D&D 5E Quests of Doom-Froggy/Necro
Gilladian
Adventurer
I own both - I've only run one adventure so far - the winery one. My pcs liked it, but it took a bunch of work to make the maps even remotely sensible. And a whole winery estate with one tiny patch of vines made no sense; I just added acres of fields around the estate on the hills. In the house, the ballroom stairs go nowhere, and the entrance to the cellars is non-existent. I added a ramp and cellar doors in the back yard.
I hope the other adventures are better mapped!
I hope the other adventures are better mapped!
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
I own both. The winery one is the weakest adventure IMO, but I amped it up (quadrupled the opposition) and ran it. My conclusion: prepared adventures don't work well for my style. After the main house was cleared we were all bored of oozes and had figured out how to kill them efficiently, so I basically discarded the whole basement and turned it into a portal to the Underdark with githyanki and drow wandering around, and ancient biomachines that take in gems and permanently modify your body in xixchil-like ways. When they finally ran into the module's boss I just handwaved the fight (PCs had 28 drow skeleton warriors with actions readied to kill whatever was on the other side of the door) and focused on letting them play with the machine that had created him.
So I guess the only thing I have to say about that adventure is that it was pedestrian and uninspiring, but maybe I'd feel that way about any prepared module.
Fifth Edition Foes is quite inspiring though. I should have used a grue in that basement...
Last edited:
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Yep. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Here's a wild guess: are you guys wine connoisseurs? The adventure had syne interesting suggestions about bringing physical samples of the chateau's product to set the mood for your players, but since 1.) I don't drink, 2.) my players are more into poisons than wines, and I reskinned the chateau accordingly--since that, I couldn't really share exotic poisons with my players, and we missed out on that element.
Zardnaar
Legend
I have run the following.
Bad Moon Rising
The Dead From Above
The Noble Rot
Hidden Oasis (borked adventure do to under CR monsters with autohit attacks).
Death in Dyrglass
Irteps Dish
I liked Bad Moon Rising and Irteps dish for roleplaying, The Dead from Above is quite tough but was an interesting dungeon hack. Hidden Oasis starts off good but the CR 1/8 things are very very deadly. CR 1/8 my ass.
Bad Moon Rising
The Dead From Above
The Noble Rot
Hidden Oasis (borked adventure do to under CR monsters with autohit attacks).
Death in Dyrglass
Irteps Dish
I liked Bad Moon Rising and Irteps dish for roleplaying, The Dead from Above is quite tough but was an interesting dungeon hack. Hidden Oasis starts off good but the CR 1/8 things are very very deadly. CR 1/8 my ass.
Last edited:
redrick
First Post
I bought this book, but it's hard for me to review an adventure book until I've played through at least several of the adventures in it! So my review could be tied up quite some time in jury duty, so to speak.
I wrote an overly lengthy play report based on the Noble Rot adventure (the winery one). Several other users commented with their own experiences of it as well. That can be found here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?435144-Play-Report-Quests-of-Doom-The-Noble-Rot
The summary is that it's a location-based adventure with a lot of good atmosphere and a backstory that's easy to plug into just about any campaign. Unfortunately, in play, it felt pretty flat, with all but the final few combat encounters feeling like a waste of time. All spooky music with no real scares.
Our group is currently playing Bad Moon Rising. This is a nice investigative adventure that can be used as a springboard for a mid-level sandbox adventure. We've woven a couple other plotlines from our campaign into the adventure, which has worked really nicely. It also means that it's taken us longer to play, because a lot of our sessions have been spent on side quests and tangents that we've come up with ourselves. Regardless, this adventure was exactly what we needed. A solid chassis, with a minimally described town, nobility and local threat. There are a lot of spaces that can easily be filled in with the DM's own material (often on the fly for me), but I'm sure a group could also slam through it pretty quickly with just the material presented, if that was how they wanted to play it.
For me, this book feels a bit like buying several issues of Dungeon magazine. Some of the adventures might not be very good, or at least not at all to your tastes. Some of the adventures are intriguing, but don't fit with the level or themes of your current campaign. You might read them and pull some ideas out. And, if you're lucky, you might actually find an adventure that's worth slugging more or less whole-cloth into your current game.
