Once the characters leave Fort Knucklebone, we are into the section where they cross Avernus repeatedly. From place to place doing quest after quest. I will have more about those quests in the next post, but I just wanted to make some comments on travelling through Avernus.

Infernal War Machines

I assume that the primary way to travel through Avernus is to be by Infernal War Machine. I am not a fan of Infernal War Machines. They are a fine idea, but they tend to play poorly. I realised that the one fight with Infernal War Machines I enjoyed very much happened to be when you were on Fai Chen’s Wagon in Faces of Fortune – so, you were fighting infernal war machines rather than controlling one. And you were not fighting the war machine itself but rather the creatures on them.

The reasons I dislike war machines fighting each other comes down to two things: For the most part, the actions you can take on a war machine are not that interesting. And more importantly, if your war machine is damaged, repairing it is painful. You need spare parts. You need smith’s tools or tinker’s tools. For each hour you work on it, you need to make a DC 15 Dexterity check. And then it repairs 2d4+2 hit points. The game is about adventure – it is not about being a mechanic.

If a Demon Grinder hits your machine with its wrecking ball, it inflicts 40 bludgeoning damage. You start with the Tormentor which has 60 hit points. It does not take long in a battle to realise that this is less fun than it should be.

My advice? In a battle between war machines, make it about the characters and monsters involved. Use the chase rules to give complications that the drivers over the vehicles must overcome – on a failure, provide a penalty for everyone on that vehicle. But instead of the war machines attacking each other, have them target characters.

Is it better to have the characters on foot? Perhaps!

Encounters when Travelling

Descent into Avernus eschews a random encounter table for the description of three warlords the party might meet while travelling. It is worth noting this: Not every encounter need be hostile! The warlord might want to trade, make an alliance, or just swap stories and rumours.

Unfortunately, for most of this, you are on your own. The adventure is rather terrible at making travelling through Avernus exciting or dangerous. There is a chance of getting lost each time you travel. Unfortunately, the destinations are rarely interesting if you are not doing their related quest.

The question might also arise, “If we arrive at the wrong place, can’t we just travel again?” In such a case, I would say “You need to know from where you are setting out to find where you are going.” Or the characters need someone at the location to give them directions to the next. Actually making the location interesting is something I leave to you.

The product Encounters in Avernus – DDAL-legal for those who care about those things – provides 20 random encounters in the wastelands, as well as other material. You might also find inspiration from Random Avernian Wasteland Encounters, which is less professionally produced but has some good ideas. (I particularly like the encounter inspired by Dante’s Inferno). Both of these products give both creatures and context. Meanwhile, Avernus Encounters just gives bare tables of monsters without any context. These latter two products are not DDAL-legal.

It is worth noting that there is a distinct difference between an encounter that challenges characters travelling in an infernal war machine and one for characters on foot. If you roll randomly on a table, make sure to roll again if the result isn’t suitable for their mode of transportation.

Travel Time and Soul Coins

What happens when a group spy an encounter and want to avoid it? Or if they have to flee from one and take another track?

I like having encounters matter. If the group avoids it, then there is a penalty. An easy one to assess is a half-day or full-day extra to their travel. And, as the cost to use an infernal war machine is soul coins, this is a resource that the players need to replenish.

There are just a couple of problems with that:

First, maps are useless in Avernus. As a result, the time taken between areas is purely up to the DM.

Second, the number of soul coins the party finds is also up to the DM, since very few encounters give them as treasure.

My advice? Use the map. Use it to work out how long it takes to travel between locations.

You could use the individual monster treasure to allow monsters to have a chance of dropping soul coins; I would replace platinum pieces with soul gems. Perhaps try this table:

The exact values dropped may need to be adjusted based on how often your party fight. Note that the Warlords have the Soul Coins mentioned in the text.

Potential Encounter Motivations & Types

This is just the start of a list; you can add more types as desired.