The Ebon Aspect

Most of my statblocks for Three Faces of Evil are pretty obvious stuff from the Monster Builder the Ebon Aspect presents more of an issue as its not really like anything else out there and is therefore more trouble to create/convert.

Here is my version. Note that I emphasize the cold elements of the pool as opposed to the elements of the three Gods this is a fetus of. That is intentional as I did not really want to lock the Ebon Aspect to specific Gods.

More Housekeeping

Here is the map for the Labyrinth. I think this is pretty close to the original with one huge difference - the Labyrinth itself has been excluded! The reason for this is that I feel that this Labyrinth in particular and generally most in general, are best handled as skill challenges. Actually mapping the things out takes a ton of time and is generally only an activity between the DM and the mapper for an extended period. I think its just bad gaming unless there is a really good reason why what is taking place in the Labyrinth will be engaging to all the players.

I did not feel this quite qualified - while combat can take place in this Labyrinth it'd generally become fairly static and I felt it was better to just draw some 'Labyrinth like' area on the battle map if that occurred.

Three Faces of Evil - Labyrinth

Catching Up

I've been hesitating on updating this blog mainly because there are some problem elements with the maps for Three Faces of Evil. The First part of the complex never even got turned into a 3D map as my players where hot on my heels in terms of prep time at this point.

The second part of the complex did get turned into a 3D map and I'll include it but its got issues. The U shaped cavern is so complex that I suspect my 3D map is near useless for anyone but myself - I know whats being represented because I made the damn thing but for other people your often trying to figure out what the heck is going on through up too three layers of transparency.

The map for the last part of the cavern is significantly modified from the original campaign modules as well as I felt that the plethora of small encounters really did not cut it in a module that was essentially a single dungeon crawl that was already too long. My encounter here essentially just saw the remains of the tribe come pouring into the main room for a final battle royal. This section of the adventure reaches its highlight in the U shaped cavern and I don't feel its justified to have more then a single big fight after that climax in any case.

I made a number of changes in this part of the adventure as well. Most significantly I changed the Grimlocks to Orcs - Grimlocks are really high level in 4E and I did not want to bring them down that many levels. I gave the Orcs darkvision to allow them to operate effectively and tossed in a Goblin lackey encounter at the start and one with the Krenshars featured a Bugbear who controlled them.

I also condensed the encounters in the U shaped cavern down to two. one on each side of the cavern. This worked really well...note that all the enemies don't actually have to be working together to be in an encounter.

Three Faces of Evil - The Caves