John Cooper
Explorer
THE SINISTER SPIRE
By Bruce R. Campbell and Ari Marmell
Wizards of the Coast product number 107977400
64 pages, $19.95
SPOILER WARNING: The review that follows contains spoilers for the adventure; please do not read any further if you're a player who may end up running his PC through The Sinister Spire. You'll just ruin your own fun.
The Sinister Spire is the second adventure in the three-part series that started with Barrow if the Forgotten King, although technically it can also be used as a standalone adventure (you'll just need to use a different adventure hook to get your PCs into the adventure).
The cover art, by Steve Prescott, is a bit of a giveaway to the adventure's "big bad evil guy" (or in this case, gal), as it depicts Fadheela, a female medusa/yuan-ti halfblood crossbreed standing by a petrified Redgar. (While I still wouldn't recommend the DM letting his players see the cover for fear of giving away the main enemy, at least there's nothing that speaks of Fadheela's yuan-ti heritage in the painting.) An Underdark city stands in the background, and the painting is well-done in terms of detail, color palette, and shading.
The interior artwork consists of 9 black-and-white illustrations by Wayne England. I particularly liked the two skum on page 9 rising up out of the depths with their aboleth master (Wayne manages to make the skum look every bit as deadly and menacing as lizardfolk or troglodytes, whereas I was never particularly impressed by the illustration they got in the Monster Manual) and his illustration of Fadheela in her serpentine form on page 31 (which brings back memories of the "greater medusa" from earlier incarnations of the D&D game). Accompanying the illustrations are 18 black-and-white maps by cartographer Mike Schley, who also provides the 7 full-color maps on the inside covers (which, like many adventure products, are not attached to the pages of the adventure booklet so the DM can reference both at once). I've always liked Mike's maps - they're easy to read and easy to follow.
The Sinister Spire is intended for a party of four 5th-level PCs, who should reach 6th or 7th level by its conclusion. Since it's written to allow it to be used immediately after the events of Barrow of the Forgotten King (literally moments after the conclusion of the first adventure), it allows PCs to advance from 1st-7th level in a matter of mere days, which is something I still shake my head at - but you probably don't want to hear about that. I imagine you're more interested in the adventure itself, and how the monster stats turned out.
The layout is the new format, where there are 1- or 2-page spreads at the end of the booklet that should allow you to run that particular encounter without having to flip to open up other books. In that regard, it works pretty well, although again I note that there are monsters taken from a variety of sources (Libris Mortis, Monster Manual III, Monster Manual IV) with nary a hint as to where to find their original listings. As most of the creatures that the PCs will end up fighting do not have illustrations handy, this is a bit of an oversight, and it could easily have been added without taking up any extra space (just slap "(Libris Mortis, page 88)" or whatever on the same line as the creature's hit points).
The adventure is divided into several sections. The PCs start out at an earth node, either from having followed the tunnel from the forgotten king's tomb in the previous adventure or being hired to track down the stolen bones of the king or however else the DM gets them involved in the adventure. There's a nice, creepy encounter with various sizes of monstrous cockroaches in the earth node, and then the PCs can teleport over to the Great Grotto, an area of the Underdark that includes the somewhat-ruined city of Pedestal. There are some encounters along the way, and then once in Pedestal the PCs end up storming the Necromancer's Spike, a multi-story fortress lair carved out of an enormous, merging stalagmite/stalactite column.
There were a few areas where I thought there could be some problems for some PC parties. First of all, in the city of Pedestal, the PCs end up dealing with a unique undead creature named Es Sarch (I'm not a real fan of his name, as it sounds kind of silly), a lichlike (but not a lich) information broker. I know that won't sit very well with many paladin or good-aligned cleric PCs; I know I'd have a tough time getting my own players to deal honorably with him rather than smiting him for the undead abomination he is, and since they should be at 5th level when they meet him and he's a 14-HD undead at CR 11, we're talking potential TPK here. At least he's got a neutral alignment, so any paladins he meets up with won't have their "evil detectors" going off, but I know old Es is still going to be a sticking point for some parties. There's also another legacy item in the adventure, and those that don't have (or desire to have) Weapons of Legacy will have to make do with the horribly messed-up table on page 33 (more on that later) and the brief sidebar to try to make sense of it all.
