Dungeon Masters Guild
Narrow Results
$ to $















Back
pixel_trans.gif
DDAL10-05 A Blight in the Darkness $4.99
Average Rating:4.0 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
1 0
0 3
1 0
0 0
0 0
DDAL10-05 A Blight in the Darkness
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
DDAL10-05 A Blight in the Darkness
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Peter S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/27/2022 17:18:09

This adventure is a little stuck in a weird place where it feels like there should have been more adventures in between 10-04 and this one, and because there weren't if feels like the deus ex machina to save the NPC at the end of 10-04 just to immediately throw them back at the party, yet again, here in 10-05 was unnecessarily repetitive. On the other hand it's understandable that they needed to quickly wrap things up to move on to the more cosmic level of horror in the second half of the S10 adventures.

That aside, this is a pretty enjoyable combat with a mix of challenging combats and some exploration.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
DDAL10-05 A Blight in the Darkness
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by Cameron E. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/28/2021 09:13:33

This was a very fun adventure! I ran this with a table of mixed players, some who had played Season 10 Hardcover and hadn't met Frostclaw before, some who had done DDAL10-01 through DDAL10-04, and some who had done bits and pieces.

It felt very satisfying to finally put an end to Frostclaw for the party, starting the module off with that fight was a great decision after the build up of the previous modules. It felt very cathartic for the players that had been fighting her for the past few weeks and she and her Chardalyn appendages were a cool fight for the players that hadn't met her before.

I like the change in dynamic between Old Goat and Kaskur, that they were not at odds here was very cool, I made the 3 Goliaths that accompany Kaskur to fight Frostclaw be Souljoined seeking revenge for Rikurr's death to add some more flavor.

The Netherese outpost was also a cool little dungeon. The door puzzle I thought was good but I would have preferred if there were some clues to the correct stones that history/arcana/investigation checks could have provided written in the module so I didn't have to make them up myself. My party ended up brute forcing the door by juicing their Barbarian, I think we all really liked that the puzzle had two different possible solutions and loved the depth the door gave to insights on High Netheril culture. I really liked the Mud Mephit encounter as written but didn't run it as the party successfully snuck by. Although two party members had the Story Award: One Man's Junk they were intimidated by the Ooze Elementals and thought that the Mud Mephit from last time was annoying and unhelpful so bypassed the room. This bit of roleplay was fun to watch.

The other two rooms were simple enough to look around.

The final encounter with Feraltongue was interesting, I feel like even with the scaling of the encounter for the party to strong/very strong Feraltongue was not a difficult fight, the party burned through his HP too fast with a Gloomstalker Ranger and a Barbarian. The Chardalyn formations added some additional challenge but the party worked through Feraltongue's wildshapes fast enough that they saved Kaskur and knocked out Feraltongue without much problem. I would have given Feraltongue more HP, or a higher AC in Polar Bear form do to the Chardalyn on him to give him more time to use his abilities if I could.

I liked the fact that the Chwinga Blessings from DDAL10-04 were used, in fact I really liked that previous story awards came into play here in general. One PC gained the story Award for Chardalyn corruption at the end of this session and the whole party got song og vengeance so I'm curious to see what these awards will do in future modules. I do wish that the Content Catalogue was updated to help DM's forshadow the effects of these Story Awards as they play through the season.

My only knock is that the module structure makes running it ad-hoc with minimal prep hard. I wish the Story Awards and effects were presented at the beginning of the module to make sure an unprepared DM knows what information is important, I read the whole thing ahead of time so no worries there for me personally, but if AL is designed to be "show up at the local store and run this" then the layout should be designed around that sort of minimal prep execution.

Overall a very good module, and feels like a great halfway point through the season.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
DDAL10-05 A Blight in the Darkness
Publisher: D&D Adventurers League
by RICHARD H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/19/2021 23:10:16

I've had the opportunity to run this twice. Once with some shortcuts over three hours for six players, the second time for five players over the full four hours.

What I like about this adventure:

  1. Two heroic battles in desperate and dramatic situations with powerful dangers in both scenes.
  2. Immersive Goliath clan storyline.
  3. Intriguing history and lore from the Netherese times with a puzzle to get you into it.

How did it run? In the first game I made it shorter by making the puzzle easy to solve, and by avoiding the Alchemical Sludge. Still a fun game, and sometimes it's better to run shorter if it's a late night. In the second game I ran the full content and it ran to time. The pacing is good. I allowed a 10 minute break after the Frostclaw fight. No PC died but battles were challenging and awesome.

What did I change?

  1. I changed the puzzle from five to four pieces.
  2. I made the polar bears friendly at the end after Feral-Tongue dies, there has to be something nice in all this mess.
  3. Kaskur must die. He doesn't seem to play a part later in the storyline.
  4. Feral-Tongue starts in bear form, and gives his speech at the end. Then he dies.

What was good

  1. Old Goat and Kaskur: brilliant writing!
  2. Frostclaw coming to life wreaking havoc with legendary actions? The best! The Chardalyn Growths? Much fun and mayhem on the battlefield.
  3. Netherese Lore is cool.
  4. Alchemical Sludge is fascinating.
  5. Final battle with the chardalyn effects, and Feral-Tongue raving on about the "end is nigh" is very dramatic. Great battle and a fitting escalation from the Frostclaw fight.

What was hard?

  1. The puzzle is quite hard to explain and for the DM to understand, it would be better if it were spelled out exactly in the PDF. I still don't understand why there are five and not four pieces that are chosen. However, it is a great moment to explore a little Netherese lore and mystery with the players if you enjoy that. The picture doesn't illustrate the pieces very well, but it is a nice piece of art which I enjoyed.
  2. Story Awards are problematic with this series. No one knows why or when to use the story awards, you have to wait for the right moment, and you have to be aware of what the players have and when to use it. It's too much to handle, and beyond the capacity of most players. Most players don't remember what story awards they have, or what they are called. The DM is busy at the moment when the story awards are called on, and it's just too much paperwork to make it practical. I think this system needs to be redesigned for next season. Players love the Goliath storyline, that works well without the need for the story awards which are dependent on very specific circumstances.

Suggestions for DMs

  1. Use Madam DM's map pack available on this site.
  2. Have fun playing the Kaskur character annoying the players.

Suggestions for the Writer This is actually really well written, and I want to give the writer five stars for this. What I found is that the second half of the module when things get more complicated it is harder to follow including the puzzle, and the Feral-Tongue stuff. I think it would be better to make it clear exactly what is supposed to happen and why. It's not the time for sidebars or complex layout. Just make it simple and logical. So I knocked it down to four stars for this. However, I read this adventure with a lot of joy, and the games were a blast so kudos to the writer you made me a very happy DM.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 3 (of 3 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items