sure to write down on that sheet where you placed them. It’s very easy to forget their name, where they were, etc. But the players will remember and it will stick out if you draw a blank.

The Big Trap: I say this a lot, but I think it always bears repeating. Do not fall into the trap of having the vast majority of NPCs be negative toward the PCs. Have most NPCs be nice and helpful to them.

The group will like the city and want to save it when the time comes. If everyone in the city is a dick, they’re not going to care and they’ll want to leave or give the people what they deserve.

Prices and Lifestyles 

City of Cauldron (Shackled City adventure path)

This page has everything you need to handle lifestyles and purchasing items.

Sometimes this gets overlooked. How much does everything cost? What’s available?

Detail the Lifestyle Choices: You should know the lifestyle costs, and if possible, come up with some stuff specific to characters in that lifestyle. Players who decide to live in the “wretched” lifestyle because it’s free should see the consequences (which could be fun, not necessarily horrible).

Make up some bums. Make up a filthy alley for them to sleep in. Make up weird animals that bother them in the middle of the night, or people dumping trash out of a window into the alley, unaware that our hero is sleeping there.

The Wretched Adventurer could end up witnessing a murder or rescuing a prostitute from a violent pimp, all sorts of stuff.

Those who take the aristocratic lifestyle should have their own deal. They paid the money, let’s let them reap the benefits. They could go to a swanky gala, join an exclusive club allowing them to rub elbows with the city elite, maybe that money plus a down payment allows them to lease a large home or mansion. Maybe they have a butler! I would love to have a butler go on adventures with me.
They’re so loyal and polite.

Culture

City of Korvosa (Pathfinder: Curse of the Crimson Throne)

It can be fun to make up swears, sayings and drugs for your city. Magic drugs! Let’s sniff some goblin paste!

Local Profanity: Making up swears and sayings is tricky. You might end up making a lot of them, but the group isn’t going to be able to absorb or remember them all. It’s hard to make a swear that sounds like a swear, and not something that sounds stupid coming out of your mouth. You might want to look up swears in an obscure language in the real world, then alter it for your game. I would guess that those words in the real world became popular swears because they were effective.

Clothing: As far as clothing style, it can help your game stick out (good or bad). When I was a kid, I loved the American revolutionary war. I declared that everyone in my campaign dressed like they did in the 1770’s. Big coats, powdered wigs, etc. My group always made a face when I'd describe a long blue jacket. They couldn’t imagine it, and it did not enhance the game in any way. It was a little too outside of their vision of fantasy, especially in a world where I don’t allow gunpowder (I don’t like muskets/arquebuses in D&D).

Later, I made the fashion of the city resemble Boris Vallejo paintings. But in my city, most people are not bodybuilders or models. They’re regular schlubs with hairy chests, warts and pot bellies. Yet they wear tiny loincloths and golden armbands.

This worked better, because it was fantasy and my goofy style. The group “got” what I was going for.

Laws

City of Tu'Narath (Scales of War adventure path)

This is the part that is really tricky. What are the laws of the city? What are the punishments? How are they doled out? Are there lawyers? If you’re not sure, just make it as simple as possible.


Maybe come up with three categories of crime, each with its own sentence. It’s up to the judge to decide what category the crime fits into, and that’s it.

Magic and the Law: Is all magic illegal? Are certain spells illegal? One fireball could cost a lot of lives in a city.

Wizards and spellcasters working with guards could lead to a lot of fun things. Cleric spells are very valuable for guards. I could see cities tied to a particular faith having one cleric accompany each guard patrol.

If you decide to use magic in the court system/guard patrol/whatever, make sure you know what their spells do. Write down a shorthand version in advance and the page number it is on so that you don’t have to stop the game, look it up, and then figure out the DCs, etc.

Here’s the spells I think are most useful for city guards:

• Message (PH page 259) A great way for guards to coordinate as they approach your PCs, or for an informant to alert guards outside.
• Animal Friendship (PH pg 212) Great for handling stray dogs and weird animals that wander in from the forest like bears or wolves.
• Charm Person (PH pg 221) This is a fantastic spell to de-escalate situations.
• Command (PH pg 223) "Halt" and "drop" are absolutely perfect commands for guards to use.
• Detect Evil and Good (PH pg 231) What's better for scoping out shady-looking people who just entered the city?
• Illusory Script (PH pg 252) For sending messages you don't want other people to read. Lasts 10 days! Seems like this would be used quite a bit in a city.
• Purify Food and Drink (PH pg 270) I would imagine this would be cast on every meal a ruler was about to eat.
• Sleep (PH pg 276) A great nonviolent way for a guard to apprehend people.
• Speak with Animals (PH pg 277) How awesome would it be to a run a scenario where the group is investigating a crime, and the only witness is a stray cat? Maybe the cat doesn't want to talk! Maybe the cat knows too much and a hit is put out on it. If you run a goofy campaign like I do, this is gold.
• Unseen Servant (PH pg 284) Rich people would probably have people cast this spell to tidy up their place.
• Arcane Lock (PH pg 215) This is permanent! Any business that makes a fair amount of money might have this, right? Especially if it's a bank vault.
• Calm Emotions (PH pg 221) All creatures in a 20 foot radius! This is a good way to shut down a riot.
• Detect Thoughts (PH pg 231) This is extremely valuable to guards and the law. Reading somebody's mind solves a heck of a lot of problems. Because it will be the word of the caster against the word of the suspect, you should probably have it where the caster has sworn an oath and gone through loyalty tests - their integrity is obviously very important and if you don't establish this, your group will question the whole system.
• Hold Person (PH pg 251) Last up to a minute, plenty of time to slap some shackles on the perp.
• Magic Mouth (PH pg 257) I personally find these to be hilarious, and I love the idea of a magic mouth spouting the daily news/proclamations of the ruler, or propaganda and law changes.
• Zone of Truth (PH pg 289) It's getting pretty hot under these lights, isn't it, Driz'zt?

City Adventures

City of Sharn (Eberron)

The first question to answer when making a city scenario is: “Why aren’t the guards handling this?” Two main options:

• The guards tried, couldn’t do it, and need the heroes to help.
• If the group is hired by someone to do something, It might be because that person is wanted or involved in something that is technically illegal.

Factions: I think you’ll find that a lot of the adventures in a city start off as things the guards would have no need to deal with. In my experience, city adventures are often about conflicts between people or organizations.

Villains who Skirt the Law: In Sigil, there’s an arcanaloth slaver/mastermind named Shemeshka the Marauder. She runs a casino and on paper, she’s a model citizen. But she does bad stuff! Proving that she broke the law is very difficult because she’s careful about how to handle things.

She might use agents to hire some goons to do something illegal. Then, if the situation comes under scrutiny, she could have the agent killed and the body completely destroyed to prevent speak with dead, etc.

FetchQuest 2: The Questering: A lot of city adventures are about obtaining something. Some bad person wants possession of an item that would allow them to further an evil scheme. Someone running an underground slave operation would definitely want an item that increases the productivity of their slaves, especially if it magically eliminates their need to sleep. They can work 24 hours a day!

Murder Mysteries: These are really hard to do. My biggest problem with them is that it’s difficult to gauge whether it will fill a session! If you’re being fair, the group could stumble on or guess the culprit right away.

If that happens, you might have an urge to block the group, so you don’t have to scramble for material.

I think the best bet is to have another scenario ready, so that if the murder is solved quickly, you can just move on with other stuff you have prepared.

Thieves Guilds: I feel like people don’t use these enough. I know I don’t. They’d make great villains or edgy, anti-hero allies.

City of Sigil (Planescape)

Parties: I have always found this to be true. Players love in-game parties. The heroes go to a mansion, rub elbows with NPCs, drink punch, dance, and then D&D stuff happens. Zombies come in, one of the guests is a polymorphed dragon, thieves try to rob everybody, the mansion gets sucked into another plane, you name it.

I think players like this scenario because it’s so different from normal, and because they have an opportunity to really show everyone what their character is like. We’re not charging from encounter to encounter, we’re investigating, roleplaying, and trying to figure out what D&D thing is going to happen at this gala event. Is the food poisoned?! They’ll always check. Almost always, anyway.

Preparing a Party: It can be hard to make a scenario like this, because it is not linear. How do you prepare it? You could make a map of the mansion as if it was a dungeon to explore, but a mansion is a poor substitute for a dungeon.

What works for me is to make a list of the guests, then make a timeline of what happens when. It’s very simple and it feels loose and fun when you play it out.

When you make the NPC guests, give them some personality and think about how they’d react to the group. If the heroes have been involved in notable adventures, some of the guests might have heard about them and will heap praise upon them.

Investigation: Aside from murder mysteries, the group might go through other investigations. Find out who is sending death threats, figure out who or what this mysterious entity is that keeps appearing on a certain street at night, find the source of a lycanthropy outbreak, etc.

I’ve found that the best way to handle preparing these is one step at a time. They go to the first site to investigate. They find a few clues that point to different directions. Write down where each of them leads and detail what happens when they follow them.

The group might need to go to all three locations to piece together a clue that takes them to the next step. Or, maybe the group can learn enough at any of the three sites to move to the next step. It’s up to you. Just make sure not to have it feel like filler, like you’re padding it out to fill time. Each place should be consequential and worth visiting.

Investigations involve questioning NPCs, so definitely focus on making interesting, fun NPCs and think abut their motivation.

If you can, make an NPC who is hiding something. The group might pick up on it, they might not.
Just drop a clue. If they pick up on it, they could learn something valuable or gain an item.

Rewarding them for digging is important, otherwise it can feel like they just go to a location and automatically find something, then move on to the next step. If possible, litter each locale with one or two easter eggs that aren’t necessarily connected to the story.

Stay on Target: Don't let cities freak you out! Almost all of the best sessions I've had were in cities. If you can get comfortable with it, a lot of fun can be had.

Links

• Donjon 5e Random Generator 
• Chris Perkins NPC Name List 
• My Great List of Food and Drinks 
• DMs Guild City Encounters 
• DMs Guild City-Making Guide 
• DMs Guild Random City Events 
• DMS Guild Adversaries and Allies 
• DMs Guild 50 Human NPCs 
• DMs Guild 35 Versatile NPCs 
• DMs Guild One Drop NPCs

Episode 54: Together Forever

• Watch this episode on youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist

Holly's in Ireland (on vacation?) and she still made it to the game. Hardcore! She says her allergies are a problem over there.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

Last time, Diath got a cool new sword and the mists of Baovia drew Evelyn and Paultin back to Castle Ravenloft

The Bride and the Abbot

We start off with Paultin and Evelyn. Evelyn’s body is described as a sort of animatronic thing with rubbery skin, which I find very amusing.

Escher, the vampire who has a thing for Paultin, drops some exposition on us. He explains that Paultin is going to be getting married. Today? “If you run, the master will just bring you back.”

Escher slyly notes that once Paultin and the bride have consummated their marriage, Paultin can banish her to the catacombs. This would allow Escher and Paultin can be together. Paultin is boggled by this whole thing. The best word to describe Evelyn’s reaction to this would be “flummoxed”.

Evelyn is invisible. It turns out that Escher can see her. He tells her she'd be safer with her friends. Evelyn tackles him. Escher puts up with her antics, probably to make sure he doesn’t turn Paultin off.

We learn that even though the group put Strahd in the doll and took him out of Barovia, Strahd left a piece of himself behind. It is known as "the master."

Diath and Strix are in Citadel Adber. Here come the mists! They’re brought to Castle Ravenloft too. They’re in the study.

There's a shadow on the wall. Paultin’s shadow! Paultin’s shadow separated from him a while back.

We learn that when Strahd was taken from Barovia, Paultin's shadow took over?! A piece of Strahd is in his shadow. The dark powers want to reclaim this land. Paultin is apparently their choice as the new ruler.

The Dark Powers of Ravenloft: The dark powers have been around a long time – since the 2nd edition Rvenloft boxed set, I think. I'm fairly certain that Curse of Strahd is the first time we learned who the Dark Powers actually are.

They’re vestiges, wispy remains of slain gods, demon lords, and other “powers”. How do they communicate with each other? How do they come to a consensus? Do they form some kind of hive mind in the Amber Temple? Why do they want Barovia to be a realm of despair? What do they get out of it?

Chris had a million options as far as who would take over Barovia. I like that he chose a character over the NPCs. There are a lot of cool NPCs that could fill this spot, but directly involving Paultin opens up a lot of cool possibilities and it’s easier to involve the heroes.

Cyrus the mongrelfolk guy takes Paultin and Evelyn to the study that Diath and Evelyn are in. Escher tells Cyrus not to let Paultin see the bride.

So is the bride.. the undead bride? From the monastery? Is Paultin going to marry that dead lady?

The group reunites in the study. They get a look at animatronic Evelyn. Strix is happy.

Diath looks at Evelyn and says "I'll fix you." I love Diath, what an awesome character. Jared plays his character like a true hero – he does the right thing, even when it’s hard.

Cyrus butts in and says, "I've never had a friend." I died laughing.

The group tries to make friends with Cyrus, but Cyrus somehow messes it up in about 1 minute.

Paultin's shadow on the wall of the study has bat wings. The group has no idea what to do with the shadow. Strix tries to trap it in the flask. Doesn’t work. Was a good idea!

Evelyn decides to try to punch the shadow. The punch doesn't hurt it. Evelyn’s attack causes a magical suit of armor to come to life. Paultin tells it to stand down. It does.

The heroes debate what to do next. They're going to go check out the bride, maybe kill her.

The group gives Evelyn her stuff: Treebane the axe, Juniper the mouse and her winged boots.

Paultin goes elsewhere with Escher. Escher hits on Paultin as he puts on his suit.

The Heart

The other heroes see that the heart – the big crystal thing that gave Strahd special protection, was in fact destroyed by Mordenkainen way back when.

Evelyn scopes out the region around the castle. She sees the village of Barovia. Uh oh... witches are flying around. They're coming to the wedding, apparently. A witch broom famously defeated Diath at the first live show. Diath is scared.

Escher tells Paultin that he is indeed going to marry the undead bride. Escher doesn't trust the Abbot. He says that there's good in him. The abbot is a deva (an angel, basically). He's crazy.

The Abbot is the guy who brought Diath back from the dead. I wonder if the group could find Evelyn’s corpse, if he could fix her?

The waffle crew thinks maybe they should go burn down the church of Barovia. That way, there couldn’t be a wedding.

Maybe they should just let this happen. If Paultin rules Barovia, maybe he could use his powers to save the people of Barovia.

The group also spots another guest. The vampire guy from the very first session! He was last seen running away with a sword stuck in his torso.

Another guest... Izek Strazni, with the huge demon arm. Strix’s brother! Wow.

Paultin pulls the Abbot aside and tries to cast suggestion on him. It doesn't work. The Abbot is extremely angry. He summons his mace and unfurls his black wings.

That's where we stop!

Overall

I get a kick out of seeing the old Curse of Strahd NPCs!

They’ve started doing more shows on the twitch D&D channel. I really love the idea of the events on these shows being canon. For example, in some future book that mentions Barovia, maybe something the waffle crew did is mentioned. Or in art, we see a scene from one of these shows depicted.

I guess that might be tricky for legal reasons. Who owns the character? Does Holly own Strix, or is Strix the property of Wizards of the Coast?

Imagine if someone had to leave a show and a new player was brought in to play their character? Like an actor being replaced on a TV show? That would be horrible.

No game next week due to July 4th!

In older editions of D&D, cambions were demons. In 4th edition, they were devils. What’s the deal? I have no idea. I figured I'd read up on everything I could find on cambions and explore what turns out to be a very under-used creature in D&D.

I'm going to through each product and pull the information that I think is most relevant. I'll also detail every official cambion NPC that I can find.

I even found a cambion link to the villain of the upcoming 5e adventure, the Tomb of Annihilation.

This stuff can be a little confusing. Remember:

• Devils are lawful and they live in the Nine Hells.
• Demons are chaotic and they live in the Abyss.

AD&D Monster Manual 2

Always Male: When a human female mates with a demon, the offspring is always a cambion male.  Cambions, also known as "semi-demons", are chaotic evil.

Appearance: They range from 6 - 7.5 feet in height. They have an odd-colored complexion, scaly skin, misshapen ears, fangs, small horns. They are varied in appearance.


There are two types of cambions: major cambions and baron/marquis cambions.

Powers and Traits:

• They can let out an awe effect at will.
• They can speak with demons
• Unharmed by silver, harmed by iron

Baron or marquis cambions have 1-4 of these abilities:

1. Cause fear
2. Detect magic
3. Levitate,
4. Polymorph self

This information stay roughly the same up until 4th edition.

Dungeon Magazine #13 - Ruins of Nol-Daer

MacDaer

MacDaer is a weird name for a demon, right? I don't really get that.

Ships Passing in the Night: MacDaer is the son of Demara the Enchantress, an evil sorceress who had "a passing fling with a conjured demonic friend".

Foster Demon: The sorceress was 18th level and she had two pet black dragons, so she's a pretty big deal. She put MacDaer under the care of a "local baron" of an Abyssal layer named Arzial. MacDaer became a thief/spellcaster.

After 100 years, he went home and saw the castle in ruins and his mother gone. He didn't realize that time passed differently in that layer of the Abyss. For him, only 46 years had passed.

