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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8241074" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 21: Jan/Feb 1990part 3/5The Bane of Elfswood: Less than a tenth of the way through the magazine's run, and we've already had the highest level AD&D adventure they're ever going to publish. Now we also have the highest level Basic D&D adventure, just barely pushing into Companion set territory and covering levels 15-18. Considering they're supposed to go up to level 36, that leaves the entire second half still untouched. Of course, while humans have that potential, if you're playing a demihuman, you've long since hit the level cap and are only getting minor upgrades in equipment and fighting ability at this point. Which is a definite problem for this adventure, because as the name indicates, it's an elf-focussed one, and having at least one elf PC in the party is strongly recommended. The PC's are approached by an elf who's family has been killed and turned into undead. Now they're wandering the forest where they used to live and gradually killing everything else off as well. Probably a good idea to deal with this sooner rather than later. So you get to do some serious overland exploring, finding both survivors (who may well wind up dead later if you're not smart) and clues as to what precipitated the disaster in the first place. As with Ancient Blood last issue, they enjoy playing up the spooky gothic nature of the environment, and the dark desires & jealousies of the original spirit that led it to persist beyond the grave. Given the level of the characters, most of the random encounters are mere speedbumps, but the final confrontation is both atmospheric and exceedingly deadly, reminding us just how nasty those Companion set undead are, with save or die on every attack, plus spell-like powers they can use intelligently. Of course, at that level, you can easily raise your fallen companions as long as the cleric survives, so losing a few of them in the fight isn't a disaster. Still, this illustrates how at that level, things get weird because you have lots of hit points and good saves, but enemies also have lots of powers that'll take you out if you fail a single save, turning fights into games of rocket tag and making large parties padded out with hirelings and support characters very important for long-term survival. (Which is where most villains, who are too arrogant to work with teams of equals mess up.) It's pretty interesting, but also shows why there are so few prefab adventures for adventurers of this level and up. If you don't have some kind of world-ending threat or overarching long term goal, wandering around, killing things and taking their stuff gets boring after a while, especially if you have enough wealth to live comfortably for the rest of your natural lifespan. You're either on an epic quest or have already settled down to domain play. Either way, you're dealing with large metaplot heavy adventures that don't really fit into a magazine like this. That's a problem they won't fix until they completely change the whole XP system and it becomes possible to create adventure paths taking a party all the way from 1-20th level following a single plot without distractions. We've got a lot to get through before we can talk about those. Better carry on grinding then.</blockquote>

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