Axe of the Dwarvish Lords
- Thread starter mac1504
- Start date
Trance Fiend
First Post
I too have mined it for ideas, but never ran it due to the campaign ending before I could use any of it. Some good stuff if I can recall. Now if I can only remember some of it, I might actually be of use to you. I think I'll drag it out and have a look-see.
Bloodstone Press
Explorer
I ran it as the very last 2e game we ever played. I tweaked it a bit (mainly bumping up one of the main monsters). It was ok. Note, I don’t run very many published modules, especially 2e modules. I’ve run several 1e modules and no 3e modules so far. Though I have played in several 3e modules.
That being said, yes, it has some good material in it. The dungeon has some great butt-kicking situations. It has a lot of useful ideas on how to make an adventure tough on high level characters. I managed to kill several characters with it. I especially liked the cowardly wizard in the dungeon. Its an idea I’ve really taken to heart when playing other wizards, either as a player or a DM. Nothing sucks more than a wizard who surprises you, blasts you for 1-3 rounds then runs away before you get the chance to do anything.
For 3e, of course, the coolest thing you can do is bump up some of the many goblins in the dungeon. Throw in some mid-level fighters and barbarians and rogues, and they become even more deadly. The dungeon itself is an old dwarven fortress, now defended by goblins and infested with monsters. It is almost impossible for the characters to fight their way in. The module stresses that the place is well defended. The defenders are organized and have battle plans. They are led by a highly intelligent human, after all.
The module also introduces some new rules, which help the goblins. These new rules are similar to Battle System type rules for units of goblins. They basically use the law of averages to determine how many hits a group of goblin archers can get on a given character. When 50 goblins all shoot at Y character, they hit X times. That plus heavy use of cover, elevation, concealment, poison and overwhelming numbers makes the goblins a powerful force.
My own sessions went like this:
After several failed attempts to get inside, the players finally decided to polymorph/shapechange into goblins and infiltrate the place. That worked a lot better than walking through the front door and killing everything that tried to stop them. The “kick in the door” method never got them past the first room without at least one character dying.
Once they got inside, things went rather smoothly and quickly There were a few encounters that gave them a hard time and we never really explored the rifts between the goblin clans. There was a nip-and-tuck at the end, as I wanted to get it finished and play some 3e games, so I can’t really comment on the ending.
Some of the player comments from the first couple of games were:
“This is just ridiculous!”
“There is HOW MANY!?”
“Jesus, how are we supposed to get into this place!?”
And my favorite:
“I’m going to change characters. This character (a long time favorite of the player’s) could get killed in this place. He shouldn’t be doing this.”
So it’s a tough module. 3e would make it even tougher. As I just mentioned, add some class levels to the goblins. Also, if you used the 3.0 rules for cover, it would greatly increase the goblin's strength.
That being said, yes, it has some good material in it. The dungeon has some great butt-kicking situations. It has a lot of useful ideas on how to make an adventure tough on high level characters. I managed to kill several characters with it. I especially liked the cowardly wizard in the dungeon. Its an idea I’ve really taken to heart when playing other wizards, either as a player or a DM. Nothing sucks more than a wizard who surprises you, blasts you for 1-3 rounds then runs away before you get the chance to do anything.
For 3e, of course, the coolest thing you can do is bump up some of the many goblins in the dungeon. Throw in some mid-level fighters and barbarians and rogues, and they become even more deadly. The dungeon itself is an old dwarven fortress, now defended by goblins and infested with monsters. It is almost impossible for the characters to fight their way in. The module stresses that the place is well defended. The defenders are organized and have battle plans. They are led by a highly intelligent human, after all.
The module also introduces some new rules, which help the goblins. These new rules are similar to Battle System type rules for units of goblins. They basically use the law of averages to determine how many hits a group of goblin archers can get on a given character. When 50 goblins all shoot at Y character, they hit X times. That plus heavy use of cover, elevation, concealment, poison and overwhelming numbers makes the goblins a powerful force.
My own sessions went like this:
After several failed attempts to get inside, the players finally decided to polymorph/shapechange into goblins and infiltrate the place. That worked a lot better than walking through the front door and killing everything that tried to stop them. The “kick in the door” method never got them past the first room without at least one character dying.
