Devils and Demons at the Table: A Review of Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus

Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus (2019)
Written by: Wizards of the Coast
Genre: Tabletop Game
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Why I Chose It: I am always curious about the newest Dungeons & Dragons games, and this one heads straight into hell (literally). I had to check it out and see what adventures had been crafted.

The Premise:

Welcome to Baldur’s Gate, a city of ambition and corruption. You’ve just started your adventuring career, but already find yourself embroiled in a plot that sprawls from the shadows of Baldur’s Gate to the front lines of the planes-spanning Blood War! Do you have what it takes to turn infernal war machines and nefarious contracts against the archdevil Zariel and her diabolical hordes? And can you ever hope to find your way home safely when pitted against the infinite evils of the Nine Hells?

Spoilers Below

Discussion: One of the newer Dungeons & Dragons official adventures, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus opens up a realm of new possibilities. As a guide to an adventure, it starts characters at level 1 and runs the adventure up through level 13 as the heroes fight to save the world and survive the corruption of the Nine Hells.

The book wastes no time starting the adventure, as the holy city of Elturel has fallen into the pits of hell, and the city your heroes are in, Baldur’s Gate, is feared to be next. Conscripted to help keep order in the streets of Baldur’s Gate, the heroes quickly stumble into a plot of evil and must find a way to save the world from destruction.

The guide through the plot is fairly straightforward. Pre-written adventures in D&D are always challenging, because players can, and do, often go off script, and the book doesn’t include all possibilities. However, Avernus does a good job at keeping a basic enough plot outline that most parties will follow along without too much deviation.

There are some interesting new mechanics, like the war machines and rules for combat on vehicles. It’s a great system that puts a fresh spin on combat and lets players live out their Mad Max-inspired fantasies.

However, one new idea that did not work for my group was the idea of a party-shared “dark secret.” This mechanic is a good thought, and something that seems to be expanded in the next D&D book, Eberron: Rising from the Last War. In this implementation, it didn’t work. The idea of the dark secret is to provide some kind of unified history to help make a quick cohesive group. However, it felt incredibly forced, and not fitting for a group of mostly very good characters suddenly to have been involved in a murder.

While the idea of a shared history is a great unifying tactic (and appears to be expanded in the next book in the form of a group patron background option) a dark secret doesn’t provide many options for playing good-aligned characters. Forcing characters to immediately engage in evil activities didn’t work for the group I played with.

The idea of forced morality is common in the book, and characters will struggle to maintain a good alignment. Upon arriving in Avernus, after each rest, a character must make a saving throw. If that throw fails, the character becomes lawful evil with the potential for that effect to become permanent. A few bad dice rolls and goodbye little lawful good cleric!

Dungeons are set to be a challenge, and my party nearly got completely wiped out in the first dungeon we arrived in as level 2 characters. The fights are fast and hard with hardly any time to recover. I’d strongly recommend any group make sure they have a healer with them.

The layout of the book puts the adventure at the front and extra information, city names, non-playable characters, rules for devilish contracts, etc. are in the back. There’s a lot of flipping around, but overall it’s easy to find all the information you need.

Sample charts of how the adventure should proceed are at the start of each chapter and give a great road map of how the path forward should look. It’s a great at-a-glance guide that can help keep the adventure on track.

As always, the artwork is gorgeous and there are some truly fascinating and hilarious non-playable-characters, magic items, and fun additions to the Dungeons & Dragons canon.

In Conclusion: The adventure presents some great moral choices. Who do you trust, and who do you help when dealing with devils and demons? However, some of the “moral dilemmas” are decided by dice rolls, and that can force players to play characters they didn’t sign up for. If you’re looking for a dark, twisted ride where evil lurks behind every corner, this is the adventure for you. Just don’t sign any contract you can’t read.