Normally, the Dungeon Dive series, by Amalara, provides you a gutted out dungeon with just enough information to throw in your own adventure. Think of it as a gutted out home that you move into and decorate as you like.

In Dungeon Dive 7: Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats, Amalara?s latest in the series, it feels as though they have slightly deviated from that with a tad bit too much information.

When you read through the adventure, you often wonder what is the difference between this adventure and a normal adventure. Do not get me wrong, it is a pretty cool adventure. For some reason or another (one of the few things the book leaves you to provide), a BBEG is sending tomb bats into the world and it is the PCs job to stop it. The book is 37 pages, 23 of those is the actual adventure and the last 14 are items, spells and creatures broken down into low, medium and high. The high seems to be a bit under leveled. High for this book is 11 but in most adventures it is normally considered 13 to 14. Each area of the dungeon has creature, treasure and/or trap settings for low, medium and high parties. The written up NPCs are pretty unique and could find their way into other parts of your campaign.

The major problem again is that the writing seems a tad bit more geared towards the adventure and not the dungeon. From the description of the product, I was hoping for a dungeon with just creatures, traps and puzzles with all the NPC motivations left to me. Of course there is nothing stopping you from adding your own stuff, I would have just enjoyed more Dungeon oriented things.

For the Dungeon Master

Again the adventure is written with good flavor text and really good descriptions that allow you to determine that there is definitely undead astir here. The descriptions though are almost too good at times. A lot of detail is put into particular rooms which leaves room for the usual ?PCs did not do it that way? snafus. I assumed that a stripped down adventure would not have so much flavor text about the baddies but it does, meaning if you wanted to drop in some of your own cretins into certain rooms, you will have provide your own text.

The Iron Word

Dungeon Dive 7: Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats is a haunting adventure that follows your parties ambush of a necromantic lab that creates Tomb Bats. The adventure is nearly complete, but almost too complete for the type of product this is. Though more focus on the actual dungeon would have been more true to the product line, it will still be a good romp for your PCs none the less. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: - Nice adventure. It provides a nice side adventure for parties chasing a necromantic entity<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - Felt a bit too specific. much more detail than the earlier books in the series<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Dungeon Dive 7: Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats is a 37 page pdf adventure and the seventh in Amalara's Dungeon Dive series. Like others in the series, this product aims to provide an adventure location complete with traps, monsters and treasure, that a busy DM can use with minimal preparation. The adventures are written without plot or other overriding elements, allowing the DM to add his own plot to the location as well as his own NPCs and other monsters for a final encounter. Each adventure is the series is also adaptable to a wide variety of power levels - in the case of Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats, the adventure can be adapted from 3rd to 11th level.

The product comes as a single pdf file with a complete set of bookmarks. Use of borders and color is minimal, meaning that it can be easily printed without using too much ink. Interior art is a selection of work from a number of artists, and mostly good, though not always entirely fitting in the sense that pictures of monsters don't look that much like the monsters encountered in the adventure. The maps are very good - simple and clear, and include a legend for all the symbols used on the maps. Some additional diagrams are also included to make running to adventure a smooth affair. Layout and editing was also good, and there were very few errors to pick up in the text. I'm pleased to say that the number of stat block errors is also minimal.

The pdf starts by providing some valuable and useful information regarding running the dungeon. One of the key characteristics of this Dungeon Dive is that it is very dynamic, i.e. creatures move around a lot and can be found in a variety of locations. The pdf provides a lot of advice on this, as well as on handling tactics and incursions from a party of adventurers. Setting and dungeon overview details are provided, and most of the information about the spawning pits make the location feel more alive and active. I appreciated the thought that had gone into making this a dynamic environment with lots of possible permutations for proceeding through the adventure. In places some additional information is hinted at for further plot hooks.

As the name of the adventure suggests, the adventure location is that of a spawning pit for tomb bats. Tomb bats are diminutive bats created from dire bats with the ability to spawn undead when nesting near graveyards and the like. The adventure location is a facility devoted to capturing dire bats and turning them into tomb bats which can then be set free into the wider world. This is a interesting and creative idea, and makes for a fun and dynamic encounter within the underground complex devoted to these experiments. In addition, the creatures used, while core creatures, are also very unexpected for the location and should make for some fun adventuring.

A total of 21 encounter areas are detailed in this adventure that encompass the entire facility and all its areas which include a laboratory, residence for dire bat hunters, master's quarters, guard quarters and the like. The adventure is divided into four main locations, and, given it's dynamic nature, each location starts with a description of the creatures likely to be found there. Further details on the various creatures are given in each area's description, and tactics and response to intrusion details are provided. Stat blocks themselves are included in the three appendices (one each for low, medium, and high level characters), something that I appreciated since lengthy and unused (not of the appropriate level) stat blocks can clutter the text and make it difficult to read.

Having reviewed several of Amalara's Dungeon Dive series of products, I have to say that I found this one to be the best so far. I really like the premise and location of the adventure, the dynamic nature and the tactics provided, and the layout and organisation of the adventure was good. This is an enjoyable site-based adventure that parties will enjoy and feel challenged by, and in some cases be in for some unexpected surprises. A very good product from Amalara and definitely useful.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bits is a dynamic and entertaining adventure with some surprising and challenging encounters, all which combine to create an interesting and creative adventure. Amalara succeeds at their aim of creating an easy-to-use adventure that requires minimal preparation, and ample scope for adding your own plot and other adventure details. Cartography was very good.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Not much. One or two minor things in the stat blocks and general editing, but these were few and far between. Art wasn't particularly fitting, and quite sparse throughout the pdf.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Dungeon Dive 7 is not an adventure, but rather a fleshed-out adventure site. The idea is that the harried DM can work the existing dungeon into his or her campaign with little preparation outside of creating a compelling reason for the PCs to journey there. To support the product's flexibility, each encounter is designed in a modular fashion, with creatures and hazards presented in an array of increasing difficulty. The DM simply uses whatever tier of creatures are appropriate to the party's average level. This presentation is fast and very easy to use at the gaming table, and it allows this dungeon to scale for parties of about 3rd, 7th, or 11th level.

Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats is a very well written site-based adventure. The location is less linear than other dungeons of its type, with three separate ways to enter depending on the DM's presentation and the PCs' ingenuity. The author gives some information on the comings and goings of the dungeon's residents, as well as the motivations and tactics of each creature group. There isn't a lot of detail here, but a skilled DM should find more than enough to adjudicate whatever methods his players use. I particularly appreciated the illustration detailing the threatened area of grimlocks hiding behind defensive barriers. In a product where the goal is to provide a dungeon that can be used very quickly with little prep, the monster tactics and other small touches are a welcome inclusion. Never at any point was I uncertain what the monsters where supposed to be doing or why.

The book uses a number of new spells and magic items, mostly as plot tools to explain certain dungeon features. These new rules are detailed in an appendix, and have the added value of being useful outside the scope of the adventure itself. My favorite new rules are the tomb bats themselves, which are magically altered dire bats that animate corpses as a side effect of their nesting habits. While not overly powerful themselves, tomb bats make an excellent plot device and could serve as a persistent nuisance to characters of any level.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Dungeon Dive 7 is probably the best product of its type that I've seen. While not a full adventure in the modern sense, its perfect as a fleshed-out encounter site that could exist within the confines of a home-brewed campaign. Its well organized, easy to understand and use, and there is just enough detail to make things interesting. If you're looking for a magical laboratory / lair for a reoccurring villain, or want a themed dungeon to drop into an existing lair, you're definitely getting your money's worth with this book.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: There were a few of the thematic elements of the dungeon that I didn't care for. For example, one of the adversaries seems to have a bit of a cross-dressing fixation. This sounds worse on paper than it actually comes across in game, but its still a bit...weird for my tastes.

Also, the majority of the monster stats appear in an appendix in the end of the book. I like to run things straight from my laptop, so this format is less than ideal for me. I would probably have preferred the stats to be inserted directly into the relevant sections of the adventure. One of the strengths of this product's presentation is the modular nature of the encounters, and I think that having to access a separate section for stats takes away from its usability.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Dungeon Dive 7: Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats is an adventure from Amalara. The zipped file is just under 2.5 megabytes, and contains a single PDF file that weighs in at almost a megabyte more. Said PDF comes with bookmarks, but no table of contents. The book is 37 pages long, including a cover, a credits/legal page, and a page for the OGL.

The book?s cover is done in full color, being part of the map of the dungeon with an overlap for the title, logos, etc. There are only a few pieces of black-and-white interior artwork scattered throughout the book. The remaining color is used in the maps of the dungeon levels (and even then, it?s only a small amount of it), and blue headers for important sections. This makes the product?s lack of a printer-friendly version relatively forgivable.

The product opens with a brief note about how to use this product. This adventure can be run for a party of 3rd, 7th, or 11th level. The antagonists and traps are each given at varying Challenge Ratings, letting you set the difficulty of this adventure at any of the aforementioned levels. The product then explains that it is tailored to be dropped into an existing campaign. The Spawning Pits are an outpost of your campaign?s major villain, where his underlings (presented in this adventure) work to create tomb bats for him. This section points out how you can easily swap out tomb bats with anything else that the arch-villain would need created.

Further sections detail the dungeon itself. Set underground, the dungeon is divided into four major sections: the secure gate (entrance), the cave of the hunters (who gather dire bats to be turned into tomb bats), the foul laboratory (where tomb bats are made), and the halls of the master (where the leader of this outpost resides). Each section has roughly five rooms, and most of the major areas are interconnected. Descriptions are also given for encountering the inhabitants of the dungeon outside of it, how to enter the dungeon, and the denizen?s responses to intruders. After this the maps are given, showing each of the four areas, along with a cross-section of the dungeon set underground.

Following this are detailed descriptions of each area. If any area has NPCs, abbreviated listings for them are given here at each level of difficulty. Hazards are also presented as such, giving brief listings of information at low, medium, or high levels.

After the dungeon levels is an appendix detailing four new magic items, a single new spell, and a new monster (the tomb bats). Appendices two, three, and four detail all of the NPCs with full stat descriptions. Appendix two is the NPCs at low (3rd) level, appendix three is them at mid (7th) level, and the last appendix is them at high (11th) level.

All in all, Dungeon Dive 7: Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats is an adventure that expertly balances its flexibility with how cohesively it?s laid out. While it has a few errors (tomb bats have a special quality listing called shadow blend that isn?t then listed, and the mid-level Maastricht should have the Native subtype) but these are easily remedied. Dungeon Dive 7 is one that would fit seamlessly into virtually any Fantasy d20 game. GMs looking for an adventure to tie into their campaign need look no further ? dive into the Spawning Pits of the Tomb Bats! <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This product was concise without skimping, and tightly cohesive while still being extremely adaptable. This is an adventure that not only works, but works within the larger context of your campaign.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Minor errors did creep into a few places, though they're nothing that'd slow down gameplay.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>