Once they got inside, things went rather smoothly and quickly There were a few encounters that gave them a hard time and we never really explored the rifts between the goblin clans. There was a nip-and-tuck at the end, as I wanted to get it finished and play some 3e games, so I can’t really comment on the ending.
Some of the player comments from the first couple of games were:
“This is just ridiculous!”
“There is HOW MANY!?”
“Jesus, how are we supposed to get into this place!?”
And my favorite:
“I’m going to change characters. This character (a long time favorite of the player’s) could get killed in this place. He shouldn’t be doing this.”
So it’s a tough module. 3e would make it even tougher. As I just mentioned, add some class levels to the goblins. Also, if you used the 3.0 rules for cover, it would greatly increase the goblin's strength.
Last edited:
Grue
First Post
My group's experience with the Axe wasn't so good. We played through all the 'Tomes' adventures pretty much without much alteration or shoehorning and our consensus was that it was the definitively the weakest module in the series (and the Return to the Tomb of Horrors by far the most memorable\fun).
The biggest problem I thought was that it relied too heavily on two main strategies and it played those cards early and often from the get go. The first is with the starting encounter the party should *absolutely* know it's facing a high level wizard BBEG who will likely be staging the standard wizardry 'hit and run' tactics. The second is that it will be depending heavily on 'mob tactics' (oft parodied by Knights of the Dinner Table) using goblins throughout. Our group generally works well together and are fairly well experienced players so this kindof setup past more than one or two encounters in a row is just asking for trouble.
Needless to say the party prepped to watch for and take out the wizard if he popped in or track him down, isolate, and kill him once we found his base. We basically slogged our way to the dwarf hold (and figured out that we were going to be dealing with a heck of a lot of goblins since we were a 14th level party at the time), snuck in and set up a hidden base near the entrance (and protecting ourselves from scrying), and spent the next couple of days magically scouting the hold.
We managed to ambush the evil wizard and take him out quickly with a anti-magic grappler (I think the fighter used a 2nd ed protection from magic scroll... we beat him senseless and used a amulet of life protection we had been saving for this sort of occassion to make sure he had no way of coming back). With the heart of the defense cut out the rest was just clean up. The party used several Walls or Iron and Stone to block off the known choke points\escape routes throughout the complex and then mostly gassed the goblins (and after we were sure they didn't have any shamans left we started animating dead). Admittedly the whole genocide theme to the approach led to some morality debates in the party (except for the dwarves) and isn't much fun for the dm, the way the module was set up there wasn't a whole lot of good options in order to avoid a pc buying the farm in the stilted hackfest Skip wrote.
The hardest encounter we had was with the 20 HD Shambling mounds with the electricity generating wooly humanoids (I don't remember what they were called). Some of the fungi and oozes about also were a bit challenging (the rust monsters weren't as that's one encounter our group starts prepping for once the fighter gets his first suit of plate and a decent magic sword;-). Overall my feeling was that a group that approached the module head on was just going to get its butt kicked (and laughed at by the dm because of the 'it's only goblins' factor). That and the BBEG was one of the lamest ones I've ever seen (for a canned module) with a prime motivation that takes the cake (he starts the plot rolling just because he hates dwarves, no reason for it, he just hates'em).
For a d20 conversion I'd start by starting from scratch on the plot and adventure hook (and also avoid a straight-up conversion as I think a good number of the strategies suggested in the module are no longer viable in 3e). I'd absolutely drop the original BBEG (or at least totally rewrite him so he has a decent plot tie in and doesn't come across as such a doofus). Handling the goblins would be a lot better under 3e as a dm could afford to move away from reusing the same tactics over and over. Leveling up some goblin leaders\ncos and maybe replacing the BBEG with either some Genghis Khan of goblins or some diabolically evil entity (a demonically possessed goblin) would be a good move I think. If that's too much work, some of the encounters are salvageable for ideas and the maps are certainly reusable
The biggest problem I thought was that it relied too heavily on two main strategies and it played those cards early and often from the get go. The first is with the starting encounter the party should *absolutely* know it's facing a high level wizard BBEG who will likely be staging the standard wizardry 'hit and run' tactics. The second is that it will be depending heavily on 'mob tactics' (oft parodied by Knights of the Dinner Table) using goblins throughout. Our group generally works well together and are fairly well experienced players so this kindof setup past more than one or two encounters in a row is just asking for trouble.
