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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8544363" data-attributes="member: 907">I was running POTA before the pandemic hit, and we were coming pretty close to finishing it (the PCs were entering the fire node in the last session before we switched to online). I would not give the campaign a very good grade.First off, it's way too dungeony. The early part is great, where you explore the Dessarin Valley (though I would have spread the cults out more), but once you start entering the actual temples the whole thing turns into a megadungeon, and quite a boring one too. I'd rather have seen the temples be smaller and more spread out, and having the Fane and the Nodes as a different location. This would also allow for some outdoor adventuring in between the temples. This kind of thing would have been more useful than the side treks, which were a good idea but hard to incorporate (particularly since my PCs decided to set up camp in Rivergard Keep and got the Knights of Samular to help with guarding and maintaining the keep).Second, the background stuff is not well presented to the PCs. There's no info presented that lets the PCs know what the cults' plans are, or what purpose the elemental weapons serve. I had to use the Dark Lady as an info dump. There's also not much info about Tyar-Besil, which is bad because that's where the meat of the adventure is. Tyar-Besil is also tiny – it's a fairly big dungeon, but it's a tiny kingdom or city. By my count, each of the temples fit on a 35x45 square grid, with each square being 10 ft across. That means that the whole city fits in a 700 ft x 900 ft rectangle – and that has to be the whole city, because each of the temples connects directly to one another and have clear outward borders. As a comparison, Red Larch is about 1000 ft across (though more concentrated along the actual road). You could have made the realm of Tyar-Besil a more spread-out affair, with the temples being places of particular importance in the former kingdom.Speaking of the elemental weapons, they could definitely have had more juice. Significantly, none of them was a bow or a great weapon, meaning a lot of martial characters wouldn't be interested in them. And their actual benefits were pretty meh. Take Windvane, for example: it's a spear +2 with finesse, +d6 lightning damage, providing lightning resistance and the ability to once/day dominate an air elemental. I mean, that's not bad, but it's not something a fighter or paladin with great weapon style and great weapon mastery will abandon their greatsword +1 for. They could at least have given them some of the abilities of a ring of elemental command or something like that. Or let them have some special moves that use an attack instead of a full action – for example, Windvane could have worked as a javelin of lightning once per short rest that returned to your hand once thrown. Ironfang could have been a maul you could use to strike the ground with as a small AOE that deals a bit of damage and has a chance to knock people back/over.</blockquote>

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