MacDaer's Crew: MacDaer claimed the castle and got himself a posse of spriggan minions. He was looking for the secret library, deep underground. Apparently it was buried under rock. He abducted some dwarven miners and forced them to dig a tunnel.

That's where the heroes come in. We gotta rescue those dwarves!

Fecal Aroma: So.. MacDaer's quarters is filled with the "pungent odor of fresh manure" so strong that it might make your eyes water. MacDaer says the smell reminds him of home.

MacDaer has a new magic item called the Amulet of the Abyss:

• Worn by honored guests traveling through certain layers of the Abyss.
• The amulet bears the image of a longsword grasped by a tentacle.
• Can summon demons twice a day - manes or dretches.
• This is linked to Arzial, the demon baron who serves under Graz'zt!
• You can use the amulet to communicate with Arzial directly.

Throne of Bloodstone

There is an epic section in this adventure where it describes many different abyssal layers. One of them is home to cambions.

Lair of the Semi-Demons: Yes, it is the lair of the semi-demons. It is an abyssal layer that looks like a Material Plane world. There's small towns spread throughout. Feared by humans and despised by demons, the cambions and alu-fiends live in small villages and war on each other constantly.

Alu-Demons and Cambions: It says in here that the offspring of human females and demons are cambions. Alu-demons are the offspring of human males and succubi.

No Children: "They are sterile, so there are no children."

AD&D 2e - Outer Planes Appendix

Origin of Major Cambions: If a lesser or greater demon mates with a human female, the kid is a major cambion

Origins of Barons/Marquis: Barons and marquis are the offspring of true demons. "In either case, the mother does not survive the birth."

Factoids:

• Cambions are ugly and terrifying (?). Ugly?
• They have pitch black skin, scaly, pointed ears, and sickly fangs.
• Most of them have magic weapons and armor.
• They are very stealthy

Cambions and alu-fiends are freaks and outcasts and thus, they're bitter and hateful toward all things.
They are often personal bodyguards or servants of balors. Evil cambions serve in the blood war as assassins.

Some are Nice: A small percent of cambions are neutral or good. These wretched creatures are doomed to an existence of misery

Well of Worlds
This is a great book! Tons of fun adventures.

The Arch-Lector: In one adventure, there is a cambion known as the Arch-Lector, Byrri Tarmoril.

Lots o' details:

• Ruler: He runs a planar gate-town (a town right on the border of a plane) called Plague-Mort.
• Demented Scheme: The arch-lector wanted the town to get sucked into the plane it borders - the Abyss. To do so, he needs to sow chaos. 
• Betrayal: His balor masters decide the best way to sow chaos is to kill him. 
• Apparently it works.. in later editions, Plague-Mort is in the first layer of the Abyss.
• Brutal Pleasures! He has a private chapel to Umberlee where he enjoys "brutal pleasures." 
• Mood Rooms: He has dens to suit his moods. The ones he uses the most are Anger, jealousy and spite. 
• Resurrectable: When it's all over.. the Arch-Lector gets raised from the dead.

Marquis Fearson: He's the one assigned to kill the Arch-Lector. He is capable and he works closely with his balor father

Mortai: A major cambion, Mortai is Fearson's brother on his mother's side. He worships Fearson, unaware that Fearson wants him dead.

Hellbound


In the biggest adventure in this boxed set, there is an encounter with two cambions and an alu-fiend.

• Faare: Alu-fiend.
• Hinvar: Suave cambion with magic weapon.
• Veridis: Looks a little odd.

They got on Graz'zt's Bad Side: These rapscallions stole a magical a sword named blackshield. Whoever named that sword needs to go back to sword-naming school. They stole it from the demon lord, Graz'zt! They try to trick the heroes into taking it, so that when the magical defender of the sword appears, they can steal it back from the adventurers and run.

Blackshield: Blackshield is intelligent, speaks three languages and it can cast spells including heal, invisibility and lightning bolt.

Harbinger House 

Crimjack: This cambion is 7 feet tall, has black skin and wears spiked armor. He's basically a flunky of a scheming succubus named Nari. At one point, he commands a group of manes in an attack.

Factol's Manifesto

Ely Cromlich: This cambion has a mother from the plane of Elysium. He is a high-ranking member of the doomguard, a faction that makes weapons. He may or may not be doing it with the leader of the doomguard, Factol Pentar.

Ely is in charge of the Armory. In Faction War, when things get crazy, he starts giving out free weapons to anyone who will attack the Mercykillers (who are more or less the police of the city of Sigil).

Uncaged: Faces of Sigil

Rule-of-Three

Rule-of-Three: This is probably one of the most prominent cambions out there. Rule-of-Three takes on the guise of a githzerai sage, but that's an illusion. In truth, he is a cambion. A son of Graz'zt the demon lord!

His true secret mission is to get the devils and the demons to stop fighting and cooperate, so that they can take over all of the other planes (under the rule of Graz'zt, obviously).

Roleplaying Challenge: Any time you ask this guy a question, he gives three answers. My players love to troll me by asking him a lot of questions so I have to come up with all these answers on the spot.

Planewalkers Handbook

Thrau: This cambion sneaks around in the plane of Acheron, looking for magical weapons.Supposedly he sells a lot of magic items he's acquired in the realm, including odd magic weapons like garrotes, blowguns and arquebuses.
Faces of Evil

Ollistaar: A poet who wrote Into the Dread Styx, a moving testament to loyalty, betrayal and loss.

Zaxarus: Apparently, this cambion's treachery caused the downfall of an abyssal fortress called Malevolus.

Planes of Conflict

Rgillyrg: A cambion sorcerer who tried to use an ESP spell to figure out what a phiuhl was. He went crazy, but before he did so, he blurted out things like "undead lords of brass" and "spirits of long-dead wind dukes."

A phiuhl is a monster resembling a tall column of malevolent steam that can drain the life right out of you.

Dungeon Magazine #55 - Umbra

This is one of my favorite Chris Perkins adventures, set in Planescape.

Dirngrin: "A slender elfin man decked out in tight-fitting black leather armor with spiked metal shoulder plates and knee-high, studded-leather boots. His skin is dark his ears pointed."

He uttered one of my groups favorite quotes of all time: "The Cage ain't a place for the clueless, cutter. It'll make a basher go barmy before you can say, 'Pike it, primescum!'"

Dirngrin switches alliances and ends up helping a succubus try to sell her daughter to a demon lord.

Doom Dagger: Dirgrin has a doom dagger. It's infused with negative energy. When he rolls a natural 20 to hit, he drains a level from the victim!

Dragon Magazine #292

Drath: Drath was a cambion who wielded a magic sickle called Gravetongue. He was killed by his treacherous lieutenants. Minions of Vecna ended up getting their hands on the sickle.

D&D 3rd Edition - Expedition to the Demonweb Pits
  
Cambions didn't get a lot of airtime in 3rd edition. They didn't appear in a book until nearly the end!  We get stats to make 3rd edition cambion characters.

Here's what we learn:

• They are native to the Abyss.
• Their eyes burn with a hellish light.
• "A true cambion springs from a union between a powerful tanar'ri father and a planetouched mother -- usually a tiefling."
• The higher-ranking marquis and baron cambions result from the unions of demon lords with female humanoid half-fiends.
• No Longer Sterile: "Cambions rarely mate with their own kind, but when they do, the cambion line breeds true."
• "When making babies with other races, they come out as tieflings." 
• Shapechange: They can assume an alternate form A specific humanoid, usually a human, drow, elf, aasimar, tiefling, githyanki, githzerai, hnoll etc. It can remain in this form as long as it wants. 
• They can communicate telepathically.
• They can cast charm person at will. 
• Meatarians: They become physically sick if they eat any food other than meat.  
• Stinky: Their bodies exude a ripe, predatory stench (what's the deal with cambions and odor?)

Dragon Magazine #360

The Razor Legion: The Razor Legion is a force of cambion rangers that serves the demon lord, Graz'zt. They wield swords possessed by strange demons known as caligrostos.When the wielder dies, the Caligrosto manifests a spirit form that takes the sword and continues fighting.

D&D 4th Edition - Monster Manual

4th edition.. now we're getting wacky.

"Cambions are the offspring of devils and depraved, unwitting mortals, inheriting the worst traits of each parent." Also... it looks like there's female cambions now. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

There are few types of cambion:

• Cambion Hellsword: Perhaps unsurpisingly, these cambions wield a hellsword. They can charge and attack all within reach at the end of the charge.
• Cambion Hellfire Magus: They have a mantle of soul energy that protects them. They fire off hellfire rays.

Some are born to succubi or other devils and are reared in the Nine Hells.

Monster Manual 3

Infernal parents dote on them. They spend their lives in homage to Asmodeus. The rulers of the 4th layer of Hell, Fierna and Belial, are often accompanied by cambions.

We get a few new types of cambion:

• Cambion Wrathborn: Plots to attain power. They can assume the guise of a specific humanoid.
• Chained Cambion: wrapped in chains, its body is bound and unmoving. it bindings hold it aloft. It's linked to Stygia, the 5th layer of Hell.
• Cambion Infernal Scion: Ambitious conquerers.

Brimstone Angels

In the Brimstone Angels novels, a cambion named Lorcan is one of the main characters. He's a warlock patron and he's very difficult to deal with. He has the best intro text of all time.

Dungeon #168 - A Tyranny of Souls

Scaramander

Scaramandar: A crime lord and information broker who dwells in the Astral Plane.
He can provide fake documentation to get into the githyanki city of Tu'Narath

• Goal: He wants a seat on the Society of Seven Diamonds, some kind of merchant body in the Astral Plane.
• Flunkies: He has rakhasa agents.
• Inappropriate Robes: He has crimson skin, black horns and long, oiled black haie. He wears brilliant robes of uncertain hues embroidered with "obscene images."
• He has a power called Shackles of Phlegethos, a fire spell that does damage when you move.

Dungeon #218 - Legacy of Ghere Thau


The main bad guy of this adventure is a cambion named Trask. The story goes like this:

• Cambion mercenaries seized a fortress called Ghere Thau. 
• Trask is their leader. He is looking to control the desert around Ghere Thau.
• The heroes show up to eradicate the bad guys. 
• Due to a big backstory involving a necromancer, every time a creature is slain, it immediately rises up as a wight and attacks! 
• Main Ally of Trask: Aricanthros, an earthquake dragon.
• Trask's Sister: His sister is undead. Skaela died a few days ago and she is trying to fight off the undead effect of this place (called the Soulmerge). She's becoming a wight and has been locks in a room. Pretty cool, right?

Fun Fact: Ghere Thau has a temple of Vecna in it.

D&D 5th Edition - Monster Manual

They actually put out the cambion page of the Monster Manual as a free preview.

• "A cambion is the spawn of a fiend (usually a succubus or incubus) and a humanoid (usually a human)."
  Sense of Entitlement: They think they should be overlords of mortals. They orchestrates uprisings in towns and cities. 
• Cambions in the Nine Hells serve as soldiers and attendants.
• Graz'zt's Cambions: Graz'zt is fond of procreating with mortals. his cambion children have charcoal-black skin, cloven hooves, six-fingered hands and unearthly beauty.

Fun Fact: there seems to be no consensus on the gender depicted in the Monster Manual.

Tomb of Annihilation


This adventure isn't out as of this writing, but I learned some stuff about the probable villain of that adventure.

Acererak: Acererak is best known as the demilich (floating skull with gems on it that can suck your soul) who created the mega-deadly tomb of horrors.

It turns out that, when he was a mortal, Acererak was a cambion!

Balor Dad: He is the result of an ancient balor named Tarnhem being summoned by a conjurer who couldn't control him.

Hood Justice: His mother tried to raise him in a normal human village, but a mob came for the demon kid. Guess who rescued him? Vecna! Vecna would go on to become the god of secrets. Acererak becomes his apprentice.

Stuff Happens: Long story short, Acererak wanted to fuse himself with the negative material plane to control all undead. He failed and became nothing more than a vestige (in the 3e Tome of Magic).

But! It turns out that a simulacrum (a magic clone) of Acererak survived and was able to use a device called the soul machine to transform into a complete being.

So, apparently, there are two Acereraks out there. One is a vestige, one is the guy on the cover of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Links

DMs Guild 5e Cambion Race
DMs Guild Sorcerous Origin - Cambion Born
List of the Forgotten Realms Cambions
The Pathfinder Cambions

I can't help but notice that Xanathar's Guide to Everything is extremely popular. Tons of people are pre-ordering it! From what I can see, I think that book is going to be a big deal.

Today we’re going to put together a resource on Baphomet. There’s ideas spread through many different old books, and I’ve done my best to pull them all out and put them in one place. If you ever use Baphomet in your campaign, this should give you a bunch of concepts to work with.

If you want just one source, I think that Dragon Magazine 341 has the most information in it.

AD&D 1st Edition – Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth

Baphomet has an ogre’s body, a bull’s head and he is covered in coarse black hair. What we learn:

• The mutual hatred between Baphomet and Yeenoghu is legendary.
• Minotaurs are his worshipers and servants.
• He can communicate telepathically with animals.
• He wields a bardiche that destroys armor, shields and weapons.
• Once per day he can bellow, causing all within 300 feet to save or flee in panic.

Monster Manual 2

• He’s 12 feet tall.
• He has “limited telepathic communication with animals.” 
• He can breathe a gout of unholy water 6 times per day. It does 16-64 points of damage. So... that’s... 16d4. No way am I ever rolling that many d4’s. They’re so hard to grab.

Throne of Bloodstone

Pentagon Maze

Baphomet gets a whole stat block and everything.

Baphomet has been captured by Orcus! He’s being kept in the dungeons. “This is the result of a rare (and no doubt temporary!) alliance between Orcus and Yeenoghu.” While Baphomet is imprisoned, Yeenoghu is looting Baphomet’s realm.

Baphomet must stay until he slays a certain number of creatures that intrude. When the group meets him, he needs to slay just one human and then he’s free. He’ll immediately teleport to his home.

They detail a bunch of mazes.

• Maze 1: The walls do lightning damage if you touch them. There’s a succubus in here with a wand of magic missiles.
• Maze 2: The Octagon Maze: There is a field of octagons floating in “outer space.” Awesome! They float freely.
• Maze 3: The Hexagon Maze: You have to enter certain rooms that teleport you to certain areas.
• Maze 4: The Pentagon Maze: The walls are made of impenetrable darkness. Some walls can be walked through, some can’t. Worse, certain walls do fire/lightning damage when touched (no saving throw). “Any object touched to these walls is destroyed.”

At the end, a huge iron golem greets the visitors and welcomes them to the castle of Orcus.

Special Minotaurs: As they wander the maze, there’s a chance the group will fight minotaurs with special powers! That’s cool. There’s a list. Lightning breath weapon, Flame breath weapon, high level cleric or magic user spells, all sorts of stuff.

AD&D 2nd Edition – Monster Mythology

In 2nd edition they say that Baphomet is a lesser god, in addition to being a demon lord.

It gives a possible origin of the minotaurs: a curse condemned a number of wicked humans, which drew Baphomet’s attention.

He can’t send avatars to the Material Plane. They have to be gated in by evil wizards.

Baphomet can grant minotaurs the power to cast maze or wall of stone. When they do this, there’s a 1% chance that they are plane shifted to Baphomet’s realm.

D&D 3rd Edition – Dragon Magazine #341

This article is huge. We learn a ton of stuff:

• He is the embodiment of all that is strong and virile, tempered with the keen mind and intellect of a scholar.
• He rules the 600th layer of the Abyss, an endless maze. 
• He can breathe negative energy on you.
• He generally doesn’t pay much attention to his followers on the Material Plane. He sends aspects of himself to do that.
• Baphomet is obsessed with war against Yeenoghu, personally leading armies of minotaurs, bulezau and goristro. They mostly do battle at outposts, not in their abyssal realms.
• They don’t usually invade the others layer, they go for other outposts.

Allies:

• Pale Night: Ancient, mysterious demon lord who lives here.
• Dwiergus the Chryalis Prince: He makes demons.
• He wants to be an ally of Malcanthet, the Queen of the Succubi, as they both hate Yeenoghu.
• Ardat, Demon Queen of Harpies: Baphomet betrayed her and her Soul Sirens.

Enemies: Yeenoghu, Graz’zt and Orcus

Thralls get powers:

• Breath of Baphomet: acid cold or fire.
• Immune to maze spells
• They grow bull horns
• Cast maze 3x per day
• Increase strength, con or dex to +4!!

Minions of Baphomet: We get a look at some demons who serve Baphomet.

Ankshar

Bulezau: Thin demons with writhing flesh, bulezau had ram heads with pale watery eyes and “froth-caked lips”.

Ankshar: This thing is a combination of a bull, a man, a bear and a reptile. If it bites you, you get a disease called “warpflesh” which deforms your body. It also has a “gaze of madness”, which... you know, it looks at you and you go nuts.

Baphomet’s Realm - The Endless Maze: We learn tons of stuff:

• 600th layer of the Abyss
• At the center is the Lyktion, Baphomet’s Palace.
• The further from the Lyktion you get, the more ruined the maze is. As Baphomet’s power grows, these areas become pristine.
• The sky above looks like gloomy clouds, but in truth it’s a stone ceiling.
• There are tribes of fiendish minotaurs who lay claim to areas of the maze.
• There are portals to many different Abyssal layers in the maze.
• The Lost: Desperate gnolls and humans being hunted by Baphomet.
• The Fields of Brass: An arena where adventurers fight monsters.
• The Lyktion: Hundreds of quasits clean it at all times. It is surrounded by a maze-like moat.
• The Tower of Science: This place is made of brass and iron. It has 16 floors, each devoted to a “science” Baphomet is interested in, like taxidermy, vivisection, breeding experiments, and death.
• The Maze of the Misbegotten: An unmapped underlabyrinth home to the “cancerous monstrosities that even Baphomet, Prince of Beasts, would rather see locked away.”

