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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e) $3.99
Average Rating:2.6 / 5
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Roger M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/18/2024 09:20:51

My players loved just being murderhobos last night. Except for part 1 there is little role playing or anything else except kill everything. The magical darkness was fun for me.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Briana C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/06/2022 20:48:26

First of all, this isn't a bad adventure. My group enjoyed the game and it was far from the worst thing I've ever run. But it does have some significant flaws. Some spoilers ahead.

The good:

  • I enjoyed the various environmental effects in the dungeon. They gave the exploration some uniqueness and my players were clever in meeting those challenges. I appreciate obstacles that aren't simply all combat all the time.
  • Balors are just cool. Who doesn't want to run a D&D Balrog on a bridge across an abyss?
  • The idea of unlocking the boss door/reducing its strength is a fun callback to some old school adventure dungeons.
  • My players appreciated having a dragon as an ally, even with her snark.

The bad:

  • This adventure needs a content warning for a dead child. It may be a dragon, but that's still a fairly common trigger and one that appears with little warning. It's particularly jarring given the situation and the fact that as written, there's no way to save him.
  • There are simply too many combats to fit in 4 hours if your players actually fight everything. As others have said, there's a lot of low levels mobs to wade through. I recommend removing several fights, especially the first potential dragon fight. There's no need to let them shoot her as she flies by.
  • For stronger parties, there's much less need to reduce the Balor's strength to defeat it, which reduces the cool factor for this mechanic
  • If your group doesn't come up with a clever way around the magical darkness and/or no one has devil sight, exploring this dungeon would be even more of a slog.


Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Brian P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/04/2019 12:45:37

I ran the revised version (v1.1 released 2018-05-07) in context of a post-Tomb Of Annihilation home game, with a couple of minor changes to fit our ongoing stoyline.

There arer some valid critiques here. It's great that the author responded to the first round with a nice revision; but, there's still a decent chance some groups will find this a little easy, and it's also pretty likely this will run longer than four hours. I'm comfortable with dynamically balancing encounters (quietly adding HP to a boss so it doesn't go down too fast) and maybe letting them feel badass with easy fights once in a while; and frankly, at tier 3, different party compositions can trivialize different kinds of threats but still hit hard roadblocks in odd places. So, you need to be ready to smartly adjust difficulty at this tier, in my opinion. I was also happy to stretch this into multiple sessions for a home game. So these issues weren't a problem for me, but it's good to be aware of them.

Without loyalty to a faction, you'll have to rely on the party's innate sense of good (closing a hole to the Abyss) or at least "playing along" to hook them.

Among all the Tier 3 modules in this storyline, this is definitely one of the better ones (perhaps the best) for exploration, with a dungeon that is sufficiently complex to allow different approaches. As others have said, the number of combats will satisfy the bloodthirsty. Roleplay is a little lighter; although there are creatures to interact with, they don't have a lot of depth.

Confronting a dragon, fighting a number of demons, and concluding with a battle that invokes the iconic Balrog at the bridge in Khazad Dum, this is a pretty iconic D&D experience. It might not mean much to the jaded DM or player who views everything in terms of wargaming and challenge levels; but if you really play up the atmosphere, many players should enjoy getting swept away in a fun stereotypical adventure.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Kevin H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/29/2018 20:15:28

The Bad: Encounters here are not suited for Tier 3, seeing as many of the characters by then are quite powerful, even if the Balor is at full-power, they can take it out with no issue.

Too many low-level encounters and very little RP scenarios other than dealing with the Red Dragon



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Nathan B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/27/2018 07:54:17

great build up and the more the party does the better it gets



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by neuzil l. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/14/2018 01:29:25

Ok module but was not as fun as my group like more roleplayer than dungeon crawl.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Al D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/11/2018 11:38:39

Good oldchool module, but it's not optimized for 4-hours play. There are a lot of not hard encounters that waste time for "another demon battle". But last fight is cool and my players will remember it.

