Running Out of the Abyss after Tyranny of Dragons

[blelliot]

I'm interested in running my players through OOTA after HOTDQ/ROT. For the opening of the adventure, I was going to make it a rescue mission of one of the NPCs instead of the group starting off as captives. Now, my question is would it be better to level the drow enemies or replace them with a different group of monsters? Just curious. Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you :)

[mgshamster]

What level will they be entering into OotA?

[blelliot]

15. They have just sent Tiamat back to Hell.

[RulesJD]

Um, you're definitely going to need to add a metric ton MORE enemies, not just harder ones.

For a variety of reasons, the mechanics of 5e makes adding more medium enemies far more challenging than a lower number of hard enemies.

Honestly though, they're going to straight wipe out most chapters without breaking a sweat unless you invest some serious time in adjusting both encounters and the storylines.

[blelliot]

I had planned on doing that already. That's why I was asking if making bigger and badder drow was a more viable option than replacing them with something else.

[mgshamster]

Level 15 is the end game for OotA, so entering into that will give a significant advantage to the players.

For that, I'd add a lot more drow (including drow mages), add in some more anti magic zones (the drow know where they are and can target around them), and add in demons on the side of the drow to represent their alliance with them.

From there, use the random encounters in the second half of the book instead of the first half.

You can keep most of the cities the same, just add more monsters and focus on diplomatic solutions rather than combat solutions. The demon lord encounters in early game won't really matter as the demons will still be very powerful - likely too powerful for 15th level characters.

For characters of this level, this adventure will become more of a delivery and personnel management campaign than a horror campaign, as they will likely have to deliver the NPCs to their various home (which takes time but won't be too difficult).

It might be better to flat out skip the entire first half of the campaign and just start wth Chapter 7 - Gauntlgrym. That's about level 7-8, and goes to level 15 by end game. It'll be easier to increase the challenge from level 8 than it will be from level 1.

[Theodoxus]

Having done a similar thing, only going from LMoP to HotDQ, I'm curious, how are you planning on keeping your mage types from simply 'porting everywhere they need to go? Presumably if you're advancing the campaign to such a level, the supporting structures would likewise need to be advanced - teleportation circles should be common in the larger cities - keeping them out of the hands of the players would be problematic.

I ask primarily because my players are just now hitting those levels and I'm at a bit of a loss for keeping verisimilitude while not allowing them to just run rampant willy nilly at their own discretion - a 15 minute day is really easy when you can nova, kill the opponents and then whisk away home to recharge and simply teleport back to your previous spot in the dungeon...

[krugaan]

Now, my question is would it be better to level the drow enemies or replace them with a different group of monsters?


They have just sent Tiamat back to Hell.


Honestly though, they're going to straight wipe out most chapters without breaking a sweat unless you invest some serious time in adjusting both encounters and the storylines.

Er, yeah. If you're going to do the "damsel-in-distress" route, you're going to have to make it realistically difficult for the party to protect that damsel.

[Falcon X]

Never say impossible!

Yes, this might be difficult. The tone will be different, because they won't have anything to fear from lots of the sentient races, but that doesn't mean there aren't more vile things possible.