Pale Night's Bone Castle: Pale Night is another demon lord who lives in the Endless Maze. She’s mysterious, and is the mother of many other demon lords.

Her castle looks like a tower made of skeletal hands sitting in a circular plain of bones. Inside are galleries of the flickering shadows of her victims.

Here’s a little nugget for you: Pale Night often passes through a gate to Androlynne, where she spends a great deal of time toying with a generation of trapped eladrin children.

Fiendish Codex I


The Endless Maze: Connects to the Puzzling Hedge of Shendilavri (that sounds really cool) and the Valley of the Crypt Things on Thanatos.

When Baphomet was conquering this realm, he found Pale Night’s castle and she “somehow managed to suppress his rage enough to propose a pact that has lasted to the current day.”

4e Manual of the Planes
Baphomet is statted out in this book. Little bits of info:

• His worshipers include mercenaries, pirates (!), and savage tribes of barbarians.
• Graz’zt once imprisoned him.
• Howling Blades: Religious minotaur zealots that worship Baphomet and engage in ritualistic and profane activities that encourage chaos and savagery.  They are led by the Temple of Ire, whose followers conducts raids on patrol of local authorities.
• The Endless Maze connects to the Valley of Crypt in Thanatos. Wild goristros wander the maze.

D&D 4th Edition – Dragon #369

They did a demonomicon article in 3e, then for some reason they did another one in 4e. That’s weird, because there are so many demon lords that haven’t been fleshed out. Factoids:

• Baphomet’s Titles: The Prince of Beasts, the Trampler, the Minotaur Lord, and the Horned King.
• Baphomet coats his fur with “blod fat culled from his victims to accentuate his build.” So.. Baphomet is juicing.
• He wears an iron crown. Sometimes he impales the head of his victims on his crown.  He wields an axe called Heartcleaver and he is enemies with Melora, a sea god.

Origin of his Beef with Yeenoghu: Baphomet was a primordial who led armies against Kord, Erathis, Melora and Pelor. He fought alongside Yeenoghu. Yeenoghu fled the battle and hung Baphomet out to dry. Baphomet chased after him and ha been chasing him ever since.

Enemies: Yeenoghu, Graz’zt and Orcus.

We get stats for the aspect of Baphomet. He gets bonuses against bloodied opponents (opponents missed half or more of their hit points).

Exarchs of Baphomet: He has some cool flunkies:

• Asterion: A minotaur thief who loots the dead in the Endless maze. He has shifting tattoos all over his body. The tattoos map the Endless Maze. He wields two axes called Neckfinder and Headstealer.
• The Misbegotten: A bloated black worm “covered in quivering pustules that give it its distinctive smell.” Baphomet created this worm, and it was so foul that he sent it to the deep tunnels under his palace to destroy the other abominations he creates. It wants to kill Baphomet.

The Endless Maze: Some updated info:

• The maze has no roof in this edition. If you fly, you attract flying demons.
• The Bone Castle: Home to Pale Night, the Mother of Demons. She is a “shapely and frightening woman whose gossamer strands of white hair conceal her face." Anybody who can work the word “gossamer” into D&D text is pretty great IMO.
• The Fields of Brass: Now they’re in an egg-like chamber. There are stands and there is a throne of bronze and bone for Baphomet to sit in.
• The Horrid Spire: Baphomet’s retreat, a crooked finger of brass. It’s a new name for the Tower of Science. I wonder why they changed it? Maybe they didn’t want to use the word “science” in D&D?

Baphomet’s Servants: Carnage demons, balors, abyssal dragons, and glabrezu. Many mortal cults that Baphomet helps to “embrace the inner beast.”

Oostarix, Eater of Men: A minotaur who clawed his way to power in a minotaur fortress called Patoorn. He wants to be Baphomet’s main sidekick. His body is covered in tattoos and scars. He is a despicable villain.

The Knights of the Horned King: Virina Tabois leads a society of learned people who oppose civilization. They undermine law and dismantle progress. She is a priestess of Erathis by day, but in truth she hates Erathis.

Baphomet’s Fiends: We get some new demons that serve Baphomet:

Coflizu

• Coflizu: A swirling cloud of crimson droplets. I love the art for this one. When demon corpses collect, these creatures form out of the demonic energy.
• Kalaka: Each of these demons look different. Baphomet takes mortals and reshapes them. Their form depends on his mood at the time.
• Perditazu (maze demon): These form from those who die in the Endless Maze. They collect in packs, forming squads to hunt people in the maze. There is literally no description of what they look like, which is a bummer because I think they're cool.
• They have a power called “phantom assailant” which I think is funny-sounding. It forces a target to attack an ally. I like the idea that it actually summons phantom assailants.

4e Monster Manual 3

This book has some really cool minotaur variants, all of which are part of the Blood League, warriors that steal the power of other creatures by consuming their still-beating hearts. They sometimes work with mind flayers (!).

• Pale Bloodfiend: A minotaur who consumed the heart of a vampire. It can drink your blood to heal itself.
• Cinderhoof Trampler: This minotaur smells of brimstone. It ate the heart of a nightmare! It has black skin and its hooves ignite with hellfire.
• Ironskin Warrior: A minotaur that consumed the heart of a gorgon! How cool is that? A half-gorgon minotaur, sort of.
• Shardhorn Hunter: No! Guess what they ate? A unicorn heart! These things are assassins that can teleport. They wield a dagger made from a unicorn’s horn.

D&D 5th Edition - Monster Manual


In the minotaur entry, it says that minotaurs are descendants of humanoids transformed by cult rituals. The cults worship Baphomet. Baphomet turns them into minotaurs.

These people who join the cults are looking for power, or they want to be free from authority. They can breed, giving “rise to an independent race of Baphomet’s savage children.”

5th Edition – Out of the Abyss

They changed the way he looks. I like it, the others were pretty forgettable. All sorts of information:

• Cultists slowly transform into minotaurs, gaining bloodshot eyes, thicker hair, and small horns start to grow.
• Baphomet is 20 feet tall and he has 6 iron horns.
• The moat surrounding the Lyktion is a three-dimensional maze.
• Lair Actions: He’s got a lot of cool lair actions. He can seal doors, reverse gravity, and create massive mirages.
• Madness: 5e demon lords have madness powers. If you look at them and fail your save, you roll on the madness chart. Baphomet’s madnesses involve anger, savagery and a lack of control.
• Baphomet’s Goal in Out of the Abyss: In this adventure, the demon lords are stuck in the underdark (the massive tunnels deep underground, inhabited by drow and other weird creatures). Baphomet can be found in an underground labyrinth.  He’s looking for the maze engine, which is a modron item that sets up a really fun encounter.

There you go! Minotaurs are pretty cool, I think they're a bit underused. You can definitely make a good adventure out of this stuff.

Planning for this one was not hard. I am more interested in the goofy stuff than the actual adventuring, which is a problem. If I can't get excited about Baphomet's maze, how can the players?

I had the group go through the Lyktion, which is the weird name for Baphomet's palace. I decided that the inside of the Lyktion was a maze, one in which Baphomet would hunt the group in. The old adventure Throne of Bloodstone has a whole section his mazes, so I took those and used them. They're fun, but I didn't develop them enough.

It was a good session.  I shouldn't have broken up the maze into two sessions. The maze I made last week went really well and I was really happy with it.

During this adventure, I had the group go a few rounds with Baphomet, whose stats are in Out of the Abyss. It was pretty cool, it felt like a demon lord should.

The heroes were going through Baphomet's maze, looking for a way to shut down the portal that connected Baphomet's realms to Thanatos.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard 

Right before going in, I reminded them that they have 3 NPCs with them:

• Bovina the cow lady
• Eravamont Glask (Sean Connery)
• Eo Kaplan (gnoll Michael Jackson). I declared when Eo died last session, he rose up as a Maze Demon, a 4e demon type created when... someone dies in Baphomet's maze! Fits pretty well, right? He has a power called "phantom assailants", which I modified so that he can summon shadowy figures to do this dance right here.

Plastic Surgery: Later I did a thing where Eo talked to Dr Stein, the guy who makes golems, into giving Eo a nose reduction and skin grafts to make his skin lighter. He's also looking for a hyperbaric chamber so that he can breathe pure air when he sleeps.

Eo has one other power. When he grabs his crotch and yells "OHHHH" all glass in a 30 foot radius shatters.

Maze #1: This was a traditional maze with stone walls infused with lightning. There were pit traps full of kalakas, a 4e demon type that spits acid. Bidam fell in a pit trap and got mauled. The group was barely able to pull him out.

Later, Baphomet turned the corner, stomped his hooves and charged. He came right at Bidam and rolled a natural 20. Bidam took something like 60 points of damage in one shot! Baphomet kept running and disappeared into the maze.

My idea for this was to have Baphomet show up, do one round of stuff, and then go away. 
Maze #2: The is a field of flat octagons floating in outer space. Not actual outer space - you can breathe normal and there's gravity. The walls were invisible, but Theran's robe of eyes lets him see invisible.

Bovina is linked to Haagenti, the mother of minotaurs, and she now has an innate maze-sense. She led the group through. About halfway through, Baphomet appeared above them. He was standing on a floating octagon. He cast reverse gravity on the group. Only Bidam made his save. Bidam grabbed Bovina's ankle and stopped her from falling up.

The spell sends you up in the air 100 feet maximum, so Eo, Eravamont and Theran were all hovering high above the maze. Baphomet flew up and hacked into Theran with three attacks at +17 to hit. Theran went down. Baphomet took off to maze #3.

Theran's silent imp sidekick, Barbagg, fed him some of the group's healing berries and he was revived. Theran cast fly, and safely got the NPCs to the ground.

Maze #3 - The Hexagon Maze: This one has teleporting rooms. I handled it in a very abstract way, where basically the group had to make three checks to get through the maze. A failure meant that they teleported into a room that Baphomet was in. They failed their first check and appeared before the demon lord. He cast Mirage Arcana, making them think they'd appeared on a crumbling tiny island in a sea of molten lava.

Theran immediately realized it was an illusion and the group snapped out of it. Baphomet was gone.

Maze #4 - The Pentagon Maze: This maze is full of 10-sided rooms with walls of darkness. In each room, only one of the 10 walls can be walked through. The rest of them do damage and destroy inanimate objects.

Bidam had a good solution - he chucked money at the walls. When a coin went through a wall and hit the ground, he knew where to go next. The group ran into Baphomet here and ran from him.

The Tower of Science: They'd made it through the four mazes, and found themselves in the Tower of Science, a place where Baphomet makes different types of demons, does experiments, etc.

They met a friendly succubus/scientist wearing slacks and a D&D lab coat. Her name was Felryss Prober. She was having a problem with demon breeding. The demon embryos were growing at a slow rate.

Bidam runs a demon breeding farm and knows the solution to her problem. Would he share it with the scientist? Bidam cut a deal with her. If she showed Bidam where the room that controlled the portal was, Bidam would fix her problem. The scientist agreed.

The solution involved an in-joke that might make no sense to you. I like to joke around/fake brag that I know a lot about the female anatomy, and then I purposely call a body part the wrong name. Usually it involves the "unerus" (rather than the uterus).

In this encounter, I was able to make the unerus a thing! In order to maximize demon breeding, you have to apply pressure to the unerus. That's now official in my campaign. Demons have a unerus. I assume you know by now that my campaign is stupid.


New Minotaurs: The group got a look at some new minotaur types. They're from the 4e monster manual 3. They're half-minotaurs, half-something else:

• Pale Bloodfiend: Half-vampire
• Cinderhoof Trampler: Half nightmare!
• Ironskin Warrior: Half-gorgon! I love this one.
• Shardhorn Hunter:Half-unicorn!??

The Control Gems: The group was brought to a room that had a panel of magic gems. Touching certain gems brought up images in a massive, demonic mirror.

With the gems, the group could look at two types of thing:

• Spies: They could look at Baphomet's spies throughout the planes.
• Portals: They could see the location of every portal in the Endless Maze, and where it went to.

They saw that if they shattered the correct gem, the portal to Thanatos would be destroyed.

The group went through and looked at the spies. They learned that Baphomet has a spy in the Velvet Realm in Graz'zt' Palace (where Graz'zt keeps some of the most beautiful people in the multiverse). Baphomet also had a harpy spy in the court of Pazuzu, demon lord of the 1st layer. Pazuzu is on good term with the group, presently.

Those were the two most notable ones. I wanted to see what the players would do with them. They had no immediate immediate idea. Maybe it will come into play in a future adventure.

I also established that Baphomet had three spies in Nocticula's realm. Baphomet seemed to have a particular interest in her (she's the succubus demon lord of assassins and shadows).

Baphomet stomped into the room. The scientist vouched for them. The group made a deal with Baphomet, agreeing to help his breeding program and hooking him up in an alliance with Nocticula if he would let them shut them shut down the portal.

The group doesn't even know Nocticula, but I've been dying to work her in to this campaign.

The group destroyed the portal to Thanatos, and used another of the maze portals to go home.

Back in Sigil


The first thing they did was to finally get some magical protection on their buildings that they own. I had written up all of the spells they might want to use: arcane lock, glyph of warding, and guards and ward being the big ones.

Ultimately, the group used arcane lock spells. They got 4:

• One on the office that Bidam that lives in.
• One on Bidam's bedroom door. Bidam's bedroom has a portal to Burningwater (Bazuuma's abyssal realm) in it.
• One on the wizard lab where Theran lived.
• One on the door to the room that he kept the sphere of annihilation in.

Waffle Crew: With that done, I had my alternate universe version of the waffle crew (heroes of the Chris Perkins show "Dice, Camera, Action") pay the group a visit. The Evelyn character in my campaign is a paladin of the Raven Queen. Right now she's a living toy/real doll, which my group found hilarious.

Diath paid Theran to examine his sword. Diath got this sword on a recent episode where, if he puts a key in a keyhole on the hilt, it summons Shemeshka, an enemy of Bidam and Theran.

I did this mostly because I wanted to see if the players had any cool ideas on what the deal with the word is. I also did it just so the group could see real doll Evelyn, as I knew they would find it funny.

They couldn't figure out the deal with the sword. Bidam and Theran asked around town, trying to learn about Shemeshka. They were successful, learning that she secretly runs 5 different organizations, including the guild of the touts (city messengers) and another organization that is a front for thieves.

I'm using Shemeshka as a side-foe in this campaign. She's a fairly prominent part of Planescape, so I want to use her so that the group gets the full Planescape experience.

Counterspell: I had Theran's apprentice, Selinza the cat lady, talk to him about Iggwilv's spells. She pointed out that there's two ways to get around counterspell:

1. Have two casters cast spells at her in the same round. She can only only counterspell once per round.
2. Theran can learn counterspell himself. You can actually counterspell a counterspell.

I just stopped and looked it up to make sure that's true. It's in here.

Someone on twitter last week mentioned the "Crotch of Vecna" to me and I knew that I had to work that into this game ASAP. The group learned that Kas the Betrayer has it, and that he's currently a general in Lamashtu's demon army.

This involves a long story involving old campaigns. The heroes of one of my 4e campaigns stole a chaos ship from Orcus and stole the Sword of Kas, so Kas and Lamashtu are working together to take those two things back.

We did some stuff you probably don't want to hear about involving tighty whities and a gnome... and another thing with a githzerai guru/sensei trying to teach Bidam how to take command of the power of his demon balls.

Then the group went to Theran's floating castle in Graz'zt's abyssal realm. They saw something in the sky heading their way. It was one of Graz'zt's chaos ships, getting ready to open fire! On deck was Rule-of-Three, an enemy of the group and the son of Graz'zt.

That's where we stopped. Graz'zt wanted the group to help him invade a layer, but they refused his request numerous times. He's decided to ruin them. That should play out next session.

This is a really good issue, like the last one. It seems like they're finding their groove. There are some good Tomb of Annihilation notes in here!

Editorial: Bart Carrol says that the fiction in the previous issue was very well-received. 60% of the readers said they wanted more, and another 30% were fine with it.

Starting in issue 15, Adam Lee will be writing an ongoing story about the jungles of Chult.

I'm fine with the fiction as long as it isn't too long. I will like it if it adds to the lore and the Tomb of Annihilation story. It would be great if it has ideas I can use in my game.

He gives a nice list of the weirdest things characters have found in D&D games. Chris Perkins found a dead clone of one of the characters in the party.

Cover: We talk with the cover artist who makes gif art. He does some really cool stuff. Very unique!
He's Nicholas Little.

D&D in the World: There's an article on playing D&D in different countries. In South Africa, rent is really high, so game stores can't afford to have space. I didn't know that Japan has severe housing problems.

Story: This story is all about events tied to the Tomb of Annihilation.

There's a guy named Alfin Biscop who is a "living man molting into undeath" due to the raise dead curse. He has poison that "came from the tail of Geryon." How the heck did he get that? This poison has no antidote. Pretty cool!

