P2 - Demon Queen's Enclave - so this is the best WotC module, really?!

[Jhaelen]

Adventure module P2 has often been praised as the best of the nine original 4e modules (H/P/E). I've still ignored it so far since I don't particularly care about drow. But since I now had an opportunity to get it at a discount, I finally bought it.

My first thought after reading Adventure Book One: Okay, that's all quite nice, but where's the adventure, what's the story? This is the first module that failed to give me a reasonable overview of the adventure. Apart from 'kill the wannabe Orcus Exarch lurking somewhere', there's nothing.

Also, all of the presented adventure hooks suck. Why are the heroes supposed to go there, again?

Anyway, so I started reading Adventure Book Two, thinking maybe it contained the information that was supposed to be in book one. After reading the first two encounters I had to stop reading because I was so annoyed.

These encounters are riddled with inconsistencies and logical errors!

In encounter U1 the heroes are expected to try a diplomatic approach after being charged by a drider and shot at by drow snipers? Yeah, I can totally see that.

The motivation for the drider's attack is given as 'he hopes to draw the heroes into the fight, so they kill the undead the drow have been fleeing from'. Brilliant idea!

For some inexplicable reason one of the wights is supposed to attack the adventurers. Why?! Wights are intelligent undead and their mission is clear: Catch and slay the drow!

Okay, on to the next encounter: L1 - A bridge guarded by a (hidden) huge spider.
First is has the most common error of WotC modules: A perception check with a DC of 18 is supposed to detect both the huge spider (Stealth +17) and a bunch of (also hidden) spidery abominations (Stealth +14) .

The latter are btw. only there 'because they're hungry and hope to feast on what's left after the huge spider is done with the adventurers'. Okay, so why are they attacking right away along with the huge spider?!

Funnily, after being reduced to 20 hit points, they're supposed to retreat under the bridge and fight to death there. Why?!?!?! If their sole motivation is hunger, they'd should long be off looking for easier prey at that point.

As the icing of the cake we have a 400' chasm (according to the map) with some kind of invisible floor after a drop of 100' (according to the tactics section).

If the adventure continues in this vain, I'll probably throw it into my garbage can (well, I'll keep the poster map, I think).

So, what is it again that makes this module one of the best WotC published for 4e?

 

[wayne62682]

I don't know, honestly. When I played it a year ago my DM had the hook be one of the Wizards from that underground town in Thunderspire Labyrinth ask us to find a companion (one of the other members of that wizard council they have). But I agree with the rest; you're supposed to try and be diplomatic with a race that A) Hates anyone not of their race, and B) Is known for having no honor outside of their own culture and will stab you in the back any chance they get.

I didn't like it from what I saw, of course that might also have been because my DM wasn't scaling encounters for us when we had 4 PCs, not giving out the proper treasure (and arguing "Well, you haven't been close to a TPK so what's the problem?") and not giving us any chance at diplomacy but getting angry that we didn't try diplomacy in the middle of a fight with guys that were trying to kill us.

 

[Upper_Krust]

The sad state of affairs is that it probably is the best. I own all the adventures and haven't really been overly impressed by any.

I have isolated several problems.

1. Reading over them is a chore. Yes, the approach is functional but they are annoying to read.

2. I have sort of grown to hate the maps. Yes I know WotC have to promote their Dungeon Tiles but what you wouldn't give for some hand-drawn overhead level maps and some hand drawn isometric encounter maps.

3. Virtually all modules are story driven rather than sandbox driven...which means they just focus on individual encounters rather than create a living, breathing space.

4. Too much railroading of PCs...in the E series (for example) basically everything you do is utterly pointless and you can't affect the story until the denouement.

5. Divorcing the art from the main body of the adventure makes everything seem sterile and bland.

6. Too much combat (and I love 4E combat). Check out Revenge of the Iron Lich for a FREE adventure that has a much better balance of combat, traps, puzzles and even exploration, than ANY WotC module.

7. Lack of character. So many of the NPCs are just faceless nobodies put in as speed-bumps for the PCs. They don't have any history, goals or motivations of their own - just a stat-block.

