Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="IronWolf" data-source="post: 2008593" data-attributes="member: 21076">This is apparently one of WOTC's Adventure Path modules, which if you play all of them, are designed to bring character from 1st to 20th level. This is either the 5th or 6th, I think, and will bring 10th level characters up to level 13 at the end.It's a 32 page book, and priced at $9.95. The interior is all black and white, and the margins are quite large (about 2 inches on the side, and 1 inch on the top). The cover unfortunately gives away one of the bigger combats in the module, and is actually pretty ugly (though it's one of their better artists). The illustrations inside are few, and when there, are rather ugly or plain, as are the maps. So, physically speaking, there's not much value here.On to the content. Heart of Nightfang Spire is purely a dungeon crawl (or Tower crawl, in this case). It's obvious immediately from the layout of the module. You have a 1 page with the introduction, character hooks, and adventure synopsis, then it moves to the map keys on page 2. Not much of a plot.Essentially, the plot of the module is that the PCs explore the tower. Why? Well, there's never really a good reason given. There are a few hooks, but most are unsatisfying. The best is that people from a local village are disappearing, last seen in the general direction of the tower, and presumably out of the goodness of the players' heart, they want to investigate.The tower itself is something of an oddity. It's apparently 300 feet tall, but it's located in a 1500 foot deep canyon or 'defile'. This is quite a remarkable geological feature, and might take quite a bit of handwaving to fit into a campaign, at least depending on the local geography.This is also something of a problem. It's possible that the PCs, depending on your players, might try to simply destroy the tower, or try to collapse the canyon walls, sealing the tower up, or try to flood it. Anyway, supposing that your PCs do eventually try to explore the tower (which took me a lot of work and cajoling), it's not a bad dungeon crawl. Not great, but not bad. To sum up, they have to search the tower, find some keys, then use the keys to get to the bad guy at the heart of the tower (thus the name of the module). A bit cliched. Rather than detective work, the PCs found this info out from some semi-friendly NPCs. It's easier to point out the flaws, than the good points. For one, a lot of the monsters in it are undead, so a cleric is vital. OTOH, more than 1 cleric or a Paladin or something like an Undead Slayer class can make the module much easier than planned.   A lot of the encounters are fairly nasty traps, so a Rogue is a necessity. Without one, it could be tough.Another thing, there are basically two tough fights in the module, one right at the begining (the scene depicted on the cover), and one at the end (the showdown with the bad guy). There is one tought fight in the middle, with an Elder Elemental, but it is optional or easily avoided. So, it might be a bit boring at times for players who like challenging combat.  Also, the tough fight at the begining can give the impression that it wasn't a long adventure, just a side-trek, and killing that toughie solved the problem of the missing townsfolk (one of the hooks given to get the PCs to explore the place.)Really, this module seems more suited to a computer RPG than pen & paper. It's a slightly above average dungeon crawl, no more, no less. I would give it a 3.5, but it's closer to a 3 than a 4.  With some tweaking, it might make a passable Deadlands d20 adventure as well.  There is only 1-2 monsters that wouldn't fit into the Deadlands setting, and the tower could be set in the Badlands or desert (maybe even the Grand Canyon). Also as a side note - this module has a fair amount of info about the Ashardalon dragon cult (and directly involves it). Apparently it's been mentioned in some of the previous adventure path modules, and some like that story arc. Those people might like this module a lot more than I did.</blockquote>

Verification