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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8539193" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 44: Nov/Dec 1993part 4/5Raiders of the Chanth: Another very setting specific adventure in quick succession, as we're off to Athas to sail the silt sea. The frequency of raiders has suddenly increased a lot, and their groups are comprised of races that wouldn't normally work together. This seem like the kind of problem for a group of wandering heroes. Cross the silt, talk to the people in the nearby oasis to find out where the troublemakers lair, and head to their tower. Once there, you find out it's a blatant rip-off of the Quintessons from Transformers, a five-brained psionic gestalt construct that's dominating the regular people and has ambitions of TAKING OVER THE WORLD!!!! (despite the fact that Athas is a dump that's more trouble than it's worth, but I guess when you don't have any knowledge of other worlds for comparison, you don't know any better.) The five personalities will bicker with each other in a hammy way, but they're united in their desire to conquer through whatever means, and will try to recruit the PC's with promises of wealth and glory, then psionic domination if they refuse. Since it has 5 brains, it gets 5 independent actions per round to use various powers with. So while there are some preliminary bits and fights with regular minions as well, the meat of this adventure is a big set-piece boss fight with a unique creature with a highly idiosyncratic set of abilities, tactics and weaknesses that's designed to be a match for a whole party. It feels like a precursor to the kind of design they'd apply to Solo monsters in 4e, albeit with a larger selection of powers than any 4e monster. It's another one that's an interesting read, but I'm ambivalent about actually using, as it's very setting specific, and a bit cheesier than I like my Dark Sun. Still, it's both specific and different in style from any previous adventures in here, it's not rehashed and adds some new ideas on how to run encounters, so there's a fair bit of value in it.</blockquote>

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