What do you think?
Rate this book
The Slaying Stone
The tiefling empire of Bael Turath crumbled long ago, but the ruins of its ancient cities remain. Lost within one such ruin is a powerful relic called the Slaying Stone, and brave heroes must retrieve it before it falls into the hands of their enemies!
This standalone D&D® adventure is designed for 1st-level characters and can be easily inserted into any D&D campaign.
This standalone D&D® adventure is designed for 1st-level characters and can be easily inserted into any D&D campaign.
32 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
20 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 5, 2022
This is decent adventure module for the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons that could easily be converted to any edition of D&D (or most other fantasy RPG systems). It has a standard set-up to start off a new adventuring party on a campaign or could serve as a one-shot game. Without giving away too much about the plot, the basic premise is that the party is hired to go into the ruins of a Tiefling town to recover an ancient artifact of power. The town is now occupied by goblins and kobolds and so the party will have to search several locations for the item they seek all the while trying to evade or kill the creatures in the ruins. There are some other non-goblin/kobold parties that are involved, which provide a little diversity of foes/allies and role-playing moments.
I liked a couple of the Skill Challenges presented in the module, especially the one concerning the party exploring the city while dealing with the treat of being discovered. The rules lay out some options on how to do this and certain courses of actions and the results of skill checks will trigger certain conditions or encounters.
I also liked the roving band of opposition that is present in the module and how this would be implemented to change the course of the story. The background information on this oppositional band was interesting and unique and I liked how the module provided some guidance on how to showcase their attitudes and actions during the adventuring party’s exploration.
Some of the things that I did not like were some of the lazy, or lack of guidance, on how to utilize some of the foes, specifically the floating encounters. There is some very basic guidance (and some might prefer that for the most flexibility), but I would have liked to have seen some of this explained further, maybe with some suggestions.
I also did not like how some encounters were locked in, contradictory or just didn’t seem to make sense. For example, there is one encounter where the party will meet with an initially non-hostile individual and after some interaction, a mob of attackers will interrupt the meeting because they are there to attack the person that the party just met, but in the combat encounter description it says the party will be the targets of the just met individual, as well as the newcomers, for no specified reason. You would think that this could provide an opportunity for an alliance (even if only a temporary one). There is another encounter where the party interacts with an extremely powerful creature (far outside of their capabilities at this level) in a Skill Challenge. They could fail this skill challenge and the adventure has a good possibility of stalling out. Of course, a DM could improvise and introduce other options, or the party themselves may come up with some good ideas, but the adventure as written does not seem too concerned with exploring this possibility.
Overall, a fairly simple and good low (starting) level D&D adventure.
I liked a couple of the Skill Challenges presented in the module, especially the one concerning the party exploring the city while dealing with the treat of being discovered. The rules lay out some options on how to do this and certain courses of actions and the results of skill checks will trigger certain conditions or encounters.
I also liked the roving band of opposition that is present in the module and how this would be implemented to change the course of the story. The background information on this oppositional band was interesting and unique and I liked how the module provided some guidance on how to showcase their attitudes and actions during the adventuring party’s exploration.
Some of the things that I did not like were some of the lazy, or lack of guidance, on how to utilize some of the foes, specifically the floating encounters. There is some very basic guidance (and some might prefer that for the most flexibility), but I would have liked to have seen some of this explained further, maybe with some suggestions.
I also did not like how some encounters were locked in, contradictory or just didn’t seem to make sense. For example, there is one encounter where the party will meet with an initially non-hostile individual and after some interaction, a mob of attackers will interrupt the meeting because they are there to attack the person that the party just met, but in the combat encounter description it says the party will be the targets of the just met individual, as well as the newcomers, for no specified reason. You would think that this could provide an opportunity for an alliance (even if only a temporary one). There is another encounter where the party interacts with an extremely powerful creature (far outside of their capabilities at this level) in a Skill Challenge. They could fail this skill challenge and the adventure has a good possibility of stalling out. Of course, a DM could improvise and introduce other options, or the party themselves may come up with some good ideas, but the adventure as written does not seem too concerned with exploring this possibility.
Overall, a fairly simple and good low (starting) level D&D adventure.
Displaying 1 of 1 review