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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalendraf" data-source="post: 2008998" data-attributes="member: 3433">It's time to add a review for the 3rd episode in the Freeport series, Madness in Freeport.  This one has a lot more material than the first two adventures had.  This one lasted 4 playing sessions for my group, or about 16 hours.  My players had a blast and so did the DM!  As usual, spoilers are included below.The adventure starts with a heavy duty dose of role-playing opportunity at Lord Drac's Ball.  Depending on your taste and those of your group, you could easily stretch the events and sidebar intrigues to fill an entire playing session.  That's what happened when I ran it.  They roleplayed all the events from buying fancy clothing up thru the closing of the ball, and a final discussion with K'Stallo regarding the Jade Statue, taking about 4 hours to run thru all of it.  As a DM, running this event can push your limits with approximately 2 dozen NPC's to keep track of throughout the session.  I wish there was a bit more Q&A info regarding each character.  I would have liked to have had a large gather information chart to work off of to find gossip regarding the various notable NPCs.  If you have time, you could put something like this together yourself in advance, and tailor it to suit your particular campaign.Following the ball, the action moves to finding an old crew mate of a notorious pirate.  Finding him is rather easy, and his info is easily obtained.  Make sure the party has enough gold to pay his price, however.  My group tends to blow all but about 10 gp per character whenever they can, so they really had to scrounge to meet his price.The caves where the pirate hid his treasure are trapped in a number of ways.  One thing to note is that the 11 CR3 traps on the beach near the pirates final resting place are worth more experience than any single encounter in the nearby temple  (assuming a 4th thru 6th level party).  You may want to tone down the CR and/or experience from those in case your rogues decide to clear them all out.As for the temple, it's filled with a number of undead, especially non-corporeal ones.  If you haven't run these before, you and your players may be in for quite a surprise.  The 50% miss makes them very difficult to kill especially if you get on a hot streak in your die rolls.  I rolled about 20+ miss rolls in a row and almost killed the party in the process.  The stat damage from the shadows accumulates quickly, making it very hard for a party to survive.  I actually had to perform some DM-intervention at one point to avoid losing the party en-masse.The lower levels of the temple are quite a bit easier compared to the levels above.  The zombies at the bottom and the huge zombie snake die rather quickly to a well equipped party.  This made the temple seem a bit uneven and unsatisfying for my group.Once they have obtained the necessary pieces to reclaim the Jade Statue, they still have to make one more sacrifice.  The players aren't going to like it.  One character has to lose 2 points of constitution.  I strongly recommend that you download the Focus on Freeport information from the Green Ronin website which details the powers of the Jade Statue as well.  The item is an artifact with several powers.  That may explain why such a heavy price must be paid to obtain it.  How to recover those lost points of con is probably fodder for a future adventure at the very least.Returning from the temple and the caves, the party has one final objective: The assault on the lighthouse.  However, there is a chance that the party might not realize it's time to do this yet.  A curious party will likely have wanted to go there in previous episodes, only to be turned away.  The increased guards at the lighthouse at this point make it look even more doubtful that they will be able to get there now.  Some subtle hints may be required to steer them in the right direction.  The one clue requiring a Knowledge: Nature check may not be enough.The actual lighthouse adventure will likely take a full 4 hour playing session to finish up.  Some of the battles can be quite intense, especially the ones against the gibbering mouther or the one against the Wizard.  The final battle against Drac and his cronies can be very difficult as well, though that can be ended quickly if the party follows the clues they have.  As they climb their way through the lighthouse, the danger increases, just like a climactic finish in a movie.  Play it to the hilt, and your players will love it.  My group was very near dying in the last battle, and just barely managed to pull it off.  It's something they'll never forget!  I can't think of any other adventures that will be etched in our minds quite like this one.My biggest gripe about this adventure is the suggested party levels being 4 thru 6.  I strongly believe that a party should be at least level 5 before starting this.  My group was level 4 and had a very rough time in the caves and temple.  I'd also recommend the possibility of toning down the number of non-corporeal undead in the temple, or giving your party access to at least 1 or 2 ghost-touch weapons.  Otherwise, it's very easy to slaughter the party down there.  The final battles with the wizard and Drac are quite challenging, and you may want to consider dropping each of them by 1 level.  Also, the few items they are carrying are quite powerful (+3 stuff), which might be better to tame down to +2 and add in some other lesser items to make up for it.Overall, it's a great conclusion to the freeport series.  Sure there are some things that I would have liked to see changed or added, but its nothing that can't be fixed by an astute DM.  If decimal ratings were allowing I'd put this around 4.8 out of 5.  So I'm rounding it up to 5.</blockquote>

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