JoeGKushner
Adventurer
The Clockwork Heart is a 73 page PDF adventure meant for 12th-16th level characters. Broken up into four chapters, it introduces the mechanus race to a campaign world with a vengeance.
The adventure starts with the characters meeting a fellow group of adventurers who've had their heads handed to them by a strange type of golem and warn the party away form it. Should the party investigate, they discover a 'gentle' giant in the form of Urbit in the farming community of Jeralig. Urbit is a mechanus without a past, one thrown from his home plane into this one and buried under the earth only to be discovered by a human teacher. The entity is not well and seems to be suffering from problems, both physical and perhaps mental. The countryside itself is not well, wracked with powerful energy storms as well as invaders, similar in nature to Urbit but different in their specifics.
The only recourse for the party is to do more research which takes them to the Jerauthien Academy where they learn that others have sought the information they seek and that the library itself is the victim of thievery and in doing so, become hired on to find the thief. The thief is a creature of Ozur, a wizard whose used the libraries in the past.
So now the players must seek out Ozur and they discover that he's not alone, working with a sophisticated mechanus, Rimmon. Working on a Clockwork Heart in order to seal a breech between our world and the enemy world that is poised to invade, Ozur sends the characters off to the homeworld of the mechanus in order to battle the enemy on their home ground. Now the players seek out Mechanopolis and learn that not everything is what it seems and that Ozur's solution isn't one that is beneficial for the world but rather, a potential death-knell for the campaign setting.
The players on Mechanopolis learn that there are in essence two factions here. One lead by the Divine Forge which seeks to end all human life ala the Mechanoids from Palladium Games and another that remembers when the mechanus used to protect the humans. The players, if fortunate, are able to ally with those latter living robots and gain some impressive armor, powerful enough to make most players a match for even the strongest of the machines.
The characters not only have to shattered the Clockwork Heart on this machine world, but return to their own campaign setting and fight those mechanus which made their way through the gateway already. This is resolved in a series of massive conflicts on the characters home world with a final clash against the leader of the invaders that made it through the initial link.
The Clockwork Heart wants to be a mega-adventure but it leaves a lot of the footwork up to the GM unlike published mega-adventures. What do I mean? Where are the maps? In a 73 page product, for there not to be a single page of maps is almost a crime. This isn't a story and D&D is a game focuses on miniature combat to a great extent, making things easier to track. There should be several general maps of places characters will battle and several maps of the locations that the characters find themselves going through.
In terms of grunt work, where are the town stat blocks? Where are the tables for wandering encounters? These things don't have to be there, but in almost every mega-adventure I've seen, they are provided so that the GM can throw other things at the party if only to booster them up slightly in terms of experience points, treasure and as some posters like Christian Walker ask, to look cool. After all, not every 12th level wandering encounter is going to realistically be a challenge.
Where is the treasure? I understand that not every adventure is about treasure but there is a massive lack of detail on possessions for the NPC's homes and places outside of what they carry. This isn't good as it provides more grunt work for the GM. Several of the 20th level characters here have Armor Classes worse than 5th level warriors. There needs to be options for handling the excessively powerful treasure that the players do get. Perhaps some way to recharge the suits or armor or limited utility.
The monster blocks aren't bad but some are questionable. First off, with all of the mechanus, they are listed as having a CR of 4 higher than their level. Now if I understand where the author is coming from, he's basing this CR off of the creatures Effective Character Level which is +4. ECL and CR are not the same thing and shouldn't be used as such. There are also other instances where stats are questionable. For example, it looks like assassin levels have been added to sorcerer levels for total spells as one NPC, Rimmon, is a Sorc13, Ass7 and can cast 8th level arcane spells.
One of the suggestions to make the adventure more epic in feel is to read aloud the various interludes or printed out and handed to the players but they're not separated as handouts from the main body or text and aren't italicized to be read aloud either. This is odd since there isn't a paper shortage as this is a PDF and that sort of handout should be a breeze in this type of format.
One thing I was surprised at were, at least in my printing, the number of editing errors that got through. There was more than one reference to the dreaded page XX for instance, a few misspellings, and some double words. Hopefully those have all been caught in latter editions and free patches have been sent out to update those older copies.
Christopher Shy's artwork as always, is powerful but in my opinion, isn't used to it's fullest. As the NPCs are often listed when they're first meet, the art isn't suitable for always pulling out and going, “You see this.” Putting the NPC's in the back, in an appendix, with illustrations there, would've made that easier. In addition, the art is reused. Take the cover piece itself. It's used in the interior. The illustration used by Urbit is used some odd three to four times in the book. It's a good picture but it's not that good a picture that I want to see it over and over again.
