Customer Reviews

City of the Spider Queen (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Setting)

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This is an awesome awesome adventure which did almost everything right when it was written (without seriously cheating the players). But then Wizards of the Coast changed all of the magic right from under everybody by releaseing 3.5e.

In this 3.0 compliant adventure...
- Almost everybody has spell resistance
- Most casters use haste to get extra partial actions which are usually used to cast Lightning Bolt
- Drow can use darkness when they don't want to be seen

But in d20 3.5e,
- Spell resistance is easily bypassed by most conjuration magic (except for healing).
- Haste doesn't give casters much of any advantage except footspeed.
- Darkness has been nerfed from "darkness" to "shadowy illumination".

This has two major overall impacts:
- Drow shouldn't be studying any magic other than conjuration. Everybody's got spell resistance, so anything short of Cloudkill (which SR does not apply to in 3.5) is a waste of time.
- The straight Drow encounters are still going to be really pretty weenie.

If you've still got the 3.0 books about, this is a great adventure, loaded with atmosphere and plot unparallelled by the other adventures I've seen (which generally result in the heroes saving the day just in the nick of time despite having taken 5 years of downtime to craft magical items). Otherwise, you may want to alter the Drow -- or at least reinstate the old SR rules -- to ensure that this adventure plays as well as it did a couple of years ago. Because in d20 3.5e, the overrated dark elves are the least of anybody's problems.

The storyline is good, especially if you enjoy killing the drow.
One aspect of the adventure that is both good and bad is its length. The adventure is LONG and allows for very little downtime. This means characters have no time to make magic items and worse, wizards in the party don't even have time to learn new spells forcing them to rely on their "free spells" they gain for level advancement.
Absolutely can't be done without a cleric, I wouldn't even try. The monsters are tough and a huge portion are undead with level and ability score draining ability which means you need a cleric who can use restoration not to mention healing.
Descriptions are good and the adventure does a good job describing how enemies react to PCs such as countermeasures they employ, alert postitions, and battle strategies. Also the "Powered up" stats given for enemies that cast spells on themselves before combat means you don't have to add in the various spell effects yourself.

It's a good epic adventure designed to take the characters from 10-18th level. It does that remarkably well because the monsters and villans are smartly designed and planned and the book is well laid out with clear maps and excellent descriptions.

Still there are a few problems.
1). Some of the monsters are tougher than their challenge rating suggests. Drider Vampires are a good example.
2). Any party without a rogue and a cleric are in for a rough time. This might seem self-evident, but not every party has one.
3). There isn't much downtime. The author makes this a clear point, but characters with item creation feats might as well have spent them in skill focus profession bum. 8 levels is a long time to go without creating any items.

I completely agree that when this was written for 3.0 it must have been much harder. It does require some fixing, especially the all Drow encounters. It took about 3 months of playing time (3 hours 1/week) to get through, and the PC's gained 4 levels out of it. They did manage to emerge twice before finishing it, but my group is very experienced. It was a good module though, even though it needs a little updating. It's not going to make the PC's rich, not that I remember anyway. I used this module plus the Underdark supplement. Really fun times.

Before buying the DnD adventures we get them from the internet and check them out first. Bought the real book to replace the printed out version since we're using it. Only disappointment is that it would be better in hardback instead of paperback. We're playing 3.5 and even though this is 3.0 it still works fine except that the reference page numbers are off by a page or two sometimes.

I bought this adventure hoping for maps and info on Menzoberranzan, as in all the novels I've read, it was referred to as the City of the Spider Queen, City of Spiders, whatever. Instead it's about Myrmidea or whatever, a city I'd never heard of, and I've read 3 of the 6 War of the Spider Queen novels. However, it IS an excellent adventure, from what I've read in it, and, having bought it for a VERY good price, I got my moneys worth and then some.