Path of Legend
Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes
Path of Legend by Fantasy Flight Games is a new d20 module for their Dawnforge: Crucible of Legend campaign setting. The adventure is written with four Dawnforge starting characters in mind and should grant such a party enough experience to reach fifth level by the end of the adventure. Such characters are expected to use a different set of player character races and classes from the core selection, as well as racial enhancements that effectively increase player characters power levels implied by their pure class levels. Fortunately, the non-player characters are already enhanced with these racial rules to maintain game balance, although that does require access to the campaign sourcebook for some of the racial abilities. This sourcebook is also needed for a world map and to take advantage of the legend point awarded with its successful completion. The adventure is aptly named given the resulting access to the campaign’s Legendary Class system.
The adventure is written in four chapters, each of which is expected to roughly cover one level of experience for the whole party. Two interludes are given in the first and third chapter to offer some added experience and secondary events to provide further contacts and potential future adventures. The adventure offers a thorough mix of contests, combat, and puzzle solving in its accomplishment, although a majority of action is likely to be accomplished in wilderness settings from random encounters. Some aspects of the travel entailed are mentioned on the product website, although most of them are incorrect. To get the real skinny, one has to look to the back cover:
“In this full-length adventure campaign, your fledgling heroes take their first steps on the path of legend. From Saranor to Ebernath, from the dawn elf city of Ersevor to the night elf outposts of the Morningstar Mountains, the heroes must uncover clues to an ancient mystery – a riddle whose answer may reveal the origins and nature of arcane magic.”
While the adventure’s riddle design does require a fairly straight path from clue to clue, there is still a good range of party choices for solving each clue and at each destination to which the clues lead. Appropriate information and contacts for handling different party tactics are given where needed, although there are key locations in each chapter that must be visited in order for the party to win through the entire adventure. Two appendices provide most of the support material needed. The first one is given with explicit copy right permission as it contains all non-player characters and monsters encountered with a generic base block format used for all entries with an added flavor text of general outlook and description for named entrants. The second appendix describes four new magic items, one mundane item, and drinking rules excerpted from Tournaments, Fairs, and Taverns by Natural d20 Press with specific effects for their use in this adventure also included.
To meet the adventure expectations of gaining a level with each chapter, many of the encounters are a little powerful for the expected character levels, even with the racial adjustments of the Dawnforge characters. Thanks to the careful inclusion of the interludes and inherent wilderness encounters required by this continent spanning escapade, most of the encounters remain briskly challenging without being overly demanding. The exceptions are the very first and very last encounters. The first one is rife with problems from the failure to include discussed map markers of the opponents starting positions to the high challenge rating for a group of starting characters. While a challenge rating of four is not terribly out of line for a group of fresh, first level heroes, the problem is that some or all of the heroes are expected to have run a grueling race of hazardous obstacles made all the more dangerous by heavy drinking followed by another round of potential physical contests and drinking at the subsequent celebratory feast. As such, the heroes may well be completely hammered when they stagger upon their first, real encounter. This assumption is almost expected, given that the module specifically states, ‘Assume that the PCs spend enough time…to leave at whatever condition of drunkenness each player desires for his PC.’ While setting a stiff, challenging level for a party to meet is to be applauded, this first real fight for the heroes seems to have surpassed that aim and set the players up for a frustrating defeat that may require their characters to be ignominiously rescued before they even have a chance to test their mettle. In contrast, the last encounter, while again being at the stiffly challenging level, is somewhat problematic given the lack of supporting material. As the last fight of the adventure, one would expect lots of detail to make the fight truly climatic to conclude the adventure finally, but this module does not even bother with map. Only a column and a half on one page is given to describe the encounter, so it ends up feeling like a stop gap measure. The detail offered for this last fight suggests the climax was carried out two scenes earlier and there was just one more fight added in the dénouement to steal away with the prize the heroes have already fought through so many challenges to get.
Path of Legend offers a pretty good plot design and fairly thorough attention to game mechanics. It is not perfect, as mention of the necessity of the campaign sourcebook for spurious racial abilities and a world map suggests. Most of the encounters match a fairly standardized detail level seen throughout the industry, although there are exceptions in both directions. The more detailed scenarios are superb with such features as round by round strategy guides for the non-player characters or maps keyed with starting locations of chief participants and hazards. The weaker adventures suffer from lack of maps and in some cases even missing challenge ratings. While all of the encounters were supposed to include scaling advice, this attempt was somewhat weakened since only some of the encounters did and they only ever handled adding foes to increase the challenge rating. The editing and layout were otherwise well done, supported by decent gray scale art and sharp frames. Overall, this is a worthwhile adventure. Take a look.
For more details on Fantasy Flight Games and their new d20 module, Path of Legend, check them out at their website http://www.fantasyflightgames.com and at local game stores.
(Product Summary)
Path of Legend
From: Fantasy Flight Games
Type of Game: d20 module
Written by: Mark Chance
Managerial Development by: Greg Benage
Editing, Layout, and Art Direction by: Greg Benage
Graphic Design by: Brian Schomburg
Cover Art by: Cos Koniotis
Additional Art by: Scott Schomburg
Cartography by: Ed Bourelle
Number of Pages: 64
Game Components Included: Soft Cover Book
Retail Price: $14.95 (US)
Number of Players: Optimally four plus a game master
Item Number: DF03
ISBN: 1-58994-172-1
Website: www.fantasyflightgames.com
Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes
Added: July 17th 2004
Reviewer: Wayne Tonjes
Score: 
Related Link: Path of Legend at Fantasy Flight Games
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