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Lanathar: As far as your concerns about Rivozair finding the heroes, Corinstian Grivener can use the scrying font in the temple to locate the heroes, correct? So, Corinstian could locate the heroes, and tell Rivozair where they are.

Personally, I think it would be awesome if the dragon attacks while the group is split. Two here battle the dragon on the causeway while the other two see it from a distance and try to get there as fast as they can. Seems like it would be awesome as long as the two heroes not in the battle don't get bored.

I ran the temple mass combat this past saturday, and it went extremely well. It was three waves of bad guys, and then on each turn, I'd describe one of the NPC allies fighting one of Thrune's goons. How the character did on their turn dictated how that particular battle went. A number of important NPCs croaked:

- Gut-Tugger, the awakened dinosaur, was killed by the hell wasp swarm.
- Both Solstine siblings were killed by clay golems.
- A member of one of the group's NPC Rebellion Teams, "Ice Cold Stan Boston" was killed when Zella Zidli applied a sleeper hold (my campaign is stupid).
- 1 of the kenku sisters was killed by a blood golem.
- Mantice Kaleeki was almost killed by a vampire spawn, but the heroes dropped everything to save her.

I was a bit concerned during the first phase, as the group mopped the floor with Corinstian Grivener. I screwed up the elevation. If you look at the map, I think that central area is raised, but then the central area is a pit. The means that the group doesn't have line of sight on the creatures in the pit.

I didn't realize that until it was too late.

I had the bells go off every round, though i "nerfed" the bell of infernal darkness. For this battle, the blindness was just for one round, rather than permanent. The bells worked great.

For the second wave, the erinyes flew above and rained down arrows on the group. She was a much bigger threat! It turns out that my waves worked out perfectly - increasing in difficulty without being too overwhelming. Thanks to the song of silver being in effect, the necromancer's skeletal archers fired off volleys of silver arrows that did a lot of damage to the erinyes.

Once the erinyes was dealt with, Barzillai jumped down from the balcony. I don't know if any of you use syrinscape, but it has a "Barzillai taunt" button that I love. The syrinscape sound set for Hell's Rebels is absolutely awesome. They even have a different sound for each of the Devil's Bells.

The group began fighting Barzillai, but we ran out of time. We'll pick it up next week. We should get to the infernal engines and the profane belfry too, I hope.

You can check out the mass battle on youtube here.

I've been running this adventure path and converting it to D&D 5th edition along the way. I absolutely love Hell's Rebels and my group likes it a lot as well.

A few weeks ago, I sat down and prepared the rest of the path. Now, I can link/foreshadow things 100 times better and it has made my games "deeper", if that makes sense.

A few notes for those running the path who might not have read all the way through:

Jackdaw: When the group frees Jackdaw, she can tell them about how when she sang the song of silver, a pit fiend named Ougorthan appeared and killed two of her fellow OG Silver Ravens, Kyda and Amyreid. This info made my group extremely paranoid when singing the song of silver! the group meets Ougorthan in Book 6, page 43.

Thirothryn: I had Jackdaw also mention that later, a ghael azata named Thirothryn contacted her and vowed to hunt down the pit fiend. Thirothryn is captured and in hell in Book 6, page 53.

Red Dragon: Have the group find out that Barzillai once killed a red dragon named
Adrakash. This will hopefully impress the group and it foreshadows undead Adrakash's appearance in book 6, page 33.

Hag: Maybe work in a reference to an evil old hag named Nasperiah who used to abduct Kintargans. She's now a witchfire down by the soul anchor in book 6, page 36.

Noble: Place Carliss Mayhart as a prisoner in Kintargo Keep!! Check out book 5, page 20. He was part of a scandal/murder that was probably big news in Kintargo until the Night of Ashes took place.

Figurine: It is noted in Book 4 on page 57 that Barzillai himself owns a corrupted silver raven figurine of wondrous power. It burrows into your body like a scarab of death. I had him send this thing to deliver a message to the group and when they touched it - burrow. Worked out great.

