5 out of 5 stars

  • Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
  • Author: Brian R. James and Matt James
  • Released: September 23, 2009

So, WotC seems to be getting sloppy with it’s article releases as this one wasn’t there yesterday when I was reviewing articles, but is dated as one of yesterday’s releases.  Presumably it went up sometime yesterday in the late afternoon or evening so the date isn’t a lie.  However, this isn’t the first time that’s happened and one is forced to wonder if WotC is really going to be able to make the shift to 5-days-a-week publishing if they can’t have articles in the queue the night before they are supposed to be published so that they appear on the website on time.

The adventure itself, however, is a good one.  Set in and around Phlan in FR, the adventure is designed for 13th level PCs and sets them to work protecting the region from primordial forces.  Consisting of just 7 encounters (1 roleplaying, 4 tactical, & 2 skill challenges) by default (there are several suggestions for where additional encounters could be added) the adventure has a 21,600:21,150 ratio of non-combat XP to combat XP.  Yes, you read that right.  If the PCs do everything that collects them XP in this adventure they will get more XP out of combat than in.  However, 4,000 of that non-combat XP requires the players to perform an action which can’t exactly be considered good.  As a result, most parties are going to miss out (or at least should) on that XP source.  Personally I don’t like this, as it penalizes players of good or lawful good characters who actually play their character correctly.  There should be a way for good characters to have gain the same XP without “affect[ing] their alignment.” Taking out this “non-good” XP, the ratio drops to 17,600:21,150 but that is still a much higher proportion of XP from non-combat sources than we are used to seeing in a Dungeon adventure.  Adding some of the extra encounters (none of which are detailed, but all of which are tactical) would obviously shift the XP ratio more toward combat, as would poor performance in the final encounter when 4 minion reinforcements arrive each round until the PCs manage to seal the portal through which they are coming.  Even so, this kind of ratio is really neat to see and something I hope to see more of in Dungeon.  It really serves as an excellent example of how to reward the players for advancing the story rather than just killing monsters.

In addition to the usual elements one would find in a Dungeon adventure, this adventure also contains two more which I find particularly useful.  First, after setting the background for the adventure, there is a 1-page timeline of the events in the adventure before actually getting to the adventure details.  This “quick summary” is bound to help the DM keep track of not only what has happened but what is yet to come if they are forced to split the adventure over multiple sessions.  With it, one can read that page to figure out where the PCs are relative to the whole timeline and then focus on just those elements of the adventure which are likely to come up in the next session.  It’s a highly useful tool for the adventure as a whole, and when the concept is repeated in the details of the adventure to describe a travelogue section of the adventure the generality of the timeline as a tool is emphasized.  The second unusual element is an Adventurer’s Notebook in the appendix.  During the course of the adventure, the PCs acquire several clues as to what is going on and how to solve the “puzzle” that leads to the successful resolution of the adventure.  However, unless the PCs are especially studious, it’s easy to forget what all the clues discovered so far were when coming back to the game after a week (or more) between sessions.  The Adventurer’s Notebook helps with this by collecting all the clues into one place.  With them the DM doesn’t have to hunt through the adventure to find all the clues the PCs may have collected when they need a refresher.  Similarly, if the DM prefers handing out the clues to the players, these pages can easily be printed out, cut up, and handed to the players at the appropriate time without disturbing any of the material the DM needs during the sessions themselves.  Just be careful with Entry 5 if doing this.  I find both of these unusual elements highly useful and hope other adventure designers take a hint from the James brothers.

Finally, the adventure features an idea that I first heard of back when 4e was new, but which I haven’t seen much of since: storing rituals.  While back then it was a house rule idea, in this adventure we find official rules for the practice in the form of a magical item which can do just that, allowing PCs to access a ritual in combat with just a single skill check.  In the case of this adventure the item serves to provide the characters with a special ritual that they wouldn’t otherwise know and which has not practical use beyond this adventure, but the idea is one that I could definitely see being very useful in a more general sense.  Unfortunately, the item’s statistics list its value as “priceless” making the item more of a MacGuffin than a serious proposal.  However, the simple fact that the item appears here, and thus will be in the Compendium starting next month, may provide the necessary impetus for some real rules to result for this idea.