D&D 5E Free 'Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth' Adventure on D&D Beyond

Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is an abridged version of the full adventure, which appears in Quests from the Infinite Staircase. You can access it for free on D&D Beyond.

Deep in the Yatil Mountains lie the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, formerly occupied by the legendary archmage Iggwilv the Witch Queen. Though Iggwilv is long gone, her lair is anything but empty. Demons, giants, and other formidable creatures haunt the perilous caverns, and the archmage’s magical defenses remain intact. The rewards for braving these threats defy imagination. Iggwilv is rumored to have amassed a magical hoard of unsurpassed value, a trove of such fame that scores of adventurers have perished in search of it.

This supplement is part of a yearlong celebration of Dungeons & Dragons and its 50th anniversary. The adventure presented herein is an abridged, quick-play version of “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth,” which appears in Quests from the Infinite Staircase. See that book for the full adventure.

“Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth” is designed for four to six 9th-level characters.

 

[mach1.9pants]

The cleric is named cathartic, there's weslocke the warlock... Very Bob the Fighter, or Melf.

Ethelrede does not have the Alert feat, so I guess he is Ethelrede Unrede

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The cleric is named cathartic...

The names are definitely odd. It would have been nice to have them use 1E tournament character names, which are available in the backs of most tournament modules from the era.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The names are definitely odd. It would have been nice to have them use 1E tournament character names, which are available in the backs of most tournament modules from the era.

The names are the same as the pregens in the original Tsojcanth module.

Edit with the exception of Rustle Berrydust who is replacing a Fighter/Magic User/Thief called Hockerbrecht.

 

[darjr]

This was an oversight on my part. This is now fixed (it will no longer prompt you to purchase the fomorian or marid.)

Thanks for reporting it!

Thanks! And thanks for stopping by!

 

[Dan Dillon]

What's especially disappointing about the giant crickets is that it would take WotC 30 seconds to grab CR 1/4 default stats from the spreadsheet I assume they share in-office (and if they don't have such a document, they should), add a jump ability, and be done with it. Maybe say to use giant frog stats in the hard copy, but there's no practical limits to how many monster stat blocks they can store on DDB.

The issue wasn't time or effort, I could have whipped up giant crickets in my sleep. The issue was page space--there was absolutely no room in the book for even a small stat block for crickets. Sorry. :/

But for a noncombatant creature, it just wasn't even necessary. The giant frogs were the right size and have the jump covered, so that'll be good enough if a DM really really really needs to know how many hit points the cricket has or how far it can jump.

Like a solid 8 out of 10 times if you wonder why something isn't in a book, the answer is "there was just no room in the overall page count, or that specific area of layout."

 

[Retreater]

This was an oversight on my part. This is now fixed (it will no longer prompt you to purchase the fomorian or marid.)

Thanks for reporting it!

Wow. That's the first time my ranting on here has ever had a positive effect.
Thank you for taking care of that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Quote from the adventure:

The crickets are indifferent toward the characters.

I.e. the crickets are non-hostile, so they really don't need a stat-block at all. Definite waste of space, time and energy to give them a unique stat block. If the PCs attack them they go "squelch" and die.

But refluffing monsters to represent something else has a long history. Hidden shrine of Tamoachan has "giant polyp" which is a refluffed roper. There is a paragraph on the subject in VGR.

On the subject of monsters (or in this case hazards) not included in the adventure, Green Slime is in. This is in the DMG - a much more likely book to not own!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The cleric is named cathartic, there's weslocke the warlock... Very Bob the Fighter, or Melf.

Ethelrede does not have the Alert feat, so I guess he is Ethelrede Unrede

Even more horrifically, the halfling rogue wears goggles!

 

[Burnside]

It seems like a very fun old-school tier 2 adventure. I have the old 1E version and this is largely an improvement on it. I also like the tournament scoring rules!

A lot of combat and a lot of traps. It's a total dungeon crawl, but there's some cool environmental stuff and fun areas. The artwork is also fun and exciting.

In addition to the area 4 unmarked trap error, the map also has two area 19s and zero area 18s. Hope they can fix that before the book goes to print. This kind of map editing sloppiness happened in Shattered Obelisk as well; they should really tighten up in that area.

It should be noted that this free version is really just an excerpt; effectively, the upper level of a dungeon. There is no real payoff at the end of it beyond finding the entrance to the lower level.

 

[Delazar]

4 hours to explore 20 rooms. That’s 12 minutes per room. And a lot of fights. Is it really doable?