Then we get a ridiculously awesome NPC near the end. A person named Rokh Manti is sailing through the Positive Material Plane..! Rock has a "golemic craft." Rokh's patron is Kwalish, maker of the apparatus of Kwalish. He repels some xag-yas with a blast of negative energy. Rokh is apparently a brain inside a construct, very awesome.

Rokh is investigating the trail of energy that is affecting raise dead. The energy meant for Toril (the world of the Forgotten Realms) is now being redirected to the jungle of Chult.

Tomb of Annihilation Preview


We learn a lot of new factoids about the tomb. New to me, anyway. Here's some of the basics of the adventure and the highlights:

• The Soulmonger is a necromantic device that is trapping the souls of the dead and using their power for a mysterious purpose.
• The Soulmonger is buried under a forgotten city called Omu in the jungles of Chult.
• It is guarded by a yuan-ti named Ra Nsi. The group can get special power from nine trickster gods, but their help will come with a price.
• The group will go through a dungeon made by "the archlich Acererak."
• There's one way to come back from the dead courtesy of a green hag named Nanny Pu'pu. She can use a "unpleasant" ritual to help slain party members continue on.  
• Papazotl: A trickster god whose bones are in a stone sarcophagus placed in an ancient chariot.
• The frost giants are still chasing Artus Cimber and the ring of winter... apparently all the way to Chult.

Acererak wears a green devil mask amulet around his neck. I think that the talisman of the spheres in the DMG looks just like that. I'd imagine Acererak has some special sphere of annihilation at his disposal. Maybe a giant one, or 5 small ones or something.

Real life factoids:

• They placed this adventure in Chult because fans want a break from the Sword Coast.
• This is a "deathtrap" campaign. Mike Mearls wanted this to be deadlier than the others.
• Chris Perkins wanted to use dead gods.
• Pendleton Ward was behind the use of "nine trickster gods of alignment with their associative powers and drawbacks."
• Meatgrinder Mode: You need a 15 to succeed on a death save instead of 10.

Garycon: There's a big article on Garycon and the Tomb of Horrors. It looks like they'll be rolling out some competitive D&D tournament events next year.

We get a big thing on the Tomb of Horrors riddle, and a new riddle by Maze Arcana's Ruty Rutenberg.

Then at the end is a riddle that involves the tomb of annihilation. I'm terrible at riddles. The worst! Since I spotted this right away, I don't consider it a spoiler: the first letter of each line spells out "Soulmonger."

There's an article on fantasy grounds and how stuff like that can make your life easier.

There's an interview with a DMs Guild creator named Jussi R. Foltmar Svendsen, who created The Bestiary, a book of animal and beast stats. He seems like an awesome guy. He runs a weekly game for kids.

List of Lich Phylacteries: We get a list of lich phylacteries (things in which liches keep their souls). I was going to pick out the 3 I thought ere the best, but this list is ridiculously great. There's too many good ones to list! I'll just grab some of my favorites:

• An acorn, which grew into a tree, which grew into a forest. To destroy the lich, every oak tree in the forest must be destroyed.
• A single coin in a dragon's hoard.
• "Another lich, whose phylactery is another lich. These twins forged their lichdom status together..."
• Inside a fountain in a desert town. Destroying the fountain "sentences an entire town to a slow, thirsting death."
• "A beautifully crafted elven prosthetic leg, buried within an elven heroine's tomb."

This is legit one of the best "lists" I've ever read. You should definitely consult this if you need a lich for you campaign.

Minis: An article on painting Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures, a line of unpainted minis. I haven't heard much about there.

Dragonfire: Article on the Dragonfire cooperative deckbuilding game.
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/board-card-games/dragonfire

Rat Queens Adventure: Article about Kurtis Wiebe, who does the Rat Queens comic. He made an adventure called The Hangover, where the heroes black out while carousing and wake up in the forest to a very interesting scenario. That's a really fun idea!

I just took a look at it. It looks like you're meant to actually play as the Rat Queens in it.

Old Issue of Dragon: They look at Dragon Magazine #26, reprinting an article about liches. There's a comment about an article of DMing advice in that issue that doesn't hold up well. Apparently it's very adversarial. I would have liked to see someone pick it apart and discuss why and how the mindset of the DM evolved.

Free Maps: We get maps for the unless Citadel and, interestingly, ship maps from the 3rd edition Stormwrack book. The ships can be used in Storm King.

Unearthed Arcana: Subclasses: (druid) Circle of the Shepherd, (fighter) Cavalier, and (warlock) Celestial. There's a couple devil-related things:

• Kiss of Mephistopheles: When you hit with eldritch blast, you can cast FIREBALL as a bonus action. Egad.
• Tomb of Levistus: When you take damage, you can entomb yourself in ice, gaining 10 temporary hit point per level which absorb the damage of the attack... really awesome.

Very good issue! It is definitely worth checking out.

First off, I see that you can pre-order the Tomb of Annihilation dice set. I don't know why, but I really like them. I guess it's the tin.

Today I'm going to roll up my sleeves and dig up clues as to what's actually in the Tomb of Annihilation. We know the basics, but we don't know a lot about the actual tomb itself.

There are two things out there that bear scrutiny. In Dragon Plus, they printed four pages of handwritten grung notes by Adam Lee, one of the authors of the adventure. Also, Chris Perkins tweeted out a massive list of things that may be included in the adventure. Let's do the grung first.

The Grung


The new issue of Dragon Plus has 4 pages of notes about the Tomb of Annihilation. They are full of sketches and pretty concrete ideas from an author named Adam Lee. I decided to check them out and see what we could learn. There's a lot there!

The grung are frog people. Most of these notes have to do with the place that the grung live in. Apparently, the new season of Force Grey takes place in this grung village.

It's been said elsewhere that this location was designed so that people could pull this out of the book and use it in their own campaign with no problem. First, let's go over grung basics.

Grungs are on page 156 of Volo's Guide to Monsters.

They live in a caste system, separated by the colors of their skin. They each have their own hatching pool. The castes:

• Green: Warriors, hunters and laborers.
• Blue: Artisans with domestic roles.
• Purple: Supervisors and commanders.
• Red: Scholars and magic-users. Their spells include cure wounds, barkskin and plant growth.
• Orange: Elite warriors. They can emit sonics that stun all those within 15 feet.
• Gold: Leaders.

In rare instances, a grung who does great deeds is allowed to move up in the ranks by taking herbal tonic supplemented by ritual magic. Other factoids:

• Their skin secretes venom.
• They take slaves.
• They must immerse themselves in water for 1 hour per day. 
• On the Perkins list below, they are referred to as "flower eaters."

OK! So what' in the notes?

Dangerous: Guides will want you not to go here unless you are seeking grung venom.

The Story: The Grung now live in a zombie wasteland. Their favorite dish, humanoids, is now scarce and it is very dangerous to go hunting. Their tactics currently revolve around lurking in treetops, waiting for prey. Their poison doesn't work on the zombies, and they're somewhat stymied by the entire situation. That seems like a way for the group to become allies with them.

The Grung Leader: Queen Groak is their leader. The grung live in a matriarchal society.

• She has quote: "Come, let us worship Nang Nang (a grung god)
• She is basically a female version of Immortan Joe from Mad Max.
• She does deals with "Jessamine", trading poisons for favors and gold.

Types of Grung: There are two types of grung mentioned. These might just be expanded ideas on existing types of grung:

• Poison Arrow Frogs: These grung have poisonous skin. Their highly-toxic grung skin is worth a lot of gold.
• Grung Shapers: They can reshape trees into unique designs.

How They Deal with Adventurers: If you look tough, they won't attack. They'll do one of the following:

• Welcome you to the village and at some point, try to poison you in a sly way.
• Hide!
• Take a hostage.
• Cut a deal.

"The grung are evil, but not stupid."
The Ancient Grove: The grung live in an area that has gigantic, weird trees.

Dungrunglung: This is the grung village. It has a massive tubtub tree in the center and is protected by a maze made from giant thorny vines. It has 15-foot deep pit traps full of zombies!

Pools: There's a sketch of a possible layout of Dungrunglung. Near the trees and the yoda huts are pools of poisonous liquid where eggs hatch tadpoles.

• Some of these pools are actually up in the trees, in bowls of fungus growing outward from the bark like balconies.
• The Grung Eggs: They might have special properties, maybe granting poison resistance or dulling pain.

There's some sort of frog-shaped temple. Inside the body is pool and it looks like if you're in the head you can see out of the eyes.

Tubtub Trees: There are short and squat "tubtub" trees, wide trees that look like they have bridges connecting them.

• Infested: There are dangerous "tubtub beetle larva". There is a quote: "When you see tubtub trees, don't touch the vines."
• Weird Wood: Tubtub wood is spongy and waterlogged, which is good for grung who need their skin to be moist and damp.

Falling: If you're traveling in the tree tops and you fall, there are a few ways to save yourself:

• Grab a vine.
• Fall in a giant plant (seems like a lot of cool things could happen there).
• Land in the canopy of a shorter tree.

Dangers of the Environment: There is a fantastic list of dangerous things in the Chult environment. Here's some of my favorites:

• Poison Dart Flower: If you sniff this flower, if shoots an "instant paralytic" at you.
• Dancing Monkey Fruit: If you eat it, you dance like a monkey.
• Tumbilli Leaves: When you chew tumbilli leaves, you see through the eyes of the monkey. You can't be surprised, you can track by scent, and "you act like a monkey person."

Chult Cuisine: The bats of Chult are delicious. "Bat with rice can feed a hearty adventurer."

The Tomb of Annihilation List

Apparently, they started working on this adventure two years ago. Chris Perkins recently posted a bunch of images of a wipe board full of notes presumably from a planning or brainstorming session.
One main thing I learned is the Volo's Guide to Monsters has a heck of a lot of monsters that are featured in this adventure.

There's a really good thread on ENWorld speculating on future adventures. They mentioned that Spelljammer was discussed on Dragon Talk, so I'll check that out ASAP. 

There is a free 2-page pdf from D&D 4e right here that gives some information on Chult.


I went over the Perkins list and googled this stuff. I don't know much about the Forgotten Realms, but this is what I dug up:

Mezro, the Lost City (ruins): It was destroyed in the 4e Spellplague and was a holy place for the tabaxi (cat-people). The pdf above has a few paragraphs on Mezro, which I think is a city important to one of the villains of this adventure. Mezro is a "vine-shrouded cavity in the earth", a pit that contains all that remains of the once-great holy city. There are zombies with blue triangles tattoos on their heads, liches and ghouls.

Omu, the Forbidden City (ruins): It has a flooded garden in which a froghemoth dwells.

Pterafolk Roost: Pterafolk are peradactyl people. Their home is some kind of Elemental Evil beacon. In 2nd edition, pterafolk had three forms: a lizard man with no tail, a lizard man with webbed wings, and a miniature pteranodon with a 15-foot wingspan. They are vicious and self-centered, they live in huts up in trees and interestingly, they eat goblins. That might come up in this adventure, since there are tribes of mask-wearing goblins all over the place.

Goblins ("Batiri"):  "Howdah-town, Goblin 'town' and markers." The batiri are a collection of goblin tribes in Chult ruled by a single queen. They wear dinosaur skins (!). Each clan worships its own deity, each of which has a dinosaur avatar.

Yuan-ti: There's a lot of yuan-ti stuff in Volo's. Mind Whisperers serve Sseth, and they focus on using their powers to convert new followers. Nightmare Speakers make pacts with Dendar the Night Serpent. They send Dendar the fears and nightmares of their victims.

We know that a prominent villain of this story is a yuan-ti named Ras Nsi. Ras is an immortal, a Chosen of Ubtao. Ras leads an army and he often takes the form of a weak-willed noble.

Ubtao is the god of Chult, the Father of the Dinosaur. Ubtao is apparently a primordial (a god-like elemental entity)

Girallons (bodyguards): These are four-armed white apes. Girallons are in Volo's page 152. Check this out. Girallons were "...created through magic to serve as bodyguards for some lost empire." Yuan-ti enslave them, turning them into border sentinels for their border kingdoms. Later on this Perkins list is "Girallon temple guardians", so we have a good idea what we're getting in this department.

Albino Dwarves: They're crazy. In the Chris Lindsay game at the Stream of Annihilation, the group needed to get dust from the corpse of an albino dwarf. There is a mention here about wild dwarves who make pilgrimages to an emerald crater in Chult, which is home to an emerald dragon named Esmerandanna, the Resplendent Queen. She guides their carvings.

Firenewt: Firenewts live in the peaks of flame, a range of volcanic mountains in the center of Chult. It is said that this will be the point of entry when Dendar the Night Serpent enters Toril at the end of the world. This is interesting, because Dendar is referenced at the end of Storm King, where a bunch of yuan-ti throw sacrifices to Dendar in a pit. Later on in this Perkins list is "Lava plain w/ firenewts."

Firenewts are in Volo's on page 142. It says that they worship Imix, one of the Elemental lords from Princes of the Apocalypse.

Vegepygmies: They're on page 196 of Volo's. Nothing too Chult-y, though at the end it mentions that nobody is sure where russet mold comes from. There are a few listed possibilities: A forbidding mountain range that has a strange metal dungeon. Russet mold was found in a crater left by a falling star. The "strange metal dungeon" sounds very specific. I can't think of a metal dungeon off the top of my head, except for the modron maze in Planescape: Torment.

Su-monster: Primates with psychic powers. Don't see many connections.

Zhent Flying Snake Catcher: Flying snakes are in the MM on page 322. "A flying snake is a brightly colored, winged serpent found in remote jungles." The Zhentarim use them to deliver messages. I find the idea that the Zhentarim have people who chase these things around, catch and train them.

Dinosaur Detector Sticks: Sounds like a fun new magic item.

Dracolich: There's a note: "cult of the dragon explanation." Maybe they mean the fallout from Tyranny of Dragons. The cult of the dragon were the bad guys in the first D&D storyline, Tyranny of Dragons. That cult wanted to bring Tiamat to the world.

Originally, the Cult of the Dragon was founded by a mage named Sammaster, who wanted to create Dracoliches. There are still a few cultists loyal to the dracolich concept, so maybe this is where they are scheming.

Sammaster believed that there will be an apocalypse, and from then on the dead dragons will rule. So... Dendar show up ends the world and eats the sun. Dracoliches, also known as "Night Dragons" in Dragon #110, take over.

I'm trying to figure out if there are any named Forgotten Realms dracoliches live in Chult. There's a huge list. They've created many dracoliches. It's possible that these cultists raised one of the dragons presumably slain in Tyranny, like the White dragon in the castle or the green dragon by the waterfall.

It could be Aurgloroasa, a dracolich who took over a cult cell.

Red Dragon Lair: On this page it says that Red dragons are drawn to the Peaks of Flame, which makes sense. I bet it's on this list.


Crashed Halruaan Airship: Magic flying ships. No idea who crashed it. Maybe Artus Cimber?

Dinosaur Graveyard/cultural Burial Ground: Can't find anything on a Dinosaur Graveyard, but it's an awesome idea. I'd imagine that this is where the zombie-barfing undead t. rexes are.

Monkey Swarms: I hope this is statted out. They should steal from you.

Ring of Winter "event": I don't know what the event is. In Storm King's Thunder, frost giants are hunting for Artus Cimber, who has an extremely powerful artifact called the ring of winter. There's a whole novel about it. On the Perkins list is "frost giant gang," which I presume means that the giants have followed Artus to Chult.

Abandoned Shield Guardian w/Amulet: On page 271 of the MM, it says that each shield guardian has a magic amulet linked to it. The guardian's sole focus is to protect the amulet's wearer. It looks like the group can get their hands on one. Or maybe some villain snatches it before they can get to it.

OK! That's it! I think we learned a little something here today, yes indeed-y.

I spent some time the other day mulling over the campaign I'm going to run after this. It's going to be a Spelljammer (D&D in space with magic ships, not technology) 5e game that involves a quest for the rod of seven parts. I read up on the Queen of Chaos, who will be the main villain. She is right up my group's alley!

The crew of the ship is going to be really important, as those are the NPCs that the heroes will interact with from beginning to end. I've been keeping a file on my desktop that lists ideas for the crew. Whenever I get an idea that I think is worthy, I add it to the file.

I will be a bit bummed when this campaign is over. I feel like I could run Planescape forever. It never gets boring!

I've always loved Spelljammer, and I really like the idea of showing readers who are new to the game all that awesome Spelljammer stuff. It's not for everybody, but you can do a lot of cool things with it. If nothing else, you will see how the neogi can be used to make first-rate villains!

Demon Lord Convention:This one's really long. Here's the super-short version:

• Graz'zt is angry that the group won't help him unite the demons and devils.
• Graz'zt is blowing up the group's homes and destroying a portal that is important to them.
• Iggwilv is trying to use this situation to please Graz'zt so that he will free her from her imprisonment.
• Iggwilv has sent some demon lords after the group, including one from an old, epic Chris Perkins adventure that I read yesterday.

