D&D 5E Enhancing Vecna: Eve of Ruin *SPOILERS*

[pukunui]

Hi all,

Now that some people have Vecna: Eve of Ruin in their (digital) hands, I thought it might be a good idea to start one of these Enhancing threads.

There will be SPOILERS in this thread obviously! Click away if you're going to be playing in this adventure.


Let's begin with the fact that the main adventure covers levels 10 through 20, but there's a free one-shot prelude, Nest of the Eldritch Eye, that is for 3rd level PCs. While you could just run the one-shot at 3rd level, then fast forward the PCs to 10th and start the main adventure right away, you could also run something else to start with, inserting Nest of the Eldritch Eye at the most appropriate time. Luckily the adventure provides the PCs with some boons that may help them remember Vecna for a while afterwards.

Bear in mind that Nest of the Eldritch Eye involves an encounter with Vecna cultists in Neverwinter ... and Eve of Ruin begins in much the same way. It could feel a bit redundant if you skip from the former straight into the latter.


I'll add to this post as time allows. Consider this a placeholder for now.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Some of us have it our physical hands as well!

What I'm planning on doing is just move all the Neverwinter sections to Baldurs Gate, and run the first chapter of Descent into Avernus, interpolating the Nest of the Eldritch Eye among all the cult activity in that section (cultists of the Dead Three and of Tiamat, all of which are being played for patsies by the cult of Venca). After finishing that section at around levels 4 - 5, with what info they've gathered, they'll move to Chult instead of Avernus, as I'll be running the second half of Tomb of Annihilation, as Acererak's scheme there with the Soulmonger is actually to empower Vecna's ritual (which is what Alustriel felt, arousing her suspicions; I'll have the leaders of Baldur's Gate name-dropping Alustriel as having heard of what they've learned of Vecna, which will make her introduction and activities segue much easier when the main plot of V:EoR kick off).

After some debate, I chose Baldurs Gate over Neverwinter simply because it's a better-developed location in 5e for the characters to explore and interract with, and because it will take less work to change a few names/locales in Neverwinter to Baldurs Gate than vice versa.

I'm also thinking about not having Mordenkainen/Kas know exactly where the first piece of the Rod is, and so the party will have to venture to the Plane of Air to gain the help of the Wind Dukes of Aaqa. I'll probably have them state they can construct an item that can track down the first piece, but need something or somethings to create it. I'm leaning towards needing a piece of pure elemental ice from the Frostfell/Paraelemental Plan of Ice, guarded by cold-associated creatures such as winter wolves, frost giants, and white dragons. Since Tomb of Annhilation features the Ring of Winter, perhaps that can be used as well (temporarily until the first piece is found and the tracking item is no longer necessary) as a component.

 

[vecna00]

I'll be following this thread, but I won't really have anything to add to it. I do plan on running the adventure, but I just need to figure out getting a group comprising of half brand new players to 10th level in the meantime!

 

[pukunui]

One question I have is: how well would it work to run Turn of Fortune's Wheel then this? If you skip the level-jump at the end, ToFW goes to level 10, while EoR starts at level 10. Could you insert the 17th level ToFW finale into EoR or would it not really work? Could you ignore the ToFW finale? I feel like you could insert Nest of the Eldritch Eye early in ToFW, placing it in Sigil instead of Neverwinter.

Thoughts?

 

[Shiroiken]

As I'm a Greyhawk fan, I'm toying with starting the campaign in Greyhawk instead of the Realms. I'm not as familiar with the details of Neverwinter's politics, so it might be easier for me to make adjustments to Dyvers. The real issue I would have is with the motivation for the end of the adventure. I'm going to use a spoiler in case my players are reading my posts.

Spoiler: Greyhawk Issue

The Chime of Exile will return Vecna to Oerth if the party is successful. This means that the party is willfully bringing Vecna back to their home, making it worse. I'm toying with adding a final chapter where the party faces off with Vecna again. They'll need to destroy him the same way that Kas did, re-creating the Hand and Eye to be found in the world once again (I assume they were returned to him or were destroyed when he ascended to godhood). I might bring the Sword of Kas into play for this part, but I'm not sure.