Needless to say the party prepped to watch for and take out the wizard if he popped in or track him down, isolate, and kill him once we found his base. We basically slogged our way to the dwarf hold (and figured out that we were going to be dealing with a heck of a lot of goblins since we were a 14th level party at the time), snuck in and set up a hidden base near the entrance (and protecting ourselves from scrying), and spent the next couple of days magically scouting the hold.
We managed to ambush the evil wizard and take him out quickly with a anti-magic grappler (I think the fighter used a 2nd ed protection from magic scroll... we beat him senseless and used a amulet of life protection we had been saving for this sort of occassion to make sure he had no way of coming back). With the heart of the defense cut out the rest was just clean up. The party used several Walls or Iron and Stone to block off the known choke points\escape routes throughout the complex and then mostly gassed the goblins (and after we were sure they didn't have any shamans left we started animating dead). Admittedly the whole genocide theme to the approach led to some morality debates in the party (except for the dwarves) and isn't much fun for the dm, the way the module was set up there wasn't a whole lot of good options in order to avoid a pc buying the farm in the stilted hackfest Skip wrote.
The hardest encounter we had was with the 20 HD Shambling mounds with the electricity generating wooly humanoids (I don't remember what they were called). Some of the fungi and oozes about also were a bit challenging (the rust monsters weren't as that's one encounter our group starts prepping for once the fighter gets his first suit of plate and a decent magic sword;-). Overall my feeling was that a group that approached the module head on was just going to get its butt kicked (and laughed at by the dm because of the 'it's only goblins' factor). That and the BBEG was one of the lamest ones I've ever seen (for a canned module) with a prime motivation that takes the cake (he starts the plot rolling just because he hates dwarves, no reason for it, he just hates'em).
For a d20 conversion I'd start by starting from scratch on the plot and adventure hook (and also avoid a straight-up conversion as I think a good number of the strategies suggested in the module are no longer viable in 3e). I'd absolutely drop the original BBEG (or at least totally rewrite him so he has a decent plot tie in and doesn't come across as such a doofus). Handling the goblins would be a lot better under 3e as a dm could afford to move away from reusing the same tactics over and over. Leveling up some goblin leaders\ncos and maybe replacing the BBEG with either some Genghis Khan of goblins or some diabolically evil entity (a demonically possessed goblin) would be a good move I think. If that's too much work, some of the encounters are salvageable for ideas and the maps are certainly reusable
mac1504
Explorer
Thanks for all the suggestions and opinions everyone- I knew there had to be a few out there that had played this one 
Anyway, my main intention with this module is to pluck out encounters and ideas from it as the main plot hook doesn't fit my camaign at all. I like the idea of the cowardly wizard and I'll be using some of Grue's advice on giving some levels to goblins and such (although my party isn't anywhere near the level recommended for this adventure.)
Thanks again everyone.
Anyway, my main intention with this module is to pluck out encounters and ideas from it as the main plot hook doesn't fit my camaign at all. I like the idea of the cowardly wizard and I'll be using some of Grue's advice on giving some levels to goblins and such (although my party isn't anywhere near the level recommended for this adventure.)
Thanks again everyone.
Jeremy Ackerman-Yost
Explorer
I'm reading it right now as part of an effort to kit-bash it into my homebrew, which has some Scarred Lands elements. It's sort of Scarred Lands thousands of years after the Divine War and with a lot of tweaking of my own, including a heavy demon influence and distant gods. I'm rewriting large portions of the module and making the whole thing part of a shadow elf effort to destroy the Dwarves of my version of Burok Torn. So my defenses will be mainly the duped goblin hordes but also crack squads of classed shadow elves.
GoodKingJayIII
First Post
Played it back in 2e as well. It was fun, but it got kinda ridiculous at times. Goblins everywhere. If your players like hack n' slash, it's a great model. Otherwise it gets rather redundant quickly. There were plenty of great ideas in there and I'm sure the general layout of the dungeon and some the encounters could be easily immitated. The module was our 2e swan song; I could've done with a little more roleplaying and less killing, but it was still a blast.
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