Some thoughts:
1. Most of the events of the second half of Out of the Abyss that involve the Drow don't require that the Drow provide a genuine threat. Though players still shouldn't cause too much of a stir in their city as there are some high level enemies.
HOWEVER, the first half involves an escape and being chased. The drow won't suffice here.
You need Mind Flayers. First off, they are naturally more scary than drow. However, they also fit into the plot of Out of the Abyss. If you follow the Drizzt novels (Archmage), you know that the mind flayers have some level of manipulation going on with the drow. The mind flayers are have trained a few psions in the drow and placed an illithid with the Matron Mother. It's not a stretch to modify the story to make the whole thing one big plot of the Mind Flayers.
- How I would do it is have your NPC friend captured by Mind Flayers. Mod the prison, or assume that the mind flayers have taken it over. Then have them chase you because you have secrets or something else, cause pride isn't their big thing like it is the drow.
- I would keep the ending the same, but start threading in mind flayer stuff through the plot and tack on an extra, final quest after you face the big demons at the end.
2. Scarier monsters, obviously. Anywhere you can get away with it.
- If you add in the Mind Flayers, you can include a subplot about Orcus raising them as undead. Undead mindflayer hoards will definitely pee some pants.
- Demons are everywhere. Read the companion novel, Archmage. Even within the specific types, there are more powerful versions. Marilith isn't just a type of demon, there is the original marilith that gives her type their name.
3. Lay down the punishment with the Demon Princes. Get some real Godzilla imagery going. Demogorgan should destroy their Level 15 butts if they try to take him on. This is good. Make sure they find a way to survive and they will respect the power of the Demon Lords after that.


Now, PERSONALLY, if I was going to have to adapt something to high level, I would adapt something that was already meant to be high level. In my game, I delved into 2e and came up with this ridiculous order of events, and I could tell you how I did if you want me to:
- Hoard of the Dragon Queen>Castle Ravenloft>Vecna Lives>Tyranny of Dragons/Rary the Traitor>Die Vecna Die

[RulesJD]

Having done a similar thing, only going from LMoP to HotDQ, I'm curious, how are you planning on keeping your mage types from simply 'porting everywhere they need to go? Presumably if you're advancing the campaign to such a level, the supporting structures would likewise need to be advanced - teleportation circles should be common in the larger cities - keeping them out of the hands of the players would be problematic.

I ask primarily because my players are just now hitting those levels and I'm at a bit of a loss for keeping verisimilitude while not allowing them to just run rampant willy nilly at their own discretion - a 15 minute day is really easy when you can nova, kill the opponents and then whisk away home to recharge and simply teleport back to your previous spot in the dungeon...

I'd suggest looking into the Adventurer's League modifications to their Expeditions for Fazerous (sp?) that basically makes teleporting impossible.

[mgshamster]

Having done a similar thing, only going from LMoP to HotDQ, I'm curious, how are you planning on keeping your mage types from simply 'porting everywhere they need to go? Presumably if you're advancing the campaign to such a level, the supporting structures would likewise need to be advanced - teleportation circles should be common in the larger cities - keeping them out of the hands of the players would be problematic.

I ask primarily because my players are just now hitting those levels and I'm at a bit of a loss for keeping verisimilitude while not allowing them to just run rampant willy nilly at their own discretion - a 15 minute day is really easy when you can nova, kill the opponents and then whisk away home to recharge and simply teleport back to your previous spot in the dungeon...

For teleportation circles - you actually have to know the sigils of the circle you're teleporting to. Those can be key secret or possibly even changed every few years. Alternatively, they may be under heavy guard or simply not official (meaning the only circles are privately owned and that knowledge wouldn't be available to the public).

For the teleportation spell - well, you really don't want to use that spell in the underdark. A minor mishap (anything but "on target") can see you instantly killed as you teleport into pure rock instead of open space. And with the faerzress periodically around, there's no guarantee that spell will work even if you have an associated object or a circle. Especially with all those demon lords messing with things. Do you really want to take that risk?

[RulesJD]

There are many other problems though, depending on what your party is.

For example, the Heroes Feast spell makes any Drow laughable because you're entire party is now immune to Poison.

Some of the magic items they pick up in HotDQ/RoT are also stupidly OP, especially by OotA standards. Hazirawn + Fighter/Barb = soloing every BBEG minus the actual demonlords. Even then, decent chance of soloing.

It does depend a lot on the party makeup and whether they're powergamers or not.

[Cespenar]

Drows are the easiest enemies to level up. In every book they are described as extremely competent fighters/mages/clerics/whatever both due to innate skill and the high level of competition their race has going between each other. Give them levels, make them more numerous, put some magical items in their hands.

For random encounters, take a clue from Baldur's Gate II. Get some mind flayers, beholders, demons, etc.