 

[vecna00]

One question I have is: how well would it work to run Turn of Fortune's Wheel then this? If you skip the level-jump at the end, ToFW goes to level 10, while EoR starts at level 10. Could you insert the 17th level ToFW finale into EoR or would it not really work? Could you ignore the ToFW finale? I feel like you could insert Nest of the Eldritch Eye early in ToFW, placing it in Sigil instead of Neverwinter.

Thoughts?

Having not fully read ToFW, I think one of the main things would be if you want to deal with the glitched characters for that long. I think some people might shy away from that, but others might love it!

 

[BeachRat88]

Re-posting my post from earlier today on a dif thread...

I'm working on making this adventure more open and less linear. Thankfully, my EoR campaign won't start for several months while we continue/wrap up our current campaigns... so I have time to work this out!

[Apologies for its rambling nature but this is essentially a stream of consciousness!]

Before I get started... I'm probably going to move Kas to his own separate thread. I don't like his current place in the narrative but definitely believe he should be working to thwart/supplant Vecna. I'll probably make him focus of one of the Piece quests.

Now for the de-linearizing bit...

The first step is to make assembling and using the Rod of 7 Parts absolutely critical to breaking Vecna's ritual (instead of being a "nice to have" as it is currently). This shouldn't be hard to do though as the Rod is the principal artifact of Law vs Chaos.

Next, it's too convenient in my mind for Kas (and therefore the players) to know where the 1st piece is immediately and doing so also robs the players of much of their decision making power. Given that, I'm planning to mix up the locations for the Rod pieces and have them start with hints/pointers to the the 7th piece. Doing this will force them to have to figure out how to find the other parts and to decide how to go about retrieving them.

How might they do that? It occurs to me that Asmodeus's influence, and the Nine Hells, is noticeably mostly absent (a piece is in Avernus, but the devils are really not players in this campaign). Vecna's and the various demons' plans would tip the balance of the Blood War (and Law vs Chaos) if successful. Therefore, it makes sense for the devils (who are also somewhat "champions" of law) to be working against the chaos that Vecna and the demons are wreaking and planning to wreak. It's plausible that Asmodeus's minions might have knowledge of the location of a piece or two but that retrieving it will require even higher level PCs and the risk of the fine print of a contract.

I'm also considering adding one or more of the Hounds of Law. They could present another opportunity for the players to learn the locations of some of the other pieces and also preliminary knowledge of the threat level involved in retrieving them.

In short, rather than giving the party the location of piece 1 and setting them off down the tracks, I'm going to give them knowledge of where to get the 7th and then the task/choice of figuring out where to go next. In the next steps, they'll determine the location of a couple more of the pieces but also the risk/threat involved in obtaining them. At this point they'll be faced with the choice of going after the 1st given its extreme level of difficulty, or following their leads to the more achievable 3rd/4th pieces.

Lastly (for now), it occurs to me that even for a god, remaking the multiverse would be a feat requiring a tremendously incredible amount of magical energy. I recall that the obelisks were originally designed to allow an ancient civilization to reset a particular timeline in the event of a calamity and that Vecna now controls them somehow. It would seem that he would need to add in the power of the obelisks (or something, maybe several somethings? maybe the Rod?) to have enough magic to pull this off.

Anyways, this is what I've come up with so far. Any comments, suggestions or ideas are most definitely welcome!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Beyond the set up, I'm also thinking of adding a few extra encounters in at least the Spelljammer and Dragonlance sections to showcase more creatures of those settings. They currently each have a few, but they could definitely have some more added. Dragonlance will definitely get some draconians added (there is a section with some veterans, which are CR 3, which is right in the center of the draconian CR range, but I would add at least one other encounter featuring them), as well as adding at least one actual standard dragon encounter (the Dragonlance section, oddly, only has a lunar dragon to be encountered, which is not a typical Dragonlance dragon; I don't mind keeping it, but let's have a regular dragon appear as well in the setting with "dragon" in the name!).

Honestly, the adventure is oddly standard dragon lite. Yeah, there are some oddball ones like the spyderdragon and the lunar dragon, and a dragon in the Avernus section that the party really isn't supposed to encoutner or defeat (it's in a "well, if they insist on going this way" section), but nothnig much on your typical dragon encounters. I mean, it's a high-level campaign - parties should be encountering a reasonable number of standard dragons at this pint in their careers! So I'll try to sprinkle in some extra dragons here and there (such as the white dragon in the Frostfell I mentioned earlier).

