Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is a 224-page hardcover adventure, It’s accompanied by a full-color map of the city of Waterdeep, with one side being for players and the other for DMs.
This adventure is intended for levels 1 – 5. There is enough here that you can get your party to 5 with ease.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist has players traveling to the popular port town of Waterdeep to uncover a plot involving some of the city’s most influential people. Famed explorer (and struggling author) Volothamp Geddarm meets explorers at the famed Yawning Portal tavern and sets them off on a simple task that will have players tromping through Waterdeep in search of treasure and adventure.
This adventure is a bit different than what we are used to, there is no “Big Bad” that is your ultimate goal, instead, you are in a race to collect a secret stash of 500,000 dragons, the golden currency of Waterdeep. A disgraced politician hid the gold within the city before his exile, and eventually, the party learns of its existence…and that someone else is searching for it. Which villain the party faces is determined by which season the adventure takes place in, although players can encounter all four villains during their search for the gold treasure.
The Cast You Might face.
Xanathar, the megalomaniacal beholder crime lord who is based in Skullport, deep below Waterdeep,
The Cassalanters, Waterdavian nobles who are secretly devil worshippers that reside in an ostentatious villa with a secret lair beneath it,
Jarlaxle Baenre, a dashing drow swashbuckler best known as a character in the Drizzt novels, and
Manshoon, a powerful Zhentarim wizard who has cloned himself like the glam Mr. Sinister.
Above I said, the villain you face, will be based on the season you are in, yes I am talking about Winter, Fall, Spring, Summer, this is an interesting twist on how to pick your villain for your party, you could just ask them, name a season and boom your on your way to find the dragons before whichever villain you are up against.
Artwork
It seems that I say this, in every D&D Book review I do, amazing artwork, WOTC knows how to draw you in with the art, and it shows here again.
The Book
I won’t lay out all the chapters as I normally do, as most of them involve the adventure and would be full of big old spoilers, but my most favorite chapter in the book was towards the end, This 25-page Volo’s Waterdeep Enchiridion (that’s Latin for a small manual or handbook, Thanks Google! if you knew that, then I bow to you), Think of this a nod to Volo’s Guide to Waterdeep. The enchiridion gives a very brief history, layout of the city and its wards, and calendar of the city (You do need to know when the latest festival is after all), along with an introduction to the legal system (There are lots of city laws, you might want to make sure you don’t run afoul of the city watch) and social norms.
The final two sections are the usual magic items and monsters/NPCs.
Final Thoughts
This is well put together book overall, this is a great overarching adventure that would be fun to run or play in, a word of caution here though, there is not a super lot of Combat in this way, so if you have a party that loves to hack and slash, they might find themselves bored throughout this, this is not a hack/slash adventure by any means.
The one thing I found very odd, was the black and white hand-drawn maps, they chose to include this time, this was pretty jarring as all the other books have been the fancy full-color maps, I can see this a nod to old-school D&D, but it was a bit startling, they are well done, don’t get me wrong, but it was just an odd choice.
I LOVED the season aspect of picking your villain, I think this will lead to many replays just to see what the 3 seasons play out like.
Overall this is a great addition to the D&D 5E lineup and should keep your party planning out how to get gold long enough until the next book comes out!
The book is available now, at your FLGS or via Amazon.
A big thanks to WOTC for providing the review copy of Mordenkainen Tome Of Foes for this review, this as always had no effect on the outcome of the review.
The above Amazon link is an affiliate link, DDO Players will receive a small percent of your sale, this is another small way you can help support the site.
Recent Comments