There's a ton of NPCs involved. Here's a quick look at the many people involved in this thing:

Graz'zt, Iggwilv and the cloak that became Drokkarn the pit fiend

Bad Guys:

• Graz'zt, Demon Lord of Azzagrat: He is furious that the group won't help him win over the devils/help him hunt down Verin, his former ally.
• Iggwilv the Witch Queen: She's trapped in Graz'zt's palace, but she can send out simulacrums (clones made of ice and snow). She wants the group to convince Graz'zt to free her. She's also outraged that Graz'zt is making babies with Lamashtu.
• Lamashtu, Demon Lord of Monsters: She is the main demon lord supporting the demon armies in the blood war. The group wants to kill her and give her abyssal layer to their friend, a pit fiend.
• Korramzedah: Lamashtu's 20-foot tall balor general

Good Guys:

• Pazuzu, Demon Lord of Pazunia: Pazuzu hates Graz'zt and despises Lamashtu who is his ex-girlfriend. He ate her eyes and impaled her on a spike (she got better).
• Umbralinda, Queen of the Harpies: Pazuzu's current consort. She's tired of Pazuzu (he's very whiny) and keeps asking the group to get her a pile of soul larvae so she can consume them, become a demon lord and get away from Pazuzu.
• The Ferroliths: Graz'zt threw these succubi into a lake of molten iron long ago. Now they're ferroliths, demons covered in different types of metal. They obviously hate Graz'zt and are allies of the heroes.
• Bazuuma, Demon Lord of Positive Energy: She is the wife of one of the heroes and she's a good-aligned demon lord.

Wild Card:

• Juiblex, Demon Prince of Oozes: Juiblex rules the Abyssal Undersump, slime tunnels that act as secret entrances to abyssal layers. The devils have quietly been using them to get to Lamashtu's realm.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

Last time, the heroes were at Theran's floating castle in Azzagrat. A chaos ship was flying toward them! A chaos ship is a huge, evil, living demon ship that shoots lightning bolts and force/disintegration rays.

The group spotted someone on the deck: Rule-of-Three, son of Graz'zt. He actually shed his disguise right in front of them. He looks like a spindly old githzerai, but in truth he is a cambion with charcoal-black skin, bat wings and hooves.

• The ship opened fire on the castle. The heroes rounded up the people who lived there:
• An old genie (I keep getting mixed up and calling him a giant) who sits in a sauna all the time.
• 3 alu-fiends who are friends with the giant.
• A succubus nurse. A few sessions ago, she got turned to stone and the group saved her, so she is loyal to them.
• 13 babies, all children of Graz'zt that the nurse takes care of. One of these babies is a child of Graz'zt and Lamashtu.

If you look at Rule-of-Three's stats in Faces of Sigil, you'll see that he has two javelins of lightning. Theran makes and sells those in Sigil. Rule-of-Three pull one out and goes to chuck it at the group, and George was none too pleased to see that this javelin was one of his own creation!

Bidam got hit with lightning and the javelin itself doinked off of his armor of invulnerability, plopping to the ground. The group used their cubic gate and their jar of Lord Stillborn to escape.

Refugees of Azzagrat
 
 The group owns a dorm-style building in Sigil. The refugees were left here. They sent the genie to their mansions in the Elemental Plane of Earth.

The players were really sharp tonight! They realized they'd better go to Allagash, Bidam's demon-making farm in Graz'zt's realm, as it was likely under attack.

Before they did so, a gnoll woman approached the group. She was looking for Eo Kaplan (the gnoll Michael Jackson NPC). George looked at me and asked, "Is her name... Billie...?"Billie Jean! Yes it was.

The group went up to Eo and told them that Billie Jean was looking for him. That gave me the opportunity to have Eo say, in a bad Michael Jackson voice, the lyrics to Billie Jean in a conversational way - but I kept the "hee hees", the "nyuh"'s and the "NOno, nono."

Eo mentioned that the group owned a mansion in Sigil, and how he always wanted to live in a mansion. It would let him have a place to unleash his inner child. Right now, Melnarnia Flumph and her son, "Baron" Gonard Flumph (Trump parody NPCs) live in the mansion. Eo seemed very keen on meeting the young Baron.

I plan on slipping them a Michael Jackson nugget each week if I can. I can do the chimp, naming a child after a blanket or some other household item, Lisa Marie Presley, Latoya (!), you name it.

Allagash: The heroes went to Allagash. In the distance they could see a horde kicking up dust clouds. It was the bloodseep demons, the demons that Theran accidentally dropped a huge chain on, killing dozens of them. Apparently, Graz'zt had sent them here to help them get their revenge.

The group repelled them in "adult" ways involving fluids being projected with the power of a riot police firehose. Then, the PROGENITORS (6 demon dudes that the group liberated from Lamashtu) beat the bejeezus out of them. The Mother of All (Also freed from Lamashtu) launched out monster egg projectiles. The bloodseep demons kept slipping in the fluid and were no match for the surprise counter-assault.

Now the group had more refugees to relocate:

• The Mother of All
• Areelu Vorlesh (the administrator)
• A succubus
• An ogre who is basically the Hulk
• 30 abat-dolor (the race Graz'zt may have come from)

The heroes relocated them to the Pathfinder festhall in Malcanthet's realm that I haven't had many ideas for. This worked out very nicely!

A few sessions back, Bazuuma created a new Abyssal realm and ultimately, I hope all of these NPCs end up living there in the Mithral City.

Graz'zt's Revenge


The heroes got a sending spell message from the Queen of the Harpies. She said that Graz'zt was in the abyssal undersump killing devils! The undersump is slime tunnels that connect different abyssal layers, They are sort of the sewers of the Abyss.

The devils were using this section of the undersump to get to Thanatos. Graz'zt is having a temper tantrum and is trying to teach the group a lesson.

Bidam and Theran geared up. Theran's apprentice, Selinza the cat lady, volunteered to come along. She had mentioned ways to overcome Iggwilv's counterspells, and she wanted to come along to back Theran up in case Iggwilv was somehow involved.

Jessie surprised me. She said, "We'd better tell Bazuuma to get everyone to the safe fortress in the Plane of Positive Energy." I did not expect that! The players were really on the ball. This altered the final thing I had planned for tonight!

The group drops into the undersump and is greeted by their hellhound friend, Fireball. Bidam can speak to hellhounds. Fireball informed them that Graz'zt has a big ship in here and that it is "immune to barking" (Fireball barks at bad guys and thinks he's helping).

The heroes started to head through the utterly trashed slime tunnels. Huge chunks of side walls had been obliterated and there was bits of ooze and slime everywhere.

A creature appeared before them - an avatar of Lamashtu! She is Graz'zt's ally and the group's enemy. The heroes were more then a little alarmed as a gooey maw demon plopped out from her undercarriage and hissed at them.

Selinza used buff spells on the group as they attacked the avatar. Allies showed up to aid them - an avatar of Pazuzu and Umbralinda, Queen of the Harpies. I played them as a couple on the verge of a breakup. Pazuzu is a big baby and she's over it.

Pazuzu has these elephant-sized dragon-cats called anzus. One of the anzus really likes Theran (he rolled a 20 when trying to befriend it back when the heroes were in Pazuzu's palace).

Together, the group were able to defeat the avatar.

Pazuzu angrily asked why the anzu liked Theran so much. "It's never that nice to me!" He got mad at Umbralinda when he tried to explain and it got uncomfortable. Ultimately, Pazuzu told Theran to keep it.

I should note that Selinza the cat lady hates cats. She thinks they're really dumb and embarrassing, a less-evolved version of herself. Theran paid her no mind.

Khorramzedah: The team followed the trail of destruction. They came to the big slime lake. Standing in it was the 20-foot-tall balor general, Khorramzedah. He and his zovvuts were fighting a few hell knights.

Rocks were falling from the ceiling... this whole section of the undersump was coming apart. Fireball alerted the group that their friend, the Fulsome Queen (she's a filth elemental - an "excremental"), was buried in the rubble.

Pazuzu and the Queen of the Harpies went after the balor, while the group tried to save the Fulsome Queen. A rock fell from the ceiling and hit Theran, knocking him off of the anzu and into the ooze lake. He took a pile of acid damage, and was barely able to get out of it.

Bidam tried to lift the rocks, but they were too heavy. Theran used levitate to free the Fulsome Queen.

Khorramzedah was destroyed. He has a demon amulet, so he didn't die. He reformed in the Abyss next to his amulet. Any demon worth their salt has this. Pazuzu and Umbralinda were hurt quite badly. Bidam used his positive energy "stream" to heal them (don't ask) and they continued on.


Graz'zt's Chaos Ship: They came to the big area with the conveyor belts loaded with gelatinous cubes. The portal to Thanatos was completely destroyed. The chaos ship was up in the air (this place has a really high ceiling). The group could see that their devil friends were fighting Graz'zt's avatar on the deck of the ship. Graz'zt was teleporting all over the place and slicing them up with his acid-dripping sword, Wave of Sorrow.

Also on the chaos ship were cambion rangers wielding special soul-swords. This was the Razor Legion, Graz'zt's elite soldiers, sort of like navy seals. They're from one of those weird no-man's-land issues of Dragon Magazine from the time between 3rd edition and 4th edition.

30 members of the Razor Legion flew at the group. Bidam, Theran and Selinza were on the back of the cat-dragon. Bidam started slicing into them with the sword of sharpness, and was dismayed to see that they were not mooks (each of them has 82 hit points).

The Iron Maiden: The heroes were relieved to see their friends, the ferroliths, swoop into the room and hack into the legion. They were led by the Iron Maiden, their ruler (I swear that's her name in the 4e Demonomicon book).

This cleared the path for the group to get to Graz'zt before he killed their friends Drokkarn (pit fiend) and Feurina (warder devil/Bidam's "sister").

Battle With Graz'zt: Bidam dropped onto the deck and hacked into Grazzt

Graz'zt has a legendary action that allows him to control your movement. He used it to force Theran off of the anzu. Theran fell to the ground below, severely denting the floor grate. Beneath the floor grate is an ooze river.

This room was also crumbling because the chaos ship had been firing off force blasts like crazy. This crumbling caused a stone to fall from the ceiling right at Theran! He rolled out of the way. The rock punched through the grate and plunged into the ooze river.

Selinza flew the giant cat down and Theran climbed on the anzu. He saw that the chaos ship had portholes in the form of translucent blue blisters. He peered inside, looking for some kind of control room.

He and his apprentice jumped through a blister and found a room with an arcane-locked door. They dispelled it and blew it open with a thunder-related spell. Inside was a closet-like space containing two big demonic hearts. This ship is alive!

He smartly scanned for traps. There's two in here! One stuns you, the other entangles you in vines. Selinza and Theran stepped back and launched off spells, damaging the hearts and causing the ship to shudder.

A big section of the place collapsed, blocking off Pazuzu, Umbralinda and the ferroliths from the group.


Juiblex: Up on the deck, Bidam was taking a lot of damage from Wave of Sorrow. A side wall of the huge room they were in burst open and a huge, black ooze with glowing orange eyes came at the ship like a tidal wave. It was Juiblex, demon lord of ooze! He was none too happy that Graz'zt was destroying his tunnels, and he was also aghast to see devils in here, too.

Juiblex slowly enveloped the chaos ship, angrily chastising Graz'zt. Drokkarn grabbed Bidam and Feurina and flew them to safety.

Theran and Selinza destroyed the hearts and saw Juiblex slowly covering the ship. They were about to get trapped inside the chaos ship and would probably be engulfed by the demon lord! The anzu flew close to the blister/porthole.

Selinza refused to get on it. It was very chaotic and Theran didn't notice. He jumped through the blister, his hands slipped on the oily hide of the anzu and he fell to the floor grate again. The grate almost gave way, but it didn't break. on the anzu.

The chaos ship sealed up. It was completely enveloped inside Juiblex.

Theran realized Selinza was in there and frantically looked for some way to get her out.

When they destroyed the hearts, they caused a decaying effect - the chaos ship would crumble apart in 2d6 rounds without even factoring Juiblex into the equation.

The group watching in horror as Juiblex compressed, getting smaller and smaller, finally ejecting refuse and detritus

Graz'zt's avatar had been destroyed. Juiblex slithered off to assess the damage to his realm.

The Fate of the Apprentice: I had another big thing planned, but I gave them a moment to see if they'd search the wreckage for Selinza. They did! Dodging falling boulders, the group tore through the refuse. Drokkarn and Feurina were hurt very badly, so they stayed in a spot where boulders weren't falling.

They unearthed a sheer black dome. Selinza has Leomund's tiny hut! She had just enough time to cast it before the ship came apart. I thought she was going to die until I looked at her spell list! As soon as I saw it, I thought of Paultin on Dice, Camera, Action and was quite delighted.

The group helped her up and regrouped with Drokkarn and Feurina. Someone came out of the shadows. Iggwilv!

Iggwilv

Iggwilv Triumphant: She looked at Drokkarn, who looked down at his feet. The group has been given a number of clues that Drokkarn was going to betray them and side with Iggwilv. For decades, Drokkarn was a sentient pit fiend-skin cloak resting on Iggwilv's shoulders. While in cloak form, he fell in love with her. Iggwilv was now using that to get him on her side.

I had this whole thing written out. The group groaned as I cleared my throat. The heroes were injured really badly! They couldn't possibly defeat Iggwilv in this state!

I read Iggwilv's dialogue. She gloated as she pointed out that Drokkarn was going to give Graz'zt what he wanted (an alliance with the devils) on the condition that he free Iggwilv from her imprisonment.

Drokkarn told the group that they shouldn't have trusted him. He's a devil! Deceit is what they do!

The heroes were extremely dismayed. They tried to talk sense into him. I wanted to give them space to see what they did here. I was wondering if they would attack him. They pretty much were letting this play out, unsure of what the truth was.

Drokkarn said, "I made a choice between the one I yearn for and the ones who brought me back to life and fought at my side against Socothbenoth..."

The group started getting mad now. I was getting heckled!

"...The choice was easy." He turned and tore into Iggwilv with his claws. "I am lawful! I stand by those who honor me!"

Iggwilv reeled, shocked at this turn of events. The group got a surprise round and proceeded to beat the crap out of Iggwilv. Bidam cut her head right off! She was a simulacrum, so the head hit the floor grate and became a melting ball of ice.

Recuperating: Pazuzu and the others finally got into this room. The place was coming apart! I asked them where they want to go, as there was one more thing planned.

The heroes went to Pazuzu's floating palace. Umbralinda whispered to them that she really needed those soul larvae. "You see how he is, right?" The group agreed. Pazuzu was pretty annoying.

There were two guest rooms here. I wondered how they'd split them up. Bidam, Drokkarn and Feurina slept in one room. Feurina is basically Bidam's sister, they've actually slept in the same bed before.

Theran and Selinza were in the other room. Theran has rejected Selinza before, saying something about sullying the master/apprentice relationship. Selinza almost died today! She heroically fought beside them, despite being quite a few levels lower! Would he reject her now?!

Yes. Yes he would. They slept in the same bed. Her knee touched his knee. Theran had no reaction. Her tail started getting animated.. and he rolled over, going to sleep.

Jessie and I were stymied. I think Jessie set up the living arrangement, trying to force this thing. Nope! Theran is a mysterious dude.

They woke up, fully refreshed. They got a sending from Bazuuma. Apparently, there was a problem. They went to her realm, Burningwater, which was evacuated. The inhabitants were all safe in the Positive Material Plane.

The Demon Lord Assassin: Something was in the center of the main island in the abyssal layer of Burningwater. It was a sphere of annihilation. It was growing!

Last night, I read through an old Chris Perkins adventure called Bzallin's Blacksphere. I had always wanted to run it, but it's pretty high level and it never quite fit into my campaigns.

I'm working on my "Emirikol' Guide to Demons" DM Guild product, so I read through this adventure (there's a new demon lord in it). Bzallin's Blacksphere is awesome! The premise: There's a sphere of annihilation slowly growing in the middle of a city. What do you do? That's pretty awesome, right?

The group took a look at it. Theran has a robe of eyes. He can see invisible creatures. Bazuuma has 20 magic eyes! She can also see invisible creatures. Both of them spotted invisible creatures creeping up on them. These foul beings slipped into this layer and set this trap while Bazuuma's demons fled to the Plane of Positive Energy.

Who are these dastardly villains? I've mentioned before that Iggwilv has 12 demon lords under her control (she knows their truenames). Avatars of TWO of them are here:

• Nocticula: Demon Queen of Assassins
• J'zzlshraak: A beetle demon lord, a general of the Blood War. The Chris Perkins demon lord!

J'zzlshraak also brought along the powerful wizard Bzallin and his 12 mighty apprentices. They're all from Bzallin's Blacksphere and they're really well-detailed.

Bzallin had set up the sphere. Nocticula kills demon lords - that's her whole deal. Iggwilv thinks that destroying this layer will convince Graz'zt to free her from his palace. 

Graz'zt once tried to take over this layer, but found that because it is infused with positive energy, it is utterly toxic to him. He has no use at all for Burningwater, therefore destroying it might please him.

So next time, we'll deal with that! I've been waiting to use Nocticula for a long time, can't wait to put her into play!

Episode 55: Sweet Nothings

• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist

This was a pretty unpredictable one. I have no idea what's going to happen next week!


There is a discussion on the Dice, Camera, Action subreddit about whether or not they should include NSFW content. I have to say, that cracks me up. What exactly are people going to post? Stories? Art?


There is also a really great piece of art depicting Paultin and Escher right here.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Sam Witwer) Mordenkainen, the Mad Mage

Chris starts off by reminding us about the story of Mordenkainen, aka "the Mad Mage," and his battle with Strahd in the backstory of Curse of Strahd (fell of a cliff, didn't die). Mordenkainen helped the Waffle Crew defeat Strahd by shattering the giant crystal heart that gave Strahd magic protection.