 

[TheGlen]

I've been thumbing through it, and sharing it with some of the other lore channels to see what they think. Most of them are disappointed. There's a lot of continuity errors so working on replacing most of the adventures with something a little bit more epic.

Made some changes to the wizards three. Mordie isn't being impersonated it's actually him. Tasha is not there she's replaced with a hag from Eberron. First she's a mortal enemy with her grayhawk counterpart and second she's the mother of demons which considering what's going to happen at the end doesn't make any sense.

The party is going to encounter Kas before he gets the rod so it's just not a Scooby-Doo twist. The Death House section is being completely scrapped and replaced with a visit to the domain of Khorr wherr failed domains are destroyed by a black hole. He helps them get the rod but secretly follows them when they leave as he has discovered their plans.

The party is going to consist of an adventurer from six different settings. They are pulled out of time and space by Simurgh, a Mystaran Immortal who's only job is to protect the multiverse from destruction. When the wizards make their wish he twists it and sends them the people they need. He can't get directly involved because Vecna Is a god and the gods and immortals don't get along.

Dragon Lance is going to be completely scrapped and involve trying to steal the rod from Lord soth's Castle before he arrives with his army of death knights. Also because the guy that was giving us our Dragon Lance information pointed out that werewolves don't exist in Krynn. None of the lycanthropes do. There's a list of creatures that don't exist in that setting and they're like number three.

Kas gets the rod in a brute force sneak attack. He just bum rushes everybody with a bunch of greater demons. The party has to go stop him is the wizards hold back the horde and they happen to be the only ones not fighting a Balor.

Just have to work on the dark sun part now to replace the casino

 

[Bitbrain]

Well, I don’t have the book myself yet, but I have read quite a few spoilers for it and plan to run a reworked interpretation of the adventure in a few years time. The assorted jumble of ideas I have so far are as follows:

Players will have the freedom to go after the first six pieces of the rod in whatever order they wish. Only after they assemble the first six together will the seventh and final piece’s location reveal itself.

BBEG already has the seventh piece of the rod and needs the others for his magic ritual, but he needs the pieces disconnected from each other.

Locations visited (and the settings they belong to) will be a mix of official and 3rd party.

Spoiler: Basic Layout

• Sigil (Planescape) — demiplane city and home base. Where the PCs are summoned and return to after collecting each piece so they can rest up, before going back out to find the next fragment.
• Elemental Plane of Air — flying castle and smallest region. Where the PCs are sent to get the information from a noble djinn on where the first six fragments are located. Dude is genuinely helpful with the information and will also offer to grant each PC a single limited wish, but the more wishes the djinn grants, the harder the endgame will be.
• Shrine of Miska, Greyhawk — underground complex, no idea where yet. Fragment #1’s location. Cultists, spider-monsters, hill giants, demons, and poison-breathing spider dragons.
• Nyhem Stretch, Mystara — arctic shoreline near Ostland’s Isle of Dawn Colonies. Fragment #2’s location. Gnolls, arctic monsters, frost giants, winter dark fey, and white dragons.
• Astral Sea, Spelljammer — asteroid archipelago and largest region. Fragment #3’s location. Githyanki, space monsters, space traveling cloud giants, beholders, and solar (?) dragons.
• Ringing Mountains, Dark Sun — desert foothills between the city-state of Tyr and dwarf-town of Kled. The most dangerous region. Fragment #4’s location. Desert brigands, mutant desert monsters, psionic beasthead giants, chitin golems, and stone rubble-breathing earth drakes.
• Hornsaw Forest, Scarred Lands — snake-corrupted forest, northeast of the necromancer-city of Hollowfaust and southwest of the Broadreach Elf tribes. Fragment #5’s location. Unredeemed asaatthi serpentfolk, hornsaw unicorns and scarn gorgons (think type 2 yuan-ti malisons), fomorians, forest-dwelling hags, and lightning-breathing woodwrack dragons.
• Talenta Plains, Eberron — Dino-riding halfling steppe. Fragment #6’s location. Renegade warforged, dinosaurs, warforged titans, living spells, and maybe brass dragons (in Eberron, metallic dragons can be just as evil as chromatics and vice versa).

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten so far.

EDIT - removed a sentence that doesn’t really make any sense.