For context, I have now run all of the DDAL season 10 adventures except the epic. My table is in Chapter 6 of 7 in Rime of the Frostmaiden. My party was all level 10, so I ran the adventure as a Tier 2 adventure with the exception of leaving the Star Spawn Seer in for the final encounter. I also played Prook myself as none of the players were interested in controlling him.
What I liked: Overall this is a very solid adventure. Things pick up quickly where DDAL10-09 left off, the bombs are assembled, the party gets into Xorvintroth (my table flew quickly on Griffon back having helped out the Akannathi Tribe and made piece between them and the Thuunlakalagas). And starts exploring. The structure is essentially:
- Quick combat encounter and investigation in the entrance to Xorvintroth (also confusingly the main building?)
- Venture out to 2 towers to plant bombs in any order
- Come back the way you came, get lostish, plant a bomb with another combat encounter
I think for a 4 hour oneshot this structure worked well. The first combat encounter is a fun puzzle of navigating between the Gibbering Mouthers and investigating the map room before more enemies attack. As my party had high perception I gave them clues that Manglers were coming to help incentivise a quick look at the map and continued forward momentum.
Both of the tower encounters were a lot of fun. The north library involves some investigating, skill checks, and a fun social encounter, how much will the PC's trust the ghost Dragonborn? There is some great roleplay opportunity here. The south workshop is a FANTASTIC combat puzzle and brutal. The mirror trap combined with the Crystal Golem abilities is a very deadly encounter that helps instill the danger of Xorvintroth. A monster statblock that blinds and slows is very tough indeed! And having the Dragonborn ghosts come back and assist in the final fight is a great reward.
The final fight is also a brutal affair. Again, I didn't weakend the encounter for my party, and it was more fun for not doing it. The Star Spawn Seer's ability to hop around and get the Hulk to tank shots made for some very dynamic action. A poor roll to save against a Polymorph is what ended up saving the party, but this was a very close one. The fountain's ability to teleport was also fun to play with. Saving Nararhak felt very good, and overall brought the Xorvintroth storyline to a satisfying conclusion.
Also having run more recent AL modules like Mist Hunters, the inclusion of maps in season 10 is commended, I felt like I got much more value paying half the price than I do from the RMH modules.
What I didn't like: Just some minor things. The Xorvintroth madness didn't really threaten the party, just one player got some unlucky rolls and the short term madness wasn't that interesting of an effect, some customized madness effects on a table would have been nice. In addition there seemed to be missing from the module some sort of inclusion to satisfy the player desire to confirm that they saved as many Goliaths as possible. Without that I ended up making up some details on the fly to confirm they had found all the dead bodies they could so they didn't stick around too long looking for more survivors.
The arcana checks for setting up the bombs don't do anything, feel vestigial, like something to do with them got removed in editing but the check is still there.
Also including some sort of large scale map of Xorvintroth would have been a nice visual aid, kind of like what is there for Ythryn, but for Xorvintroth. I ended up including my own visual aid, and this is a minor nitpick, but still would have been nice.
Overall a great adventure and satisfying conclusion to the Xorvintroth storyline (for now) looking forward to the conclusion of the Goliath tribe politicking and then seeing what the Red Wizards are up to!
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