Combat 4/5 Exploration 5/5 Social 3/5 Puzzles NA

• The combat encounters are designed to be a little too hard to take on directly, intentionally so I believe.
• I feel like DMs are expected to let some of the monsters help the players if they play their cards right, but there's not much guidance for it.
• There are supposedly four possible solutions, two of them, however, seem unsatisying to me. I can't say i've actually run them, but given that it takes away the final encounter, my impression is that if your players are in any way combat-minded I would stick with the fourth option.
• Isometric map looks really cool, would still have preferred a grid-based map for ease of quick conversion to a player map.
• The social encounter is entertaining, it would probably have been a bit more interesting if I had picked the other paths for my players. However, some of the monsters could easily become social encounters instead. Note that social encounter does not mean persuasion checks- there's not much opportunity for those here. It was just fun social interaction is what I mean.

I will omit my feedback on the grammar and writing of this module and just say that I hope the designer will consider getting an editor for future efforts. What I did like- I thought the "Pick a Curse" opportunity gives this module great replayability. Only two of the adventure hooks had anything really connecting the adventurers to the main plot of the story. The "Get Rich Quick" Hook could have been more interesting .."Maybe you could secure a position in their heirarchy.." but you still want help them berid their family of the curse? Doesn't really make much sense to me.

It would have been a little easier to have the bulleted list of Lady Asche's knowledge near the narrative dealing with interactions with Lady Asche vice having it in a roleplaying sidebar on another page. The way the module lays out has the DM flipping pages to manage dialogue points with Lady Asche and having Part One's pertinent information in front of them. The adventure has players making a Wisdom Perception Check to reveal an argument going on between multiple people in Primordial. I think this is intended to reveal the nature of the creatures, but the designer doesn't really state that. It did have me wondering whether the designer assumes the PCs know the language? What if they don't know Primordial? Boxed texts tell us that areas are "obviously" destroyed" or "obviously" a wizards workshop ..why the boxed text if these are obvious? There are checks in the module that don't reveal anything of importance. They seem like "filler" checks. There is a secret door in Area 11 that does not have a DC assigned to it, so I gave it an 11.

The challenge at the end of 'The Traitor' Curse Path will require a character to either make one-of-six checks or defend themselves against attacks by mephits spawned by an efreeti and attacks by one of the major NPCs, as well as become damaged by a necrotic "pulse" emmitted by the runes of the summoning circle in a chamber. Quite the event at the end of the module! I like that the designer provides an adjustment sidebar for this unique and challenging encounter. To the desginers credit, they do warn that characters will most likely perish after five or six rounds.

If a DM does not read ahead of time, they will find themselves frustrated and glossing over parts of the adventure the designer may intend to be essential. Despite all of this, I think players would like the adventure. I thought that Alexei Vella's cartograpy was spectacular! It reminded me of some old AD&D module cartography. I hope the designer and cartographer continue to press forward with new material beyond this initial effort.

I thought this was a very well done adventure. I like that it opens up the path to the DM for progression, which makes it a lot more fun for DMs that run the same modules repeatedly at FLGs and Conventions. It does, intentionally, throw some very difficult encounters in there, but it does so intentionally to challenge the players to critical/outside the box thinking. Would recommend to others.