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Shield of the Hidden Lord $3.95
Average Rating:4.6 / 5
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by TL M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/21/2022 15:00:27

Hours and days of entertainment! We just finished this adventure last night after about 4 sessions, and my players came away really excited and inspired to keep going with the Avernus campaign! I'm going to guess that this will probably have been a highlight for months to come, given that they're a higher level party, and it was much easier with the PDF's suggestions for scaling encounters up than it has been for the first bit of Descent Into Avernus.

For those with stronger level parties, I found it worked much better to give the final big-bad a more menacing CR: I made him a vampire instead of a ghoul, allowed him to have contact with the shield in order to use its Fire Wall to trap the party inside, and gave him some inconsequential magical abilities throughout the cat-and-mouse period, such as finally casting little torches to come find him when the party went full dungeon-exploration completionist. I also turned the final level of the crypt into a map puzzle, so that when all the ghouls bust out after the fight, they had to put their mapper (squishy, not used to leading the charge) in the front of the group, or else roll history or survival checks to make sure they were going the right way. I very loosely clumped the ghouls into groups of ten that showed up whenever they passed a larger crypt area and eyeballed when a group of them would be encountering the party, rather than tracking them all in chase turn order. It worked out great!

Finally, I had to fill out some of the crypt lore with ascended Hhunes' deeds on those crypt rooms, because it was feeling a little same-y same-y. It kept the party distracted and occasionally led to some false puzzle shenanigans that made the loot in those coffins worth the digging up. Not only do I have the barbarian attuning to an OP shield, I have the bard attuning to the dagger, and they're both Chaotic to the extreme to begin with. The ranger saved two Kruthik eggs and managed to tame both of them upon hatching at the end of the adventure, and the party has a nemesis in the form of a thwarted incubus. Pretty good value for a 4 session diversion in Baldur's Gate! If they weren't going to Hell before, they definitely are now.

Thanks, MT Black! You knocked it out of the park!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by David C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/14/2021 15:50:55

I think that my players actually enjoy more this dungeon than the rest of the Campaign! It's great to see them asking themselve a lot of question and trying to put together who is Gargauth. I may have to put a bigger place for him when we'll get to Avernus!

Thanks for your incredible work!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Tony R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/10/2020 20:08:11

We ran this one as a stand alone with three PCs and two NPCs over three sessions. The campaign is very easy to run for the DM as the four chapters are well laid out and easy to follow. Plenty of opportunity for role playing through four well constructed NPCs (Thalamra, Hrizlach, Iuzakor and Inselm) and we especially had a lot of fun with Iuzakor (particauly as no one could agree on how to pronounce the name!). The chapters provide nice clean sessions breaks (S1: Chp1-2, S2: Chp3 & S3: Chp4) and it could possibly be played in two sessions as the PCs spent a fair bit of time in Baldur's Gate in the first session. PCs started at level 2 and I had them level up at the end of each main chapter, so they were well prepared for the Pit.

Overall, highly recommend and definitely worth the money.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Andrew R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/05/2020 19:20:16

I was really impressed with Shield of the Hidden Lord. It was an excellent dungeon crawl that my players greatly enjoyed. Good variety of traps and monsters with a fun NPC thrown into the mix. Well written and concise, it plays very well. I did it as a stand-alone and it is perfect. I haven't done Descent into Averus, so I can't comment on that interface, but I would assume it's extremely smooth based on the presentation.

Highly recommend!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Alan D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/15/2020 12:39:23

I ran this module as part of my Descent Into Avernus home game, and thought it was fantastic. There's a great mix of combat encounters and exploration; more importantly it contextualises the aforementioned shield. If I understand it correctly, the author was one of many involved with Descent Into Avernus, and this module genuinely feels like cut content from chapter 1 - I would go as far as removing the shield altogether if you're not running this module, as it sticks out like a blemish in the story otherwise due to lack of context.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Michael M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/11/2019 12:08:08

An excellently written and constructed adventure. I really like that it contains notes on how to incorporate it into Descent into Avernus or run it as a stand alone. It's fairly combat-heavy but rewards stalwart groups with XP, gold, and magic. One aspect I like is that it's suitably creepy and even a bit scary, which makes it a seamless addition or replacement for official content.

Frankly, I think this is as good (or even better) than some of the content in the official adventure. I plan on using it with my group. Highly recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Hiten D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/06/2019 10:41:48

A very insightfully-written adventure which plugs in a lot of questions I had after going through the first chapter of Descent Into Avernus.

The tact that went into filling in the details here is exemplary...truly a masterclass level of 5th-edition adventure design. My favorite (and possibly widely under-appreciated) feature is the larger font size, which makes each page easier to digest and run on the fly.

Shield of the Hidden Lord is worth more than the listed price. There's plenty to chew on in here!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Carl A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/03/2019 00:18:34

This adventure is incredible! It's a great addition to any campaign (if you're not running a game in Baldur's Gate, you may need to change a few things) and it's full of very interesting encounters. Don't get me wrong, this will be a challenge for your party but it'll be a dungeon they rememebr.

For the price, you can't beat it - there's so much value in this. It's even awesome dungeon to run as a one-shot (which is what I did!). Tons of fun.

M. T. Black does it again!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Hal H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/02/2019 19:03:47

Extremely well written. Balance information really helps scale it for any Tier 1 party. A tough but worthwhile addition to any game set in Baldur's Gate.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shield of the Hidden Lord
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Julio M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/02/2019 17:54:07

Very fun short adventure! My players want to play Descent into Avernus in the future, and I decided to play this adventure with them to sort of tease the future campaign. We played it in 3 sessions (of less then 4 hours each), with a lot of investigation and mystery going on. It reminds me the Death House from Curse of Strahd for some reason: a well built investigation adventure into a single mysterious location.

We had a blast! My players loved it, specially with the fact that the lore is so interesting.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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