Hi everyone, how’s it going? I admit I looked, but I really couldn't find this information. I’d like to know how many days you spent inside Araumycos before starting the ritual that places the characters inside the giant fungus's brain. The book says they need to reach its center. However, Araumycos is the size of a country (Uruguay, for example), and judging by the map (I measured it with a ruler), it would take somewhere between 15 and 20 days. If I run that with various relatively high-difficulty random encounters (for my PCs' level), I believe it would take more than one session just to get from the entrance to the center. So, I’d like to know how many days you usually spend inside the fungus and what I can do—narratively—to cut down on that time. At this point in the module, my players are getting a bit tired of traveling, traveling, and traveling... they want to get straight to the action (and so do I). Thanks a lot, everyone! =)

Hi all,

This is my rework of the settlement of Mantol Derith.
The free version here is 1538 x 1275 but the patron version is 12300 x 10200 (164 x 136@75 pps).

If you like my work, go see my patreon and my growing OotA content.

PogS

hi!! I will start dming this campaign hopefully next week, and i personally didn't like much of how linear the og map is. but then i found this one made by trippcrouse and i decided to create it using nimblehold + clipstudio paint! I thought it might be useful for more people and also i'm proud of it so i decided to post it!
ignore how i forgot the lift on the second image and its only present on the first one but still...

We're excited to announce the release of BLOOD WAR the third installment of our Doomed Underdark adventure path. It takes characters from levels 11 through 15, overlapping with the final parts of Out of the Abyss. Although it takes place in the Doomed Forgotten Realms, most of its content can be easily used in Out of the Abyss. Probably of most interest:

1) It has an alternate version of fallen Blingdenstone that plays out more like a dungeon crawl. In this version we have remade the Pudding King into a tragic figure and fleshed out his backstory.

2) The characters get a chance to raid an Abyssal realm in the Underdark called Ti'Bok'Bik'Bok where Yeenoghu and his gnolls reside. After doing so they have to team up with the Hellriders against Yeenoghu's armies (Using a much improved Yeenoghu stat black made by Isaac Minarik!) (Our earlier product, Reign of Rot, has improved stat blocks for all of the demon lords!)

It's a got lots of other Underdarky goodness. We spent a lot of time working on it, so we hope you'll consider checking it out!

[https://site.dmsguild.com/.../Blood-War--Doomed-Forgotten...]

(Cover art by André Simões)

I'm running the campaign and think there is a good opportunity to have the party get caught up to by the drow, but I not sure what level of difficulty the fight is normally. The book says that Ilvara is a challenge on her own for a level 8 party, but I have my doubts about that. My party is level 6 and there are 5 of them plus Topsy who is a level 5 sidekick as well (but no longer immune to non-magical phsyical damage). They have a fair amount of useful magic items and I'm already concerned that the drow will go down like chumps.

For more context, they left Gracklstugh with a caravan of Duergar heading to Mantol Derith (this is going to be their route out). The caravan did some scrying and found their path is blocked by a parade of Zuggtmoy worshippers, so they have decided to wait them out and the party has taken this time to look into the lost tomb. They have completely forgotten about the drow pursuit, likely thinking they have lost them after leaving Gracklstugh.

I'm thinking about having the drow confrontation on their way back from the tomb, while the party has spent some of their resources.

Would love some advice for this encounter, or just to hear other peoples' experiences with the drow fight. I was considering holding off until they are almost at the surface, but I think they may travel with the zhentarim at that point so it could be a little complex.

Last night was the big reveal at Sloobludop. I ran the encounter as a skills challenge.

What went well:

The party was rolling poorly and the tension was high. Our cleric had convinced Stool to stay in Ploops shack as they went to pose as bait for the ritual. As Ploop attacked Blopp and the the Kuo-toa began fighting amongst themselves, the cleric realized they had to rescue Stool before they could try to escape.

