From Here to Avernus

Tonight we finished Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. Despite by trepidations that we had not yet done all the sidequests we might have needed to do, as it turns out, we were fine. We got the "good ending" for the campaign, and we all leveled up to 14.

A couple takeaways:

SPOILERS AHEAD


First, I'm shocked at how we were able to fight some of the things we did.

While the final confrontation with Zariel for us wound up being more of an RP event (especially after our Arcane Trickster Rogue more or less ended the fight Zariel was having with a Balor with a single Hypnotic Pattern in the first round of combat,) there's an earlier part in which you play through a vision where Zariel repels Yeenoghu from a village in the material plane.

Our group, which at that point was, I think, level 11 or 12, beat Yeenoghu. Now, as it says in the book (I got the book last night, but I'm also good friends with the DM, who gave me the behind-the-scenes look at it) after a number of rounds during the vision, the angelic version of Zariel comes and saves the day. But we were doing well enough that we didn't actually need to be saved - apparently we actually got him down to zero on our own (after a slog of several demon fights.)

Yeenoghu is CR 24. I had assumed one would need to at least be level 17 or so to fight something that tough.

Granted, we had some very good players with some powerful builds (I'm also fairly proud of my use of Danse Macabre to create a wall of zombies the Gnoll Lord would have needed to burn attacks to get through to hit the casters - one of my zombies even survived a hit thanks to undead fortitude,) but I was shocked at how we were able to do that.

Given how epic the big boss fights in Critical Role tend to be, I'd really love to see what modifications, if any, Matt Mercer uses for them (the final fight in campaign one felt totally epic like a final fight should be.)

I'll also say I'm a little surprised at how little of the campaign was spent in the infernal war machines. Granted, given the profoundly disturbing way they work (they burn soul coins, which, when fully consumed, totally annihilate the souls of those trapped in the coins) might be for the best. I wonder if there were random encounters we didn't do or something, because that felt like it was going to be a bigger part of the adventure.

What's really crazy is that this is the first game (outside of Adventurer's League one-shots or a short "my friend wants to try DMing" adventure) that I've actually played through a whole campaign to its conclusion.

Now, this is an AL game, meaning my now-level-14 Hexblade Warlock can still be played in various mods. But I will confess that it's a little sad for it to be over. I do have to say that getting to higher levels as a Warlock is not as dull as people have made it seem to me. Sure, there's a massive toolbox I might have as a Wizard or something, but I do have a fair number of spells and the invocations give me a lot of options. I look forward to playing him in other contexts (though I think my other AL characters deserve some attention - I don't think I've played my monk in like six months.)