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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean $3.99
Average Rating:3.8 / 5
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by BRIAN B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/07/2022 12:45:22

Anyone DMing this adventure needs to REALLY read the fine print on the success and fail conditions of the module.

Unlike other Tier 4 adventures, this is a skill challenge rather than a fight-packed action adventure. The goal is to get to the final location BEFORE the red wizards do. The module could've done a better job at communicating this and reminding the DM about this. Handouts could've been used to help track the advancement of the party through the locations versus the advancement of the red wizards to the end location.

It's the reason why the final fight in this adventure is on the weaker side, because making it to the end IS the success - not winning the fight which is almost guaranteed as long as you can make it there in time.

Love about the module

  • the concept and structure
  • adding exhaustion in to make the group survival checks harder, well done
  • the checks and how they foreshadow the maze mechanics in DDAL07-18

Dislike about the module

  • poor job communicating how to manage that element: the survival setback
  • lacking in handouts to help facilitate tracking the adventurers' travel


Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Nathan B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/27/2018 07:46:24

great lead up to a very difficult boss fight, worth every moment of play time



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Richard C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/06/2018 10:51:08

Overall I think that this is a good adventure that provides some challenge to high tier parties. Obviously at this level the power levels of groups varies widely and any adventure is going to require adjustments up or down depending on the group. This adventure provides a good baseline to work from.

Environmental challenges are a good way to drain some resources from a high tier group and they are present in abundance. However, some of the encounters that combine with these might have been better off designed as traps given the insanely low CR for tier 4 of some of the creatures used. They didn’t even make for a speed bump.

On the other hand, the final encounter did provide for some suspense as even tier 4 characters are in some danger from what was awaiting them.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Robert N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/28/2018 22:38:50

An alright adventure that satisfies fans of all three pillars of D&D. Larua's appearance adds some nice foreshadowing to future mods and connects the plotline neatly.
I especially enjoyed how pretty much every encounter had suggestions on how to run it in different ways, whether that be combat, interaction or exploration. The combat encounters themselves were very flavourful and interestingly designed, but were missing the necessary oomph for T4. Even the final encounter wasn't that much of a challenge (if any) for my group and I had to crank it up pretty extremely for it to work. The main problem is that it doesn't accoount for spellcasters enough. The dragon skeletons are a neat idea but most of the time won't really end up doing anything, sadly. Archmage + Death Knight encounters are also kind of overdone in general.
Overall I had fun running this module though and will recommend it further!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Timothy J. L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/27/2018 12:00:43

I was rather disappointed to see the "dream" introduction repeated from the previous entry, along with a very similar plot line - go chasing after people who are already ahead of you. Most of the challenges presented are simplistic for a T4 party - flight, teleportation, and other transportation spells make a long wilderness pursuit an inconvenience, not a challenge.

It's pretty straight forward, but frankly most of the encounters are pushovers as written. There is no excuse for CR1/2 and CR1 creatures in a T4 module; they're fodder that drop to the first area spell (of which T4 charactes have many).

Even the final fight was disappointing. There weren't any interesting interactions to challenge a T4 party - in effect, it was like a T2 fight, just with bigger numbers. There may be some black humor amusement factor in the enemy using the modules' magic item reward against the PCs, but they're likely to have defenses in place to make it irrelevant.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Matt P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/23/2018 01:31:19

The final combat is amazing. Requieres a lot of prepartion to be worth a challenge for the usually AL broken tier4 PCs.

According to PCs, consider being in a cave with a low ceilings.

Not much intersting plot in here and it still fits well in the 4-parts S07 tiers 4 story arc

at least just for the final combat. YOU. MUST. PLAY. THIS



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by richard p. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/05/2018 16:46:38

This is one where you need to know your players to edit to properly challenge them. Running this randomly at a game store has a distinct chance of feeling underwhelming, but modifying some small parts to improve it is simple enough Tier 4 is generally hardest mode, and this kinda feels like punches were pulled a bit. Still fun though



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Tim L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/28/2018 20:28:26

Part 2 of Broken Chains (in my attempt to run 16h today) is even better than part 1. I liked the extra combat in this one compared to part 1, the ability to add an extra random "thing that should not be" to the fights was a nice twist and kept things moving without having to resort to just giving the monsters a ton of extra HP to make them a threat. 5 Banshees all Wailing to start a fight is a threat regardless of the fact every players should have no problem passing at least 4/5, but the chance of that 1 character gets a bad roll is still a real fear. As for the plot, amazing RP chances that lead to a fun (yet very short) finale (which I don't mind-they earned it and beat it with prior diplomancy and not with just Meteor Swarm everything to death)



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Mikaela R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/21/2018 22:06:10

I didn't find this as interesting as the previous adventure it's tied to but that doesn't mean it's a boring adventure.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Wrich P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/12/2018 13:38:15

Each of the four mods deals with the rather plastic conciete that someone is contacting Tier 4 players in their dreams, and having them act as an improptu murder squad. About 100 Hollywood movies do this already, as a sub genre of the mysterious mission quest, so the trope is familar.