Also play up the wilderness challenges to have them come up with some solutions with their high level characters. Have creatures harry them incessantly, even when they camp. Traversing the spider webs becomes a DC 20 Acrobatics check. They repeatedly get lost without native scouts. The smog of Gracklstugh becomes even more obnoxious: you make a save each 8 hours. Have some sea creatures destroy their boat on the Dark Lake. If they don't take extreme care with track erasing and anti-scrying spells, drow patrols keep finding them. Increase the madness save DCs and have them repeat after a day as well, due to the image being still in their memory. Etc.

[mgshamster]

As far as the first half of the book goes, the opening chapter is the only prt where you have to run away from something that's by a demon, because they're more powerful than you. Either let them slaughter the drow captors, change the captors, or increase the size of Velkynvelve to a few hundred or thousand so they have to still run.

From there, gracklstugh and Neverlight Grove only have a handful of combat encounters, and you can easily change those to make them a challenge. Sloobludop is a demon lord, so run from that no matter what. Blingdenstone is primarily about an army battle, so increase the size and power of the enemy forces, and turn the city's adventure in preparation for war. Gauntlgrym is a social chapter, so you don't have to worry about over powered stuff. And I still need to read the second half (only skimmed it so far).

You can still keep the flavor of the campaign by using descriptors and mind games - keep it a Alice in Wonderland and Lovecraftian horror theme, and it doesn't really matter if they can win in a fight. They'll still enjoy the campaign.

[mgshamster]

Oh, and use my Bad Dreams Variant:

Every long rest they roll a d100. There's a 10% cumulative chance that they have really bad dreams. If they roll under the amount, they do no gain the benefits of a long rest (including gaining a level of exhaustion).

That makes it dangerous for any level character.

[Fflewddur Fflam]

Drows are the easiest enemies to level up. In every book they are described as extremely competent fighters/mages/clerics/whatever both due to innate skill and the high level of competition their race has going between each other. Give them levels, make them more numerous, put some magical items in their hands.

For random encounters, take a clue from Baldur's Gate II. Get some mind flayers, beholders, demons, etc.

Also play up the wilderness challenges to have them come up with some solutions with their high level characters. Have creatures harry them incessantly, even when they camp. Traversing the spider webs becomes a DC 20 Acrobatics check. They repeatedly get lost without native scouts. The smog of Gracklstugh becomes even more obnoxious: you make a save each 8 hours. Have some sea creatures destroy their boat on the Dark Lake. If they don't take extreme care with track erasing and anti-scrying spells, drow patrols keep finding them. Increase the madness save DCs and have them repeat after a day as well, due to the image being still in their memory. Etc.

And also like Baldur's Gate 2 and earlier additions: make the Drow have magic resistance.

[Taejang]

5e has a distinct lack of high-level campaigns, so I understand your desire to do this. But honestly, it'd be easier to do a custom campaign from the ground-up than adapt OotA to the degree necessary to pull this off. That said, I'll help as best I can.

If you want to maintain the feel of the original campaign, you'll need a believable way for the party to be captured. Perhaps an earthquake collapses the ground beneath them and they fall hundreds (or thousands) of feet into the Underdark, then awake in chains. Or a demon lord goes after them, and the party gets extra motivation to take them down. Whatever it is, take all their equipment away and don't let them have it back. They have to scrounge for new gear, put together shoddy armor instead of the nice plate they used to have, etc.

The spellcasters should be denied any means of casting spells at first. No spellbooks, druidic foci, locked in the antimagic cell area, etc. Otherwise the party wizard will chain lightning and disintegrate the entire starting fort. At least the party fighter only gets 3 attacks for 1 damage each.

If your party has a monk, he should be disabled. Poisoned condition with magical mumbo-jumbo to keep him from simply recovering (because monks are that awesome), a magical curse, whatever it takes to keep him from flurry of blow-ing his way past literally every obstacle in the starting fort.

