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Message: <blockquote data-quote="demiurge1138" data-source="post: 4696600" data-attributes="member: 7451">DCC #26: The Scaly GodAn adventure for 4th-6th level characters. I can’t help but be struck by the similarities in the plots of The Scaly God and The Slithering Overlord. Both adventures feature as primary adversaries a tribe of troglodytes lairing deep within the earth, under the control of an intelligent, spellcasting reptilian monster.The party has been dispatched to the wilderness fort of Whitefang, which defends the caravan route between two cities from the depredations of humanoids. Unfortunately, reports have come in that Whitefang has been sacked, and these reports are accurate. The keep is now in the hands of a gang of bugbears and goblins, but the evidence suggests that they weren’t the responsible party for the raid. There’re too many three-toed, reptilian footprints about, the weapons that killed the men were rough-hewn stone rather than forged metal, and there’s a huge blue scale in the ruins. Not to mention that the bugbears hardly seem capable of blowing off the tops of the keep’s towers…The culprits are a tribe of mountain troglodytes lairing nearby. Their cunning shaman, Ssutsre, has made an alliance with the young blue dragon Rathulagon, and convinced his tribe that the dragon is in fact their lizard-god Lagos in the flesh. The trogs, emboldened by their divine patron, raided Whitefang for food and metal weapons, and plan to use its absence to make further raids in the region and establish themselves as the dominant power. Of course, now there’s a gang of adventurers after them, but the troglodytes are well defended, and their caves are also home to a host of other monsters and natural hazards.What I liked: Do you like the Tome of Horrors? You should—it’s a fantastic resource for all sorts of monsters from 1e that didn’t make the cut in Wizards of the Coast products. I have some issues with their design philosophy, but I admire the book’s thoroughness of scope and status as Open Gaming License fodder. The Scaly God makes full use of the Tome of Horrors, including encounters with old-school monsters like ascomoids, phycomids, aurumvorax, mites and pesties, mantari, gas spores and decapus. The original monsters also feel like they stepped right out of first edition, especially the impaler (it’s a reverse piercer—a mollusk disguised as a stalagmite that jumps up and stabs at adventurers).The Whitefang Keep encounter area is a pitch-perfect Against the Humanoids scenario. The bugbears and goblins have neat tactics (although I think the pepper grenade is a bit broken) and react intelligently to intrusion. It strikes me as a great night’s gaming. It’s short enough to run in a single night, and the encounters are designed such that most parties won’t have to rest until they clear out the keep. The Scaly God overall has a lot of relatively easy encounters, but they’re pointedly designed to create a delving mood and to allow more encounters in a day—and there’s also some very difficult encounters as well, like the aurumvorax.What I disliked: In comparison to the excellent Whitefang Keep, the bulk of the adventure takes place in the troglodyte caves, which don’t tickle my fancy in the same way. Although the trogs themselves have clever tactics and feel like a living, breathing tribe, it’s sort of weird that there’s so many deadly monsters lairing in their vicinity. An effort is made to explain the interactions with some of them, like the mite tribe that live nearby and the monstrous fungi that grow in their garden, but why aren’t the troglodytes attacked by the impalers every time they try to leave the mountain? Do they skirmish with the decapus, or does it leave them alone?There’s some wonkiness with the stat blocks as well. The bugbears are listed as having only leather armor and morningstars, but their ACs include the shields they carry in the basic SRD stat block. The impalers apparently went through changes in editing that weren’t caught—the New Monsters entry lists them as 1 HD aberrations, but in the text they’re 2 HD magical beasts… that have the Base Attack Bonus of 1 HD aberrations.The wandering monster tables are also a little weird, especially in Whitefang Keep. The text indicates that the humanoids would have organized responses to intrusion, which seems at odds with monsters just wandering around. It’s extra weird on the 2nd floor—the first three rooms are all combat heavy, so the only places that the party would be lingering around would be later rooms… the random encounter table for which is populated by the monsters from the first three rooms! They should already be dead by that point!Was it worth the $2? The Scaly God and The Slithering Overlord are both for the same level range and both feature troglodytes as antagonists. Of the two, buy The Slithering Overlord. But if you want to see some old friends used in an adventure again and want a short but excellent vs. goblinoids scenario, The Scaly God is a worthwhile investment.</blockquote>

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