Fantastic Locations: Fields Of Ruin
FIELDS OF RUIN
By Richard Pett
Wizards of the Coast product number 953647400
16 pages, $14.95
Fields of Ruin is the second in the
Fantastic Locations series that I've seen (the other being
Hellspike Prison). The two are of comparable quality, each being a short D&D adventure (16-pages, of which 14 are the adventure itself) specifically geared toward use with D&D Miniatures, and with the last page devoted to D&DM use.
The cover art, by Francis Tsai, depicts a chimera flying straight at the viewer. Although the middle head is described in the
Monster Manual as being a "maneless lion," Francis gives this one some light stripes along the head, so it almost looks more like a tiger. (And why not? The dragon head on a chimera is variable; this one's a black.) I like the "gauzy" effect of the creature's wings: you can see through them and make out details of the ruins behind them.
The interior artwork consists of four black-and-white illustrations by Andrew Trabbold. I really like his half-fiend ogre brothers on page 9; I've always
hated the way ogres were depicted in 3E (they remind me of the Muppet suit where there was actually a man in the costume), and by focusing on the half-fiend aspects, Andrew's found a way to make them frightening-looking while veering far out of Muppet country. His fiendish girallon on page 13 is very nicely done, too - the extra-shaggy fur on his limbs almost makes him look like a yeti hybrid.
The main attractions, though - as in all
Fantastic Locations products - are the two double-sided poster maps, depicting four different areas of the adventure. As an added bonus, two of them fit together to make a double-sized (for this product line, anyway) adventure area, the Keep of Fallen Kings. As always, the maps are reprinted on the insides of the removable cover, although why they didn't line up the two Keep of Fallen Kings maps so they connect together is beyond me. (They've got the first part on the lower half of the inside front cover, and the second part on the upper half of the inside back cover -
that was silly!) In any case, these DM's maps have annotations (room numbers, the starting locations of enemies, and so on) that are not present on the poster maps, so the players won't get any hints as to what's about to happen. Cartographer Jason Engle did another fine job with these.
The D&D adventure itself is focused on the hunt for a powerful magic item, the
Earthcrown, hidden somewhere in the ruins of the Keep of Fallen Kings. Naturally, to keep things interesting, the PCs aren't the only ones looking for the item; a tiefling blademaster is also looking for it, and a band of half-fiend ogres and their orc minions have settled in the ruins. While they're not actively searching for the
Earthcrown, it won't be good if they stumble across it in their explorations. The fact that they have support in the way of a skullcrusher ogre, ogre mage, chimera, and dire bear mean the PCs have their work cut out for them. (Oh, by the way, this adventure is intended for four 8th-level PCs. Once again, nowhere does it mention this on the outside covers of the book, and since the product is shrink-wrapped - a necessity, to prevent looting of the poster maps - it's almost as if Wizards of the Coast expects you to purchase the adventure first in order to find out if it's going to be useful to you.)
Several minor errors made it through the proofreading and editing process, which kind of surprised me given that it was only a 16-page book. One sentence apparently couldn't decide whether the verb was going to be "arrives" or "rides" and ended up with both still intact ("This champion arrives rides a destrachan into battle..."), and "pass" was used in place of "past" in another sentence. There was also an area where reference was made to "all four orc sergeants," even though the 8 orcs in the conflict all use the same stat blocks and no differentiation is made between them. Finally, there's a sidebar describing the orcish version of "scissors, rock, paper" - called "knife, rack, and troll." Knife beats rack (by cutting its ropes), rack beats troll (by stretching it), and troll beats knife (by regenerating any damage incurred from the knife). Okay, that kind of makes sense. Then, Richard expands on the concept by creating tribal variations: "skull, leg, and throat" for the Vile Rune orc tribe, "rat, dog, and owlbear" for the Rotting Eye orc tribe, and "plague, pox, and pestilence" for the Leprous Hand tribe. None of these make any thematic sense, however. Leg crushes skull, skull bites throat (?), and throat does what to leg - use sarcasm to belittle it? Owlbear kills dog, dog kills rat - but owlbear kills rat, too. (In a fight between an owlbear and a rat, smart money's on the owlbear.) And if you're going to use the argument that the rat's disease kills the owlbear, well, that works just as well on the dog too, doesn't it? And aren't "plague," "pox," and "pestilence" all pretty much the same thing? I don't see how any of these would work, and they should either have been tweaked until they actually made some kind of sense of just deleted. If the book absolutely needed another four lines of filler, I'm sure there were other places they could have been thrown in.
The rest of the errors confined themselves to stat blocks. Here's my list of "unofficial errata" for
Fields of Ruin:
- p. 4, Drax, skullcrusher ogre: 30 ft. does not equal 8 squares! His "Speed" line should read "30 ft. (6 squares) in spiked half-plate; base 40 ft."
- p. 5, Sliprursh, male orc rogue 6: He should have 6 HD, not 7. Orcs are humanoids, so they "trade in" their 1 HD of humanoid for their first class level.
- p. 6, Thogbad the Unhinged, male orc barbarian 8: Initiative should be +1, not +2 (+1 Dex). Flat-footed AC should be 16, not 15 (due to uncanny dodge). When raging, flat-footed AC should be 14, not 13 (also due to uncanny dodge).
- p. 8, Half-fiend ogre barbarian 1: Grapple should be at +18, not +15 (+4 BAB, +4 size, +10 Str). Bite damage should be 1d8+5, not 1d8+7 (1/2 Str bonus = +5). When raging, Grapple should be at +20, not +15 (+4 BAB, +4 size, +12 Str), and bite damage should be 1d8+6, not 1d8+9 (1/2 Str bonus = +6).
- p. 10, Kazmir ("The Magpie Man"), male tiefling rogue 2/swashbuckler 5: I don't have whatever book details the swashbuckler, but Ref should be either +11 (if swashbucklers have good Reflex saves, which makes sense) or +8 (if swashbucklers have poor Reflex saves), not +9. +1 rapier damage should be 1d6+1, not 1d6+3 (+0 Str, +1 magic weapon bonus). If using Two-Weapon Fighting, +1 rapier attacks should be at +9/+4 melee, not +11/+6 (+6 BAB, +4 Dex with Weapon Finesse, +1 magic weapon bonus, -2 Two-Weapon Fighting), and masterwork dagger attacks should be at +9 melee, not +6 (+6 BAB, +4 Dex, +1 masterwork, -2 Two-Weapon Fighting).
- p. 14, Fiendish Ettin Skirmisher: Fort should be +9, not +7 (+7 as a 10-HD giant, +2 Con). Ref should be +2, not +8 (+3 as a 10-HD giant, -1 Dex). "Special Attacks" entry is missing "smite good 1/day (+10 damage)."
- p. 15, Crimson Ooze: "Senses" entry shouldn't include "Listen +10, Spot +10" - nonintelligent oozes have no skill points to spend, and this one has Wis 1 in any case, so both skills would be at -5.
For those keeping score, that's errors noted in 7 out of 9 stat blocks in the adventure, for an overall error rate of 78%. Not the finest hour for either Developer and Editor Christopher Perkins or Development Manager Jesse Decker, both of whom have proven in the past they can do much better work than this.
Fields of Ruin is a fairly decent skirmish adventure; if you're into poster-sized battlemats, then it's liable to be an even bigger draw for you. The
D&D Miniatures page says that three of the four battlemats in the adventure are "official" for use in D&DM tournaments; for whatever reason, only half of the Keep of Fallen Kings is permitted, while the other one is not. I give it a rating of "3 (Average)."
