Neuroglyph
First Post
In an apparent homage to the famed AD&D adventure, U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Blackbyrne Publishing’s second adventure in The Dark Veil Campaign Arc is set in a sea coast town with a dark secret. While the adventure features many similar elements of the original U1 module, such as a creepy mansion, pirates, and lizard men, the author makes it plain in his forward that this adventure is not a 4th Edition update of The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh:
And so, can The Manor of Deceit live up to its predecessor U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and how does it stack up as a sequel to the first module of The Dark Veil Campaign Arc, The Hidden Current?
The Manor of Deceit
The monster stat blocks are presented in the newer MM3 format, but are a little difficult to read, having none of the box shading around power headers and the effects that standard stat blocks would have. DMs should note that there are a few typos in the monster stat blocks as well, and will need to make some corrections before they can be used at the gaming table.
The artwork is good to exceptional, consisting mostly of pen-and-ink drawings evocative of older D&D edition modules. Overall, they enhance the production quality, and generally fit with the surrounding text. The author’s maps are really well-rendered, using Campaign Cartographer 3, and full scale printable versions of these are provided at the end of the module to be printed and used during the gaming session. This is a nice feature for those gaming groups that do not have access to dungeon tiles, although printing out over thirty pages of full color maps might still be a bit daunting to some DMs.
Introduction
As this is the second adventure of The Dark Veil campaign arc, the adventure presumes that the Characters participated in the first adventure, The Hidden Current. They are now traveling to a larger town, accompanying a barge of merchant goods, to follow up on researching the strange book they discovered during the first adventure. The author also provides a secondary adventure hook of meeting an old teacher who wants adventurers to investigate a local manor, so this adventure could be run as a stand-alone product. Of course, it makes more sense to run the adventure as part of the campaign arc, as the storyline of researching the book will lead, presumably, into the third adventure.
The author provides some nice details regarding the town of Gull’s Port, where The Manor of Deceit takes place, as well as information on the main NPC’s involved in the storyline. Although the author uses Gull’s Port and other locales from a homebrew world setting, resourceful DMs could place Gull’s Port along any major ocean in almost any fantasy world, or simply replace Gull’s Port with a port native to whatever setting is being used in their campaign.
The Encounters
The encounters range from basic and simple to simply terrible, and there is some definite room for improvement in the creation of the custom monsters used in this adventure and their design.
For example, early in the adventure, there is a barroom brawl scene coupled with a skill challenge. First off, the skill challenge fails to conform to any of the skill challenge formats offered by the DMG or DMG2. As the brawl breaks out (for some unknown reason), and the Characters must question the bar tender in the middle of this fight to continue to the next part of the adventure. The skill challenge is a Level 1 Complexity 2 Challenge worth (again, for some unknown reason) 750 XP, and is divided up into two segments requiring 3 successes before 1 failure. Typically, a Level 1 Complexity 2 Skill Challenge would be worth only 200 XP, but combined with the combat, this whole encounter weighs in at 1500 XP according to the author’s tally.
From the barroom brawl, the adventurers must explore a haunted manor, and the undead infested catacombs beneath it, and eventually face down pirates. The plotline and encounters are all quite linear, although the manor house does allow for encounters to occur in whatever order the adventurers choose to explore it.
At the manor, the encounters range from some fairly reasonable ones, such as a garden of monster vines and wasps, which are mostly minions, to poorly designed encounters such as some haunted armors and a soulbound spirit (four 3rd level brutes and a 4th level elite lurker). This latter encounter will probably take considerable time to resolve for 3rd level Characters, given the amount of hit points they have to work through when presented with brutes and elites.
And in one notably poor encounter, set at the manor and presumably the climax of that part of the adventure, the heroes must face down monsters that actually heal substantial hit points! This encounter includes a 4th Level Elite Brute zombie, which has a daily power to restore two-thirds of its hit points once it dies. Added to that are several 4th Level Skirmisher zombies, and the whole thing is topped off with a 5th Level Artillery (Leader) who can restore the monsters to half health after they die. Further, this healing ability of the leader is area of effect (close burst 5) and is rechargeable on a 5 or 6! I have no idea how 3rd Level heroes are meant to succeed in this encounter, but even if they choose to blow all their daily powers, the combat is likely to take several hours, and likely more than one gaming session, just to run through it.
After somehow completing the manor house, the trail of the adventure leads to a pirate ship, and a number of pitch battles on board. The finale encounter of this segment of the adventure is quite likely to completely overwhelm a 3rd level party of heroes, and pits the adventurers against the pirate captain, which is a Level 6 Elite Skirmisher, his Level 4 Brute (Leader) lieutenant, a Level 4 Controller pirate mage, and a pack of Level 4 Minions.