In the end, the Clockwork Heart is more about providing the ideas and scenarios and letting the GM do the dirty work. For those who love to customize their adventurers, this book makes it easy but for others, needs lots of refinement.
The adventure starts with the characters meeting a fellow group of adventurers who've had their heads handed to them by a strange type of golem and warn the party away form it. Should the party investigate, they discover a 'gentle' giant in the form of Urbit in the farming community of Jeralig. Urbit is a mechanus without a past, one thrown from his home plane into this one and buried under the earth only to be discovered by a human teacher. The entity is not well and seems to be suffering from problems, both physical and perhaps mental. The countryside itself is not well, wracked with powerful energy storms as well as invaders, similar in nature to Urbit but different in their specifics.
The only recourse for the party is to do more research which takes them to the Jerauthien Academy where they learn that others have sought the information they seek and that the library itself is the victim of thievery and in doing so, become hired on to find the thief. The thief is a creature of Ozur, a wizard whose used the libraries in the past.
So now the players must seek out Ozur and they discover that he's not alone, working with a sophisticated mechanus, Rimmon. Working on a Clockwork Heart in order to seal a breech between our world and the enemy world that is poised to invade, Ozur sends the characters off to the homeworld of the mechanus in order to battle the enemy on their home ground. Now the players seek out Mechanopolis and learn that not everything is what it seems and that Ozur's solution isn't one that is beneficial for the world but rather, a potential death-knell for the campaign setting.
The players on Mechanopolis learn that there are in essence two factions here. One lead by the Divine Forge which seeks to end all human life ala the Mechanoids from Palladium Games and another that remembers when the mechanus used to protect the humans. The players, if fortunate, are able to ally with those latter living robots and gain some impressive armor, powerful enough to make most players a match for even the strongest of the machines.
The characters not only have to shattered the Clockwork Heart on this machine world, but return to their own campaign setting and fight those mechanus which made their way through the gateway already. This is resolved in a series of massive conflicts on the characters home world with a final clash against the leader of the invaders that made it through the initial link.
The Clockwork Heart wants to be a mega-adventure but it leaves a lot of the footwork up to the GM unlike published mega-adventures. What do I mean? Where are the maps? In a 73 page product, for there not to be a single page of maps is almost a crime. This isn't a story and D&D is a game focuses on miniature combat to a great extent, making things easier to track. There should be several general maps of places characters will battle and several maps of the locations that the characters find themselves going through.
In terms of grunt work, where are the town stat blocks? Where are the tables for wandering encounters? These things don't have to be there, but in almost every mega-adventure I've seen, they are provided so that the GM can throw other things at the party if only to booster them up slightly in terms of experience points, treasure and as some posters like Christian Walker ask, to look cool. After all, not every 12th level wandering encounter is going to realistically be a challenge.
Where is the treasure? I understand that not every adventure is about treasure but there is a massive lack of detail on possessions for the NPC's homes and places outside of what they carry. This isn't good as it provides more grunt work for the GM. Several of the 20th level characters here have Armor Classes worse than 5th level warriors. There needs to be options for handling the excessively powerful treasure that the players do get. Perhaps some way to recharge the suits or armor or limited utility.
The monster blocks aren't bad but some are questionable. First off, with all of the mechanus, they are listed as having a CR of 4 higher than their level. Now if I understand where the author is coming from, he's basing this CR off of the creatures Effective Character Level which is +4. ECL and CR are not the same thing and shouldn't be used as such. There are also other instances where stats are questionable. For example, it looks like assassin levels have been added to sorcerer levels for total spells as one NPC, Rimmon, is a Sorc13, Ass7 and can cast 8th level arcane spells.
One of the suggestions to make the adventure more epic in feel is to read aloud the various interludes or printed out and handed to the players but they're not separated as handouts from the main body or text and aren't italicized to be read aloud either. This is odd since there isn't a paper shortage as this is a PDF and that sort of handout should be a breeze in this type of format.
One thing I was surprised at were, at least in my printing, the number of editing errors that got through. There was more than one reference to the dreaded page XX for instance, a few misspellings, and some double words. Hopefully those have all been caught in latter editions and free patches have been sent out to update those older copies.
Christopher Shy's artwork as always, is powerful but in my opinion, isn't used to it's fullest. As the NPCs are often listed when they're first meet, the art isn't suitable for always pulling out and going, “You see this.” Putting the NPC's in the back, in an appendix, with illustrations there, would've made that easier. In addition, the art is reused. Take the cover piece itself. It's used in the interior. The illustration used by Urbit is used some odd three to four times in the book. It's a good picture but it's not that good a picture that I want to see it over and over again.
In the end, the Clockwork Heart is more about providing the ideas and scenarios and letting the GM do the dirty work. For those who love to customize their adventurers, this book makes it easy but for others, needs lots of refinement.