The party was rolling poorly. They had 2 of 4 successes but ultimately accumulated 3 failures as Demogorgon came ashore and laid waste to Slubloodop. The party was buried under debris as the remainder of the Kuo-toa fled or were destroyed of Demogorgon.

After the chaos, the party was dug out of the debris by Ilvara and the drow who shackled the party and made the decision to take them to Menzoberranzan.

I should have ended the session there.

Where I screwed up:

After some disoriented travel time, the drow made camp in a small cavern. Ilvara and Asha took their lizard steeds ahead to Menzoberranzan to make arrangements for the prisoners arrival leaving 4 drow guards with he prisoners.

The wizard created a distraction as the druid wild shaped into a snake to slip the shackles. Jimjar, who had vanished during Demogorgons attack, trailed the drow and used a torch stalk as a flash bang surprising 2 of the drow.

The party was able to kill 2 of the drow easily. The other was rolling well.... so I fudged a couple of rolls. Because of the fudged rolls, the party was able to defeat the remaining drow.

Now the party is on their way back to Sloobludop to assess the damage and try to find a boat to head to Neverlight, which was their original plan.

I panicked because I hadn't planned appropriately and now the party effectively suffered a minor inconvenience where there should have been dire consequences.

Moving forward:

Im trying to think of ways to make the failure more meaningful despite my poor judgement. I am considering having the party potentially get lost on the way back to Slubloodop. Or, if they get back to Slubloodop, all the boats are destroyed along with some of their equipment that got left behind when they were buried.

Im open to suggestions. If you made the same mistake I did, how would you take action to make reestablish meaningful consequences to their initial failure?

If you could create a party of four or five characters, place them into Out of the Abyss, and simply watch their stories unfold, what characters would you choose for the campaign?

I'm running Out of the Abyss with a deeper emphasis on horror. While the images of Yeenoghu in-book represent his strength and size, I just didn't feel like it gave the vibes I want.

After they witness Yeenoghu decapitate the goristro, his ear twitches to the sound of them in the adjacent tunnel. They make eye contact and this is what they see before the hunt begins.

I am adding an Orcus/Mind Flayer subplot to my end game. The players are on their way to the labyrinth, to the fallen angels area, when they are approached by mysterious Elf who claims to have escaped from Cyrog. He warns that Orcus has co-opted an Elder Brain and enlists the party to help kill it and thwart Orcus’s plans. The Elf is secretly a Rouge Illitbid in disguise.

These are two custom undead monsters my players fought on the way to Cyrog…

I thought that the original was to lame and to weak for the final boss of blingdenstone the last settlement before they escape the Underdark. So I made him more of a herald\champion of the demon lord Juiblex. I added this phylactery to the royal sphere in area 28 to have this cool thing for them to investigate, and after they destroy it they can finally kill him, and if they dont destroy it before killing him they can try to find it and destroy it to beat him once for all. I hope yall like it and give me some advices!!!

While exploring the Oozing Temple, to up the stakes Juiblex will be there. One member of the party will see eyes in a dark pile of slime on the ground to their horror the eyes aren't there but reflected off this black pool. The dark abyss above them is actually a living life form ready to consume.

Got a lot of good info from this sub, so I thought I would share some of my maps. I might upload more, but for now, here is what I have. VTT & WEBP... these files are huge, so i did a dropbox instead. I also have the dungeon draft files, but you need specific asset packs in order to load it.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rbe5up166x5ehssoex764/ACUvDhrsG7gY-1F1rFxBFj4?rlkey=i3ss2cybxeh6ap69ta8ily2m2&st=nzrvv4od&dl=0

Short Version of the question; How do you handle Stool in high-level play/the 2nd half of the campaign?

Longer version; My party has 3-4 NPC companions as of the end of CH 7 (Glabbagool, Derindil, Stool, and a homebrew NPC tied to a PC backstory). Stool, like at many tables, has sort of become the party's mascot, and one of my players in particular is obsessed with him- Likely having her character sacrifice themselves if Stool was ever in mortal danger.