When the party breaks out, they will probably waste the drow in the opening fort. That's just what will happen when the fighter or paladin or whoever can steal a shortsword and some basic armor, then free the sorcerer. Design the campaign to accept that, but don't let them have their original equipment back as the campaign normally does. Instead, they have whatever they can strip from dead drow in the fort. Their original gear has been taken to Menzoberranzan, destroyed, stolen by the demon lord who got them into the Underdark in the first place, whatever.

Have a few drow escape, possibly because they were on the ground when the fighting started. These drow will bring a literal army to chase the party. Make the army as big as you think it needs to be to scare your players into running for the surface. If the party attempts to infiltrate the army, remember drow can make good use of spells like Alarm and Detect Magic.

The faerzress present can be said to inhibit magical teleportation. If any of your peeps can pull such tricks, let them try it and have it go haywire (use the table for the Teleportation spell as a guideline). Later in the campaign, you may allow your party to teleport / plane shift / whatever, but at least for the beginning you've got to stop that. Make it a goal they can work toward: figuring out how to cast their spells around the faerzress. It'd be a great secondary goal for them to research at the library of Gravenhollow.

If your spellcasting party members are overshadowing their ill-equipped melee friends, use the faerzress to progressively limit what spell level they can use. As time goes on (and the demons grow in power), maybe they lose access to seventh level spells, then sixth, and so on. Again, this could be something the party works to overcome, probably through research in Gravenhollow or maybe through divine rituals or what-not.

The Underdark is supposed to be dangerous, and you can upgrade the random encounters to the party's skill level without impacting the campaign. Start with the encounter table from the second half of the book and make those a bit more difficult if they're too easy.

The NPC party members will probably revere these high-level adventurers. It will change how the party interacts with their NPC brethren, but not to such a degree that it breaks the campaign.

The regular encounters will have to be upgraded somehow to make them more difficult. Some can just have more enemies, while you can upgrade some enemies and say they were possessed by the demonic stuff going around. For more fun, you could instead have higher level demons attack the party right after they finish sweeping the floor with the weak kuo toa or what-not, similar to the encounter in the first chapter (when flying demons attack near the fort). This would let the party remain their powerful selves while also giving them a believable challenge in the form of the demons.

Once the party escapes to the surface, they will probably have access to some decent gear again. Let their surface allies help the party out (particularly if you've got a wizard who really needs a decent spellbook again). The second half can become the party getting revenge for all the crap they had to run from in the first half. Vengeance never felt so good, right?

You'll again have to upgrade encounters in the second half. High level demons can really make up the difference here, as the demon lords are more and more powerful as the campaign progresses. You may chose to sprinkle some demon lord encounters into the campaign earlier than the book has them.

With the party starting at level 15, you need to address experience. OotA is long enough that, with adequately difficult encounters, they'll reach level 20 before the campaign ends, maybe significantly before it ends. If you're okay with that, cool. If not, switch to the milestone method and time things so they reach level 20 when you want them to.

Loot will be a problem. In the beginning, any piece of loot should be a major find. Keep the power level low until they reach the surface. Remember to give the party wizard some weak spellbook so he at least has something, and sprinkle some scrolls around so he can have some versatility before recovering a lot of spells from allies on the surface.

During the second half, you may opt to let the party recover their original equipment, or at least some of it. Work that in so the party can work toward that goal. Players hate having their stuff taken away; knowing they can work to recover it eventually will help them hate you less, and they'll be really happy when they do recover it.

Overall, you've got your work cut out for you. But the presence of faerzress and demonic invasions makes this campaign perhaps easier to upgrade than most. I'm interested in what you end up doing; try and remember to tell us!

[mgshamster]

Taejang, that was great!

Here's one a friend sent me for this:

"We need you to investigate the Underdark for signs of demonic influence. There's a place near here were people are being captured by Drow. Go pretend to be captured then once you're in their prisons break out and find out anything you can. Don't let them know who you are and try to keep casualties to a minimum for believability."

