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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2008917" data-attributes="member: 924">This is 48 page adventure from WOTC, reasonably priced at $9.95. It's for high level characters, 15th level or so. It doesn't appear to be part of the "Adventure Part" series, but it does have a very small tie-in with the Ashardalon plot line of them. It's a planar travel adventure, and unfortunately (for me, at least), it has something of a tie in with the Planescape setting (and cosmology), as opposed to something completely original. But if you like Planescape and/or the regular D&D cosmology, you'll like that aspect of it.While I'm a big fan of planar travel and different planes (just not Planescape), this module is remarkably simple when it comes to plot. Basically, the PCs must stop an evil bad guy from finishing his slightly diabolocal plans. I say slightly, because they really aren't bad - he's just trying to reforge a fairly powerful sword (powerful, but not earth-shakingly powerful).Why must they? Well, good question. The module itself is rather vague on it. Part of the trouble of making high level adventures it that it's hard to get powerful characters to take part in them. There are several hooks given, but none are very compelling. (Personally, I took a page from the Elric novels, and just had the PCs appear on the bad guy's fortress, like Elric and others sometimes travel through planes at the whims of Fate. Or the Balance).Anyway, assuming you follow the module plans, the adventure basically consists of 3 parts. The first part is trying to get to the evil guy's fortress. For reasons I don't really understand (I guess I need Manual of the Planes, or various Planescape books), they just can't go there directly. They have to go to a city on a neighboring plane, then cross over to the plane the fortress is on. The first part is pretty short, just a brief stop over. Guess it's for flavor.The 2nd part is when they get to the location of the fortress itself, or rather, the 'cube' it sits on (apparently all things on this plane live on large cubes that fly around) it gets interesting. The PCs must first explore the cube to find the fortress. There are several different people on the cube, from evil ant people who aren't actually evil because they don't really enjoy enslaving people, to dragons, undead, and even some Slaad. The 3rd and last part is the exploration/ransacking of the evil guy's fortress itself. This is a pretty decent dungeon crawl. Has all sorts of nasy types inside, including the obligatory torture chamber. Most of the rest is fairly original, though. At least, the types of critters in the fortress are (the plot, or fortress itself, it not).For instance, the main bad guy is a half-red dragon, half-duergar, and he's not a wizard, but a fighter/cleric. There's also a lady Pit Fiend (I always thought Pit Fiends were male), and a fallen Archon. Part 3 is actually pretty short, so your PCs might be surprised to encounter the big fight so quickly.The last part of the module has some new monsters, spells and magic items. A monster template is repeated from the Manual of the Planes, apparently. There's also the "Bladeling" which is pretty cool looking, but a pretty stupid concept (they're a humanoid race with blades sticking out of them - I feel sorry for their mothers) and the "Steel Predator", which is a metal eating cat like thing.  The new spells are "Cubehop", which lets the caster travel from cube to cube on Acheron (and on the plane of Rubix), and "Improved Arcane Lock", which is like Arcane Lock but lets people designated by the cast also move through the locked things. The new items aren't worth mentioning, to be honest, except for the "Blade of Fiery Might", which is an artifact/uber scimitar (huge unholy keen flaming burst +5). It's possible the PCs could end up with this, too, though it causes fire damage to the wielder. Oh yeah, rounding it off, you get some pregenerated PCs, which of course, are the iconics! Woohoo! Like we haven't seen enough of Lidda & company.  Anyway, it's not a bad adventure. Not great, but not terrible, either. Very little role-playing in it, as opposed to combat. Very little art that is noticeable, except for one very nice (and a bit kinky) picture of the lady Pit Fiend (I think). My main problems with it are philosophical.For one, the party is apparently expected to befriend some Formians, who IMHO are evil, since they use slaves and actually enslave anyone they meet that is weaker than them. But since for some bizzare reason they aren't considered evil, they are okay for the PCs to make friends with. But they're not expected to make friends with a hobgoblin who is hunting some critters on the cube. Why? Because hobgoblins are evil, I guess. Never mind he doesn't act evil in this module.For another, while the types of NPCs/enemies in this book are different, their personalities are bland or non-existent. For the most part, no one has much in the way of a personality. The only ones that stand out seem to be the lady Pit Fiend. Most aren't even given personalities.While personalities are mostly good for role-playing, it can be helpful in both adding flavor to combat, and figuring out what sort of strategy they would use. Lastly, while high level adventures are tricky to make, and even trickier to make plausible in the face of possible PC powers (like divination, scrying, teleportation, etc), I think this module did something of a poor job of handling it. It's nice that they tried, but I think things are far too contrived.  While these things don't really detract, they don't help either. So, ultimately it's a pretty average adventure.</blockquote>

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