Asmoden: I had Hetamon Haace (he is a love interest of one of the heroes in my campaign) tell SOME of the story of Andax Tasetas, the priest who was brutalized by the Asmodeans and eventually became the undead entity Asmoden in Book 4 page 57. I wanted to tell his tragic tale and mention that his arm was cut off, as this might make the subsequent discovery of this dude's arm more interesting. Hetamon is unaware, however, that Andax lives on as an undead abomination.

Solstines: Also, if possible, place the Solstine siblings (they are described only as "hot-headed would-be rebels" in book 5) in this book somewhere, fighting on the side of the rebels. They should die. This will set up the group's encounter with Raenna Solstine in Book 5, page 21.

Aside from all that stuff, I love the authority points gimmick but there came a point when I just stopped tracking the numbers and went by feel.

Once I found out that there is a scrying font in the temple of Asmodeus (book 4 page 51) I would decide a time of day that Corinstian Grivener would scry on the group, and then see what the group was doing/saying at that time. This ultimately enabled Barzillai to use the orb of storms to trash the group's folding boat and nearly drown them when they were crossing the river.

In my game, the group is about to fight the blue dragon Rivozair for the second time (the group surprised attacked the dragon while it was blowing up buildings during a reprisal).

I felt like the Song of Silver performance should have been more dramatic, so I fleshed it out a bit. I toyed with the idea of having the pit fiend Ougorthan show up, and having the rest of the group hold the pit fiend off until the performance was done. I probably should have done that!

Instead, I let the group learn that a pit fiend had attacked when Jackdaw performed it way back when. They were very paranoid. I had the group roll initiative:

Round 1: Small pieces of the opera house ceiling fell, the building shook. I asked each player what they did, they positioned themselves, ready for an attack.
Round 2: The ceiling glowed silver, the performer (Fio, the party's bard) began to hover and glow.
Round 3: Fio let out a magical pulse that spread through the entire city. I had her and the heroes make checks to withstand it, stunning them on a fail. The group's weapons glowed as the boons kicked in.
Round 4: Fio chose who got the individual boons. With each choice, a silver beam of energy struck that character, who had to make a save or be stunned.

Once it was done, they heard the devil's bells ring and a loud roar erupted from the temple district. Barzillai had ordered Rivozair, the blue dragon, to go to the opera house to destroy the silver ravens.

After that battle is dealt with, there's nothing left to do but to attack the Temple of Asmodeus. I've been dropping hints/clues about the temple, having the devil's bells ring out over the city, and making sure the group knows that the bells supposedly can do things to non-believers of Asmodeus inside the church.

I've also made it clear to the heroes that there are TONS of bad guys in the church. When preparing it, I was kind of groaning - this church is full of combats. If I ran it as a "dungeon", the church would take months to get through and I think the group would get bored.

Instead, I am going to run it as a sort of mass combat. The group is rallying all of their teams and allies, such as the Order of the Torrent, tieflings from Red Roof, etc. I'll run this as the group fighting waves of major foes (probably 3 waves, starting with Corinstian and ending with Barzillai) while their NPC allies fight the other monsters that inhabit the church.

I absolutely LOVE this path and look forward to it every week. We play on twitch and you could watch our stuff on youtube if you're planning on running this path, although unfortunately up until around episode 30, I wasn't able to foreshadow properly because I hadn't read the whole path.

Of the things I really wish I could have foreshadowed, it would be the businesses on the bleakbridge (would have been great to use when the heroes go shopping), the church of asmodeus (I'd have loved for them to visit the church and check out the "gift shop" inside), and generally I want another crack at running the dinner in Book 3 (which is one of the coolest things I've ever run). It went pretty well, but I wish I had read everything bout Hei Fen so I could have really depicted her in a more menacing manner while she was sitting at the table with the adventurers.

Our latest episode (where they sing the song of silver) is right here.