Mordenkainen

Paultin's shadow has pulled the group back into Barovia so that Paultin can link up with the dark powers and his shadow can link up with him. The dark powers want Paultin to be the new ruler of Barovia. To do this, Paultin will have to marry the flesh golem lady.

We left off last time with the Abbot being none too happy with Paultin. They're in a chapel where the wedding is about to take place. The rest of the group is on the roof of the chapel.

A wereraven kid lands on the roof and tells the group to wait for the wizard to arrive. The wereravens are good guys. The heroes met them a few times, most notably at the wine-making place where Evelyn almost ate a baby.

Paultin talks to Escher. Escher was just messing with a corpse. As Paultin is smelling the corpse-stink on Escher's hand, the bride comes in. Escher asks where her bridesmaids are. Who are the bridesmaids? Mongrelfolk? The witches? It is not yet revealed.

The golem bride talks. She makes a corpse-y croaking noise. So she doesn't talk... I thought she talked when they met her last time. They should get Ireena's corpse and animate that.

Up on the roof, the bells ring. The belfry is right above the group. The doors to the chapel open and a line of ghosts enter. That's the ghosts from one of the very first sessions. They ghosts this every day, I think. It was a very cool part of Curse of Strahd that you could do a lot of fun stuff with.

The vampire altar boy that the group almost killed in one of the first sessions spots the group. Evelyn approaches him, friendly. She tries to grab him. Rolls a 20! He turns into a bat.

Down below, Escher says that it's time. He's all keyed up. We learn that the witches are the bridesmaids. They've gone missing.

Escher brings Paultin to see a corpse... it's Falkon! Escher says he blames Strahd for his death. Escher's plan is for the wedding to happen, and then once it is complete, they'll kill Paultin's shadow. There's only one thing that can hurt the shadow. The sunsword! Paultin has it, but he doesn't use it much.

Up above, Strix uses magic to look like Strahd. I love it when he does the Strahd voice.

The wedding starts. The group is about to spring into action. The wereraven kid tells them to wait - it's not time.

Ireena

The ceremony starts. Paultin's shadow looms near the altar, watching intently as the Abbot performs it. It's not so much a wedding as an incantation. Evelyn gets the sense that once Paultin says "I do", the spell is completed.

The vampire altar boy tells Evelyn that she's a construct - she could marry Paultin and embrace the darkness. Evelyn is deeply offended at the idea of embracing evil and starts going off on him about Lathander.

Here come the good guys. They burst through the doors of the chapel. A mob of villagers led by Ireena's brother, Ismark. He beheaded 3 of the witches and he's holding their heads! We can only wonder if he sundered their brooms.

Wereravens are with him, as is and Mordenkainen. Murty Gurty has returned, and he is drinking buttermilk!

Evelyn tackles Paultin and demands to know if he was actually going to marry the golem. Paultin doesn't answer.

The Abbot strikes her with his mace for 25 points. Escher grabs Paultin and pulls him to his feet.

The villagers all have polearms - each a different type! If you're new to D&D, you might not get that.  Mordenkainen was Gary Gygax's (the co-creator of D&D) real life D&D character that he put into the actual published game in the form of names of spells and in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure. Gary Gygax was obsessed with polearms. He always wrote about and statted up tons of polearms. I think Zeb Cook said that part of his job application actually had a quiz on polearms.

Hey! The Abbot tinkered with the golem. The bride now has has Ireena's head! The head is frozen with the same scream on her face that she had when Strix accidentally knocked her off the nightmare and she fell to her death. That is funny.

Diath is freaking out. He is afraid to fight. Ohhh... here come the witch brooms! Of course, they're coming right at Diath. Someday he's going to have to fight a colossal undead spell-casting broom. Or maybe a broom golem! Has there ever been an artifact broom in D&D? Someone should make one.

Strix wants a broom to keep. She grabs one and she's pulled off her feet. Diath leads the brooms on a chase. Look like he's got some sweet maneuver planned.

Ismark is going after the bride. Escher tries to stop him, but Ismark pushes him into a fire.

The villagers drag down the Abbot. Mordenkainen uses Bigby's crushing hand to do a massive pile of damage to the bride. In real life, Bigby was one of Mordenkainen's NPC sidekicks (along with Rigby, Zigby and others).

Paultin spots his shadow creeping up on Evelyn. He runs over and attacks it. Natural 20! Wow. The shadow is obliterated! It scatters like a bunch of bats. He hears Strahd's voice howl. It looks like he destroyed what was left of Strahd.

Lightning hits the chapel. The dark powers are not happy. The roof crumbles. Strix, luckily, is flying on the broom.

The only creature still on the roof when this happens is Waffles the baby owlbear! The owlbear falls. Diath catches it! Phew. A roof chunk falls on Escher. Methinks we have not seen the last of him.

In the sky, the clouds take the form of a giant face. It looks like Strahd. He's angry! Lightning flashes and tears cloud-Strahd apart. The chapel flickers between night and day.

Wow... Barovia's about to go back to wherever it came from! That's cool, I don't think it has ever been officially stated where Barovia came from. Do you think Chris will place it in the Forgotten Realms? Or... Greyhawk?

Mordenkainen realizes this flickering indicates that there's a fracture in time. If the group stays here, they're either going to go to the past or the future.

Izek, Strix's brother with the big demon arm, hucks a ball of flame at him and calls out, "Lorcana scum!" I think that's what he said.

Diath is getting beat on by brooms. Strix casts dispel magic and all of them clatter to the floor! The one remaining broom lands next to Strix and pats her. It doesn't want to be dispelled. I am very glad Chris let her have the broom, that should be fun.

The Waffle Crew is fading away. Wow... they're going back in time. Mordenkainen thinks they're going back to AD&D 1st edition and hands them a 10 foot pole, an iron spike, a flask of oil and buttermilk. I hope they have flint and steel.

That's where we stop. Very good show!

Overall

There is a 2e Ravenloft adventure called From the Shadows where the group goes back in time to when Strahd had his freakout and killed his brother, Sergei. The heroes possessed wedding guests  and get the thrill of being slaughtered with the rest of the people.

We are given this advice: "The rest of this encounter is a merry chase in which Strahd kills all the characters one by one. The DM should be cruel; none of the players are losing their real characters."

Even as a kid, I knew my players would hate this, I don't think I used that section at all. That adventure has cool stuff in it, but it requires a lot of tweaking.

Another interesting thing is that Chris said recently on twitter that time travel ruins campaigns, or something to that effect. Maybe this is an isolated jaunt that won't negate any campaign stuff. Who knows? Maybe we'll see the the origin of the amber temple, or what Barmy the lich was like as a regular dude.

Today we’re going to check out one of the oldest demon lords in the game of D&D: Fraz-Urb'luu. I went through old products and compiled all that is known about Fraz-Urb'luu into this one guide.

I’ve never been a Fraz-Urb'luu fan. I hate typing his name out, and I’ve always had a hard time running bad guys who are deceivers or illusionists.

As I got toward the end of this, I found some really cool stuff. I missed a note in Out of the Abyss which might hint at an epic future storyline!

The Essentials
Here's a quick overview:

• He was involved in some big stories in the original Gary Gygax Greyhawk campaign.
• He rules an Abyssal Realm called Hollow’s Heart, which is a plain of white powder that Fraz-Urb'luu can turn into whatever he likes.
• Legendary spellcasters Zagig and Iggwilv trapped Fraz-Urb'luu in a bas relief for over 200 years. Iggwilv interrogated him and put much of what she learned in the first Demonomicon of Iggwilv.
• Fraz-Urb'luu has an extremely powerful staff that was stolen from him. He wants it back. It’s broken into four pieces and if someone else gets their hands on it, they could take Hollow’s Heart from Fraz-Urb'luu.
• He had a son with a witch named Vilhara. The son is Tsojcanth, a demon prince.
• Fraz-Urb'luu wants to kill all human beings everywhere.
• In 5th edition, Fraz-Urb'luu ended up trapped inside a gem. Anyone who touches it goes mad.

Real Life

Here’s the real-life origin: In the original Greyhawk campaign in the '70's that Gary Gygax ran, Ayelerach (played by Mark Ratner) and Erac's Cousin (played by Ernie Gygax) had both obtained vorpal swords that were ruining the campaign.

They stumbled onto Fraz-Urb'luu's prison and freed him. The adventurers panicked and used a scroll to call on the god Zeus to save them, but he ignored their pleas. Fraz-Urb'luu took them to his abyssal realm, destroyed their swords and sent them packing.

AD&D 1st Edition - Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

• His face is beautiful but cruel! His head is large and pointed and he has blue fur.
• For centuries, he was imprisoned in a bas relief visage in the dungeons beneath Castle Greyhawk. He speaks all "human languages" and is capable of telepathy.
• He can gate in demons or "deceive another demon prince into believing he has been summoned to the spot."
• He rules an Abyssal Plane that seems to be totally flat and featureless. Magic items taken there lose their magic!
• Fraz-Urb'luu has a staff that combines the powers of a rod of beguiling with a rod of rulership and a staff of command.
• The staff was stolen while he was imprisoned.

Monster Manual II

Mostly the same entry with a few changes.

• When Fraz-Urb'luu summons demon lords, he goes elsewhere.
• His realm is "alive to the demon's wishes, and shapes itself accordingly."

AD&D 2nd Edition - Faces of Evil: The Fiends

We learn a few things, berk.

• Fraz-Urb'luu is an 18-foot tall hulking humanoid with blue fur and black leathery wings.
• He has the ability to trick other demon lords into believing that they have been summoned by a mortal. This lasts for two minutes, and then the demon lord is returned to whence it came.
• When a demon lord is summoned, it does not die when slain - it reappears in the Abyss.

D&D 3rd Edition – Fiendish Codex I

• Fraz-Urb'luu is immune to scrying and divination spells/effects.
• Fraz-Urb'luu is the demon lord of illusionists and tricksters. His mortal minions trick others into worshiping him and sacrificing themselves to him.
• Since his escape from Castle Greyhawk, Fraz'Urb'luu has been rebuilding his realm Hollow's Heart and searching for his magic staff.
• He employs succubi, lilitus and a number of chaotic evil rakshasas known as the Hollow Rajahs.
• His cults are known as the Cults of Deception. A cult has about 12 members who eventually sacrifice themselves. They become prisoners in the city of Zoragmelok on Hollow's Heart.
• His staff: A jeweled scepter of adamantine cast at the end to resemble five bestial arms that grip a horned and fanged humanoid skull.

Dragon Magazine #333

Again, Fraz-Urb'luu has the most annoying name to type. He is considered to be a "primal lord of the Abyss," one of the first demons to rise to dominance. He has been a terrible constant amid the writhing change of abyssal nobility.

When Zagig summoned him, Fraz-Urb'luu thought he would run roughshod over the mortal realm. Zagig confronted him with an artifact known as the ichor lance to drain some of Fraz-Urb'luu's essence. Fraz-Urb'luu snatched and disjoined it, but in doing so he released energy that stripped him of his powers. Zagig had tricked him!

Fraz-Urb'luu was imprisoned within the dungeons below Castle Greyhawk inside a massive stone bas-relief for over 200 years.

Powers:

• Disjunctive Touch: Fraz-Urb'luu can absorb or negate magic effects with a touch. He can turn magic items (including artifacts) into mundane items.
• Inscrutable: Immune to divination and scrying.
• Item Master: He can create any kind of magic staff without expending resources or spells.
• He can reform the appearance of his realm with a thought.

When Fraz-Urb'luu was imprisoned, other demon lords sent hordes into the realm and killed everyone. The realm became an endless white plain of powdery sand under an empty black sky.

The demon lords fought over his staff and it shattered, scattering throughout the multiverse.

Once Fraz-Urb'luu escaped and returned to his home, he was extremely angry. Without his staff, reforming his layer is very difficult.

Graz'zt, Demogorgon and Socothbenoth (!) all almost forced Fraz-Urb'luu from his realm.

He is building an army to wage war on humans. Fraz-Urb'luu intends get revenge on the entire race because of what Zagig did to him.

The Staff of Fraz-Urb'luu: A jeweled scepter of adamantine. The staff can be used to bend the will of huge armies. The staff has been shattered and the parts scattered. If all of the parts are brought to Hollow's Heart, the staff will instantly reform.

Powers of the Staff:

• Enhances enchantment spells
• Casts Charm person, command and suggestion.
• 2/day cast charm monster, dominate person, mind fog
• 1/day dominate monster
• Ir has the powers of a rod of rulership
• It is also a +5 weapon.

His current symbol is of a partially-devoured human skull with eyes in the sockets that can roll around.

Sacrifices to Fraz-Urb'luu occur once per year. The victim must be someone who has been tricked, preferably lawful good.

Thralls of Fraz-Urb'luu have some cool powers:

• When a creature is summoned by someone, they can trick he creature into thinking they summoned it.
• They can use magic staffs without expending charges at the expense of some of their “life force” (temporary CON damage).
• They gain the service of two skurchur demons.
• Once per day, they can turn an illusion into reality!

Favored minions of Fraz-Urb'luu: Succubi and skurchurs

The Hollow Rajahs look quite different from normal D&D rakshasas. Instead of tigers, they take on the humanoid forms of other animals. They rule and govern Hollow's Heart.

Skurchur: These demons are plucked and wingless vulture/dinosaur things that serve Fraz-Urb'luu. They magically disguise themselves as halflings or gnomes and become advisers to kind mortal rulers. Very odd! They have a power:

• Touch of Vacant Beauty: They can enhance someone's beauty and drain their willpower/dull their intuition simultaneously.

Hollow's Heart: Piles and piles and piles of info:

The sky is black, but it is somehow brightly lit. No shadows are cast here.

• Athawyn: A decadent city of curving towers and decadent domes ruled by succubi and skurchurs. The guards are orcs. Humans who appear here are eaten by orcs or enslaved by the rulers. The main ruler is a very powerful succubus bard named Nyrashlia.
• The Blood Dunes: A desert of blood-red particles that are actually scabs and clots of dried blood. There are mysterious ruins here inhabited by liches, mummies and other undead.
• Bonepus: A small town of 1560 fiendish goblins ruled by a crocodile-headed rakshasa named Rontakus.
• Deathrot Woods: A forest of sickly trees that is home to demonic plant monsters, including 13 demonic treants.
• The Demon's Teeth: A mountain wilderness where creatures hide from Fraz-Urb'luu.
• The Drooling Jungle: A jungle full of trees that have muttering mouths on them. Lots of barlgura live here, along with massive basilisks and acid-spitting hydras. There are rumors that a massive nalfeshnee called the Gardener lives here, too.
• The Flensers: Volcanoes
• The Forever Gash: Land of white powder that Fraz-Urb'luu cannot figure out how to transform.
• Harrowfen: A swamp of poisonous muck inhabited by hezrou and skulvyn.
• The Hollow Sea: An ocean with many islands containing portals that bring unlucky travelers to this realm.
• Karantis: A temple-city ruled by a gorilla-headed rakshasa named Kiltikatrit.
• Karugoze: A raven-headed rakshasa named Liorkian rules this city of orcs, ogres and "fiendish gnomes." What the heck is a fiendish gnome like? For that matter, what would a fiendish lawn gnome be like? Humans are sold here for an average rice of 100 gp.
• Magghat: Home to slaving sailors, ruled by boar-headed rakshasa named Magghat. Magghat makes disgusting statues.
• The Red Rapture: A plain full of torture devices operated by vrocks.
• Scarwood: Fraz-Urb'luu hunts this vast woodland full of feral tribes of humans.
• The Spiral of Ugudenk: One of Fraz-Urb'luu's great enemies is Ugudenk, demon lord of worms and parasites. He used to burrow into Hollow's Heart and a massive tunnel to his realm still remains. The tunnel leads to the 177th layer of the Abyss.
• Zoragmelok: This is where Fraz-Urb'luu's lair and fortress is. A nearly-empty city of corkscrew towers and twisted domes. The only inhabitants are Fraz-Urb'luu his consorts (high-level succubi bards, sorcerers and clerics) and humans tricked by his cults. Each of the deceived humans lives alone in a section of the city that has been changed to resemble where they came from.

Expedition to Castle Greyhawk

Kalystis

Kalystys is the daughter of a drow and a succubus who leads a cult of Fraz-Urb'luu in cavers under the city of Verbobonc. In this adventure, she's trapped in a hedge maze. Her ultimate goal is to become a full-fledged succubus. High level followers of Fraz-Urb'luu are given the ability to alter reality, a power she can use to do so.

Excursion to Hollow’s Heart: In this adventure, the group goes to Hollow’s Heart. The group needs find the three pieces of the Godtrap Key. Doubles of famous Greyhawk NPCs each took a piece and brought it somewhere for safe-keeping:

• Murlynd's Double: Dungeonland
• Nolzur's Double: Isle of the Ape
• Zagig’s Double: Hollow's Heart

The heroes go to the Forever Gash - the area Fraz-Urb'luu can't transform. They come up the ichor shrine, a pyramid of red stone with a flat peak. Suspended in the air above it on tall tenterhook is an enormous, disembodied black heart. This heart was torn from a massive nalfeshnee minion of Graz'zt.

