19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Plot, but lack of flavor leaves a lot to be desired., April 25, 2010
This review is from: Prince of Undeath: Adventure E3 for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (4th Edition D&D) (Paperback)
Essentially, I view written adventures like plays, or instruction books for inexperienced DMs. When reviewing these, I imagine if I handed this to a young kid and he ran it just like the book says how fun would it be? I don't assume the DM is going to add background, and fluff etc. It is the author's job to get that across, knowing that someone else is going to be reading their work outloud. Some DMs are authors too, but the two are separate responsibilities.
This is fourth edition, and while they are re-inventing the wheel and I love it, there is a vast history of flavor that already exists to be mined and it should be used! The writers have all grown up reading about Orcus and know all about him. They left a lot of that history out of this adventure.
If the name Orcus is enough for you, you get it here. You face him twice, once as an aspect and once for real. If your players don't already know who Orcus is or why he is cool, then it will take some work on your part.
WARNING SPOILER:
Plot Synopsis: You start in the Abyss after having defeated Doresain. You break into Orcus's stronghold in the Abyss and steal one of Orcus's boats (chaos ship). You take that flying boat to the heart of the elemental chaos chasing after Orcus. He went there to steal part of the shard of the Abyss. There, you witness devils and demons fighting as part of the "Blood War" but arrive too late to stop Orcus. You learn that he is headed to Latherna and you face him down after witnessing him commit deicide on the Raven Queen.
It's slightly a hack-fest: you fight on the boat several times, fight through a generic stronghold in the abyss with little abyssal flavor, then fight in a forge in the elemental chaos, then face Orcus.
This adventure has a lot of potential. The plot is the best thing about it. Steal something from Orcus, travel to the heart of the Abyss, get involved in the Blood War, stop a deicide from happening (or commit your own ha ha!). That's all totally awesome. My complaint is that they managed to make it a dungeon crawl with no flavor. The only thing in the adventure that lets you know you're in the abyss is the red maps, which the players will most likely never see. Epic adventures in past editions made you travel through hell to face Orcus, this one does not capture much of any exploration feel. It needs more descriptive writing. As well as imaginative NPC's. The only NPC's you meet are some Raven Queen angel lackeys who can assist you a little, but aren't interesting. One Pit Fiend barely gives a clue that you could negotiate with it, so 90% of the time parties will probably wind up killing it.
:END SPOILER
I can't help but compare this adventure to both "Throne of Bloodstone" and "A Paladin in Hell" and notice that those two adventures include much more flavor of the the Abyss within them. They include everything, you don't have to refer to any other sources. In those, you travel through hell and see a variad of different environments and even meet with all the major demon lords. You get to witness lakes of fire with demons pushing people back in with pitchforks. In `Bloodstone', there's an angel who smokes cigars(memorable and cool), theres a mephit who dresses in plaid suits and tags along offering help. Orcus's stronghold is detailed as being made of bones. The front of which is guarded by two giant talking skulls who confront you. In "Savage Tide", another epic abyssal adventure, when the party gets to the Abyss they meet an insane crippled madman who is cursed to live forever, dying over and over. That stuff is cool, there's none of that here. They even missed out on a narrational opportunity to describe the chaos ship lurching through the elemental chaos. What's Orcus's stronghold look like? I don't know it's not detailed anywhere. Please WotC; put in more text that sets-the-scene and npc dialog. "Pyramid of Shadows" had excellently laid out NPC's with motivations, so you know how to do it.
If you were to play through "Prince of Undeath" as a player; you could tell people "My character went to Orcus's stronghold in hell and then went to where the heart of the Abyss was." Other people could ask you "What was it like?" and you would reply "I don't know, I don't remember any descriptions, all I remember was fighting." "Who did you meet?" you would reply "We didn't talk to a single thing, we killed it all."
A book called "Plane Below" was released after this adventure was published. It contains more flavor of the Abyss which can and should be added. Especially: locations, hazards like elemental storms, risks of insanity etc. Note: a lot of that book was copy-pasted straight from "Fiendish Codex I: Fiends of the Abyss" which is a tremendously flavored book on my favorite location.
In this adventure almost every single monster comes from new sourcebooks like the "Monster Manual 2", and "Open Grave" etc. The adventure itself includes no physical descriptions or pictures of most of the monsters, so if you don't know where that monster was published and don't have an D&D insider subscription; good luck trying to guess what the hell the thing the party is fighting looks like. They don't even help you by telling you where the monster was published.
How's the combat? Well ever since Oct2010 where WotC released some errata stating monster target damage should be Level+8 instead of (1/2*Level)+8. This means on average every monster in this adventure is doing 15 points of damage too less on every attack! This whole adventure, needs updating. Since all of WotC adventures are mostly just a book of encounters, this renders this book completely out of date and not worth saving just for the plot. It is a tremendous amount of work to go through boosting Brute's attack bonuses and adding damage to every single monster. Plus they never gave a clear math quick fix you can apply on the fly. They also haven't even bothered to update the monsters in the online compendium. They also have never updated Orcus, and it is a running joke on the WotC forums how easy it is to defeat him.
At the level 27 and above, almost every class has an Encounter Stun power, so monsters stand around doing nothing, Solo's never get to act because they are stun-locked. If a monster does happen to get off a good attack under all the penalties it will most likely be under, it will probably be interrupted into being useless by the players who all have tons of contingent powers. A whole lot of updating, or cheating by the DM is necessary to make this playable.
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