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Princes of the Apocalypse (PotA) is the third campaign for D&D’s fifth edition after the Starter Set and the two-part Tyranny of Dragons campaign, making it one of the older modules, and takes players from Level 1 to Level 15. What Princes of the Apocalypse 🛒 does right and whether it’s ultimately recommendable, you’ll read in this post.
The Premise of Princes of the Apocalypse
In PotA, the players travel through the Dessarin Valley to stop four factions from destroying the beautiful valley, which lies 7 days’ ride north of Waterdeep. The four factions each gather under the banner of one of the four elements (Fire, Air, Earth, Water). The adventure’s background is kept quite simple. A drow wizard followed the visions of a long-forgotten god (neither the god nor the wizard play a role in the further story) and forged four magical weapons, one for each of the four elements. Some time later, four prophets followed the call of these weapons and each founded a cult to summon the elemental princes of their element. Although each of the prophets has a backstory and motives (e.g., envy, vanity, or revenge), the prophets remain relatively bland throughout the entire campaign.
Princes of the Apocalypse: These are the Strengths
First, the positive sides of the adventure: The book is sensibly structured and gives a good overview of the events in the Dessarin Valley. Even for the low levels 1-2, there are reasonable side quests available, though the actual story only begins from level 3 with hints about a missing delegation. Also positive is that side quests are repeatedly offered throughout the module for higher levels as well. Among other things, a manor can be protected from a hurricane attack or a magical dwarven axe can be found. A great strength is also some of the NPCs. For example, at level 5, the players can meet the lich (powerful undead wizard) Renwick, who doesn’t necessarily want to attack them but even helps them if they are polite. The book explains that Renwick was a hero hundreds of years ago and protected the valley with his brother – a knight of some renown. He died in battle, but his brother didn’t want to let him go and had him become undead. Here, the players have a great opportunity for roleplaying. If they attack Renwick thoughtlessly, they are nowhere near a serious opponent for him; however, if they remind him of his past, he supports them with magical items. Also positive are the new spells that were published in PotA and are always related to the four elements. The magical items, which are not limited to the four weapons mentioned at the beginning, are also a plus. Also positive are individual enemies of the various cults, which sometimes strongly orient themselves to their respective element and thus create an exciting and atmospheric mood. Finally, the Genasi are also very successful, another playable race instead of elves, dwarves, and all the others. Genasi are partly descended from the djinn and are thus influenced by the four elements. Fire Genasi, for example, take only half damage from fire attacks, while Water Genasi can breathe underwater.
Princes of the Apocalypse: These are the Weaknesses
However, the positive qualities cannot disguise the fact that PotA is deficient as a complete adventure. The core point of my criticism is the structure of the four cults. Each cult has an overground camp and an underground temple. The temple is designed for significantly higher levels than the camps, but these are not spatially separated. An example: The Fire Cult’s camp is designed for a level 6 party, the temple for level 9. In my campaign, this led to the players having hardly any resources left (hit points, spells, special attacks) after the fight for the camp, but still wanting to continue because they hadn’t explored everything yet. Even a long rest (to replenish resources) only helps to a limited extent, as the level difference is simply too great. The module recommends first leading the players through each camp and only then leading them into a temple, which in my opinion is completely unrealistic. Also negative is the size of the temples, which each contain very many and also relatively strong monsters. Example: Towards the end of the Water Temple (according to PotA intended for level 7 parties), the players almost inevitably encounter a Dragon Turtle.
Although the Dragon Turtle’s hit points are reduced, it can still give the players a real challenge – and the actual final boss in this dungeon is still waiting. The encounter balancing doesn’t work at all with a 1:1 adoption from the book. However, if the players successfully fight their way through a temple, the other prophets learn about it magically and retreat – big surprise – to an even deeper temple. If the players also manage to fight their way through there, the remaining prophets simply move one floor deeper, to a kind of sanctuary. For the players, it may seem like their decisions about which of the four cults they fight first is important, but actually it doesn’t matter at all. The book coldly pulls the story according to the motto “If Prophet 1 dies, the others move further down; if Prophet 2 dies first, then it’s the others, doesn’t matter at all”. Here I would have wished for more decision relevance. The fact that individual rooms in the sanctuaries are completely broken almost gets lost in this. If the players, for example, enter one of the rooms in the Water Sanctuary, they are automatically caught by a water vortex (without a saving throw!) and each one is spit out individually at a random location determined by a dice roll. This not only tears the party apart but can also put individual players through no fault of their own into hopeless situations where they have to fight alone against the prophet or even the elemental prince and logically have no chance.
These weaknesses prevent PotA from being really fun. The atmosphere in the respective camps/temples and especially in the sanctuaries is quite successful though. The enemy at the end of the campaign is finally the prophet of the last cult. He succeeds – without the players even getting a chance to successfully prevent it – in summoning the respective elemental prince. Then the Dungeon Master gets to attack the players with not only the prophet but also with a giant fire elemental, if for example the Fire Cult survived to the end.
Princes of the Apocalypse: My Conclusion
Overall, a successful PotA campaign requires a lot of additional work to even somewhat compensate for the module’s weaknesses. The module makes it difficult for the Dungeon Master to find a reasonable path due to the lack of spatial separation between camps and temples. Finally, the four cults with their own backstories, attributes, and characters overload the players with too much information, so that none of the cults can come into their own adequately. If I were to run PotA again as a Dungeon Master, I would choose one of the four cults, spatially separate the camps/temples, and place more emphasis on the side quests, which are really successful. Generally, however, I would rather recommend playing a more refined campaign, such as Curse of Strahd.
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