An outcast Hollow Rajah named Vajakilar lives here with tiefling minions. He's trying to use the heart to create a massive, undead nalfeshnee

Dungeon Magazine #151

There's a sequel to Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth in here. We learn that Tsojcanth, son of Fraz-Urb'luu is a demon prince! His mother is "a witch named Vilhara."

Who is Vilhara? No idea.

Tsojcanth is a 9 foot tall human with leathery gray skin and a serpentine tail with two poison barbs. His eyes are completely black and he has a steaming tongue.

D&D 4th Edition - Dragon #414

The Iggwilv-Graz'zt affair article has a bit of Fraz-Urb'luu stuff. It says that Zagig imprisoned Fraz-Urb'luu partly to teach Iggwilv (his apprentice at the time) how to handle summoned fiends. She took further instruction from Fraz-Urb'luu, extracting countless secrets. Once she had learned everything she could, she stole stuff from Zagig and fled.

Tsojcanth, son of Fraz-Urb'luu, was a half-demon who was disguised as a mortal for years.

Graz'zt viciously attack Fraz-Urb'luu once solely because he had been Iggwilv's prisoner and plaything at one time - a 'privilege' that Graz'zt no longer wished to share with anyone.

Dungeon #208 - Fraz-Urb'luu: Prince of Deception

Another Demonomicon article. It’s so weird how they did two of the same demon lord when so many have gone undetailed.

• Orcus is worried that Fraz-Urb'luu might recover his staff. Graz'zt is trying to find the parts of the staff.
• Fraz-Urb'luu has found the crystal of the staff, so anyone who wants to make the staff whole must get the crystal from him.
• He likes to corrupt devas, as they are reborn in his layer as rakshasas
• Some cities in his realm are abandoned facades.
• Fraz-Urb'luu is saving most of his energy to be channeled into his staff when he succeeds in reassembling it. Upon its completion, the full extent of his power will be realized and he can use the staff to restore and sustain the rest of his domain.
• The High and Holy Rajah: A rakshasa who rules a golden city called Ketilon. It is on the shore of a sea that connects to the astral plane.
• There are four pieces of the staff: Two halves of the wooden shaft, a claw of adamantine and the crystal.
• Reassembling the staff could enable a wielder to usurp control of Hollow's Heart.

D&D 5th Edition - Out of the Abyss

I'll do his stats first and then talk about how he's trapped in a gem.

Staff Changes: The staff of Fraz-Urb'luu is referred to as "the legendary staff of power" and it was "taken from him by those who imprisoned him." Hmmm. I missed this when I read this so long ago.

It was taken from him by Zagig and Iggwilv?! That sounds like a possible clue to a future adventure, no? Will there be a Castle Greyhawk adventure where the group assembles this "staff of power"? Probably not, but that’s a really weird detail to throw in there.

Many of his worshipers think he is a beneficent being and a granter of wishes. Fraz-Urb'luu delights in aiding demon hunters against his adversaries.

Hollow's Heart is described as a featureless white plain of white dust. So everything's gone? Did it revert to white dust when he got summoned again? His lair is the city of Zoragmelok, which is still standing.

Madnesses of Fraz-Urb'luu include:

• I have intermittent hallucinations
• I never let anyone know the truth about my actions or intentions, even if doing so would be beneficial to me.

Fraz Isn't So Smart: Fraz-Urb'luu had taken precautions to try to prevent being summoned and trapped again which backfired spectacularly. When Gromph's spell goes off in this adventure, his failsafe kicked in. Fraz-Urb'luu’s lifeforce shunted into a black jewel.

Gromph's spell was so epic that it actually pulled the gem into the Underdark with the other demon lords.

The Gem: When you touch the gem, you must make a DC 23 Charisma saving throw or succumb to a form of indefinite madness (listed on Fraz-Urb'luu stat page).

Anyone who touches this gem falls prey to delusional madness. While imprisoned in the gem, Fraz-Urb'luu retains his alignment and senses but loses all of his other attributes. This gem has an AC of 10 and just 1 hitpoint, but it's immune to non-magic weapons or spells that require a saving throw.

Shattering the gem releases his lifeforce, and he can return to his body in the Abyss.

Story Possibilities: That actually sets up some interesting possibilities. In Out of the Abyss, it's clear Fraz-Urb'luu might spend up to nine months down there. While these demon lords are trapped in the Underdark, their Abyssal layers are up for grabs! Demon lords like Lolth and Pazuzu can swoop in and take them, in theory.

If Fraz-Urb'luu's body is just lying there for nine months, all sorts of things could happen. A spirit (maybe a loumara) could inhabit it, or one of his hollow rajahs could use it to pretend to be him. An astral being could possess it.

What happens if his body is destroyed? Like.. thrown into a sphere of annihilation? Would he just be a roaming spirit? Would a new body form? Would he merge with his own abyssal layer?

Fraz-Urb'luu seems more interesting if he actually stays in this gem, whether he rules his realm or not. Maybe he somehow bonds with his staff so that he actually is the staff.

Now that I think about it, if Fraz-Urb'luu is gone, all someone has to do is assemble his staff, go to Hollow's Heart, and they can steal his realm from him! The hollow rajahs are probably racing each other to find the pieces.

Maybe his son, Tsojcanth, would take it over.

There you go. Fraz;Urb”loo{} is done.

Links

Field guide to Fraz-Urb'luu:
History of Fraz-Urb'luu

Today I'm going to talk a bit about running gods in your D&D campaign. Gods are supposed to be important - powerful and influential. It can be tough to figure out how to best get that feeling across in a fun and fair way.

First, we'll go over the godly information in the 5e core books, then I'll yammer on about things I learned about running gods in D&D over the years.

Bahamut in his "old man" form

On page 10 of the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide, we go over the idea of a what a pantheon is (a collection of deities). There are two types"

• Loose Pantheon: A collection of deities that aren't overly intertwined. There are temples devoted to single deities, and often there is conflict between the followers of different gods.
• Tight Pantheon: This pantheon has a cohesive vision. All of them are worshiped, though individuals might "specialize" in one deity more than the others. One temple honors the entire pantheon.

The Godly hierarchy goes like this:

Greater Deities: They can't be summoned and are always removed from the direct affairs of mortals.

Lesser Deities: These gods are embodied somewhere in the planes. Lolth is in the Abyss, Bahamut is in Mount Celestia, etc.

Quasi-deities: They don't answer prayers or grant spells. There are three types:

• Demigods: Children of a god and a mortal.
• Titans: These might be constructs made by a god, the child of two gods, or born from the spilled blood of a god.
• Vestiges: Deities who have lost nearly all of their followers and are considered dead. Rituals can contact them and draw on what power they have remaining.

Human Gods: On page 13, it says that there is no single god that can claim to have created humanity. Humans worship a vast array of gods. In my game, I like to say that He Who Was (a 4e entity who cast the first devils into hell) is the god who created humans.

Empyreans

On page 130 of the Monster Manual, we get stats for empyreans, who are "the celestial children of the gods of the Upper Planes." The empyrean is listed as a "Huge celestial (titan)."

The stat block of the empyrean make for a good starting point when trying to figure out stats for avatars and aspects. If these are the children of the gods, it stands to reason that a god's avatar is at least as powerful as empyreans. Their stats: AC 22 HP 313 +17 to hit, 31 damage and the target must make a saving throw or be stunned.

Their moods affect the land around them. When they die, their spirit returns to their home plane. There, one of their parents resurrects them.

Clerics of the Gods

Cleric of Lathander

On page 59 of the Player's Handbook, it says that once per long rest, clerics of 10th level or higher can call on their deity to intervene on their behalf. You roll percentile dice, and if you roll a number equal to or lower than your cleric level, your deity intervenes. Once an attempt is successful, the cleric can't try again for 7 days.

When you are level 20, your call for intervention automatically succeeds!

Domains

If you are making your own gods, you should make sure that you take into account the possibility that a player will make a cleric. Make sure you have your bases covered. These are the different divine domains that a cleric might utilize:

• Knowledge: Learning, craft and invention. This includes spells like identify, speak with dead and scrying.
• Life: Healing the sick an wounded. Spells include cure wounds, revivify and raise dead.
• Light: Rebirth, renewal, vigilance. Spells: Faerie fire, fireball, guardian of faith.
• Nature: Forest stuff. Spells: Speak with animals, plant growth, dominate beast.
• Tempest: Storms, sea and sky. Spells: Thunderwave, call lightning, destructive wave.
• Trickery: Thievery, rebels and liberators. Spells: Charm person, dimension door, modify memory
• War: Courage and might. Spells: Shield of faith, crusader's mantle, flame strike.

If you're stumped and have no ideas on making your own pantheon, you can make a god based on each domain and extrapolate from there.

Page 294 of the PH lists the gods of the different D&D settings.

How to Run an Omniscient Being

Follower of Tharizdun

Once you have the basics down, you'll need to figure out how you want to handle the gods in your game. I've always struggled with this. Are they omniscient? What do they know? How do you keep a secret from them? Can you keep a secret from them?!

It's very hand-wave-y and it can come off as a little too convenient if you're not careful.

Why Don't They Do It? Another thing I've always had a hard time with is why the gods don't just handle things themselves. For example, some mortal bad guy is going to pull off a scheme that will let evil dominate the world. Why wouldn't a good god just pop down there and take the bad guy out? Why all the omens and dreams and prophecies?

What I say in my game is that the gods have a pact of non-interference, at least as far as directly intervening. That's because it won't take long for two gods to show up in the world and fight each other. That kind of battle could destroy the entire world! Then the gods would have nothing to reign over. It i in their best interest to make a binding agreement not to set foot on the world in their true, most powerful form.

Avatars and Aspects

Takhisis from the Dragonlance Setting

From what I understand, it goes like this:

• Avatars are a piece of the essence of a god. It is sent on a mission, and when it is done, it comes back and is reabsorbed.
• Aspects are independent entities, clones with their own thoughts and feelings.

In one book, it says that Asmodeus can create up to 10 avatars. Once those 10 are out in the world, he can't make any more.

In a Dungeon Magazine #111, an aspect of Asmodeus is detailed. This aspect is named Nyxthseht, "an aspect of Asmodeus that personifies the arch-devil's persuasive voice and fearful countenance." He commanded a host of bearded devils in the Blood War. In this adventure, Nyxthseht is trapped in an iron flask.

So the aspect has its own name, it is actively involved in affairs of mortals, and has limited power.

How Do Gods Gain Power?

Blibdoolpoolp, goddess of the kuo toa

I think the general idea is that the more followers a deity has, the more powerful they are. The belief itself empowers them. So, if people abandon a faith, that god is going down.

That's a little weird for evil gods. There's not that many people openly worshiping them, right? I suppose that the world has plenty of orcs, goblins, drow, gnolls, trolls and those kind of monsters to worship evil gods, though many of those races already have their own god.

Dead Gods

Tu'narath, city on a dead god

There's a whole adventure book on the topic of Dead Gods. When a god dies, a mile-long stone statue of the god appears in the astral plane, floating among many other dead gods.

These dead gods can be visited and there's all sorts of weird stuff on them - godsblood, atmospheric phenomena, etc. The githyanki travel to them often.

Tu'narath: The githyanki actually built the city of Tu'narath on a dead god. Vlaakith, the lich queen of the githyanki, calls this god "The One in the Void." The god corpse holds a spark of divine life in it. Vlaaskith tries to harness it and become a goddess in "The Lich Queen's Beloved" in Dungeon #100. Capturing this spark involves casting thousands of wish spells.

Having the Characters Meet a God

Iomedae, deity from Pathfinder

The best way I've seen this portrayed is in the Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path. The group meets a goddess named Iomedae. One piece of advice it gives: "Deities exist beyond anything the rules say can or cannot happen."

The heroes are about to go to Baphomet's maze, a mission that will affect the lives of Iomedae's followers. Iomedae meets with them to evaluate them and give them aid. The meeting with Iomedae goes like this:

• The area fills with light and the heroes are filled with a sense of pride and hope.
• The group find themselves in a cathedral. Soft light fills the vast space and choirs of angels and archons can be heard singing.
• If Iomedae wills it, anyone looking at her is forced to make a saving throw or they have to avert their gaze.
• If a hero mocks her, a deafening trumpet blast echoes through the cathedral. The mocker is permanently deafened and must make a saving throw or forever be mute. This condition can't be removed by anything except a deity's will.
• If someone mocks her twice or attacks her: She fires off a shaft of light from her shield. The character must make a saving throw or drop to 0 hit points and appear back in the world they came from. If they succeed at this saving throw, they are permanently blinded and appear back in the world they came from.

Iomedae asks the group three questions based on the tenets of her faith. If they answer correctly, they are given an artifact chalice, a spell-like ability and a thread from her cloak - a thing called the Stole of the Inheritor (another major artifact!). Each time answer incorrectly, her choir sings and the whole group takes 5d6, 10d6, and 20d6 damage respectively.

Pantsing a Deity

Church of the Silver Flame from Eberron

You might notice that there's a lot of details focused on what happens if a hero mocks her. That's because in a lot of groups, that's what happens! You need to be ready for this amusing but very tone-shattering kind of behavior.

When I ran Scales of War, the group met Moradin, god of war. The party wizard was an elf with a smart mouth. His character didn't like dwarves, and began mercilessly mocking Moradin and would not let up. I sat there and thought over my options. Would a god kill him? I mean... you're mocking a god, a supremely powerful being! How do you decide what is appropriate?

The first thing I did was to make it clear to the player that this is a god who has incredible power and that his character was likely to provoke some sort of retaliation. He said he knew that, and kept on roasting the god of the dwarves.

So Moradin decided to teach him a lesson. He turned the wizard into a dwarf! For pretty much the rest of the campaign, the dwarf-hating character was a dwarf. Moradin was hoping that if the wizard walked in the shoes of a dwarf, he'd understand them and stop with the blind hatred.

The wizard just kept hating dwarves. In fact, he hated them even more. Eventually he regained his elf form and became the god of magic in my campaign. To this day, all of his followers hate dwarves, and dwarves hate them.

Change is Unlikely: That's something that I learned in D&D many times over. Most players cannot be "taught a lesson," in-game or out of the game. I have never had a group change their tactics, even when their strategy gets them killed time and time again.

What I eventually concluded was that everyone has their own sense of how things should work, and they are not going to change those beliefs based on what happens in this game. If they were running the game, what they did would work. To them, I'm the one making the mistake.

They know that this is my game, my vision of how things work, so they are happy to ride along but they will never buy into something that they fundamentally disagree with.

Battling a God
 

Kyuss, god of worms

This one is really hard to handle. If the big bad guy of your campaign is an evil god, how do you do a final battle that "makes sense"? It's a god! How can mortals kill a god?

Usually the story involves some artifact that can kill the god in one shot, or some kind of ritual that weakens the god for a short time, effectively making them a CR 22 monster or whatever. Some campaigns go with banishment - the heroes get some device or spell that traps the evil god in some nether-realm.

That's the really hard part about using gods. How do you fight them?

Make Consistent Rules

You should decide at the outset of the campaign exactly what the god's capabilities are. What does it know? What can it do? What can't it do? Maybe it can see through the eyes of a certain type of creature, such as a bat or a raven. Whenever the god wants, it can scan their minds and see where they're at and what they're seeing. Maybe the god can speak through them or use some kind of power through them.

Maybe the god has an aspect down in the world handling everything, practically cut off from the true form of the god. The aspect won't have that nebulous god-power to worry about, it would be more on the level of the demon lord stats in Out of the Abyss.

How does the god communicate with its followers. Does it hear every prayer? Does it know what all of its followers go through and think about?

How does the god reward followers? How does it punish them?

Can the god just make an artifact - conjure it out of thin air? What about magic items?

These questions are important because players can tell when you're pulling ideas out of your butt during the game. They'll realize that this god can do whatever the DM wants it to do, so it's pointless to try anything outside the box because the god will know what it needs to know.

If you have these "rules" in place, that frees your players up to come up with schemes and scenarios to work around those rules. If they know the god sees through the eyes of every raven, maybe they'll have every raven in the kingdom captured and locked up somewhere. Maybe they'll befriend another type of bird and get them to scare off the ravens.

Spending a little extra time to clarify how the god does things can make your game much more fun and the players will come alive when they sense it.

Roleplaying a God

Vecna, God of Secrets

I see a lot of people lately getting hung up on doing a voice. Newer players: You don't have to do a voice! That's a thing on Critical Role - a show full of voice actors! Most of the groups I played with in my life don't do voices at all. You can do it if you want, but it's fine if you don't want to. You are not failing in any way if you can't do a good Darth Vader impression.

The important thing is to try to convey the specialness of a the god. You should come up with a few things that make the god special. Three things, probably. The god shows up, and what happens? Holy light has some effect, when the god speaks some effect goes off, and gazing upon them has some effect. Maybe just being near them temporarily enchants weapons and armor as the metal absorbs divine radiation.  Maybe flowers spring up in each of their footprints.

The most important thing, as weird as it sounds, is to be ready for goofing off. If you want your god to be taken seriously, be prepared for inappropriate behavior. Definitely warn the players that this god isn't likely to put up with fart jokes. They've been fairly warned... then do what you have to do, just make sure it's not overly harsh. It should fit the tone of the god.

Ascension

You should also think about how gods become gods. Is it possible for mortals in your world to become gods? How does that happen?

