This was a super fun adventure to run! I prepped and ran this as a oneshot in Talespire with my friends. We were limited to a 3 hour session unfortunately so I had to speed some things up, but this was still an excellent time.
WHAT I LIKED: The adventure structure is robust and a lot of fun. You spend the first part researching targets and picking one. Then you have a small encounter of varying types to get into your statue. Then you explore the inside of the statue. Then you complete your mission and get out of dodge.
There are some great NPCs to add to your Waterdeep campaign (and I heavily recommend including this as part of the ongoing events of Dragonheist). The driving action is simple enough, and it's a great opportunity to explore the famous landmarks of the city that the rest of dragonheist doesn't really touch. The rival party is a nice addition to give your group of adventurer's some complications to deal with. For my particular run of this adventure I changed them out for some existing rivals.
The new monsters were fun variations on statblocksm and the reward item is useful and thematic!
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Nothing really! Almost a prefect adventure, the only problem for me is a missed opportunity in the premise of the adventure. Sure zapping a Walking Statue away and then making a clean getaway is fun. But there is the Walking Statue of Waterdeep statblock. It would have been so very fun to PILOT a statue! So I did for my group. Their task was not to just steal a statue, but to relocate it and use it to create a passage from Waterdeep straight to Skullport. I added some rules for how to pilot the statue, the 4 metal plates allowing the party to control different limbs instead of vanishing the statue, and then there's the oppotunity for statue on statue combat with another one commanded by Blackstaff or some Gargantuan monster or something else! The party had a great time. This is again a very minor nitpick and doesn't lower my score of the adventure, it's great as is, I just saw a bit of a missed opportunity at the end.
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