As for the stat blocks, there were a lot of errors, but many of them at least had the decency to restrict themselves to skill point allocation, where they'll arguably have the least impact upon play. Here's my recommended "unofficial errata" for The Sinister Spire:
And speaking of editing, The Sinister Spire had some problems in that area as well. Besides the typical piddly things like sentences with words missing (usually the word "the"), improper apostrophe usage (the apostrophe goes after the "s" when you're using it possessively for a group of multiple subjects), a missing closing parenthesis, and a sentence with an extraneous "or" (they probably forgot to delete it after rewriting the sentence), they really screwed up several times with page references (I counted no less than 5 instances where the page referenced was not the page on which the information was to be found, which really kind of invalidates the whole reference in the first place, don't you think?) and the aforementioned Legacy Item chart on page 33. Let's examine that one in a bit of detail, shall we?
First of all, legacy items are kind of weird. They don't play by the normal magic item rules; instead, you take all kinds of oddball penalties when using them, and have to go on various quests (and expend gp) to activate different powers. (I'm really not a fan of the system, but that has no real bearing on how they managed to butcher the table.) The Sinister Spire introduces Banrhialorg, a magic staff legacy item. (For those inclined to pitch the whole legacy item nonsense, it's just a masterwork quarterstaff that functions as a lesser metamagic rod of Extend Spell.) The Banrhialorg chart on page 33 has the following columns, each with one word atop the other: "Skill Wielder Level," "Penalty," "Caster Check Penalty," "Spell Save Penalty," "Level Loss," and "Slot Abilities." That freaked me out right there, because not only is it bad enough that I'd have to be striking at a penalty if I used Banrhialorg in combat, but what's all this about "level loss?" No way would I be willing to lose actual levels just to use some magic staff! Fortunately, I was finally able to figure out (through the nonsensicality of the other columns - what's "Skill Wielder Level" supposed to mean?) that there were tabbing errors in the chart's headers. Here's what the columns should read, to the best of my ability to figure it out: "Wielder Level," "Skill Check Penalty," "Save Penalty," "Caster Level Penalty," "Spell Slot Loss," and "Abilities." It took me - who's never read Weapons of Legacy, the book from which this material was based - a fair bit of time to unscramble this mess; you'd think that the developers/editors (who you'd expect would be a bit more familiar with the material) might have noticed it was so garbled, wouldn't you? Anyway, I was less than impressed with the two pages dedicated to this "legacy weapon," and apparently the designers/editors weren't too worried about the content's usability in any case, so I'd recommend just chucking that part and use Banrhialorg as a non-legacy weapon. Furthermore, I'd just as soon not see any legacy items appear in future adventures (personal preference), especially if their presentation is going to be as generally unusable as this one was (a general comment applying regardless of my own personal preference about legacy items).
Okay, that said, I do like the fact that there is some cool new material presented in this adventure. Besides the crappy staff, there are some neat magic items: a jasper spider figurine (a new figurine of wondrous power), a pearl of Undercommon (which not only allows you to speak and understand Undercommon - very useful in this adventure - but also voice a command once per day), Organripper (a +1 dagger that deals extra damage to the helpless, very evocative as a "sacrificial dagger"), the amulet of dark blessing (which adds 24 hp to the wielder, an easy way to bump up a low-level NPC to a more credible threat), a shroud of perpetual beauty (which prevents decomposition of a slain creature), and a field provisions box (free food production, perfect to explain how the folks populating an underground lair are obtaining their food). There's also a pretty interesting template ("plaguelost creature," which is the result of a victim having been slain and risen to undeath from the "ash doom" supernatural disease that wiped out much of the city some years past), which is put to good use in the adventure, both in explaining the history of Pedestal and also in providing combat enemies.
All in all, I guess I liked The Sinister Spire a little better than I did Barrow of the Forgotten King, if only for some of the cool encounters (I loved the cockroach clusters - and yes, that was an intentional Monty Python reference - in the earth node) and the less "cut off at an arbitrary point" ending (which I thought was a particular failing of the first adventure in the series), but it still isn't going too far beyond a high "3 (Average)." It's definitely at the high end of average, but I still think it's a few points short of a 4-star rating.
By Bruce R. Campbell and Ari Marmell
Wizards of the Coast product number 107977400
64 pages, $19.95
SPOILER WARNING: The review that follows contains spoilers for the adventure; please do not read any further if you're a player who may end up running his PC through The Sinister Spire. You'll just ruin your own fun.
The Sinister Spire is the second adventure in the three-part series that started with Barrow if the Forgotten King, although technically it can also be used as a standalone adventure (you'll just need to use a different adventure hook to get your PCs into the adventure).