This review write for DM-quest for my important characters because fraction rules 8 season is bad.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Tim L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/08/2018 21:12:21

I like trash mobs as much as the next DM, but this was overkill. The repeated darkness effect really eliminated one of the three Lts, since the party had been dealing with a) a shadow already, and b) fighting in the dark for the last 1 1/2 h at this point. The other 2 Lt were also a joke compared to the endless mobs of 30HP newts that only serve as resource siphons. Chucked one player of the bridge in the last fight, so that made me feel a little better, but with the triple-nerf and the ally dragon his days were numbered.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jonathan U. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/06/2018 23:31:50

Fun module to run its simple to run, plenty of challenging monstes to fight really played up the intimidation factor for some of the rooms. Some of the fights are just not needed mostly due that the players at this level can take them out without expending recorces. The enviromental mechanic was fun to mess with not enough mods utilizes the exaustion mechanic. The dragon at the very start of the mod is almost not nessecary just eats up time 90% of the time the players would just leave her be which really allows the murder hobos to deal with.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by michael w. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/30/2018 17:15:02

i felt like this had too many combats for a 4 hour module and cut some of them out and made them easier for time pourposes



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jon K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/25/2018 02:14:38

This module provides a decent challenge and has a nice and rarely seen item. Our group was a bit blur about one of the environmental mechanics, which did make it last a little longer than it should have, but DMs should definitely play up the environment.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jonathan E. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/24/2018 17:05:45

So I ran the adventure after the update was done and while we had fun there are still serious issues with the module. Mostly that there are so many layers piled onto the area. First there's forbiddance which is used to prevent someone else from casting it in the area, of course they can still dispell the forbiddance and it an be recast. Then there's the perpetual darkness, doors of fire that aren't explained at all, wild magic surges, so on and so forth.

Keep things simple, you shouldn't try to challenge players by overcomplicating the map.

Sadly I probably won't run this one again unless it's requested, there's just not a good enoug reason to.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Thomas H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/24/2018 15:52:14

Overall, this is an interesting module. It's a bit different than "Run out of Port Nyanzaru and come back." that I've seen this season. However, the beginning part of the module doesn't give a lot of reason behind the players going to their destination other than the Lord's Alliance and Order of the Guantlet having a missions to complete there... because reasons? Also, it was really hard to convince the players not to kill the dragon, but thankfully one charmed it and then had it take them to the location; which made it easier to explain the story;Outside of those portions of the modue, I liked the lore, the ideas, and the overall story.

The technical part of the module, such as the fights, were very interesting. I will definitely be borrowing from some of the flavoring of the fights. One thing, though... If you really want players to weaken the end boss, then don't put a DC on the door. A player walked up to it, rolled a natural 20, and they fought the boss. They took a ton of damage from its abilities, and a couple died, but they did do it. If it hadn't been for the cert item and experience, they wouldn't have gone through the rest of the dungeon.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Christopher P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/15/2018 22:01:47

The central premise of this module is to spend an entire adventure weakening a single creature that the party was probably easily capable of defeating in the first place. As originally written, most of the other combat encounters were more suitable for a mid or high Tier 2 party, and required significant upscaling to provide a challenge. The new version looks to be a significant improvement for many of the subencounters, but I don't think it goes far enough. Fortunately, it is easy enough to upscale - simply add more demons, and possibly replace the final encounter with one of the demon lords (suitably reflavored).

The module does a good job supporting the exploration and social pillars. There's a pretty cool dungeon to explore, and plenty of opportunities for roleplay.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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DDAL07-10 Fire, Ash, and Ruin (5e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Alex W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/13/2018 12:48:05

It's an interesting module, with great characters and story developments (and quite the final boss fight), but it feels out of place in Season 7.

Characters will want to explore this massive map, which may take them well over the 4-hour expected slot, which poses an issue when playing AL at a game night. Also, if your players are pretty in sync and effective they will make short work of almost all of the encounters.

It should also be noted that when I originally ran it, it was before the second version was released. I cannot speak to the newer version.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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