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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9184881" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/CXpt4br.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Escape From Senag IslandOur last adventure in the Dragonlance Companion, Escape from Senag Island is a combat-heavy module designed for 4-5 PCs of 5th level. Like Trials of the Tower Initiate, the PCs will level up multiple times, once each time after completing one of three major tasks, and again once the adventure is complete. And unlike Trials, this isn’t a days-long overland journey, but more or less presumably takes place over the course of a day. That’s a bit too rapid for my tastes!The adventure takes place on Senag Island, which is a day’s sail from the Tanith Peninsula of Solamnia. The White Dragonarmy set up camp on the island, conducting a ritual of some kind upon it. The PCs are hired by the Knights of Solamnia to infiltrate the island, destroy its watchtower, stop the ritual, and if possible free the prisoners who are being used as slave labor. The party will be paid 2,500 gold upfront, with the rest of the reward being undefined magic items. The Knight who hires the party was able to find details from a sending stone of a POW on the island, although said POW has since died and the information is coming from the minotaur Teeris Bearpelt. Teeris feels that his minotaur superiors in charge of this military detachment are acting dishonorably, particularly in imprisoning and killing unarmed prisoners for the ritual sacrifice rather than giving them a fighting chance.The adventure is rather open-ended in that the order of objectives don’t have to be followed in a linear fashion. Doing some objectives before others can alter future encounters, such as the watchtower’s destruction ramping up Dragonarmy patrols and making them more common as random encounters. Stopping the ritual first will cause zombies to start springing up around the island who are hostile to everyone. While the Dragonlance Companion gives us a map of the island, it doesn’t have maps for the encounter areas, forcing the DM to do that work themselves.The PCs can find allies on the island, such as the kender Yezree Bramblebough who an escaped prisoner and can provide the PCs with information about the island. As for Teeris Bearpelt, he can give directions to the ritual and while he won’t hinder the party, he won’t overtly help them either save during a possible final battle. As for the prisoners, they will fight alongside the PCs and use various improvised tools if they believe that the party will help free them, but individually are quite fragile. As for their opposition, the White Dragonarmy soldiers are spread out in patrols and guard most of the critical areas in this adventure. Draconian Soldiers and Scouts are the most common enemy types and are pretty easy for PCs to overcome at this level. Draconian Elite Troopers are typically lone captains in patrols, and are a lot beefier with better gear, a unique death throe where they explode into icy shards,* and can make two weapon attacks per turn. As for the minotaurs, the unnamed troops use the stats of the monster of the same name, with the named ones other than Teeris having their own unique stat blocks.*None of the five default draconian types do this in the lore. Frost draconians do, but as those draconians are good-aligned it’s unlikely that they’ll have advanced far in the Dragonarmies before attempting to defect. They also were only created during the last months of the War of the Lance IIRC, so if this is a shoutout to them it’s a bit odd to not bring this up.Destroying the Watchtower is the shortest and simplest task. The Watchtower is still undergoing construction, with the intended purpose of housing siege weapons to attack enemy ships. A work crew of prisoners is overseen by a few minotaurs and draconians, and the two major ways to send the watchtower crashing down involve getting a powder keg from Yezree or stealing a large batch of alchemist’s fire from the Dragonarmy camp.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/7issQNF.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The Ritual of Sargonnas is in a clearing that can only be reached through the island’s tunnel network. Beyond a possible random encounter with a roper, the caves aren’t dangerous to traverse, and it is here the PCs will run into Teeris Bearpelt who can inform them about the ritual. A minotaur sorcerer known as Aremin Keenmind is hoping to sacrifice a trio of prisoners to his god Sargonnas, claiming that it is necessary in designing a weapon that will allow the Dragonarmy to make incursions into the Solamnic mainland. Said weapon is the ability to raise zombies at will, and he has a failsafe built in where if he’s slain then he will count as a sacrifice. Should he be taken prisoner, he will do all he can to provoke his captors into killing him. Upon his death, all deceased enemies on the island will rise as zombies, and this has effects on future encounters where slain creatures will then rise as zombies in 1d6 turns. Should the ritual be stopped, the magic on the island unravels, where every spell cast has a chance of causing a wild magic surge on a natural 1 of a d20 rolled