You are then sent on a very liner walk through the jungles of Chult (so, about the 16th time that has been done this season), set up a challenge based on the armor folks are wearing (or exhaustion...perhaps the players least favorite game mechanic which AL uses to distraction), when most of these characters can either fly, teleport, windwalk, or bring their own atmospheric conditions around with them. - Naturally...not all can...but tier 4 needs to dispense with most minor challenges and spark something else in the hero(es).

For example, add in guides, or companions who are having a hard time, and have the heroes use their resouces on them. As for the "yet another walk though the jungle"- couldn't have this one been set in Port N? A danger because of proximity? High end politics with the Merchant Princes?

In any case, the mod itself is clear, and has some innovative concepts with the monsters it uses. At their listed strength, they are more tier 3 than 4, but that is fine in the case of filler. I think many of the druids/priests in parties are going to want to have a challenge to "clean" the corruption from some of the beasts, so not having that as an option not only excluded resources spent by the party, but it also stopped what could have been an emotional part of the story- and even a thank you from the nativie species of Chult.

The boss fight is underwhelming. It is designed with a tier 2 powerset in mind, and almost always results in the quick destruction of the enemy. I have run, played in, or observed multiple runs of this mod, and it rarely goes beyond two rounds. For an advanced Tier 4 party, I would recommend that the Archmage simply surrender, or ask the party for help with the shard. The off chance that the Death Knight might lop the head off of someone is amusing, but simply having everyone Death Warded stops that from being any real risk.

The Magic Item is great. The adventure is not hard to run. Yes, you should buy this mod...but add plenty of your own spice to it.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Kevin H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/04/2018 21:13:15

This module was very cleverly written, right up till the end. Throughout there was a magical mix of interesting low CR threats with devestating environmental effects. The end encounter was pretty pathetic compared to the previous encounters. The story was pretty good, but needed more opportunity for exposition.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by William A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/02/2018 21:53:27

Honestly, my group had fun. We only had three people and maybe because of this, we were able to finish this significantly than the previous module. It was a lot of fun and it was fun retaliating against a [Insert the Boss Monsters here as I will not use spoilers].



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Chris B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/01/2018 21:21:02

The Good: The players were entertained, and had a good time. It was very linear, and mostly combat encounters.

The Meh: It takes more prep than the other 3 in the series. Adjusting on the fly for party strength is problematic at points. the end fight can be disappointing.

The Bad: It does not feel like the other 3 parts in this set in terms of challenge. Environmental effects are fine for weakening the party, but you can't use tier 2 saves, at tier 4.
Most (75%) of the saves are still at the default level, which in our case resulted in many auto-passes. For context, I've been playing and Dm'ing for a little over a year, in the hundreds of characters that I've interacted with, I've seen 1 with a negative con mod (he was at tier 2, and -1 to con saves). Add in a paladin with a +3 aura, and you are barely over a 50% chance of failing. One of the monsters had 3 of it's 4 attacks that were utterly useless against the party. Swarms of low level monsters, still don't make up for the players, resulting in them largely being damage sinks.

Suggested fixes: Increase DCs to mid to high teens. If you are going to use swarms of monsters as fodder, make sure that the fodder outnumbers the party (1 per party member +1, or greater). Make changes to the tuning for Strong and Very Strong, so that there are more allies that have proper saves, instead of the same mutant monsters from earlier in the module. Add in a failure condition. In the other 3, we keep tripping over Zulkirs, here, it's just an archmage.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Fiona M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/31/2018 22:15:27

I have a few observations on how to effectively run this game as a challenge, as someone who has both DMed and played in it. In general, this module is designed so that it's the environment that kills you, not the monsters. To that end, here are a few notes:

If you have a sufficiently powerful party that has a high-level paladin in it, asking the players for CON saves against exhaustion, as you do in the Land of Ash and Smoke, is an almost trivial exercise. You are empowered as a DM, so the DC of that particular save can probably be bumped up to something higher to give players an actual chance at failing it.

By design, it does more damage to grapple players and dump them into pools of hot water or lava than it does to attack them directly - and you, the DM, should be taking advantage of this tactic - since grapples are checks, not saves, and it's much easier for a DM's monster to win a grapple contest than it is to hit against some of the impossibly high ACs I've seen on T4 characters.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-16 Pools of Cerulean
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Robbie P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/23/2018 01:35:02

It's a pretty linear adventure, with a simple concept. As far as the overarching tier 4 story goes, it's another step ahead with no shocking twists but a good build towards the eventual conclusion.

However, the challenge levels are simply too low for any tier 4 party not just hitting their stride. A large quantity of low-challenge saves (banshees, heat exhaustion, etc) can't compare to a few high-challenge saves, and with a paladin or two in the party, the DCs are negligible. Similarly, most of the combat encounters don't take much time or effort at all; even the final boss wasn't all that high a challenge; if they roll low on the initiative, they're pretty much dead in the first round if the players drop some high level spells on them.

That said, the way the corruption causes mutated creatures to attack is neat, and some of the environmental challenges are decent. If the players DO get into combat with the bosses without getting an early kill, it could be more fun (watch out for those 20s).

Not the worst tier 4 adventure, but still needs to work on providing more of a challenge. Still, it works as far as the story goes.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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