Crothian
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Forge of Fury
The Forge of Fury is the second of Wizards of the Coast original series of modules. They are loosely connected and this one works just fine as a stand alone. This review is based on not just the reading of the module but also the using of the module in different campaigns. I have ran this one three times and played through it once. It is very much a dungeon crawl without a very good over all plot and as plots go it is probably the weakest of the series.
Forge of Fury is a module by Wizards of the Coast for the 3.0 edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The module is designed for groups of third level and is written by Richard Baker. The module like all of them in the series is just thirty pages long, soft bound, and done in black and white. The maps are easy to use and well done. The adventure has multiple levels and that is done well. As always with any adventure review there will be major spoilers so do not read them if your DM is going to run it for you.
The adventure takes the player characters into an old dwarven complex. There are other caverns and places to explore from the complex and the whole place has five different levels. Even with that many levels there are only fifty four encounter areas so each level is not that big and easy to deal with. The adventure hooks are rather poor. Perhaps the player character have found a map to this place or a noble man wants more swords thought to be here as one broken blade by a famous dwarven weapon smith was found here. At least that one deals with the title of the module. The final idea is go after the orc raiders that have been raiding some town. Of course the orcs are in control of this place now. The dwarves can not seem to hold on to anything these days.
The one thing that stands out in my mind the most about this adventure is that it wants to kill the PCs to teach them lessons. It is old school thinking and one of the worst old school philosophies still around. This place is a fortress built into a mountain. The main way in forces the PCs to go by many arrow slits and frontal assault is suicide. Even sneaking up to the front doors and somehow being able to get through them without any one realizing it is pretty hard. The orcs should be aware of attacks and even if the rogue can sneak by the sentries watching from the safety of the other side of the arrow slits the wizard and fighter being able to is going to be much more unlikely. On the other side of that door is a neat encounter with a rope bridge over a big pit making the place very hard to get an army through fast. The PCs could also have trouble here especially if they don’t notice the two secret doors. While it is cool for a defensive fortification it makes me wonder did the dwarves have to carry ore and supplies over the rope bridge or did they use one of the secret doors then go up a flight of stairs and take a long way around to get supplies into this place.
The module does suffer a bit from a wide range of monsters that don’t make a lot of sense. The stirges at least have the orcs staying away from them but on the other side of the stirges none of the creatures have tried to keep them away. The bear should at least have some dead stirges in the room or something and the troglodytes would be a good dinner for those creatures. The stirges and bear and the giant lizard and other creatures are tough but they are not the death if encountered like the Roper. It is really a bad adventure design to have an encounter that is supposed to teach the player character to run. This thing is a ten challenge rating, high armor class, hit points, and spell resistance. It has +18 to hide so will be very hard to notice and the way the map is by the time the characters can have line of sight on it they are easily within its fifty foot reach. By the time they realize they are in over their head a player character should either be dead or unable to be saved and it could easily be more then one. The biggest problem though is that most D&D adventures always have creatures in them that the PCs of a certain level should be able to defeat. The placing in there of one creature they can not with no warning makes no sense. It goes against one of the main aspects of the game and the CR system. There is also a Challenge Rating nine encounter in here that can also go really bad for the player characters. If they get through all of this the climatic encounter with the Black Dragon will seem like a breeze as it is only challenge rating four.
The Forge of Fury is a dungeon crawl that suffers from some bad plot and adventure design but over all it is till pretty fun. In two of the times I have played this the party ran into something that was too tough and it went bad. I found it much better for the over all game to just not include them. So if you run this just be careful or it will be total party kill.
The Forge of Fury is the second of Wizards of the Coast original series of modules. They are loosely connected and this one works just fine as a stand alone. This review is based on not just the reading of the module but also the using of the module in different campaigns. I have ran this one three times and played through it once. It is very much a dungeon crawl without a very good over all plot and as plots go it is probably the weakest of the series.
Forge of Fury is a module by Wizards of the Coast for the 3.0 edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The module is designed for groups of third level and is written by Richard Baker. The module like all of them in the series is just thirty pages long, soft bound, and done in black and white. The maps are easy to use and well done. The adventure has multiple levels and that is done well. As always with any adventure review there will be major spoilers so do not read them if your DM is going to run it for you.
The adventure takes the player characters into an old dwarven complex. There are other caverns and places to explore from the complex and the whole place has five different levels. Even with that many levels there are only fifty four encounter areas so each level is not that big and easy to deal with. The adventure hooks are rather poor. Perhaps the player character have found a map to this place or a noble man wants more swords thought to be here as one broken blade by a famous dwarven weapon smith was found here. At least that one deals with the title of the module. The final idea is go after the orc raiders that have been raiding some town. Of course the orcs are in control of this place now. The dwarves can not seem to hold on to anything these days.
The one thing that stands out in my mind the most about this adventure is that it wants to kill the PCs to teach them lessons. It is old school thinking and one of the worst old school philosophies still around. This place is a fortress built into a mountain. The main way in forces the PCs to go by many arrow slits and frontal assault is suicide. Even sneaking up to the front doors and somehow being able to get through them without any one realizing it is pretty hard. The orcs should be aware of attacks and even if the rogue can sneak by the sentries watching from the safety of the other side of the arrow slits the wizard and fighter being able to is going to be much more unlikely. On the other side of that door is a neat encounter with a rope bridge over a big pit making the place very hard to get an army through fast. The PCs could also have trouble here especially if they don’t notice the two secret doors. While it is cool for a defensive fortification it makes me wonder did the dwarves have to carry ore and supplies over the rope bridge or did they use one of the secret doors then go up a flight of stairs and take a long way around to get supplies into this place.
The module does suffer a bit from a wide range of monsters that don’t make a lot of sense. The stirges at least have the orcs staying away from them but on the other side of the stirges none of the creatures have tried to keep them away. The bear should at least have some dead stirges in the room or something and the troglodytes would be a good dinner for those creatures. The stirges and bear and the giant lizard and other creatures are tough but they are not the death if encountered like the Roper. It is really a bad adventure design to have an encounter that is supposed to teach the player character to run. This thing is a ten challenge rating, high armor class, hit points, and spell resistance. It has +18 to hide so will be very hard to notice and the way the map is by the time the characters can have line of sight on it they are easily within its fifty foot reach. By the time they realize they are in over their head a player character should either be dead or unable to be saved and it could easily be more then one. The biggest problem though is that most D&D adventures always have creatures in them that the PCs of a certain level should be able to defeat. The placing in there of one creature they can not with no warning makes no sense. It goes against one of the main aspects of the game and the CR system. There is also a Challenge Rating nine encounter in here that can also go really bad for the player characters. If they get through all of this the climatic encounter with the Black Dragon will seem like a breeze as it is only challenge rating four.
The Forge of Fury is a dungeon crawl that suffers from some bad plot and adventure design but over all it is till pretty fun. In two of the times I have played this the party ran into something that was too tough and it went bad. I found it much better for the over all game to just not include them. So if you run this just be careful or it will be total party kill.