The cover art, by Steve Prescott, is a bit of a giveaway to the adventure's "big bad evil guy" (or in this case, gal), as it depicts Fadheela, a female medusa/yuan-ti halfblood crossbreed standing by a petrified Redgar. (While I still wouldn't recommend the DM letting his players see the cover for fear of giving away the main enemy, at least there's nothing that speaks of Fadheela's yuan-ti heritage in the painting.) An Underdark city stands in the background, and the painting is well-done in terms of detail, color palette, and shading.
The interior artwork consists of 9 black-and-white illustrations by Wayne England. I particularly liked the two skum on page 9 rising up out of the depths with their aboleth master (Wayne manages to make the skum look every bit as deadly and menacing as lizardfolk or troglodytes, whereas I was never particularly impressed by the illustration they got in the Monster Manual) and his illustration of Fadheela in her serpentine form on page 31 (which brings back memories of the "greater medusa" from earlier incarnations of the D&D game). Accompanying the illustrations are 18 black-and-white maps by cartographer Mike Schley, who also provides the 7 full-color maps on the inside covers (which, like many adventure products, are not attached to the pages of the adventure booklet so the DM can reference both at once). I've always liked Mike's maps - they're easy to read and easy to follow.
The Sinister Spire is intended for a party of four 5th-level PCs, who should reach 6th or 7th level by its conclusion. Since it's written to allow it to be used immediately after the events of Barrow of the Forgotten King (literally moments after the conclusion of the first adventure), it allows PCs to advance from 1st-7th level in a matter of mere days, which is something I still shake my head at - but you probably don't want to hear about that. I imagine you're more interested in the adventure itself, and how the monster stats turned out.
The layout is the new format, where there are 1- or 2-page spreads at the end of the booklet that should allow you to run that particular encounter without having to flip to open up other books. In that regard, it works pretty well, although again I note that there are monsters taken from a variety of sources (Libris Mortis, Monster Manual III, Monster Manual IV) with nary a hint as to where to find their original listings. As most of the creatures that the PCs will end up fighting do not have illustrations handy, this is a bit of an oversight, and it could easily have been added without taking up any extra space (just slap "(Libris Mortis, page 88)" or whatever on the same line as the creature's hit points).
The adventure is divided into several sections. The PCs start out at an earth node, either from having followed the tunnel from the forgotten king's tomb in the previous adventure or being hired to track down the stolen bones of the king or however else the DM gets them involved in the adventure. There's a nice, creepy encounter with various sizes of monstrous cockroaches in the earth node, and then the PCs can teleport over to the Great Grotto, an area of the Underdark that includes the somewhat-ruined city of Pedestal. There are some encounters along the way, and then once in Pedestal the PCs end up storming the Necromancer's Spike, a multi-story fortress lair carved out of an enormous, merging stalagmite/stalactite column.
There were a few areas where I thought there could be some problems for some PC parties. First of all, in the city of Pedestal, the PCs end up dealing with a unique undead creature named Es Sarch (I'm not a real fan of his name, as it sounds kind of silly), a lichlike (but not a lich) information broker. I know that won't sit very well with many paladin or good-aligned cleric PCs; I know I'd have a tough time getting my own players to deal honorably with him rather than smiting him for the undead abomination he is, and since they should be at 5th level when they meet him and he's a 14-HD undead at CR 11, we're talking potential TPK here. At least he's got a neutral alignment, so any paladins he meets up with won't have their "evil detectors" going off, but I know old Es is still going to be a sticking point for some parties. There's also another legacy item in the adventure, and those that don't have (or desire to have) Weapons of Legacy will have to make do with the horribly messed-up table on page 33 (more on that later) and the brief sidebar to try to make sense of it all.
As for the stat blocks, there were a lot of errors, but many of them at least had the decency to restrict themselves to skill point allocation, where they'll arguably have the least impact upon play. Here's my recommended "unofficial errata" for The Sinister Spire:
- p. 14, Es Sarch: First of all, it's a bit disconcerting seeing him as an "unspecified undead" - he's not a lich, he's not a zombie, he's just some guy slapped together with undead features and some random spell-like abilities. In any case, his skills should include Disguise +4 (+6 acting) [0 ranks, +4 Cha, +2 synergy bonus from Bluff] and Survival +0 (+2 following tracks) [0 ranks, +0 Wis, +2 synergy bonus from Search]. Also, given that he has 14 HD, I'm not entirely sure why his Caster Level for his spell-like abilities is 11th instead of 14th; as with the rest of him, it appears it was just thrown together without a whole lot of rhyme or reason.
