War of Everlasting Darkness

(Description written by Chris Tulach)

The upcoming D&D Encounters season—War of Everlasting Darkness—is set to start Wednesday, October 31st. Chris Tulach introduces us to this new season, featuring higher levels, greater character options, and new encounter designs.

You’ve delved into the depths to uncover the drow threat in Web of the Spider Queen. You were able to live out your dark fantasies as the enemy in Council of Spiders. Now, the final chapter of the epic Rise of the Underdark storyline plays itself out in the War of Everlasting Darkness.

As Lolth reaches for her final goal to seize control of the domain of arcane magic left behind by Mystra’s death, she spins a dark web called the Demon Weave to replace the Weave the goddess of magic maintained. With it, she hopes to empower her servants to rise up from the Underdark and spread across the surface of Faerûn under shrouds of darkness. In the Silver Marches, a group of heroes emerges to put an end to Lolth’s dark dream and set things right in the Forgotten Realms. The season takes place over the course of about 2 years’ time (a popular story element last seen in March of the Phantom Brigade), and your characters grow throughout the story.

This final season of D&D Encounters in the Rise of the Underdark storyline will be epic, even if the tier is heroic. Realms-changing secrets will be revealed and your characters have a chance to participate in an important moment in the transition from the post-Spellplague Realms, to the Realms just prior to the events of The Sundering storyline announced at Gen Con Indy this year.

This season, we have three new features for D&D Encounters as the finale plays itself out.

Level Up Each Session!

We are trying something new this season. In order to play up the epicness of the story in War of Everlasting Darkness, we’ve decided to allow characters to level up at the conclusion of each session, rather than each chapter. Characters will progress from 1st to 8th level over the course of the season. You’ve been asking for higher-level D&D Encounters seasons, and this time we felt it was appropriate to do so.

Use Lots of Books!

In addition to leveling, we wanted you to have a more robust array of character options so you could create a variety of interesting characters to the higher reaches of the heroic tier. This season, you can use the following books for character creation:

·        Heroes of the Fallen Lands

·        Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms

·        Player’s Option: Heroes of Shadow

·        Player’s Option: Heroes of the Feywild

·        Player’s Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos

·        Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook

New Encounter Design!

Lastly, we wanted to try out some of the D&D Next design principles for encounters in the War of Everlasting Darkness. Namely, each session is more of a mini-adventure rather than an individual encounter, with a balance of interaction, exploration, and combat (the “three pillars” of D&D). Dungeon Masters are able to play a little loose with their sessions, and the adventure is more flexible and customizable as a result.

We’re really excited to make the final season of the multi-part Rise of the Underdark storyline a different experience for you this time out. There will even be some surprises not mentioned here!

Important note: If you are using the Character Builder to make your character you need to check the box labeled “Inherent Bonuses” in the section that is titled “Manage Your Character.”