8. No variety of gameplay, Dungeon Crawl - Dungeon Crawl - Dungeon Crawl.

9. Too much space devoted to 'irrelevant' encounters. Do we really need a double page spread for every single encounter? I mean couldn't we have just the big scripted encounters fleshed out with maybe one column devoted to regular encounters. When every encounter is the exact same format they all blend into one - as a result, nothing stands out anymore.

10. ...as regards the E series, nothing epic about them whatsoever.

11. Virtually every encounter is fixed and static (famously the one that isn't involves Irontooth). Meaning no matter what the PCs do the defenses never change. Its going to be the same encounter whether the guards are alerted or not.

12. Enemies all too often fight to the death, no one has heard of morale before.

 

[Klaus]

I don't know if it's the best. I prefer Reavers of Harkenwold and Cairn of the Witch King. Of the original 9 adventures, I'd retool some of Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth (the latter is a sandbox disguised as an adventure, really).

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm putting in a second opinion that Reavers of Harkenwold is a great module. Stonefang Pass is also decent.

 

[Klaus]

I'm putting in a second opinion that Reavers of Harkenwold is a great module. Stonefang Pass is also decent.

Agreed. Slaying Stone is also good. I wonder how Slaying Stone and Stonefang Pass would be like if they had a higher page count.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Er, yes! How could I mention Stonefang Pass and not Slaying Stone in the same breath? :S

I think with a higher page count, they could very well be a mini campaign arc all by themselves. They could have been the new H1-3 arc.

And now it looks like Reavers (with the recent article on Nerathi Legends) is shaping up to be another great Heroic arc. Reavers was nearly worth the price of the DM Kit all by itself!

Okay, not really, but it was pretty good, considering. If they'd replaced the DM book with dungeon tiles for the adventure, and fleshed it out a little more, and kept all the tokens, it probably would be.

 

[ghaladen]

I'd take a look at some of the Paizo Adventure Paths, and grab one of the 4e conversions. Regardless of how you feel about Pathfinder, one has to admit that their modules are badass as far as story, roleplaying and character hooks. We're running Kingmaker in 4e right now, and while I'm not very good at converting, the first session was still a lot of fun. I also know Dannager has done conversions of several modules out of Rise of the Runelords, and has done one of the Curse of the Crimson Throne modules so far. Speaking of RotRL, we're doing RotRL right now in PF rules as well, which I think would be fun to do in 4e.

 

[Obryn]

It was the best for my group, yeah. But realize that "best of the H-P-E series" is not actually a very high bar.

I was able to tie it in with H2 - another one my group loved - which gave them a familiar starting point, a reason to care about the mission, and so on. I even ran a quick session with pre-gens to set the stage for the new adventure. (They were Brugg's enforcers, all 4th level. Brugg tells them to go clear out all the drow who were moving in. They got their asses kicked. This let the 14th-level party saunter in and show the drow who's boss. )

It is mostly good if you strongly, strongly encourage them to use diplomacy with the Drow wizard and the Matron. It worked really well, actually - they elected to kill the wizard for the Matron, and then kill the vamp chick, and then head off and take out the big vamp dude.

The settings were fun, it was pretty open-ended, and it just worked out pretty well. It was by far the least linear of the HPE series, and had the greatest chance for NPC interaction.

-O

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'd take a look at some of the Paizo Adventure Paths, and grab one of the 4e conversions. Regardless of how you feel about Pathfinder, one has to admit that their modules are badass as far as story, roleplaying and character hooks. We're running Kingmaker in 4e right now, and while I'm not very good at converting, the first session was still a lot of fun. I also know Dannager has done conversions of several modules out of Rise of the Runelords, and has done one of the Curse of the Crimson Throne modules so far. Speaking of RotRL, we're doing RotRL right now in PF rules as well, which I think would be fun to do in 4e.

Yeah, I have to agree with this for the most part. I'd totally do a 4e conversion of Runelords - I really liked that series. I might end up running it someday. Heck, some of Paizo's stuff is almost worth switching back to a 3.x -based system for. Almost.