Banewarrens--written by Monte Cook
The criteria I use to evaluate a d20 adventure includes the following:
1. Interesting and varied encounters: I look for unique encounters, allowing for a variety of role and roll playing.
2. Atmosphere/Motivations: I look for elegant descriptions, and NPC/Monster motivations; foreshadowing and intrigue are also considered here.
3. Logical: the adventure should obey a sense of logic that clever players can use to their advantage.
4. Rules/Balance: I look at application of rules and whether monsters and treasures balanced for the expected character levels.
5. Ease of DMing: Clear maps, friendly stat blocks, skill check numbers, player handouts and illustrations.
I don't give much weight to text density and cost per page... I'd rather pay a lot for a small clever mystery than pay a little for a huge repetitive monster bash. I don't give much weight to new monsters, prestige classes, and magic items.
*important* I'd like to think that I am authoring an adventure for a 3rd party publisher. I don't believe that my review is biased, but thought you should know.
THE BASICS: (not exactly spoilers) The adventure is 128 pages long, cover price of $17.95 American.
3 pages of advertizing/credits
13 pages of background
26 pages of city adventure
9 pages of wilderness (extraplanar) adventure
64 pages of underground dungeon adventure
4 pages of new monsters/items
8 pages of player illustrations (2 per page)
All of these pages break down into the following encounters:
Approximately 50 combat encounters.
Approximately 18 roleplay/negotiation encounters.
Approximately 23 trap encounters.
Approximately 16 puzzle encounters.
Approximately 47 exploring encounters (interesting things to examine)
*note that about 20% of "exploring" encounters are also dangerous but avoidable traps - these are in addition to the 23 trap ecounters
The overall gist of the adventure is that there is a large dungeon full of evil artifacts (the banewarrens), and the players are most likely trying to seal the banewarrens for good. I say "most likely" because there are several outside factions with competing goals. The party will probably find themselves siding with one faction or another at different times... sometimes even competing with the same faction that they had previously aligned themselves with. There are several city and wilderness adventures as the pursuit of these competing factions periodically takes people away from the banewarrens.
THE SPECIFICS: (Some Spoilers Follow)
1. Interesting and varied encounters: (5/5). The adventure starts off with a great mix of intrigue, negotiation, dungeon and city adventures. The final 1/3 becomes more of a dungeon crawl. There are encounters underwater, on bridges, in swamps, on slippery floors, etc... the variety is terrific... no two situations are alike. The adventure started out with a bang... Chaos in the city streets, civilians needing to be rescued in the midst of fires and monsters--probably the most exciting introduction to an adventure I've ever run.
2. Atmosphere/Motivations: (5/5)You may have noticed that over 10% of the book is "background". This is because of the several competing factions that the party may interact with at different times in the adventure. This adventure truly has intrigue... the players will have to decide who to trust, and perhaps who to betray... likewise, the faction that allied with the party at the beginning may find themselves opposed to the party later. This adventure far exceeds any other adventure I've read for elements of intrigue. There are many creepy, interesting, and puzzling things for the party to encounter. I think that perhaps some of the final third of the adventure could have used a little more flavor text, although the darkstar pendant room, which appears in the last section, was particularly vivid.
There were a number of rooms with Warding Generators... the text for these rooms was cut-and-pasted from previous sections. It was a lot of text and the repitition seemed unnecessary.
I apologise for being redundant, but I need to stress that the intrigue in this adventure far exceeds anything I've read before. In most adventures, the party might be hired to do a task, but then later find out that thier employer is going to betray them... that is child's play compared to the Banewarrens. Many adventures, and a lot of sourcebooks talk about various factions and noble houses with different goals... as far as I am concerned, that is not really "intrigue" at all, it is only flavor. When the party must uncover the secret agendas of different faction, and must make important decisions on which factions to side with, and which factions to exterminate, defy, or betray, then you really have intrigue. This adventure is the real thing.
3. Logical: (4/5)The adventure obeyed its logic throughout. Every creature had a reason for being in its particular place. Most of the creatures that were entombed for long periods of time were appropriately constructs or undead... the few living creatures always had an adequate means of support.