In my games, the characters can become gods. All of the gods in my world are former characters. Sometimes, when the character hits the highest level, I'll run a special event where the heroes can become a god if they kill a god. I first did this as a little kid. The characters were ridiculously powerful. The players flipped through deities and demigods. They picked out the weakest gods in there and asked to fight them. Sure! Why not? They killed them and became the gods of my realm.

That's a great way to immortalize your friends. One day when I was running a game in the game store, my old friend came in to say hi. I told the group, "He ran Thennrynia." Everyone gasped and started asking him questions. He went, "You mean my cheesy Drizz't rip-off character?"

This campaign had partly revolved around his character. People who had never even met him got to interact with him in a small way without ever meeting him. In a very tiny way, my friend was "famous".

To me, that's a fitting reward for someone who put so much of their time and energy into my goofy campaign.

Episode 56: Prime Evil

• Watch this episode on Youtube here.
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist

On twitter the other day, Chris put up some polls on that were pretty interesting. Check it out:


Strix wins! I picked Evelyn because of Paultin, and Drizz't as her fallback option.

Strix wins again! I picked Paultin because he had no problem eating the mother of Waffles.
Strix with a clean sweep. I picked Paultin because he gets drunk and I imagine that's very snore-y.

Anna cooked up some Lathander stuff:

That's when you know a player is 100% in the game. A long time ago, I ran an Al Qadim game where there was all this goofy drama between the heroes. One character decided that since he couldn't get with another character's sister, he was going to commit suicide. The player wrote the suicide note in real life and handed it to me between sessions. He was not a depressed kind of guy, he was just really into the game.

The next session, he got turned into a badger and he tried to kill himself by swallowing his tongue. The player was very insistent that such a thing is possible. The group had a big debate about it and I ruled that the bottom line is, if he wants to kill himself, he'll find a way to make it happen.


The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

The group is in Barovia.... in the distant past, apparently! The dark powers want Paultin to marry an undead lady so that he can be the new evil ruler/prisoner of the realm.

Strix has a witch's broom. The broom's name is Whiskey.  We're reminded that last time, Izek threatened Diath and called him Lorcatha (?) scum. My headphones were all messed up so I got new ones after this show. These earbud things, I'm not a fan.

Strix and Diath appear in a morning-lit rose garden. They hear someone humming. It's "Ireena" (Tatyana - Ireena in Curse of Strahd is a reborn version of her). She's picking roses.

Evelyn and Paultin appear in Castle Ravenloft. A woman mistakes Paultin for the bard performing at the wedding between Sergei and Tatyana. Paultin plays along. She looks at construct Evelyn, and says she has one of those, too. It's a wedding gift. Murderbot?!! 

This mysterious woman's name is Duchess Dorlithia, something like that. I feel like I should know who this is, but I'm drawing a blank. Evelyn and Paultin are brought to another room.

In this room is a woman who looks like Ezmerelda. She's drawing a deck of cards. A tarokka deck! It's a young Madame Eva.

Evelyn says hello to Madame Eva. The woman says her name is Katarina, but she says she like the name Eva, she'll remember that.

A guy with blonde hair enters the room. It's a relative of Paultin's! He as a scar above his eye. Is this his dad? We don't find out this session.

Outside, Strix and Diath watch three people arrive at the castle. It's Strahd, his brother Sergei, and someone wearing a helmet (I assume that's Rahadin, the dude with the howling souls around him). Young Strahd's horse looks a lot like his nightmare. It is Rahadin! They dismount and talk.

Tatyana points at Sergei and declares that he is "dashing."

Evelyn and Paultin really want to see what's in the big box. Paultin makes a sleight of hand check and is able to remove the wrapping paper without ruining it. That's a very amusing use of sleight of hand.

They open it.. inside is Simon, aka Pidlwick aka Murderbot! He's not all creepy and evil, he's a fresh toy, well-painted. Clownish and freakish. Paultin drops to his knees and goes, "my son!"

Strix is able to figure out that the group was sent back in time by a god or someone with a wish spell. She thinks that they might be in a version of Barovia that is locked in time, replaying over and over. Aha... so maybe the Dark Powers sent them here? Or Lathander?

Diath and Strix climb in a window after shooing Tatyana away. Diath is less than thrilled to see Murderbot.

OK. Here's the tempter.

Strix thinks that whatever they do here will affect Barovia only, not the entire multiverse. The characters won't have to worry about being erased. They might be altered (especially Paultin) but no matter what happens, they'll know what they know.

Despite this very clear information, Diath is really wary about changing the timeline. He says that it might undo everything and the group won't know each other. He tells the group that they are more important to him than anything else.


Last session, we had a similar confession from Strix. Hmmm.

The group discusses using... the sword! Diath's sword! The Planecape sword! Evelyn wants it to happen. Strix actually throws it out there that they could use the sword to jump through the portal to Sigil. Wow. My mind is blown.

Diath does not want to use the sword, not at all. He totally shuts it down. OK. We're going to need to petition Jared and insist that he use the sword once every session. You can't tease it like that. It's not acceptable in any way, shape or form! I, for one, am not going to sit here idly by while the mystery of those keys taunts us mercilessly.

Evelyn thinks Lathander sent them here to kill Strahd. Somewhere in here, Strix gets a decoy name: Amy.

Eep.. Rahadin comes into the room. He kicks the group out. They see a magic lute. An instrument of the bards, the Cannith mandolin? I'm missing all of the important words today.

Strix goes to grab Eva's tarokka deck (Eva's gone). Strix sees the formation they were in.

• Top Card: Two of Swords/Paladin (Evelyn)
• Bottom: Raven (Paultin)
• Left: Master of Coins/Rogue (Diath)
• Right: Five of Stars/Elementalist (Strix)
• The Card Between Them All: The Three of Glyphs - the Healer  (Lathander?!)

Sergei and Tatyana stumble into the room. They're going to make out! Is Chris going to roleplay it? Will he make the noises? No, they notice the group and regain their composure. Evelyn politely tells them: "So. We're from the future..." I died laughing.

Here's the marionette

Then Strix turns into Sergei and says, "I'm you from the future." Paultin helpfully plays dramatic music. They try to explain to Sergei that he's in grave danger.

Suddenly, a dart sticks Tatyana in the neck. Simon?!?! Simon did that! In slow motion, the group sees that there are three other tarokka cards on the floor:

• The Tempter (??)
• The Marrionette (Simon, right? Or Evelyn? Maybe the paladin up there is Sergei?)
• The Executioner!(??)

Evelyn tries to lay on hands while Paultin quietly disciplines Murderbot. Oh no... it's the bad dart! The death dart! Tatyana's dead.

Strix polymorphs Sergei into a tiny mouse. So, will time repeat like groundhog day? Does the group get to keep trying until they get it right?

Evelyn casts revivify! Tatyana's alive!

Ugh, the noose. Diath will have flashbacks.

To prove that what they are saying is true, Diath shows Tatyana the Tome of Strahd. Awesome idea! Tatyana is shocked - she reads through it a bit, and now she believes the group. Then Simon darts her again!

Luckily, the group has set her up with a protective spell, so Tatyana doesn't die.

Chris points out that there's a third card. Who is the Tempter? It was the Duchess who sent Simon.

That's where we stop.

Strix? The Elementalist.

Overall

Good show! The players were really fun together this week. The chemistry in the group just keeps getting better. The group has a good handle on their characters and they're poised for all sorts of interesting developments. The show itself feels like it has a lot of momentum and is gaining a bigger following. It is very fun to watch it grow.

I am really glad that this is a long campaign. I feel like a lot of people don't get to experience 50+ sessions of the same game that often. I know Critical Role is on episode 100 or something and etc, but I think one of the best things about D&D is how deep you can go.

It feels like a real accomplishment when you get a pile of sessions under your belt. The players really get attached to their characters, everyone' s comfortable, and there's a million plot threads to choose from. I guess I hope this encourages people who can do so to go ahead and grind it out every week rather than doing a single session once a month.

What World Are They On? I can not figure out where Chris is going with this. Why is this happening? Chris did mention in the game today that nobody knows what world Barovia is on and he seemed like he wanted the group to leave the castle, although that could have just been to set up the next encounter on the way to the exit.

The world they're in could be anything. It seems like Greyhawk is a logical choice. Or maybe Krynn (from the Dragonlance setting), because Tracy Hickman wrote the original Ravenloft module and he was the co-creator of Dragonlance.

It might be the 4e Nentir Vale. I think I saw someone mention that the raven-thing that gave Paultin the severed hand was actually the Raven Queen. Maybe this is all the doing of the Raven Queen? She hates undead, I think. She's pro-dead, that's for sure.

If we're going to do Tomb of Annihilation for season 3, at least some of that adventure is set in the Forgotten Realms, so I don't think we'll be going on a long term trip to any other world.

Who Sent Them? It could be that Lathander sent the waffle crew back to help them save Barovia for good, but if Lathander could do that, he would have done it a long time ago, right? Maybe because Strahd is gone, the border in the realm is weaker and Lathander can extend his reach a bit more.

It could be the Dark Powers messing with the group. Why would they do this, though? Maybe if the group stops Barovia from forming, then the Dark Powers never get stuck in Barovia? I think the powers want to be there, though, right?

We haven't seen Van Richten yet. There's no vampires here, but if Paultin's dad is a werewolf right now, then Van Richten might show up to try to kill him. That will be really awkward.


Also, maybe we'll see Escher and his buddy Falkon. The group could have a chance to snag young Falkon and undo his grisly demise.

I've been meaning to check this out for a long time. It is D&D Beyond, an online D&D program where you can make characters, look up stuff and make monsters, spells and magic items. One of the guys who works here was one of the only survivors of the Chris Perkins meatgrinder at the Stream of Annihilation, which was pretty epic.

In 4th edition, D&D Insider was the best thing ever. You had access to every monster made for the game, and the character builder was so useful that most of my players never once made a character by hand. D&D Beyond seems to be the 5e equivalent.

Signing Up: When you sign up, you do so through the twitch game-streaming service. Apparently the company that made D&D Beyond is owned by twitch, and twitch is owned by amazon. I watch Dice, Camera, Action on twitch every week, so I should have signed up a long time ago. Here's a message I got right away:


I feel like a kid who just moved to a new school district.

Here's the main page:


I don't know what to click first. I guess I'll do compendium content.

Compendium: This is the srd. All of the basic D&D rules. The magic items list is gigantic! Very useful.

The rules I have the hardest time finding are the swimming and drowning rules. Swimming is right in the combat section. It doesn't have drowning information. That is in the "environment" section, under 'suffocating'.

Let's check out the monsters..

Wow! You can organize them by type, search by environment (!). That's very handy.

I just searched for underwater monsters. First result is archdruid! That's a little odd. But the rest are appropriate.. dolphin, dragon turtle, marid, morkoth, etc. I'll click on the dragon turtle.


Hey! It's got the art and everything. It's a little weird how they stuck the armor class next to the challenge rating, a little disorienting. AC 20! People don't use dragon turtles very much. The best use I ever saw of them was in the Pathfinder Skull & Shackles path. The group is in a boat race with other pirate ships and a dragon turtle pops up, very awesome.

This monster is so powerful that it's a bit hard to use until the group gets way up there in level.

Monster Creation: Let's see this create-a-monster thing. You can create one from scratch or base one on an existing monster. Let's see an orc.


Wow.. you can edit it however you like! That's really awesome.

Hey... you can see homebrew monsters. Is that..? It is! A massive list of other people's homebrew monsters! 28 pages of them! Let's see if I can find a cool one.

I'm tempted to pick "Alumnoch the pink unicorn", but I assume you want something semi-serious here. An amber golem! You could stick a vestige in there, how awesome would that be?

It says at the bottom that the amber golems are created by spellcasters to track other creatures. They are usually in the form of a lion or a tiger.

I think there is a ton of material I can use in my Planescape campaign. Let's make a list:

Alumnoch the Pink Unicorn: It has vicious mockery! Hilarious. The unicorn heckles you. Description: The pink gorgeous unicorn from Lewollyn soars through the skies with the help of his majestic mane and tail."

Ancient Red Hydragon: A hydra/dragon?! Whoa.. challenge rating 30. That's too high.. Demogorgon is what, a CR 25? Very cool idea, though.

Contract Devil: I worked on these for my guide to devils. I found it very hard to make rules for the actual contract. I think Pathfinder did it best. This stat block doesn't have rules for contracts.

Cthulhu: Wow. Also a CR 30. If Cthulhu is killed, R'yleh sinks back into the depths. I think that this monster needs a madness chart! Right? More than any other entity out there. Lots of fun details in this entry, lair actions and everything.

I skipped to the last page. The very last monster is Ysgrove the Unkillable, a blue dragon. He's CR 30, too!

I'll filter it for monsters appropriate for my planescape group. That's a challenge rating of 8.

Two pages of results!

Chained Angel: This sounds cool. Really nice description on this one! "These angels have been captured by fiends, tortured and turned to serve darkness. A pack of chained angels is considered a status symbol among the servants of evil." If you kill one, it will either reward you with a spell effect or become a storm of destruction. That's great!

I'd want to rescue them, not kill them.

Hill Giant Butchers: Do they have giant meat cleavers? They do! When in their kitchen, they get lair actions.

There are a lot more cool ones. Lava dragon, mindflayer corpsewalker, skeletal tyrannosaurus rex, treasure golem and.. The Mother of Squorms. What is that? Let's see.

The Mother of Squorms: She's a horror created by the pollution of alchemy labs. She has "horrid fertility", she breeds asexually, spawning dozens of squormlings after every large feeding. Well, I'm sold! Just the name "squormling" is enough to win me over.


Character Builder: OK, let's look at the character builder. I imagine this is the thing that will get used the most. I really don't want to hand-make a character. Let's randomize! I am going to make a level 9 goliath warlock. I like goliaths, I guess they're my favorite race. And warlocks are cool.


I need a name. Let's see, something stupid. This page has a list of craptastic names. Henry Cooldown, that's pretty good/bad. Or bad-good. Dingo Egret! That's great. Darkdeath Evilman!!! Wow. Trevor McFur. If I was making a tabaxi, that would be a shoe-in.

There's so many!!! Cream the rabbit? Let's go with Hot Coldman. You pronounce it "Cold-min." Maybe it should be Hawt Coldmin.

I have a 6 Wisdom! Why?! Hawt Colmin is not optimized. I guess and I can get into that. He's got a 16 charisma.

They picked my spells. Nice! I have counterspell to shut you down. Banishment.. contact other plane! Very cool.

They did my background, too. I was a soldier. I have a military rank. Soldiers recognize my authority and influence. I can requisition horses and etc. Officer Coldmin!

My alignment is "unknown" for some reason. They left bonds, flaws, and personality blank.

You have to pick equipment, they don't randomize it.

I can speak with animals at will, and I can disguise self at will. What the heck is gaze of two minds?

It's here. Wow. Haüt Cold'mynn can touch a creature and see through their senses. I can sustain this by using an action each round. I'm blinded and deafened while doing this.

OK. The builder is pretty great. Let's see homebrew content.

Homebrew Spells: Wow. Homebrew spells?! 27 pages of homemade spells! Let's search by "spell tags". Creation spells, please.

Clone Hero: That sounds cool. It's a level 8 spell that creates a hero that will fight for you for 24 hours. Awesome idea, but it is very vague. What are its stats? If it's an 8th level spell, it should be pretty powerful. Maybe like a blackguard from Volo's or something.

Dark Maiden's Moonfire: I like the way this one is written. You summon the moonlight, which illuminates the area around you. When you want, you can use an action to hurl the moonlight and do radiant damage. That's really great! It's a cantrip, too.

Remove Hand: "This spell lets you remove one of your hands and control it while it is separated from your body." Sold! 100%!

Homebrew Magic Items: This should be good! Let's do my favorite, wondrous magic items.

Endless Keg of Mead: It has 30 gallons, refilling itself at dawn. If it is not used for five days straight, it is destroyed. I like that a lot.

Traveler's Chest: A chest that follows you around, like a drow crawlchest. Very cool!

Headband of Goblinkind: You gain the goblin ability to disengage or hide as a bonus action once per rest and you can speak and understand goblin. But you can't speak or understand other languages except thieves cant and the Druidic language. That's pretty rough for an item requiring attunement!

Overall

D&D Beyond is extremely useful! Why wouldn't you use it? It's full of ideas for you to use in your game. I immediately saw a bunch of things I would want to put in my campaign.

Official Release: D&D Beyond is set to officially launch on Tuesday, August 15th.

Through D&D Beyond, you will be able to buy digital sourcebooks like the Player's Handbook or Xanathar's Guide to Monsters. The core books will be $20 for the first week of launch, then it goes up to $30.

There are subscription options:

• Hero Tier: $3 a month. It's for players. It removes ads, lets you make an unlimited amount of characters, and utilize homebrew content.
• Master Tier: $6 a month. The DM can share all of their content with other players within a campaign, so content does not have to be unlocked by every player.

I'm a little confused as to how the subscriptions work with the digital books. From what I am reading, you don't have to buy the books to use it, but the books add content..? You can use the books offline. I don't know if they are pdfs or if they are locked into an app or something.

My first instinct was to turn my nose up at people complaining about buying the books again, but I see that some people have already bought the physical book and then they bought it again on roll20! I can understand why they wouldn't want to pay for them a third time.

It's a very useful set of tools. D&D Beyond i definitely worth a look!