The custom monsters used to create the encounters in this adventure, and the combination of these monsters, simply show bad design. Nearly all these encounters will quickly degenerate into at-will slugfests, having drained off all the encounter powers and start pushing Characters to use daily powers in no time flat. In succession, these combats will require frequent extended rest breaks for the Player-Characters to recharge action points and daily powers, or they will likely be slain at the two major climax encounters at the end of manor house and pirate ship.
Troubles with Treasure
Dungeon Masters wishing to conform to the standard treasure parcel format presented in the DMG will need to seriously overhaul this adventure. The treasure listed in The Manor of Deceit far exceeds the 4 magic items + 1355 gold pieces recommended in the Dungeon Masters Guide to be given out to 3rd Level Characters. All tallied together, the 3rd Level adventurers stand to receive nearly 8000 gold in coins, gems, and sellable jewelry/collectibles, as well as three to six magic items of Level 4 to Level 6! The text concerning the distribution of magic items is rather bizarre by 4th Edition standards, as though the number of magic items generated each level were left to random chance, as is seen in this example:
This distribution of wealth and magic would seriously unbalance any D&D 4E campaign if placed in the hands of 3rd Level Characters. Perhaps the bountiful treasure is something brought from the Pathfinder version of this same adventure, but is, frankly, over-the-top for a GSL product release.
Overall Grade: C
Regretfully, there are some serious issues contained in The Manor of Deceit which are hard to ignore. While the overall design of the adventure is fine, although tending to be quite linear in plot, the encounter design is poor. And even if a 3rd Level party of heroes could overcome some of the fights, those combats would likely take several hours to play, requiring frequent and out of place extended rests to complete the module. The skill challenges are of a very strange non-standard design, and hand out far too much experience for their level and complexity. On the other side of the combats and encounters, the treasures offered in The Manor of Deceit are completely “Monty Hall” by 4E standards, offering monetary rewards that would be found during the 9th Level of the heroes’ adventuring careers, not the 3rd Level. Dungeon Masters would need to seriously read and overhaul nearly every facet of this module to bring it into line with acceptable 4E play, and it shows quite a few earmarks of having been converted from its Pathfinder version for use as a GSL product. While the maps are quite a nice bonus for this adventure, problems with The Manor of Deceit would not make it worth the current “October sale” price of $5.95, let alone the usual $11.90 retail price for this pdf.
So until next review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Grade Card
And so, can The Manor of Deceit live up to its predecessor U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and how does it stack up as a sequel to the first module of The Dark Veil Campaign Arc, The Hidden Current?The Manor of Deceit
- Authors: Jeff Gupton
- Cover Illustrator: Daniel Firak (cover), James Denton, various stock art (interior)
- Publisher: Blackbyrne Publishing
- Year: 2010
- Media: PDF (74 pages)
- Retail Cost: $11.90 or $5.95 during October (available from RPGNow.com)
The monster stat blocks are presented in the newer MM3 format, but are a little difficult to read, having none of the box shading around power headers and the effects that standard stat blocks would have. DMs should note that there are a few typos in the monster stat blocks as well, and will need to make some corrections before they can be used at the gaming table.
The artwork is good to exceptional, consisting mostly of pen-and-ink drawings evocative of older D&D edition modules. Overall, they enhance the production quality, and generally fit with the surrounding text. The author’s maps are really well-rendered, using Campaign Cartographer 3, and full scale printable versions of these are provided at the end of the module to be printed and used during the gaming session. This is a nice feature for those gaming groups that do not have access to dungeon tiles, although printing out over thirty pages of full color maps might still be a bit daunting to some DMs.
Introduction
As this is the second adventure of The Dark Veil campaign arc, the adventure presumes that the Characters participated in the first adventure, The Hidden Current. They are now traveling to a larger town, accompanying a barge of merchant goods, to follow up on researching the strange book they discovered during the first adventure. The author also provides a secondary adventure hook of meeting an old teacher who wants adventurers to investigate a local manor, so this adventure could be run as a stand-alone product. Of course, it makes more sense to run the adventure as part of the campaign arc, as the storyline of researching the book will lead, presumably, into the third adventure.
The author provides some nice details regarding the town of Gull’s Port, where The Manor of Deceit takes place, as well as information on the main NPC’s involved in the storyline. Although the author uses Gull’s Port and other locales from a homebrew world setting, resourceful DMs could place Gull’s Port along any major ocean in almost any fantasy world, or simply replace Gull’s Port with a port native to whatever setting is being used in their campaign.
The Encounters
The encounters range from basic and simple to simply terrible, and there is some definite room for improvement in the creation of the custom monsters used in this adventure and their design.
