The Second PRINCES OF THE APOCALYPSE Review

Between this and [MENTION=67925]Fildrigar[/MENTION]'s review (not to mention the AL preview), I'm eagerly awaiting this adventure. My home group is coming up to the finish of LMoP, so I should be able to move them straight into PotA pretty much straight away.

Any chance you could spill the beans on the new monsters contained in chapter 7? No stats or anything, just a list of new beasties and such. Pretty please?

 

[Obvious_Ninja]

Just finished a full read of chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 2, The Dessarin Valley, Is awesome. Really excellent detail, plenty of npc notes location notes towns inn's etc etc I have a feeling that I will be referring back to this module for years and running adventures in this area well beyond whats published in this adventure. This module will be sitting in the forgotten realms reference shelf in my library for good I think.

For reference this module is set in 1491 DR - The year of the Scarlet Witch

Actually the year is what I needed. Thank you!

 

[pukunui]

Actually the year is what I needed. Thank you!

It's nice that they actually listed a year. Neither Lost Mine nor the ToD modules were set in a specific year (although the ToD Expeditions adventures in Phlan were set in 1489 DR, so it's reasonable to assume that Hoard and Rise were too).

 

[graves3141]

Well the darksun section is 2 1/4 pages long. talks about the setting, background options, athasian cult changes for the elemental eye cult and how it interacts with the elemental priesthoods. Factions on athas fills out the rest. Its really well done actually. I ran a darksun game once for 2 years real time so I am pretty familiar with the old stuff and this all makes sense for the setting

Dragonlance gets a page and a half mostly on background and factions.

Greyhawk gets 2 pages Setting, background factions as well as an "other elements" area that talks about changes to worshipers for the npc's

Eberron gets 2 pages as well, the setting section is bigger than the others got. It offers multiple locations to set this module in and its other elements is also very inclusive with a lot of suggestions.

It's pretty clear that if WotC ever does get back into the business of making campaign settings that these will be the ones they concentrate on first. Actually, I think the Forgotten Realms would probably be first but that's just my gut feeling.

BTW, thanks for the review of PotA. I can't wait to get the book in my hands

 

[Dire Bare]

We'll see, but my money is that we won't see a free supplement of crunchy bits from the core rulebooks like we did with Tyranny of Dragons. ToD was the first adventure released and it was very reasonable to assume that fans either hadn't had the opportunity to pick up all three core rulebooks, or were holding off until they had a chance to play the game first. With Elemental Evil, the core books have been out for a while and there's been plenty of time for fence sitters to play and decide to buy in or not.

Not that it wouldn't be cool for WotC to release that type of supplement again, but I don't see much of a need for it and I don't think we'll see it. I am, however, enjoying the Elemental Evil Players Companion that has more player crunchy bits than the actual product will!

 

[Klaus]

FYI awesome tidbit. 2 of the most awesome artworks in the book are OBVIOUSLY darksun

Thanks (for one of them)!

 

[DEFCON 1]

We'll see, but my money is that we won't see a free supplement of crunchy bits from the core rulebooks like we did with Tyranny of Dragons. ToD was the first adventure released and it was very reasonable to assume that fans either hadn't had the opportunity to pick up all three core rulebooks, or were holding off until they had a chance to play the game first. With Elemental Evil, the core books have been out for a while and there's been plenty of time for fence sitters to play and decide to buy in or not.

Not that it wouldn't be cool for WotC to release that type of supplement again, but I don't see much of a need for it and I don't think we'll see it. I am, however, enjoying the Elemental Evil Players Companion that has more player crunchy bits than the actual product will!

Yep. As it stands right now, you have all the monsters in the Basic Game available for free, and a bunch of monsters in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat supplements for free too. At some point, if they kept releasing free supplements to their adventure books, they would have reprinted almost the entirety of the Monster Manual.

At some point, the onus comes upon the player / Dungeon Master to decide either to take all the monsters they already have acquired for free and just recreate some of the encounters in the new adventure book that use monsters they don't yet have... or spend the 50 bucks for the MM and not have to worry about conversion. WotC's made it so easy for players to play 5E with little expense, but at some point you have to decide either to spend a bit extra money or put in a little more work. I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

[Iosue]

Per this Legends & Lore, there should be supplements for every major storyline. Here's the money quote:

As we introduce new storylines like Tyranny of Dragons, we’ll also make available free PDFs that provide all the rules and stats missing from Basic D&D needed to run the adventures tied into the story.

 

[TwoSix]

For reference this module is set in 1491 DR - The year of the Scarlet Witch

That's a weird spot for Avengers 2 product placement.

 

[JeffB]

Per this Legends & Lore, there should be supplements for every major storyline. Here's the money quote:

Yup, this is the bit I was remembering!

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Oh yeah. What are the CR's of the Prophets that was never stated.