After a the party tests the waters a few times (examines some artifacts), they will quickly know what to look for and what to expect. Likewise, for opponents, some enemies make hit-and-run attacks on the party... the party can begin to anticipate such encounters and plan a strategy to deal with them.
The adventure was logical enough that the party could begin to correctly predict where they would find traps, where they would find allies, and where they would find opponents. I think this is a pretty good sign of a logical adventure.
There were a few areas in which I didn't think creatures really belonged... even with a food source, some living creatures could not remain entombed hundreds of years even with a plentiful food supply.
4. Rules/Balance: (4/5) The treasure is balanced with the encounters overall: some encounters had a bit extra treasure, some had no treasure, overall my players advanced from 6th to 10th level and always had the appropriate amount of treasure for thier level. Some encounters were seriously overwhelming, especially since Mr. Cook provided excellent tactics for the opponents. I believe that an ambush encounter on page 43 (EL 11) will easily destroy any group if the DM uses the encounter as-written. Lets just say that my players are all experienced, they used good tactics (invisibility, grappling, flanking, defensive spells, etc)... and during the course of the adventure there were 20 player deaths (including 1 TPKs, and 2 near-tpks [where one person survived by teleporting away once the rest of the party was obliterated]). The first half of the adventure is VERY hard at the suggested levels. I think level 7 is much more appropriate for starting characters.
One encounter on page 44 is listed as "CR11", though it includes two CR6 monsters and a CR12 boss... the party will be about level 7 when they have this encounter. The odds of survival are not too good here if the party decides to fight (and there is nothing that would indicate they shouldn't)
5. Ease of DMing: (4/5) The background was excellent and provided most of the information necessary to work with the very intriguing operatives. There were excellent illustrations. The new monsters are statted out, while the common monsters have references to the page of the 3.0 Monster Manual where you can find thier statistics. The maps are included in the text. There is a very handy index of NPCs, that especially comes into play as the factions evolve. A party might encounter a few representatives of a faction multiple times... for those times the index was very handy.
The advertisements for the adventure (and the book cover) did not say that the book requires the use of the "Book of Eldrich Might" published by Malhavoc press. There are a few NPCs that use prestige classes from the book of eldrich might, likewise there are spells and many magic referenced from the book of eldrich might. There is just enough information provided in the adventure that most of it is playable without the supplemental book, but in many cases, particularly with magic items, the DM does not know what particular items do.
I think that with so many factions and people involved, it is important for the adventure to make things as easy to understand as possible for the DM. There is a minor pet peeve I have in that the author sometimes gives more than one name for a particular place or character. For example: the person who built the banewarrens is referred to as "Danar", "Eslathagos Malkith", and "The Dread One." That is three separate names (one hard to pronounce) all used to refer to a person that the PCs will never even meet. Perhaps the multiple names provide flavor, but the adventure would have been easier to use and apply if each person, object, or place had only one name... and those names should be relatively easy to pronounce or read.
The adventure had more encounters than the party will probably need to experience. There are some locations that a party can bypass completely. For example, the playtest group had a cleric with access to a particular spell. If the group didn't have the cleric, they would have had to travel to a place called the "tower of Charch-Pahn". It is nice that these extra locations were included to take into account the many possible party compositions. There was a pretty significant section, (all of chapter 10), that seemed anticlimactic... the playtest group never went there and never needed to go there. Chapter 10 was interesting but it wasn't necessary for the adventure.
There were a large number of sealed doors that the party wasn't expected to be able to open. This bothered me a little bit as the DM... I didn't want to describe doors and have the party spend time trying to break through them when it wasn't going to be possible.
There was an intelligent weapon named "Yalesha", who plays a very important role throughout the adventure, but I didn't think there was enough information provided for me to play it. The adventure wasn't clear on what Yalesha knows and what it doesn't... as it was I had to guess and play it as if it had sort of selective amnesia.
Playtest Results: (Major spoilers from here on down)
The group played for 23 sessions, each about 4 hours long. I tend to be a fast-moving DM... keeping the action going rather than letting people get bogged down or sidetracked. As it was, the players only encountered perhaps 2/3 of the entire adventure... while still seeing it through to a conclusion.