[RulesJD]

What is the party composition?


Bear in mind, the RoT Tiamat fight is significantly more difficult than any single demonlord.

[blelliot]

Thank you all for your input! I should have mentioned this before, but the idea is to run the OOTA adventure as a means to get to level 30, using the epic boon rules in the DMG. The idea is to actually fight and slay Tiamat. The NPC that they are rescuing is one that found a possible portal into the Hells where the party can find a way into Avernus. I figured Gromph's Grimoire, or some other magical scripture that the players can find could have a way to permanently kill Tiamat. To slow the players down, Tiamat hatches a quick scheme to loos the Demon Lords into the Underdark. So in order to fight the Goddess, the players have to work their way through the Demon Lords. How does this sound?

[Taejang]

Taejang, that was great!
Thanks!

Thank you all for your input! I should have mentioned this before, but the idea is to run the OOTA adventure as a means to get to level 30, using the epic boon rules in the DMG. The idea is to actually fight and slay Tiamat. The NPC that they are rescuing is one that found a possible portal into the Hells where the party can find a way into Avernus. I figured Gromph's Grimoire, or some other magical scripture that the players can find could have a way to permanently kill Tiamat. To slow the players down, Tiamat hatches a quick scheme to loos the Demon Lords into the Underdark. So in order to fight the Goddess, the players have to work their way through the Demon Lords. How does this sound?
Sounds like an interesting campaign. I'm not sure it really utilizes the first half of OotA, though; you may be better served scrapping that and starting in the second half, as mgshamster suggested. Perhaps have a chapter's worth of material you create that gets the party to realize crap ain't right downstairs, so to speak, then jump them into the second half of OotA.

Getting the party to level 30 from 15 will require some wicked-hard fights, the milestone method, or extra material. Even upgrading the encounters present in the second half of OotA, that's just a lot of experience to acquire. As you are going into this expecting the party to be quite powerful, you may want to significantly change the demon lord fights themselves. For starters, I'd break them out into their own encounters (instead of letting the lords fight themselves, as the book has it). The last few levels will probably be obtained as the players fight through the underworld to reach Tiamat.

Possible ways to spice up the campaign:
The devils would probably take advantage of any weakness in the demons. Every demon lord getting "killed" by mortals, and then having those mortals rampage through the underworld, definitely constitutes as weakness in the demon ranks. I'd plan an encounter with devils fighting demons and let the players decide to get involved or not.

Celestial forces may or may not be pleased as the players disrupt the balance between demons and devils. Pick how you want them to react: maybe some celestials try to convince the party to knock it off, lest the devils get too powerful, or maybe the celestials send a solar to give the players the McGuffin they need to finish Tiamat off for good. Lots of possibilities here.

Various enemies of the demons would probably help the players. Remember, adventurers at such high levels should be interacting with gods from time to time. Get Mystra or Bahamut or somebody involved.

Likewise, demonic cults may be called upon to defend their masters. If Tiamat believes she is in danger of actual death, she'd pull out all the stops to survive. Perhaps she summons a flight of dragons into hell itself to stop them, or brings an entire fortress worth of cultists into the Underdark, or whatever.

[coredump]

OotA just will not work with lvl 15 PCs. Its not a matter of adding some monsters, its a matter of completely rewriting most of the first 7 chapters.

If you really want to do this, I would either start with new PCs, or bring them into the story at chapter 8, it is a natural entrance point in the story, and will not require quite as much rewriting.

[Falcon X]

OotA just will not work with lvl 15 PCs. Its not a matter of adding some monsters, its a matter of completely rewriting most of the first 7 chapters.

If you really want to do this, I would either start with new PCs, or bring them into the story at chapter 8, it is a natural entrance point in the story, and will not require quite as much rewriting.

He does have a good point. You could have a different lead-in and just start at Episode 8. You'll be a little ahead level-wise, but not too much so. It would be easier to upgrade in difficulty too.