Our second session of Descent into Avernus saw the characters continue their attack on the sewer-based hideout of the cultists of the Dead Three.

Ye gods!

We’d ended the first session with them winning in a tough fight against two cultists: a fist of Bane and an iron consul. The first order of the day was taking a rest. The dungeon, as written, doesn’t have much movement of the cultists between chambers, so I was happy for them to take a short rest for an hour. They’d need the hit points and, in the case of the warlocks, the refreshed spell slots.

The next area they stumbled into was the morgue, where they fought a swarm of undead rats (lovely idea!) and a master of souls. There was one problem: the master of souls was a 6^th-level caster with two fireball spells.

This is design I don’t agree with. A fireball spell, on average, does 28 damage. Most second-level characters will be rendered unconscious by one of those spells if they fail the save, and failing the save is incredibly likely. Two of them? And, given the choke point that the characters enter the area through – I detest five-foot-wide corridors with a party of five or more characters – it’s most likely they’re all still gathered together. That was the case with our party. They’d just killed the swarm of rats, and the next in turn was the master of souls.

Honestly, without any cheating at all, I could have obtained a TPK in this encounter. The only reasons I didn’t were (a) I rolled poorly for the fireball – 22 damage, (b) the players rolled incredibly well and all made the DC 14 saving throw, and (c) I decided she wanted to save her last third-level slot for the animate dead spell she’d been planning to cast when the characters disturbed her. Most of the characters were still bunched up (as they’d been trying to heal each other) when her turn came around again.

I’m all for difficult situations and challenging play, but fireball doesn’t give a second-level party a chance to realise they’re outmatched and retreat. The characters simply die.

The Dungeon of the Dead Three is an example of how not to design a dungeon in a narrative story. If the characters fail or have to retreat, the adventure ends. Because if I’m a member of the Cult of the Dead Three and half of our leaders are killed by a band of adventurers, I’m going to find a new hideout and lay low for a while. So how do the adventurers return to the plot? With a dungeon so big, the designers need to account for what happens if the party retreat and then return. How can the adventure continue? And this adventure doesn’t give that advice.

If you end up in such a situation, then wait a couple of days, have the cultists relocate to a new location, and draw a quick dungeon including the encounters that you didn’t run from the first one, possibly including a few extra cultists. The heroes’ contact from the Guild should be able to give them the address.

I was never gladder that we were using D&D Adventurers League rules and everyone had a bonus potion of healing. Those were all quaffed, and so we could continue with the dungeon.

The party of “everyone has darkvision” avoided the perils of the flammable gas room, and took out a few more cultists, rescuing Vendetta, a captive of the cult, on the way. Yes, Vendetta is a tiefling. Why do you ask?

Rescuing prisoners always allows for interesting decisions from the players. Or perhaps they’re not interesting. Do the players escort them out of the dungeon, continue with them in tow, or just leave them in a deserted area? In this dungeon, escorting them out is entirely feasible. Some players, however, don’t want to deal with the hassle of prisoners. They just want to continue exploring and not break the tension. Have an eye on how your players react and adjust accordingly.

One of the more amusing encounters happened later with a disguised cultist – the players were never aware that the elderly woman they were rescuing was indeed a cultist. However, just before she led them into a trap, they escorted her (and Vendetta) out of the dungeon. At least, I found it amusing – they never knew! I doubt Vendetta found it amusing when the disguise was revealed! Whether this character will reoccur later I don’t know. I’d like to think so!

It was an option to reveal her as she was escorted out, but it seemed like a suicidal thing to on her part, which is why I didn’t. NPCs want to live as well!

I permitted a lot of short rests in the dungeon. The final encounters were challenging, but not as insane as that with the Necromancer of Fireballs. And in the end, the players got to meet one of the people behind everything: Mortlock Vanthapur, son of one of the Dukes of Baldur’s Gate. And he turned into an ally of the characters as he now believed his family was planning to kill him! The party teamed up with him, eliminated the last cultists, recovered some treasure, and headed out.

That’s the shape of the second session. Over the two sessions, the Dungeon of the Dead Three took us about four hours to play through; you may find it takes you longer. Overall, I like the design of the dungeon – there are interesting challenges and it’s suitably creepy. However, one challenge being too hard and there being no back-up plan if the characters can’t complete it in a single expedition hurt it significantly. You need to be aware of the issues and have plans to deal with them.

The characters now advanced to third level, and the next session will see them acting on the information Mortlock gave them!