- p. 35, Unusually Large Cockroaches: Trip attacks should be made at -2, not +2 (+2 Str, -4 size) - they would only get the +4 stability bonus for having multiple legs when defending a trip attack, not initiating one.
- p. 35, Cockroach Swarm: BAB should be +2, not +1 (as a 3-HD vermin). 20 ft. does not equal 6 squares; its speed should either be "20 ft. (4 squares)" or "30 ft. (6 squares)" - and given the speed with which I've seen cockroaches scurry in real life, I'd be willing to guess it's the latter. In any case, the swarm's climb speed should match its normal landbound speed, so be sure they match, whichever way you choose to go with it.
- p. 39, Duergar Rogue 2: Skills should include Disguise -2 (+0 acting) [0 ranks, -2 Cha, +2 synergy bonus from Bluff] and Intimidate +0 [0 ranks, -2 Cha, +2 synergy bonus from Bluff].
- p. 40, Plaguelost Grimlocks: I realize they're just applying the "plaguelost" template as written, but does it seem strange to anyone else that sightless grimlocks would suddenly gain darkvision 120 feet by being slain by a disease? (This is especially weird when you consider that they still retain their blindness-based immunity to all gaze attacks.) I'd use some common sense and drop the darkvision in this case. Finally, it looks like they only spent 12 of 15 skill points (5 each on Hide and Listen and 2 skill points - cross-class ones at that - on Survival).
- p. 41, Plaguelost Large Monstrous Spider: Cha should be 6, not 10 (2 as a Large monstrous spider, +4 from the plaguelost template).
- p. 42, Muvaysil, male drow wizard 3: Spent 27 of 30 skill points.
- p. 44, Advanced Phantom Fungi: Technically, in advancing from 2 to 6 HD, these creatures should have picked up a +1 to an ability score; we'll just pretend a point was added to one of their even-numbered ability scores so that no other stats are affected. AC should be 14, not 15 (-1 size, -1 Dex, +6 natural [+4 from the base creature, +2 for the size increase]). Touch AC should be 8, not 9. Flat-footed AC should be 14, not 15. Bite attacks should be at +11 melee when invisible, not +13 (+4 BAB, -1 size, +6 Str, +2 greater invisibility).
- p. 45, Dusklorn Mercenaries, male drow fighter 4: AC should be 17, not 19 (+2 Dex, +5 masterwork breastplate). Flat-footed AC should be 15, not 17. Will should be +2 (+4 against spells and spell-like abilities), not +1 (+3 against spells and spell-like abilities) - (+1 as a Ftr4, +1 Wis). Spent 12 of 14 skill points.
- p. 46, Bone Spider Golem: Bite damage should be 2d6+4, not 2d6+6 (+4 Str, and it's not its sole attack so it doesn't get the 1.5 multiplier to damage).
- p. 47, Fiendish Spider Swarm: Spent 0 of 5 skill points, now that it has an Intelligence rating. Also, that same Int 3 should grant it a feat.
- p. 49, Tomb Mote: Spent 18 of 24 skill points, and put 7 points into Jump when it has an upper limit of 6 points. Thus, Jump should be -1, not +0 [6 ranks, -1 Str, -6 speed], and then go spend 7 more skill points elsewhere.
- p. 50, Bone Rat Swarm: 15 feet does not equal 6 squares! That should read "Speed 15 ft. (3 squares)."
- p. 51, Corpse Rat Swarm: 15 feet does not equal 6 squares! That should read "Speed 15 ft. (3 squares)."
- p. 52, Blinding Blot (blindness/deafness living spell focused on the blindness option): Fort should be +4, not +3 (+1 as a 3-HD ooze, +2 for a 2nd-level spell, +1 Con). Will should be +2, not +1 (+1 as a 3-HD ooze, +2 for a 2nd-level spell, -1 Wis).
- p. 53, Ghoul Ooze (ghoul touch living spell): Fort should be +4, not +3 (+1 as a 3-HD ooze, +2 for a 2nd-level spell, +1 Con). Will should be +2, not +1 (+1 as a 3-HD ooze, +2 for a 2nd-level spell, -1 Wis).
- p. 53, Shadow: "Will 4" should be "Will +4" in the Saves entry.
- p. 55, Wraith: "Speed 60 ft." should be "Speed Fly 60 ft."
- p. 56, Advanced Evolved Desiccator: Skills should include Survival +1 (+3 following tracks) [0 ranks, +1 Wis, +2 synergy bonus from Search].
