Alternate start to the campaign
Rather than starting the campaign off in baldur's gate like the campaign has I instead had my players conducting a bank heist in Elturel. The session zero was to establish why each character was a part of the heist what their motive was for robbing this bank called the copper Drake Bank. Rather than the party arriving in Elturel while it's in avernus, I had them start by scoping out the area around the bank which allowed them to kind of explore Elturel before its descent. I can't recall because I ran this campaign so long ago, but I either had them start off at level 3 or 4 they were a party of five at the time and basically part of their heist was to scope out the bank security where they found that there were animated suits of armor as security. The head of the bank was a copper half dragon who had the codes to get into the vaults below. By chatting up with the employees and succeeding in persuasion checks, they could also uncover other security parameters within the bank like half of the riddle to one of the puzzles that opens the door to the vault. After the period of let's call it discovery/ Intel gathering, they went into planning mode which was how to deal with the various security measures. One of the players opted to go to the city's magic guild to learn about animated suits of armors and learned that they can be effectively shut off by the spell silence. I allowed the wizard player to purchase magical ink and parchment to craft scrolls of silence. They had to roll a DC 16 arcana check, otherwise they ruin the magical ink and scroll. The magical ink and parchment wasn't expensive but it wasn't a super affordable either I think the ink and the scroll were 10gp each, the ink could be used to write up to 3 scrolls. And every scroll they wrote they had to expend a spell slot. By the time of the heist, I believe they had crafted six or seven scrolls of silence. (Side note, every spell level above 1 that was transcribed into a scroll increased the arcane dc by that spell level and used that level spell slot ex. If the player wanted to make a scroll of fireball the DC is 18, banishment would be DC 19, cone of cold would be 20, ect) Meanwhile the rouge and warlock were mapping out routes in the sewers nearby for their escape route which later helped them navigate the city and avoid dangers when the city was pulled into Avernus. The cleric was "collecting donations" in front of the bank to get a pattern of what time is best to heist based on how busy the bank got.(These were perception/investigation checks). I forgot what the fighter was up to. The party had a "guy in the chair" it was a Nilbog named Gob (very original I know) who's legs were missing so he had a corner of a flying carpet wrapped around his waist to hover around with. He was a dm mouth piece to get ideas started and someone to verbalize the party progress as they checked off objectives.
At the time of the heist the party had mapped out the sewers, stocked up on scrolls of silence, spent a few days scoping out the clientele and how busy they got at peak hours, learned about the vaults and who had access to them. They also arranged for horses to be waiting for them just outside of town for a quick getaway.
Finally they showed up in 2 different groups during the low hours of business. the first group was the cleric and fighter who made an appointment with the head of the bank to store a "religious relic" (there was no such relic they just wanted to get the bank owner alone and to lead them through the vaults) so they went upstairs to his office. Oh yeah The layout for the bank was made in dungeon fog and it was based off of the bank in rainbow six siege like I literally just copied the layout from that and made it into a D&D map. Meanwhile, at various points there were animated suits of armor guarding different areas of interest. In the office of the bank owner, the owner eventually wanted to see The relic to gauge where in vault the relic would be as suited. Inside the office was a animated suit of armor. After both party members failed at speech checks to deceive the bank teller. The bank teller rolled an insight check with advantage to understand what was going on. He passed. He then ordered the animated suit of armor to detain the cleric and the fighter. That's my initiative began in the office. The fighter had to leave his weapon outside of the room so all he had were his fists. The bank owner held his turn as he rolled highest on initiative. The cleric was next. He used the scroll of silence, thus deactivating the animated suit of armor. The fighter then proceeded to restrain the bank owner and no one could hear the thing because of the scroll of silence. The fighter and the cleric then knocked out the bank owner. The warlock did some meta gaming and went upstairs to check everything out and found out that the bank owner was knocked out and one of the scrolls were used so they had to do charades to explain what happened. The three of them then proceeded to do their best weekend at Bernie's with the knocked out bank owner. The warlock did the heavy lifting with the persuasion checks to convince people that the bank owner was just deep in thought and didn't want to talk to anyone. The three of them managed to regroup with the rest of their party downstairs or in the main lobby area and together they went downstairs where they had their first security gate. This is where things fell apart. They had to to basically get a knocked out manager through what was effectively a TSA checkpoint and they couldn't manage that which then alerted security and all the animated suits of armors began to descend. Upon them, they started to place scrolls of silence behind them to prevent the suits of armor from pursuing them, and from there basically a mix of using the scrolls and fighting the 2 human guards which used the veterans that block.
They managed to get through that encounter and found themselves at a door with a locking mechanism and a lever. The locking mechanism had what look like a handprint in the metal. When One of the players tried to press their hand into it, a spike jetted out dealing 1d4 piercing damage. They eventually figured out that only the bank owners hand was allowed into the mechanism. Once the hand was in the mechanism, the lever had unlocked. The liver was on a radial dial so there were four positions based on the cardinal directions that the lever could be in. There was an icon of fire on the North position, a butterfly on the East position, a. Glacier on the south position and a skull on the west position. Basically whichever direction the Lever was pointed at the door would open to a pocket dimension. The skull led to the shadowfell, The butterfly led to the feywild, The fire led to the plane of fire and the glacier led to the plane of ice.
If the players went through the plan of fire a. Spectral gold dragon wyrmling would blast the players with its fire breath. If the players went into the feywild room they would realize that they are surrounded by blink dogs that would start to chase them out of the room. If they went into the glacier room they would slowly take cold damage until they left. Finally the room to the shadow of hell just had an animated skeleton holding a box of Bones. The key to this puzzle is you grab the bones from the shadowfell. You bring them to the feywild where you could play fetch with the blink dogs. The blink dogs would follow you back into the main room and not attack you. Then you'd bring the blink dogs to the plane of fire where the spectral dragon wyrmling was excited to play with his friends. The blink dogs and in return would melt the glacier within the ice room revealing the door to the main vaults.
After going through that ordeal, the party made it to the final room with the vaults. However, they still had to deal with the inventory manager which was a spectator which was their little boss fight and finally they could access the wealth that was stored in the vaults. In the room there were a series of chests, two of which were mimics. So if the party picked poorly, they had to deal with those encounters. After they've collected some of the items and gold because they still had to lock picks the chests. And some of the chest had really high DC's because they held really valuable items so they could only get what they could get. But basically when they were finished collecting their goods, the players felt an earthquake from the vaults. The player still had. I think two scrolls of silence at this point maybe one. One they ran out of the bank hoping to reach the nearby sewer grate just outside. But upon exiting the bank, they found themselves and the city in avernus.
From there they ran back to the tavern in which they had planned The heist from because there was all sorts of chaos going on in the city. They rolled an encounter table for every 5 blocks that they moved to get from the bank back to the hideout. On their way they had a scripted scene where they ran into, I can't remember her name but she was the young paladin that you meet in baldur's gate. And then once the party made it back to the tavern which was their main hideout that's when the descent into avernus campaign began. Where they were going to try and find other survivors and make it to the high Hall or whatever its name was. I ran this like 5 years ago but I felt like finally sharing the story. We were trying to play decent into avernus before the release of Baldur's gate 3.
Let me know your thoughts. I'm interested to know how I could improve this. I had a lot of fun making it and running it and I thought it'd be fun to share.
Thank you.