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<blockquote data-quote="Kenmis" data-source="post: 2010881" data-attributes="member: 11796"><p>I did quite a bit of research before deciding to run my players through Chaos Rising. I wanted a nice high-level module that would be a challenge both for me to run and my players to complete. I read a ton of reviews on here, and Monte Cook also recommended it in his review. I was quite excited about the premise of the module, until I actually started reading it. Unfortunately from now on, I’ll be taking online reviews with a grain of salt. I’ve never so strongly disagreed with the majority on a product before. To put it bluntly, this adventure is an ill-conceived and poorly written mess.</p><p></p><p>Things start out well enough, however. The party is hired by a benefactor to stop evil Lord Raob and his army from finding a key to an impregnable obsidian vault which contains the amulet of a demon prince, Jubilex. If someone gains the amulet, they can control Jubilex and wreck terrible havoc upon the world. Assuming, of course, they make the will save to properly control the demon prince. The save DC is 25, with the penalty being instant death. Raob’s will save is +6…</p><p></p><p>The players must reach the key before Raob does. The catch is that access to the key (stored away safely in another demiplane) has been lost for ages, so the players must use a feature of the dwarven-built citadel to go back in time to when the citadel was still populated and convince the guardians to give them access to the demiplane where the key is located. Never mind the fact that Raob has no idea the key isn’t actually on this plane, and that he has two weeks to figure that out before the window of opportunity to use the key (it can only be used for one day every 400 years) is gone. Yes, it’s the entire adventure is predicated upon stopping a villain who in all likelihood isn’t going to succeed anyway. It gets better, though!</p><p></p><p>Once the time travel begins, things get extremely messy. Or rather, IF the time travel begins. It seems the writer of the adventure encountered lots of problems with believability and consistency with time travel, so he gave the DM two options: time travel or separate demiplanes. The DM may choose to have the citadel either in the past or in a separate demiplane. The problem with this is that neither work and the way the adventure is written is very inconsistent. Sometimes the text of the module assumes the DM is using time travel, other times the demiplanes. As a whole, the “demiplanes” idea does not work at all; the players go to a separate demiplane but the NPC’s there remember who they are and react accordingly depending on the PC’s previous actions. But the players have never been here before, and should never have met these people before. At one point the ghost of an NPC from one demiplane appears in a different one. So I threw it out and tried to make the time travel option work. Hilarity ensued.</p><p></p><p>The whole point of this time travel is that the occupants of the citadel will be able to use time gates to go back in the past and warn themselves of impending attacks. It sounded like an interesting idea, but the biggest problem with it is the events of the module do not take into consideration the very purpose for the time gates! When the players arrive back in time, the citadel is very soon after besieged by demons. A traitor from within the dwarves opens a gate from the abyss, and hoards of demons sent by Orcus assault the fortress in an attempt to gain access to the key. The players help the dwarves defend, and as a reward are allowed into the demiplane to get the key. The dwarves apparently ignore the fact that the PC’s arrived at almost the exact same time as the demon attack, and write it off as mere coincidence. Also, the lead cleric of the dwarves has been poisoned by the traitor, and is now comatose with 1 con. The OTHER clerics never bother to cast lesser restoration on him, even though they are high enough level to do so. Nobody ever bothered to Detect Evil, either. Naturally, the PC’s discover the traitor, stop the attack, and save the day. </p><p></p><p>My players, however, took it one step further. I knew I was in trouble when one said “Hey, we can use these time portals and go back to about 30 min before the attack, and stop the traitor from ever creating the gate, can’t we?” The adventure had never taken into consideration the actual use for the time portals! I allowed my players to do so, and then we had a completely new problem: after stopping the demon attack, 30 minutes later, the PC party arrives through the time portal, to be greeted by themselves!</p><p></p><p>Chaos rising is rife with problems like this. Teleportation is not allowed within the citadel, yet monster descriptions say things like “This monster will teleport next to the nearest obvious spellcaster.” According to the timeline of the demon attack, the traitor casts the spell to allow the lead demon into the demiplane with the key in eight minutes. The casting time for the spell is one hour. NPCs have prestige classes they don’t have the prerequisites for.</p><p></p><p>And to top it all off, what the players don’t know is that Jubilex is actually trapped in the vault. When the players go in to get the amulet, he either kills them (he’s CR 28), or tricks them into letting him out, THEN kills them. It’s possible the players can convince him to self-banish for 100 years, but wouldn’t it be better if they just don’t open the vault at all, and he’s stuck in there for AT LEAST another 400 years? Yes, this entire adventure has its best ending if the players simply walk away. Raob can’t get the key, Jubilex can’t get out, and Good is victorious.