Its a great premise. I just finished running it with a group of lvl 6-7 characters. So it can scale past its intended lvl. Mostly due to the last fight. On that note the monsters they give are not well worked out. There are typos and copy and paste issues it looks like. I had to ask what they intended for the creature to do sometimes. The stats don't follow the normal build for a creature in the monster manual. Then for the final fight I just amped up the thugs to make it a "boss fight". It is fairly easy to kill a lvl 2 party if they want to try and capture the monsters. Heck my lvl 6 rouge got KO trying to chase and capture the monsters.
I use http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367697-Encounter-difficulty-how-to-fix-it to judge how hard a fight is. Even by the DM guide book, some of these encounters would be rated deadly. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th would be. To me that is way to much of a chance to TPK. The final fight is slightly easier then those 3 fights. In short when you read over the flow of the module and think when should my guys take a long rest it feels like at the very end. Or maybe before heading out for the final fight. But unless they don't get with in melee range of the first 5 encounters they will need long rest a couple of times depending on luck of the fight. I don't feel you should have more then 1 deadly encounter per long rest because it drains easily halve your resources in the way of spells and hp. Also it is very very likely someone will get KO in a deadly fight. After such a fight most parties start to think they should sleep for the night. It just feels like if they sleep 3-4 times during this module it takes away from the premise and there for the fun.
Again the story was great. It seemed to me to be really easy to add to the campaign. I would recommend it. But due to poor monster design I can't give it 5 stars. So if you like tweaking or making monsters then you should love it. My group loved playing it the day after thanksgiving :). Which is what natters. And this does only cost $0.00. So i will give it 5 stars.
It works great as a side quest to help explain the world that your in better. The final boss fight could be a great hook for another quest. There could be a clue or hook to help get your party back on track to where you want them to go in the big story. It is great for some light humor.
|