- p. 59, Glass Spiders: Ref should be +3, not +2 (+1 as a 4-HD construct, +2 Dex).
- p. 60, Fevers (Medium Fire Necromentals): AC should be 18, not 19 (+3 Dex, +5 natural [+3 as a Medium fire elemental, +2 from the necromental template]). Flat-footed AC should be 15, not 16. Odd that it has Listen +4 and Spot +3 when the base creature has them the other way around.
- p. 61, Choke, Voidwraith: "Speed 60 ft." should be "Speed Fly 60 ft."
And speaking of editing, The Sinister Spire had some problems in that area as well. Besides the typical piddly things like sentences with words missing (usually the word "the"), improper apostrophe usage (the apostrophe goes after the "s" when you're using it possessively for a group of multiple subjects), a missing closing parenthesis, and a sentence with an extraneous "or" (they probably forgot to delete it after rewriting the sentence), they really screwed up several times with page references (I counted no less than 5 instances where the page referenced was not the page on which the information was to be found, which really kind of invalidates the whole reference in the first place, don't you think?) and the aforementioned Legacy Item chart on page 33. Let's examine that one in a bit of detail, shall we?
First of all, legacy items are kind of weird. They don't play by the normal magic item rules; instead, you take all kinds of oddball penalties when using them, and have to go on various quests (and expend gp) to activate different powers. (I'm really not a fan of the system, but that has no real bearing on how they managed to butcher the table.) The Sinister Spire introduces Banrhialorg, a magic staff legacy item. (For those inclined to pitch the whole legacy item nonsense, it's just a masterwork quarterstaff that functions as a lesser metamagic rod of Extend Spell.) The Banrhialorg chart on page 33 has the following columns, each with one word atop the other: "Skill Wielder Level," "Penalty," "Caster Check Penalty," "Spell Save Penalty," "Level Loss," and "Slot Abilities." That freaked me out right there, because not only is it bad enough that I'd have to be striking at a penalty if I used Banrhialorg in combat, but what's all this about "level loss?" No way would I be willing to lose actual levels just to use some magic staff! Fortunately, I was finally able to figure out (through the nonsensicality of the other columns - what's "Skill Wielder Level" supposed to mean?) that there were tabbing errors in the chart's headers. Here's what the columns should read, to the best of my ability to figure it out: "Wielder Level," "Skill Check Penalty," "Save Penalty," "Caster Level Penalty," "Spell Slot Loss," and "Abilities." It took me - who's never read Weapons of Legacy, the book from which this material was based - a fair bit of time to unscramble this mess; you'd think that the developers/editors (who you'd expect would be a bit more familiar with the material) might have noticed it was so garbled, wouldn't you? Anyway, I was less than impressed with the two pages dedicated to this "legacy weapon," and apparently the designers/editors weren't too worried about the content's usability in any case, so I'd recommend just chucking that part and use Banrhialorg as a non-legacy weapon. Furthermore, I'd just as soon not see any legacy items appear in future adventures (personal preference), especially if their presentation is going to be as generally unusable as this one was (a general comment applying regardless of my own personal preference about legacy items).
Okay, that said, I do like the fact that there is some cool new material presented in this adventure. Besides the crappy staff, there are some neat magic items: a jasper spider figurine (a new figurine of wondrous power), a pearl of Undercommon (which not only allows you to speak and understand Undercommon - very useful in this adventure - but also voice a command once per day), Organripper (a +1 dagger that deals extra damage to the helpless, very evocative as a "sacrificial dagger"), the amulet of dark blessing (which adds 24 hp to the wielder, an easy way to bump up a low-level NPC to a more credible threat), a shroud of perpetual beauty (which prevents decomposition of a slain creature), and a field provisions box (free food production, perfect to explain how the folks populating an underground lair are obtaining their food). There's also a pretty interesting template ("plaguelost creature," which is the result of a victim having been slain and risen to undeath from the "ash doom" supernatural disease that wiped out much of the city some years past), which is put to good use in the adventure, both in explaining the history of Pedestal and also in providing combat enemies.
All in all, I guess I liked The Sinister Spire a little better than I did Barrow of the Forgotten King, if only for some of the cool encounters (I loved the cockroach clusters - and yes, that was an intentional Monty Python reference - in the earth node) and the less "cut off at an arbitrary point" ending (which I thought was a particular failing of the first adventure in the series), but it still isn't going too far beyond a high "3 (Average)." It's definitely at the high end of average, but I still think it's a few points short of a 4-star rating.
