This adventure, like the others in this series, is divided into 3 parts. In general, I liked it but there's some issues keeping me from rating this higher.
I didn't like Part 1. It involves the party being given the mission and traveling to Candlekeep. But along the way, the party has to deal with inconveniences, with little reason to suspect the causes are deliberate. Worse, there's not many ways for the party to address the inconveniences (they either just happen or has to be unreasonably bribed away). And even worse, even if the party did address (or bypass) it all quickly, it has ZERO effect on the rest of adventure. The party still gets to Candlekeep even if they do nothing (well almost nothing..one inconvenience involves managing a disease outbreak) and the same stuff still happens. It might as well been background boxed text up until the point the adventures go into the library.
I LOVED Part 2. The party has a library trip, talking with librarians and experiencing the super magicalness that is Candlekeep. Though some interactions are contrived, there's good roleplaying opportunities here and the researching aspect feels enjoyably interactive. There's a scene that the DM can insert whenever appropriate to lead to Part 3.
Part 3 is so so for me. It's basically a good challenging combat. However there's a "book burning" aspect to it that the party is trying to stop. But the adventure doesn't address certain obvious ploys, such as why doesn't the bad guys toss in several books at once. Also, it's a special "fire" they are immune too and they have all the books on their person, so why not just walk into the "fire" to burn all the books at the same time? But ignoring that, the combat is a nice scene to end the adventure on and lead into the next one.
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