Even after repeated player deaths, TPKs and near-TPKs... the players wanted to keep going back, the Banewarrens was a challenge that the players needed to overcome. I offered to run a different adventure, but the players wanted satisfaction. I guess this shows that the adventure was compelling and entertaining.
I was very eager to run the adventure after the first read, but somehow after 18 of the 23 sessions I began to lose some of the excitement... I believe this is where the adventure became more of a steady dungeon-crawl.
The first 10 weeks were some of the most exhilirating to DM... especially as the party was beginning to discover just how dangerous some of the banes (evil artifacts) were. One mage put a wraith-generating "Malignant Crystal" in his backpack. Soon enough, a wraith spawned out of the crystal, got a suprise attack on the mage, and killed him. It was the first time I have ever used the "Spawn" ability of a wraith.
The first and second grailquest teams were responsibile for 5 player deaths. I decided not to run the full-on ambush with the 2nd grailquest team.. instead they encountered each other without the grailquest team having advanced preperation. The mind flayer still ate the brains of a paladin, rogue, and cleric.
The Group never interacted with the helpful rogue "Nicalon"... instead they came to an agreement with House Vladaam and then quickly broke thier agreement. I had been looking forward to some of the interaction in chapter 4 but the party was a step ahead of me.
The large scorpion construct in Chapter 5 (page 49) was responsible for a TPK, several members failed thier saving throws vs petrification, the ranger survivor was trapped between two sets of constructs and didn't survive the attacks of opportunity when he tried to retreat.
After that TPK, the party began making use of a sorcerer with dimension door, and another player bought a cape of the montebank. That pretty much assured that at least one person would survive every future encounter.
The Disk of Dissolution played a major role, as the party sorcerer wanted to summon a monster (a celestial monkey) to disintigrate opponents.
The combat in the Belfry was suitably cinematic, with a lightning bolt triggering an explosion that blew off the top of the structure. The "betrayed" with his ability to turn living was a very dangerous encounter... it would have been easier if the party paladin was alive, but the ability to automatically turn PCs (no saving throw) split up the group.
The trapped silver dragon and accompanying puzzle was completely ignored by the PCs... actually most of the inner vaults was skipped as the party took a route from room 6, to 17, to 18, to 41, to 43.... leaving 3/4 of this large level unexplored.
There are a number of things to look out for if you play version 3.5 instead of version 3. A number of creatures no longer have an appropriate space/reach for the dungeon: Both grailquest teams had large size creatures that fill up the typical 10 foot corridor in the Banewarrens. In Chapter 5, The air elementals summoned in room 42 are too wide for the corridor. The Girallions in room 37 are too wide to fight side-by-side in the 10 foot hallways. The ogres in chapter 9 (area 15) are restricted to fighting in single-file on the ledge... there was some question about whether a bull-rush can push people at an angle at all... I had to allow it or the ogres would have had no way to push someone off a ledge.
Some of the monsters have changed from 3.0 to 3.5. In particular, the Osyluths in Chapter 5, area 4c are certain to kill an entire party if they are discovered.
FINAL WORD:
I thought that the initial encounters were too difficult for a party at the expected level... I thought that some of the early momentum died out a bit in the baneheart. On the other hand, the first 15 sessions were very exiting for me as a DM and for the players. The intrigue was outstanding. The overall plot and atmosphere of the banewarrens make it a truly memorable advnture... it is one that the survivors will talk about for ages, much like the Tomb of Horrors or Rappan Atthuk.
I think the adventure would translate very well into most campaign worlds... but the new Ebberon seems particularly suited to the adventure. Warforged characters can bypass many traps, poisons, and diseases... so that might make the adventure a little less deadly.
I think that even with the negative points I've brought up, this adventure is still worth a 5 of 5... mostly on the basis of the outstanding intrigue and the author's interweaving the dungeon crawl aspects with several breaks--The party needs to keep on top of developments outside the dungeon, which leads them to several interludes in the city and into a demi-plane.