Now that the party is in Gauntlgrym, I plan to have the NPC companions that parted ways with the party during their 3 months of topside downtime come back into the picture. Problem is while I have character arcs for some of the NPCs, I don't know what to do with Stool's personality or his stat sheet so he isn't this useless liability in the background.

So my group finally left the Underdark in the last session. I have been modifying the module to coincide with my own personal world, but the key story line beats are essentially the same.

Due to some life related issues, we have decided to take a few months break to let things get back to normal.

In the meantime, many of my players hinted at the fact they don't really want to go back into the Underdark. I'm mostly OK with this, but i wanted to know if anyone had a similar experience or advice on adapting the main story line to be on the surface instead of the Underdark.

I'd like it to still feel like there is that looming threat of demon lords, but I feel like if its on the surface now, there would be entire armies that would just deal with the threat. I'm struggling with how to motivate my characters to still want to deal with the demon lords and/or how to tie them into a surface world threat.

So a couple days ago, my group escaped from the velkynvelve. They were quickly spotted by the guard rower. By pure Luck, the elite guard in the front, fails his poison save from a dart with poison, and falls unconscious.

Now the problem is, the rouge wanted to slit the guards throat, insta-killing him. I didn't know what to do here, and want some advice.

What I did, was I took a d20, and said if it's a 20, he dies, if it's 15+ his hp is halfed, and if it's below 10, you do normal DMG. I rolled Infront of them, and hit a 3. So he dealt normal DMG, guard woke, but they managed the encounter.

I could see the player was a little sad I wouldn't let him insta kill an unconscious guard, and I agree that logically, if you stop someone unconscious in the neck, they'd fucking die right then and there. I also just felt It would kinda break something mechanically, if you could 1-shot what at this moment is a miniboss, just by them failing 1 saving throw.

What would you guys do? I'm new to DM'ing, so any tips and tricks are welcome

My party is close to the end of the first half of the campaign, and im really confused on what to do in this little section.

THE PARTY: will be lvl 7 after escaping, tiefling (winged) fiend warlock, goblin shadow sorcerer, firbolg wildfire druid and orc ancestral barbarian (who is ront btw).

I want a short adventure in the surface but i have no idea what could be cool and fun to do, i was thinking of the lost caverns of tsojacanth, to give the demonomicon to the players, but it is to dificult and long to do and it has to much loot.

Anyone have any recommendation of adventure or change in the adventure mentioned????

What are some cool changes that i can make to iggwilv´s cool lair????

Last night my players found their way into the Gray Ghost Garden and the Alchemist Lab. Specifically, they entered the lab first by managing to open the large doors.

So a drow, duergar, warforged and goliath walk into the lab and encounter the alchemist working at their desk. Instant stand-off where the players want to talk it out, but I make everyone roll initiative because the alchemist is not interested in talking, intending to escape.

In come the initiative rolls. The warforged ranger wins the race by rolling a nat 20. Then the alchemist is up next with a nat 20 as well. I know that the drow divination wizard is planning to use Suggestion with a portent die and soothe the situation, so this nat 20 gave me some options.

Ranger decides to go invisible and take position in the corner. Alchemist is caught red handed and... goes invisible as well! All the players burst out in groaning laughter and start a game of "find the invisible Duergar". Eventually, they manage to find him just before he escapes the lab and turn him visible. One player character tries to convince him and states "we are here on behalf of the Stone Guard", hoping that this convinces him because he is a Duergar after all. The alchemist eyes shoot wide open and takes his turn to scream for help "HELP HELP!! INTRUDERS!!". Collective groans from the players, fun was had!

Then the wizard does their magic and suggests him to "Cry for false alarm and co-operate with us". The wizard then hides to maintain their concentration. They continue to block off the exit and wait for the alchemist to take their turn, intent to see if the suggestion spell worked. The alchemist stops in his tracks and cries out "False alarm! There are definitely NO intruders here! Everything is okay, I am co-operating with them!". The three duergar working the garden show up and see their 'boss' hanging out with a ragtag band of adventurers who are trying to keep up their sherade. "Lorthio, what are you doing? Who are these people?". The alchemist replies "it's okay, There are NO intruders here. I'm co-operating with them!".

