Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall will be Level 11-20 adventure

Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall will be a high-level Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Today, Wizards of the Coast officially made the upcoming adventure and its companion rulebook Arcana Unleashed, available for pre-order. The listing for Deadfall reveals that it will be a Level 11-20 adventure, pitting players against the undead lich Szass Tam. The new adventure is billed as a "magical spy thriller" with Tam set to unleash a demonic undead horde upon the Forgotten Realms.

The adventure will also feature 20 dedicated maps, a Thay gazetteer, 6 "high-CR" creature statblocks, including Szass Tam, and 14 magic items.

Historically, Wizards of the Coast has shied away from high-level adventures for its 5th Edition campaigns, although there were a few exceptions like Dungeon of the Mad Mage and Vecna: Eve of Ruin. It's interesting that, for the first official campaign adventure for 5.5E, Wizards is opting for a high-level campaign as opposed to an entry level campaign.

Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall will be released on September 15th.

 

[Zardnaar]

Both. I'll give an example.

Light of Xarysis (the Spelljammer module) was supposed to be episodic and end on a cliffhanger. Unfortunately, most of the chapters were small and only had a few encounters (combat or otherwise) before they moved to the next session and you gained a level. I was playing a lunar sorcerer and found I barely got a chance to even try my new spells before I was gaining even more. And unless the DM added side quests, expanded the dungeons with more encounters or basically ignore the cliffhangers, it really felt rushed.

That is absolutely a flaw in the structure of the module and while a good DM could fill in the gaps, it required the DM to basically restructure the module to slow it down, which feels like it hurts the purpose of using a module.

And that module covered levels 5-9. This is 11-20 in the same size book. I wager there is going to be a lot of "2-3 fights and then level" style chapters. But I'm hoping to be wrong.

Its noy a lot of pages for for 20 levels.

Its about half the size of level 1-10 Adventures. And theyre kinda rushed.

 

[Vael]

I hope it's good and I get to play it, never played or GMed past level 11. Or it's so good I decide to run it ... but I'll admit I'm more interested in trying to play some high level DnD.

 

[Reynard]

I actually may want to buy this one eventually. Support for high-level play in D&D is lackluster so every little bit of it is needed.

But if it is bad, is that what you want to support? It is like when people go see crappy Star Wars movies even though they are crappy. In the end, you are sending the wrong message.

 

[mamba]

I'm not sure "pre-order" permits that.

then wait with your conclusions

 

[500 Toads]

Magical spying... it would be interesting if at some point they went into depth regarding such things as what sorts of security measures merchants, nobles, et al would take in light of such things as divination, illusion, mind control and teleportation magic. There's some countermeasures in the setting, like the Alarm, Arcane Lock, and Nondetection; but not a lot of guidance (at least in 5E) as to how often they're actually used in the "default" Forgotten Realms.

Is there a canonical magical version of ADT, for instance?

 

[Mort]

But if it is bad, is that what you want to support? It is like when people go see crappy Star Wars movies even though they are crappy. In the end, you are sending the wrong message.

Even the bad adventures almost always have several nuggets worth mining/stealing. Or some parts that are great.

I find Dragon Heist, for example, not great. But the 4 villain lairs - fun well designed mini dungeons (which just happen to be near useless for the adventure they are included with).

 

[Reynard]

Even the bad adventures almost always have several nuggets worth mining/stealing. Or some parts that are great.

I find Dragon Heist, for example, not great. But the 4 villain lairs - fun well designed mini dungeons (which just happen to be near useless for the adventure they are included with).

Sure. I'm just saying that when you buy crap, you are asking the company to keep making crap.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sure. I'm just saying that when you buy crap, you are asking the company to keep making crap.

WotC adventures are more mid tgsn outright crap.

I've reread sone crap ones lately.

 

[MNblockhead]

I've enjoyed DMing high-level DND in 2014 5e, but it was sooo much work to make combat interesting and challenging to my group of very experienced players. I was so exhausted after my last campaign that I took a break from DnD for a while. I've not found prior high-level adventures from WotC and even most third-party publishers that helpful in running high-level adventures. I find that at high levels the powers of the individual characters and the experience level of the players make a huge difference that it is harder to write good adventures that will work for most groups. So, while I'm interested in take a look at the adventure, I'm tempering my expectations.

I bought the new 2024 core books, but haven't run any games with them yet. I don't see anything that greatly changes what I've experienced with high-level DnD.

Generally, in my experience, the best high-level published adventures are those that use pre-gens. The writers can design the adventure for that specific set of characters.

Anyway, I know that there has been a lot of discussion on high-level DnD in other threads on this forum, I don't need to rehash it there. I'll be interested at getting a look at WotCs approaches in its latest high-level adventure.

 

[CM]

One thing to remember is that all those megacampaign hardcovers (at least the ones I'm familiar with) have multiple plot branches that are completely optional or even assumed to go unused depending on the choices of the players. Storm King's Thunder for example - in a typical playthrough you might not even use fully half of it.