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DDAL05-15 Reclamation (5e) $3.99
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
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by Jasmine L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/13/2017 13:54:17

Spoilers.

PDF File: Thumbs down. The PDF has no bookmarks, and is locked so I cannot add my own. Which is lame.

Story: Thumbs down. All the story happened in the previous module. This one is just a dungeon crawl with some combat encounters and a puzzle. No roleplaying to speak of, and not much plot. It's not even an interesting dungeon.

Encounter design: Thumbs down. The encounters are basically all low-CR enemies that T3 characters will easily steamroll. They're a joke. Way too easy. The hardest encounter is the first one, and while there are a few nasty effects that the enemies there can dish out if you fail your save, they still have to get lucky to even have a shot. After that, everything just gets steamrolled. The only challenge is keeping the NPC alive when the nagas hit him with a series of lightning bolts, or whatever—and that's not exactly very compelling.

Player agency: Thumbs down. The plot is entirely on rails. Proceed through each room in sequence. Kill the enemies. Get MacGuffin. The end. There aren't any opportunities written in for the players to come up with creative solutions for anything. Every enemy is there to kill you and cannot be bargained or reasoned with, even the humans (they are apparently so afraid of Baron Rajiram that they fight to the death rather than risk his displeasure). There is only one solution to the Sudoku puzzle room. The ending is so railroaded that there isn't even any mention of what to do if the NPC mage dies. Stay there stuck forever, I guess?

So basically this module is a series of combat encounters with no real roleplaying or story. And they're not even good combat encounters. The whole thing is a poorly-designed smashfest, and it is my #1 worst module of this season. I mean, I heaped a lot of the same criticisms on Jarl Rising, but at least it had a couple interesting, challenging encounters in it. The encounters here are just boring. Swashbucklers? Really?

EDIT: As an attempt to "fix" the module, I ended up rolling with how overpowered T3 characters are, and took advantage of the library drawing from all over time and space to bring back some notorious boss fights from previous adventures in the season: Bad Fruul and his mammoth from DDAL5-16 Parnast Under Siege, the Rune-Forged Guardian from DDAL5-11 Forgotten Traditions, and the Beast of Talos from DDAL5-17 Hartkiller's Horn. I had these fights replace the encounters in rooms B, C, and D. It was fun giving the players a chance to stomp the bosses that nearly TPK'd them in the past. I left the pirates as intentionally easy encounters and played it up for laughs, with them soiling themselves and saying "Holy crap! That's a T3 party, Bob! They sent T3 adventurers after us!" "But we're only CR 3! We're gonna get murdered! What do we do?" "I don't know! Play it cool, pretend you don't notice them, maybe they'll try to Stealth past us instead!" I think it ended up being a big improvement overall.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL05-15 Reclamation (5e)
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