RPG Review: D&D: Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus
The brand new adventure from Wizards of the Coast, Descent into Avernus, is more than just a journey into the first level of the Nine Hells. It’s also a gazetteer to the city of Baldur’s Gate, a guide to Avernus itself, a stunning art book, and a fantastic walk into the infernal.
Today we’ll be covering Descent into Avernus, both its standard cover as well as the alternative cover.
The Covers and Maps
The cover features a gorgeous piece of art showing Zariel, the archduke of Avernus reaching for her sword, by Tyler Jacobson. It shows you everything you need to know about the adventure, with the clouds above in the image of Bhaal, the fiends swarming around the desolate landscape below, and her henchman, Haruman chasing after her. For the past few releases, I haven’t been super impressed with the standard covers, but for this adventure, I’m really really impressed. It’s a really fantastic and evocative piece of art.
The alternative is even more gorgeous, a deep red on black, with shimmery silver highlights. Bhaal’s symbol looms over the center, and the back of the book features a beautiful stained-glass-style image of Zariel with stunning patterns all throughout.
The back of the book contains a double-sided map (which is scored and needs to be carefully removed. On one side, you have a map of Avernus which is beautifully evocative, showing the River Styx cutting its way through the wasteland. The map has no text on it, and everything is kind of vague so it’s not a problem to have this out in the center of your table during the campaign. As you’ll see later, distances mean very little in this infernally blighted hellscape.
The other side of the map features the city of Elturel, which has been pulled down into Avernus. It is also unlabelled, so you’ll be able to use the maps in the book to identify locations for your players. The map is even more gorgeous than the Avernus map, in my opinion, depicting the city split down the middle and floating in the air, chained to a series of columns. Flames lick the outside edges of it and you can feel the palpable fear the citizens of the city must have after being so terrifyingly cast into Hell.
The Adventure
The adventure makes up about half of the book. As I said before, the city of Elturel has been pulled into Avernus, the first level of the Nine Hells. The citizens of nearby Baldur’s Gate are concerned, worried that they’re the next target of this terrible fate. Cults of the Dead Three (Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul) are rising up throughout Baldur’s Gate killing seemingly at random and spreading fear. A sinister conspiracy has infested the city, which the players will need to unwind. This will lead them to Candlekeep where they will find a way to make it into Avernus. Their goal: Save Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard of Baldur’s Gate, who was in Elturel, and hopefully, to bring Elturel back from hell itself. Pretty epic.
Within Baldur’s Gate, the famous Elfsong Tavern is detailed, and a few different dungeons and encounters are mapped out with Dyson Logos’ fantastic maps.
When the players arrive in Elturel, they find the city under assault by devils who are roaming the streets and capturing civilians. They are gathering up conscripts for their latest war against the demons. The city floats directly over the River Styx, and the whole city shudders as it slowly descends to the surface of the plane. The players will have to defend against waves and waves of terrible creatures as the city’s cathedral comes under assault. The adventurers will struggle to escape the siege on the city as they head out into the deserts of Avernus to find a way to return the city to Faerun.
Here, the book explains the mechanical and narrative changes to Avernus, including the Styx, alterations to magic, demon ichor, flesh warping, and optional rules such as death saves, exhaustion, and evil. One thing I love with the Death Saves rule here is it’s essentially the opposite of the brutal death saves in Tomb of Annihilation, but is no less terrible. If you fail a death save in the Nine Hells, an archdevil can offer to keep the player alive by causing their next roll to be a 20. If they do so, they are now beholden to the archdevil, who makes a deal wit hate player in exchange for their life. Your characters essentially can’t die in Avernus unless they choose to do so, but they’ll find themselves increasingly in the service of evil. It provides the players with a choice.
I don’t want to get too deep into the rest of the adventure here, so you have some surprises, but there are a ton of fantastic locations and encounters. Players can encounter Arkhan the Cruel, Joe Manganiello’s PC who is a servant of Tiamat, or run into multiple powerful demon lords. There are so many different archdevils and demon lords your players will find it nearly impossible to face even at 20th level, so they are mostly there to provide menace and demand things of the PCs. The adventure is rich with enough to power multiple campaigns across Avernus.
