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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2011002" data-attributes="member: 18387">As several people have reviewed this adventure already I will content myself to adding my evaluation after running it in my campaign, and thus keep it short. I wish to focus on the gaming experience of running this module. This review contains spoilers, but I’ll try to keep them fairly minor.General descriptionTomb of Abysthor could be described alternately as a huge dungeon or a mini-campaign. It is a part of Necromancer Game design philosophy to make modules that last at least 4 or 5 levels. Personally I find this extremely useful. There is no timeline in the module (apart from a six month limit), so it is easy to add side quests or entire side adventures. The dungeon will still be there. It is a site-based adventure, but it can be made as dynamic as the DM wishes. On the other hand, the absence of a plot means that the DM must put a little effort into motivating the players to get into the dungeon.High points-The adventure is very flexible. If the DM is short on time, it is easy to leave the monsters where they are even after several raids on the dungeon without detriment to the internal logic. On the other hand, it is possible to move monsters around, add traps and even for the bad guys to mount raids and come after the characters at their home base. -There is a wealth of spicy detail, a couple of new interesting monsters and a few very interesting NPCs. I also liked the touch of mystery.-It is a huge adventure. My characters first entered the dungeon at level 2 and finished at level 11. Of course I added a lot of side quests, but the lower levels were still challenging to those high-level adventures.-Even those parts of the dungeon that sounded boring when I read the adventure were fun to play. The adventure provided immense value for the money.-The encounters ranged from the easy to the outright deadly, which kept the players on their toes.-There are tons of support (including errata) on the Necromancer Games internet site, as well as a friendly community of fans to exchange advice and tips with.Low points-There are very few plot hooks, even it is fairly easy to invent some to get the players into the dungeon and feel that they have accomplished something.-Some of the stat blocks are wrong or not fully 3.0 compliant. Even though there is errata, there is a little too much errors. -Some of the magical effects (e.g. the purple haze) seem a little unreasonable, rules-wise. The Font of Bones is practically indestructible, which seems a bit steep. It shouldn’t be more difficult to destroy it than to create it. None of this affects game-play adversely, though.-Abysthor is a 20th level character, which may upset the history of some low-powered campaigns somewhat, even if it doesn’t matter in play.-One of the NPCs is heavily dependent on Relics and Rituals from Sword&Sorcery studios. I don’t mind bringing in non-core material, but this was a little too much in one place.-Many NPCs in Necromancer Games adventures are multiclassed Clerics/Sorcerers. While this makes for great flavour, it also tends to make them weak for their CR (in 3.0, that is).Also Staurath had no reasonable use of his sorcerer levels as his full plate rendered him a 40% arcane spell failure.-Many of the evil NPCs have very high ability scores and lots of evil items, which the players may find a bit unfair (unless they are unscrupulous enough to sell the evil items, in which case they will be very rich indeed).-The tsathar were a bit of a pushover after the challenges on the preceeding levels.-It is almost impossible to find the final level without the aid of True Seeing or Find the Path. This could easily lead to the party wasting a lot of time or even getting killed by exploring the wrong parts of the dungeon.Conclusion:As you can see, my criticisms are either nitpicks or consequences of the fact that the adventure is heavily site-based. The enjoyment factor was huge. I have never ever had this much fun DM-ing an adventure. The challenges were varying and exciting and there were many climactic moments. So if you’re looking for a good solid dungeon crawl, Tomb of Abysthor is one of the best on the market.</blockquote>

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