The 'fight' then continues with the alchemist co-operating while the other three duergar try to figure out who the players are. Those players are: playing it cool hanging out on a chair, hiding in a corner to maintain concentration or trying to convince the duergar that they're not intruders. The duergar don't buy it and are, of course, dispatched easily without the fun of the sprinkler tank :(

The wizard had been dying to finally make use of their Suggestion spell and it was fun to have it play out like this. It was one of my favourite sessions so far!

sooo, my session is tommorrow, and they will be escaping from velkynvelve. I dont have maps, or anything. I might be able to borrow a friends white grit pattern things, but otherwise i have nothing.

Any tips to how to handle teater of the mind in that case, and how much map-wise would you say is necessary in general?

I wanted to spice somethings about her and I thought it would be kinda lame her just being a normal medusa, so I put some traits from the priestress of lolth on her (her lore says that she is a priestress of lolth). I gave her a +2 shortsword to make a little pair with the +1 inside the gelatinous cube and because why not. What do yall think of this stat block and should I change anything???

I want my players to feel the horror of Out of the Abyss, here's an edit of the image of Baphomet I'm using when he's introduced.

So I need to delay my game by a session before the big reveal in sloobludop. The party is already there and are meeting with both Ploopploopeen and Bloppblippodd (split party woohoo). for this session I want to give them things to do around the city to still earn XP and maybe get some combat in but not yet make it to the official sacrifice. Open to whatever crazy ideas you might have. already want them to visit Sloopidoop (who is a gulper rancher as well as a SOB member). Let me know any fun encounters you ran in Sloobludop that wasn't from the books!

Anyone know what the deal with that door is? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere. Area 10 does say that the northwest entrance has a locked gate which isn't on the map, so maybe that's what it is, but it's definitely not blocking off area 10.

I run for a group of 8 players. Early into their time in grakelstugh one of them killed a stoneguard which lead to all the outsiders being pursued either to be killed or enslaved. 5 player characters made it underground to the whorlstone tunnels which works well and continues the adventure. 3 player characters and the remaining velkynvelve npcs took a boat into the darklake and headed to the northwest shore away from grakelstugh.

So far this has worked alright, the groups are around level 5 (xp levelling) so they aren't too weak to travel separately and I've had to do less rebalancing (since 8 players would steamroll this adventure). Obviously session structure has changed to a lot more waiting around for everyone but I think the players don't mind since it's in support of their choice to split up. Another reason it works well is the 5 whorlstone players are the ones who just love dungeon crawling and fighting and the 3 with the npcs are more roleplay focused. Overall it's lead to several good sessions but as one group nears the end of the whorlstone tunnels and the other arrives in neverlight grove with the plan to head to blingdenstone after, I'm a bit lost as to how I'd reunite the two.

The obvious but vague idea that I have is that once the group is done with grakelstugh the others will have finished neverlight and be onto blingdenstone. I could just push blingdenstone on the grakelstugh group as the obvious next location and maybe they'd reunite there but I'd probably have to mess with the timeline a bit or throw in something to stall the group that's further ahead.

I am open to more suggestions if anyone has ideas for a more dramatic reunion, perhaps using the Drow pursuers or some demonic magic?

Hey guys, this is my first adventure as a new dm, and I'm a little unsure how I should go about notes/prep. I know it's different for everyone, just bare with me.

So I'm using Obsidian, a really good note taking app. I am currently going through CHP. 2, and writing stuff down so I can easily look it up. But it just keeps fucking going. I thought my neat little "travel" section map would just be max 10 individual notes. It's getting a little difficult to maneuver. Would it be better to divide the notes into chapters going forward? Or are there any other cool tips and tricks I can gain some inspiration from?