The players can attempt to actual redeem Zariel, freeing her from her damned fate, before escaping back to the material plane. The adventure is very sandboxy, providing a ton of encounters across Avernus that many groups may never encounter.
The adventure provides tips and tricks for roleplaying devils, and explains what life is like in the Nine Hells. This section has one of my to favorite headlines: “Everyone is unhappy” and “Everything’s awful.” These have actual mechanical rules. In addition, if characters attempt to actually map Avernus, due to its unnatural features, you can actually go mad. Your best bet is to just start wandering in what you think is the right direction and hope you get there.
Baldur’s Gate Gazetteer
The back half of the book is dedicated to Baldur’s Gate proper. In the same way that Dragon Heist provided detail on Waterdeep, the book here covers all the nooks and crannies of the city which serves as the Gotham to the City of Splendor’s Metropolis. This is a much different city, one that always seems like it’s on the brink of collapse, where conspiracies sit on every corner.
The city is closely connected to Elturel, Candlekeep (the grand library of the Sword Coast), and far off Port Nyanzaru, so it’s a great jumping off point to other adventures. The Tiamat adventures travel through Baldur’s Gate, so it’s worth picking up this book to add flavor if you’re running those adventures.
The book has tables for random interactions and reactions the players can have with the City Watch and the Flaming Fist, who are a mercenary company that serves as the city’s army. There are fantastic cutaway maps of different notable buildings in the city, and the book contains multiple random encounters and various interactions and possible threats in the different neighborhoods.
I found this gazetteer more useful than the Waterdeep one, providing a lot more detail and entertainments than Dragon Heist.
There is one new character background, Faceless, making you a bit of a Batman type, who, due to their status, must adventure masked and in secret. The section speaks about every other background and how they all tie into the city. The book also provides a way to tie all the players together via a Dark Secret. The players will together choose some sort of terrible thing that ties the characters together, forcing them together. Whether a conspiracy, a murder, theft, or coup, someone in the city knows this secret and holds leverage over you. I LOVE this idea, and can’t wait to see what other Dark Secrets the DM’s Guild provides.
The Appendicies and General Thoughts
Appendix A covers the terrible diabolical deals players can enter into to provide them with untold riches and power. Every one will eventually benefit the devil who made the deal, however. The chapter details the charms and contracts made. It’s useful for any campaign.
Appendix B covers exactly what we all came here for: Infernal War Machines. Since the D&D Live event, everyone’s been talking about how this adventure essentially turns D&D into this:
Here, the rules for these wasteland vehicles shine. The infernal war machines are massive tanks and trucks powered by souls. They travel across the landscape battling one another. The vehicles range from small two-wheeled motorcycles called devil’s rides to massive demon grinders which have a whole mass of spikes and a wrecking ball.
WizKids does have a repainted mini of one, and it looks pretty awesome.
The rules include mishaps, repairs, and all kinds of other weapons and armor upgrades.
Appendix C and D features magical items and all the creatures you’ll encounter. This includes the various demon lords you’ll find in the Out of the Abyss adventure. I don’t mind them being republished here, because I’d rather not have to have a whole extra book at the table.
Appendix E features a menu for the Infernal Rapture both in the Infernal font as well as common tongue, showing you what’s eaten in Avernus. Appendix F is packed full of beautiful concept art.
Appendix G provides a translation for the Infernal script, allowing you to write out information for your players in the language.
The book is absolutely gorgeous, with a bunch of two-page spreads of artwork. It’s fantastically laid out, and is indispensable if you’re running adventures in Baldur’s Gate or within hell itself. Definitely pick it up when it releases September 17th.
On Sunday, we’ll be giving away a copy of Descent into Avernus, so watch this space!
Wizards of the Coast provided a copy of Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus to Dice Monkey for review.