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Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus starts in the city of Baldur's Gate, before your adventure takes you to the layer of Avernus within the Nine Hells.

Where does Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus take place?

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus is set in the year 1492 DR in the Forgotten realms.

When does Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus take place?

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus is designed to take players from levels 1-13 over the course of their adventure.

What level is Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus?

The events of Baldur's Gate 3 take place shortly after the story of Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and there are several characters and places that can be found in both!

Is Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus connected to the video game Baldur's Gate 3?

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus is an expansive adventure that can take 30-40 sessions on average, depending on the players and the choices they make!

How long does it take to finish Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus?

Cults, devils, demons, and worse! I’ve run this module twice and played it once, and I keep coming back to it. The first section clearly serves as a funnel into Chapter 2, but Baldur’s Gate is a fantastic setting, and the enemies you face there may not be what they seem.

From Chapter 2 onward, you’re thrust into the scorched wasteland of Avernus, filled with key locations that, with some work, can make for a compelling middle and end to the adventure.

Start in Baldur’s Gate, end up in hell—literally. No one leaves unchanged.

This madcap descent into Avernus is part Mad Max, part Faustian tragedy. The highlight? Moral dilemma after moral dilemma that can shake even the most hardened adventurers.

So your players want high-stakes adventure, infernal bargains, and the absolute worst road trip of their lives? Congratulations! Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus throws them from the crime-ridden, backstabbing streets of Baldur’s Gate straight into hell itself. Literally.

This campaign starts off gritty and political, with back-alley betrayals and cultist conspiracies, but quickly flips the table and sends your party on a one-way trip to Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells. Once there, they have to navigate an apocalyptic war zone, deal with scheming devils, and maybe—just maybe—save an entire city from eternal damnation.

Oh, and did I mention you get Mad Max-style infernal war machines? Because you do, and they run on demon ichor.

Pros:
✔ The opening in Baldur’s Gate is great—a grimy, morally grey intro that sets the stage perfectly.
✔ Avernus is METAL—the whole place is one giant, blood-soaked battlefield between devils and demons.
✔ Zariel is a fantastic villain—a fallen angel turned tyrant of Hell, and your party actually has a chance to redeem or destroy her.
✔ Infernal War Machines—hellish monster trucks that encourage reckless driving and vehicular demon-slaughter.

Cons:
✘ The tone shifts HARD—it starts as gritty, street-level intrigue and then suddenly, boom, welcome to Hell!
✘ The Hellscape can feel empty—without DM adjustments, Avernus can feel like a lot of wasteland with not enough stuff to do.
✘ If your players aren’t into moral dilemmas and devilish bargains, they’re missing half the fun.
✘ Some parts drag—certain sections lose momentum, especially if the party doesn’t engage with the war between devils and demons.

Final Verdict:
If your group wants a unique, high-stakes adventure filled with diabolical choices, epic battles, and the chance to ride a flaming death machine across Hell, Descent into Avernus delivers hard. If they just wanted another classic fantasy romp, this might be too much of a wild ride.

8/10 – Souls Sold Separately.

It's a lot of fun for anyone who likes to play combat-focused characters. The story leads into Avernus and has a great ending with many fun twists and turns. It's so much fun. I would recommend it to new and old players alike.

A fun adventure that touches on mad max (infernal engines) and adventure through the infernal planes

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus is a hell of a campaign!  The designers definitely took inspiration from Mad Max: Fury Road when they were putting the adventure together.  There are plenty of creative locations and NPCs--although the structure of the middle of the campaign can be a real railroad.  An experienced DM will probably want to rework it.
As a player you will run through several dungeon crawls in the early levels, before reaching Avernus.  Once there, there will be plenty of surprises.  The environment is fun to explore and experience.
As a DM, you will find that you need to put some extra work into Chapter 3, with has two parallel paths.  Each of these amounts to a series of fetch quests that can feel repetitive and even a little pointless in some places.  If you put in the effort to add some flexibility to the structure, you can strengthen the motivations of both PCs and NPCs, and end up with an unforgettable adventure.  
Final note:  You can stretch this adventure to level 20 by appending Chains of Asmodeus, produced by Arcanum Worlds, which takes the party through all Nine Hells!

Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus

Dungeons & Dragons 5e

Welcome to Baldur’s Gate, a city of ambition and corruption situated at the crossroads of the Sword Coast. 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?

Authors: Adam Lee, Bill Benham, M.T. Black, Dan Dillon, Justin Donie, James J. Haeck, James Introcaso, Chris Lindsay, Liane Mersiel, Shawn Merwin, Lysa Penrose, Christopher Perkins, F. Wesley Schneider, Amber Scott, James Sutter

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