Fane of the Drow - an ongoing review - Major Spoilers!

[MerricB]

Excellent review, Merric. Any chance of seeing how you converted this for Greyhawk, when you're done?

This one is set in Greyhawk to begin with. No conversion necessary. (I actually ran it in Eberron...)

I'll post details of converting Sons of Gruumsh after I run it - early next year, it looks like.

Cheers!

 

[Truth Seeker]

Thanks, but I found the answer on Wotc site, it is part of the demo. But I am switching it around to a all drow party, facing invading adventures.

I don't know. It certainly uses the Fane map, but whether it is that section of the adventure or a different adventure I don't know.

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Would be nice, but it seems unlikely.

Oh well.

Joe, have you run Fane yet?

Cheers!

Just finished it yesterday, about, as I suspected, six hours of game play worth out of it, or in my group's case, two weeks worth of combat!

The party had a heck of a time opening up the crypt of the ghost queen and in the end decided to just smash it open.

Most of the monsters were dead at that point though. They have light spells on them so they're easy to see and noisy as heck so they were basically fighting one undead after another.

And man, the bloodhulk seems over rated on it's CR compared to what it can do. It takes an extra d6 damage every time struck? Ugh. Lame monster. Very lame.

The "ghost queen" went down quick. One of the party members is a ritual warrior and one of his rituals treats his weapon as magical and he almost always rolled the % necessary to effect the queen. Even with her touching him twice and stealing 10 hit points, she was cut down quickly.

One thing the players mentioned is that they didn't like all the miniature stuff on the maps that had no coresponding notes in the actual adventure. Could've just been my reading though. The important thing is everyone had a good time.

 

[MerricB]

The Bloodhulk is actually something that TWF enjoy fighting more than Power Attackers.

The only miniatures notes on the maps that has no effect on the RPG are the Starting Areas, Exit squares, and the Victory areas.

Otherwise, you have:
* Risky Terrain (entering a square gives a 25% chance of taking 2d6 damage)
* Sacred Circle (+2 bonus to attack rolls, attacks considered magical)
* Difficult Terrain (double cost movement, as regular rules)
* Summoning Circle (any summon spell instead gets a Spider of Lolth).

Most of these notes are on page 2 of the book.

Your guys were better able to handle the ghost queen than my PCs. They freaked when they saw me set up all the skeletons around them - and when they realised that they could do hardly any damage to the skeletons (rogues!) or ghost queen. It was very close, though they eventually prevailed.

The goblin fight was wonderful - the goblins led them all around the caves. Very interesting combat for movement, such as I normally don't see.

I still have to run the two drow maps.

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Otherwise, you have:
* Risky Terrain (entering a square gives a 25% chance of taking 2d6 damage)
* Sacred Circle (+2 bonus to attack rolls, attacks considered magical)
* Difficult Terrain (double cost movement, as regular rules)
* Summoning Circle (any summon spell instead gets a Spider of Lolth).

Cheers!

Remembered difficult terrain and summoning circle last game but forgot risky terrai nand sacred circle this time around completely. Comes from focusing too much on the text that I was running as opposed to using it as a whole adventure.

And Risky Terrain could've helped those skeletons out so much!

And yeah, my party tore through them (skeletons) like nothing. Cleave and other feats were in high use.

Best highlight of that adventure had to be when the wizard decides he's going to grapple the ghost queen!