independently for the purposes of determining such surges.Keenmind doesn’t fight alone, and has two elite draconians at the ritual site with him. In terms of stats, Keenmind is a minotaur with a warhammer that deals extra lightning damage on a hit, has a rechargeable Thunderburst attack which is like the Thunderwave spell, and he can cast a small array of low-level spells.The Wrath of the Dragonarmy covers the main contingent of Dragonarmy soldiers on the island, as well as where the bulk of prisoners are kept. The camp will be on high alert once the watchtower is destroyed and/or the ritual interrupted, and sensing a change in the wind the prisoners begin to covertly prepare for an uprising. Four draconian scouts and a minotaur hunter known as Raasra Wolfslayer will track down the PCs, holding Yezree as a hostage in hopes of putting the party at a disadvantage. Raasra is a modified minotaur, who wields two daggers with which he can sneak attack as well as a longbow, and although he still has a charge and gore attack he deals slightly more damage with his manufactured weapons. Which is a pretty neat touch, as a lot of players are likely to expect a minotaur to fight with heavy weapons and may be taken aback that the daggers are deadlier in his hands.The Dragonarmy camp has a large number of draconian soldiers, with some minotaur soldiers including the commander Miralo Brighthorn. Brighthorn fights with a greataxe she can wield in one hand along with a shield bash attack, and as a bonus action she can give a command to an ally which gives them free movement and an attack. If the prisoners were freed the survivors will be rushing to a barge at the docks with soldiers in hot pursuit and zombies blocking the progress of both Dragonarmy and prisoners. If they’re still mostly imprisoned, zombies will be attacking the barracks in which the prisoners are held. The barge isn’t sturdy enough to hold both the PCs and surviving prisoners. Anyone who stays on the island is certain to get overwhelmed by zombies if they can’t escape, but extra boats can be found in the caves where the PCs met Teeris.Should the PCs escape the island and return to their employer, they will be gratefully rewarded with a rare magic item based on the DM’s discretion. I find that interesting, as the adventure earlier implied that the PCs would be getting multiple magic items.Thoughts: Escape From Senag Island is honestly hard to judge. First off, the rapid leveling in a very short period of time is highly subject to how the DM interprets the refreshing of resources. If they don’t refresh a level up like with spell slots, the PCs will need to spend at least 3 days on the island in order to gain the full benefits of their power increase. Additionally, I spotted quite a bit of mistakes: beyond a few spelling errors, several NPC and monster stat blocks have incorrect calculations, such as skill modifiers being off by one when you take into account relevant ability scores and proficiency bonuses. Then there are things like the lack of maps or the incongruence between the number of magic items as the quest reward, and it’s clear that this adventure could use another editing pass.The last part of the Companion is Adventure Hooks, which provides a list of hooks strongly tied to the new player-facing content, with roughly one such hook per race, subclass, and background. There’s also a few for the new spells, magic items, and monsters in the book. As they are very brief and more to get the creative juices flowing, I won’t be covering these.Overall Thoughts: It’s hard for me to decide on a recommendation for the Dragonlance Companion, because so much of the material within is of varying quality and may not be suitable for all fans. The new races, backgrounds, subclasses, feats, and spells point heavily to a player-friendly supplement, but with monsters and adventures taking up slightly less than half the page count a good portion is meant for DM eyes only. And even of the player-facing material, a lot of things associated with classic Dragonlance are missing or of more niche appeal. I can see a lot more people eager to play a Baaz rather than a Thanoi, or Knights of Neraka rather than Seekers. The Legacy Items don’t really seem all that inspiring, but the Herald Items for the gods of Krynn more or less do the same thing but much better. And as I mentioned before, some of the larger changes to the lore are sure to rankle the more purist set of fans.If anything, the Dragonlance Companion is a grab-bag, where the only guarantee is that you’ll get a lot of Dragonlance content. The content doesn’t have a consistent level of quality, and given the price the only way I can or can’t recommend it is based on how important certain things in the book are to you. And whether you’re willing to shell out 20 dollars for the content that does sound appealing.Some people will inevitably ask for comparisons with Tasslefhoff’s Pouches of Everything, as that’s the other big “companion expansion” sourcebook for 5e Dragonlance. I can’t make a recommendation right now, as when I first read that book it was a casual read. I will be reviewing that book next on its own terms, and once that’s finished I will grade the two books together.</blockquote>

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