For example, early in the adventure, there is a barroom brawl scene coupled with a skill challenge. First off, the skill challenge fails to conform to any of the skill challenge formats offered by the DMG or DMG2. As the brawl breaks out (for some unknown reason), and the Characters must question the bar tender in the middle of this fight to continue to the next part of the adventure. The skill challenge is a Level 1 Complexity 2 Challenge worth (again, for some unknown reason) 750 XP, and is divided up into two segments requiring 3 successes before 1 failure. Typically, a Level 1 Complexity 2 Skill Challenge would be worth only 200 XP, but combined with the combat, this whole encounter weighs in at 1500 XP according to the author’s tally.
From the barroom brawl, the adventurers must explore a haunted manor, and the undead infested catacombs beneath it, and eventually face down pirates. The plotline and encounters are all quite linear, although the manor house does allow for encounters to occur in whatever order the adventurers choose to explore it.
At the manor, the encounters range from some fairly reasonable ones, such as a garden of monster vines and wasps, which are mostly minions, to poorly designed encounters such as some haunted armors and a soulbound spirit (four 3rd level brutes and a 4th level elite lurker). This latter encounter will probably take considerable time to resolve for 3rd level Characters, given the amount of hit points they have to work through when presented with brutes and elites.
And in one notably poor encounter, set at the manor and presumably the climax of that part of the adventure, the heroes must face down monsters that actually heal substantial hit points! This encounter includes a 4th Level Elite Brute zombie, which has a daily power to restore two-thirds of its hit points once it dies. Added to that are several 4th Level Skirmisher zombies, and the whole thing is topped off with a 5th Level Artillery (Leader) who can restore the monsters to half health after they die. Further, this healing ability of the leader is area of effect (close burst 5) and is rechargeable on a 5 or 6! I have no idea how 3rd Level heroes are meant to succeed in this encounter, but even if they choose to blow all their daily powers, the combat is likely to take several hours, and likely more than one gaming session, just to run through it.
After somehow completing the manor house, the trail of the adventure leads to a pirate ship, and a number of pitch battles on board. The finale encounter of this segment of the adventure is quite likely to completely overwhelm a 3rd level party of heroes, and pits the adventurers against the pirate captain, which is a Level 6 Elite Skirmisher, his Level 4 Brute (Leader) lieutenant, a Level 4 Controller pirate mage, and a pack of Level 4 Minions.
The custom monsters used to create the encounters in this adventure, and the combination of these monsters, simply show bad design. Nearly all these encounters will quickly degenerate into at-will slugfests, having drained off all the encounter powers and start pushing Characters to use daily powers in no time flat. In succession, these combats will require frequent extended rest breaks for the Player-Characters to recharge action points and daily powers, or they will likely be slain at the two major climax encounters at the end of manor house and pirate ship.
Troubles with Treasure
Dungeon Masters wishing to conform to the standard treasure parcel format presented in the DMG will need to seriously overhaul this adventure. The treasure listed in The Manor of Deceit far exceeds the 4 magic items + 1355 gold pieces recommended in the Dungeon Masters Guide to be given out to 3rd Level Characters. All tallied together, the 3rd Level adventurers stand to receive nearly 8000 gold in coins, gems, and sellable jewelry/collectibles, as well as three to six magic items of Level 4 to Level 6! The text concerning the distribution of magic items is rather bizarre by 4th Edition standards, as though the number of magic items generated each level were left to random chance, as is seen in this example:
This distribution of wealth and magic would seriously unbalance any D&D 4E campaign if placed in the hands of 3rd Level Characters. Perhaps the bountiful treasure is something brought from the Pathfinder version of this same adventure, but is, frankly, over-the-top for a GSL product release.
Overall Grade: C
Regretfully, there are some serious issues contained in The Manor of Deceit which are hard to ignore. While the overall design of the adventure is fine, although tending to be quite linear in plot, the encounter design is poor. And even if a 3rd Level party of heroes could overcome some of the fights, those combats would likely take several hours to play, requiring frequent and out of place extended rests to complete the module. The skill challenges are of a very strange non-standard design, and hand out far too much experience for their level and complexity. On the other side of the combats and encounters, the treasures offered in The Manor of Deceit are completely “Monty Hall” by 4E standards, offering monetary rewards that would be found during the 9th Level of the heroes’ adventuring careers, not the 3rd Level. Dungeon Masters would need to seriously read and overhaul nearly every facet of this module to bring it into line with acceptable 4E play, and it shows quite a few earmarks of having been converted from its Pathfinder version for use as a GSL product. While the maps are quite a nice bonus for this adventure, problems with The Manor of Deceit would not make it worth the current “October sale” price of $5.95, let alone the usual $11.90 retail price for this pdf.
So until next review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Grade Card
- Presentation: B
- - Design: B
- - Illustrations: B+
- Content: C-
- - Crunch: D
- - Fluff: C+
- Value: B-