</p><p></p><p>I wanted to like this adventure. I tried very hard to rationalize and find plausible ways for events described in here to happen. It just can’t be done. Though I do have to say my players did very much enjoy going through Chaos Rising. They enjoyed it because it was, in the words of one of them “laughably, b-movie style bad.” We all did get quite a kick out of finding the 101 flaws and inconsistencies in here. I don’t really think that’s what the writer had in mind, though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kenmis, post: 2010881, member: 11796"] I did quite a bit of research before deciding to run my players through Chaos Rising. I wanted a nice high-level module that would be a challenge both for me to run and my players to complete. I read a ton of reviews on here, and Monte Cook also recommended it in his review. I was quite excited about the premise of the module, until I actually started reading it. Unfortunately from now on, I’ll be taking online reviews with a grain of salt. I’ve never so strongly disagreed with the majority on a product before. To put it bluntly, this adventure is an ill-conceived and poorly written mess. Things start out well enough, however. The party is hired by a benefactor to stop evil Lord Raob and his army from finding a key to an impregnable obsidian vault which contains the amulet of a demon prince, Jubilex. If someone gains the amulet, they can control Jubilex and wreck terrible havoc upon the world. Assuming, of course, they make the will save to properly control the demon prince. The save DC is 25, with the penalty being instant death. Raob’s will save is +6… The players must reach the key before Raob does. The catch is that access to the key (stored away safely in another demiplane) has been lost for ages, so the players must use a feature of the dwarven-built citadel to go back in time to when the citadel was still populated and convince the guardians to give them access to the demiplane where the key is located. Never mind the fact that Raob has no idea the key isn’t actually on this plane, and that he has two weeks to figure that out before the window of opportunity to use the key (it can only be used for one day every 400 years) is gone. Yes, it’s the entire adventure is predicated upon stopping a villain who in all likelihood isn’t going to succeed anyway. It gets better, though! Once the time travel begins, things get extremely messy. Or rather, IF the time travel begins. It seems the writer of the adventure encountered lots of problems with believability and consistency with time travel, so he gave the DM two options: time travel or separate demiplanes. The DM may choose to have the citadel either in the past or in a separate demiplane. The problem with this is that neither work and the way the adventure is written is very inconsistent. Sometimes the text of the module assumes the DM is using time travel, other times the demiplanes. As a whole, the “demiplanes” idea does not work at all; the players go to a separate demiplane but the NPC’s there remember who they are and react accordingly depending on the PC’s previous actions. But the players have never been here before, and should never have met these people before. At one point the ghost of an NPC from one demiplane appears in a different one. So I threw it out and tried to make the time travel option work. Hilarity ensued. The whole point of this time travel is that the occupants of the citadel will be able to use time gates to go back in the past and warn themselves of impending attacks. It sounded like an interesting idea, but the biggest problem with it is the events of the module do not take into consideration the very purpose for the time gates! When the players arrive back in time, the citadel is very soon after besieged by demons. A traitor from within the dwarves opens a gate from the abyss, and hoards of demons sent by Orcus assault the fortress in an attempt to gain access to the key. The players help the dwarves defend, and as a reward are allowed into the demiplane to get the key. The dwarves apparently ignore the fact that the PC’s arrived at almost the exact same time as the demon attack, and write it off as mere coincidence. Also, the lead cleric of the dwarves has been poisoned by the traitor, and is now comatose with 1 con. The OTHER clerics never bother to cast lesser restoration on him, even though they are high enough level to do so. Nobody ever bothered to Detect Evil, either. Naturally, the PC’s discover the traitor, stop the attack, and save the day. My players, however, took it one step further. I knew I was in trouble when one said “Hey, we can use these time portals and go back to about 30 min before the attack, and stop the traitor from ever creating the gate, can’t we?” The adventure had never taken into consideration the actual use for the time portals! I allowed my players to do so, and then we had a completely new problem: after stopping the demon attack, 30 minutes later, the PC party arrives through the time portal, to be greeted by themselves! Chaos rising is rife with problems like this. Teleportation is not allowed within the citadel, yet monster descriptions say things like “This monster will teleport next to the nearest obvious spellcaster.” According to the timeline of the demon attack, the traitor casts the spell to allow the lead demon into the demiplane with the key in eight minutes. The casting time for the spell is one hour. NPCs have prestige classes they don’t have the prerequisites for. And to top it all off, what the players don’t know is that Jubilex is actually trapped in the vault. When the players go in to get the amulet, he either kills them (he’s CR 28), or tricks them into letting him out, THEN kills them. It’s possible the players can convince him to self-banish for 100 years, but wouldn’t it be better if they just don’t open the vault at all, and he’s stuck in there for AT LEAST another 400 years? Yes, this entire adventure has its best ending if the players simply walk away. Raob can’t get the key, Jubilex can’t get out, and Good is victorious. I wanted to like this adventure. I tried very hard to rationalize and find plausible ways for events described in here to happen. It just can’t be done. Though I do have to say my players did very much enjoy going through Chaos Rising. They enjoyed it because it was, in the words of one of them “laughably, b-movie style bad.” We all did get quite a kick out of finding the 101 flaws and inconsistencies in here. I don’t really think that’s what the writer had in mind, though. [/QUOTE]
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