I wrote an overly lengthy play report based on the Noble Rot adventure (the winery one). Several other users commented with their own experiences of it as well. That can be found here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?435144-Play-Report-Quests-of-Doom-The-Noble-Rot
The summary is that it's a location-based adventure with a lot of good atmosphere and a backstory that's easy to plug into just about any campaign. Unfortunately, in play, it felt pretty flat, with all but the final few combat encounters feeling like a waste of time. All spooky music with no real scares.
Our group is currently playing Bad Moon Rising. This is a nice investigative adventure that can be used as a springboard for a mid-level sandbox adventure. We've woven a couple other plotlines from our campaign into the adventure, which has worked really nicely. It also means that it's taken us longer to play, because a lot of our sessions have been spent on side quests and tangents that we've come up with ourselves. Regardless, this adventure was exactly what we needed. A solid chassis, with a minimally described town, nobility and local threat. There are a lot of spaces that can easily be filled in with the DM's own material (often on the fly for me), but I'm sure a group could also slam through it pretty quickly with just the material presented, if that was how they wanted to play it.
For me, this book feels a bit like buying several issues of Dungeon magazine. Some of the adventures might not be very good, or at least not at all to your tastes. Some of the adventures are intriguing, but don't fit with the level or themes of your current campaign. You might read them and pull some ideas out. And, if you're lucky, you might actually find an adventure that's worth slugging more or less whole-cloth into your current game.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
I've prepped Of Ant And Men but not run it yet because my players have ignored the giant ant nest. If I do run it, I will do so with slight modifications[1] but I did find it inspirational and look forward to using it, or borrowing elements from it for other adventures. (In particular, I found the lock and traps in the Tomb of the Sword delightful.)
One final note: the adventure text expects the PCs to have problems getting the sword out of the hive due to the anti-magic aura nullifying all of their invisibility spells/etc., but in practice I don't see that as a problem. They'll just tie a 100' long rope to the sword and drag it behind them so they can still use their spells. It's what I would do. The other possibility is to just kill all the ants in the hive first: 600 workers, 120 warriors, 60 bombers is very doable, merely boring and grindy--you will probably spend about 400 gp worth of arrows in the process though. On the plus side, that's 141,000 XP...
-Max
[1] Table alterations. Mainly, I will remove "Intruder!" from the random encounter tables. I just don't like the implication that ankhegs, beetles, and bulettes are attacking the hive every twenty minutes of every day. Also I will alter the attack % tables to make invisible/silenced/stealth not part of the table. Instead the ant detecting the creature will be a precondition to making any sort of response whatsoever--because it doesn't make sense to me that "Hive At War" would make ants better at detecting invisible creatures.
One final note: the adventure text expects the PCs to have problems getting the sword out of the hive due to the anti-magic aura nullifying all of their invisibility spells/etc., but in practice I don't see that as a problem. They'll just tie a 100' long rope to the sword and drag it behind them so they can still use their spells. It's what I would do. The other possibility is to just kill all the ants in the hive first: 600 workers, 120 warriors, 60 bombers is very doable, merely boring and grindy--you will probably spend about 400 gp worth of arrows in the process though. On the plus side, that's 141,000 XP...
-Max
[1] Table alterations. Mainly, I will remove "Intruder!" from the random encounter tables. I just don't like the implication that ankhegs, beetles, and bulettes are attacking the hive every twenty minutes of every day. Also I will alter the attack % tables to make invisible/silenced/stealth not part of the table. Instead the ant detecting the creature will be a precondition to making any sort of response whatsoever--because it doesn't make sense to me that "Hive At War" would make ants better at detecting invisible creatures.
I have the books. Running the winery adventure now. Like said above, I have had to greatly increase encounter strength for a party of 4 5th levels. Its been pretty boring to DM so far, but I've been trying to spice it up as much as possible. I let them find a map of the area I put the winery in before the region fell to disuse, so hopefully they will want to explore some stuff there. I also used it to give the characters a ton of gold. I'm hoping they use the gold to set up some form of base of operations.
I ran the tower adventure with the underground entrance in 3rd edition many years ago. Iirc, it went quite well. All the other adventures I skimmed through and they look good. I am a bit behind on my reading though. I have bought every 3rd party in print product that I can find, so I still haven't read all the adventures and books cover to cover thanks to real life.
I ran the tower adventure with the underground entrance in 3rd edition many years ago. Iirc, it went quite well. All the other adventures I skimmed through and they look good. I am a bit behind on my reading though. I have bought every 3rd party in print product that I can find, so I still haven't read all the adventures and books cover to cover thanks to real life.
Similar Threads
