D&D Adventurer Magazine parts 5 & 6

I'm continuing to look through these.  It's now possible to work out roughly where they are heading and what they are covering by looking at the Hachette website.  They are starting a new Adventure in issue 12, so I'll probably finish with issue 11 (always assuming I can find them, they are getting thinner on the shelves - which is normal for partworks).

Both issue continue to develop all four of the sections, and I'm getting a better idea how these are put together now.  

Issue Five

Sage Advice covers the Three Pillars (exploration, social interaction and combat) in a very general way. A nice touch is suggestions for including aspects of one pillar within another. 

Then there are pages covering the different ways time passes in the game and how different light levels affect characters. 

Finally there's a section on damage resistance, vulnerability and immunity.

Character Creation covers the fighter class. As with the previous classes, there is a page of background and a page on first level features.

Lore covers the Neverwinter Wood. While it would have been nice to have details of potential wandering monsters, there is a very useful map of the region. This is the same area as the big map in issue two, but has the adventure locations from both Lost Mine and Icefire Peak marked, along with short paragraphs describing them. 

The second Monsters page looks at skeletons. No stats unfortunately, it looks like these will only ever be included in the Encounters.

The freebie in issue five is another set of dice, the third so far.

Issue six 

This issue is mostly concerned with levelling up. 

Sage Advice is a single page looking at magic items and discussing attunement. 

Character Creation is a large section, with an overview of levelling up and giving details of hit point increases. 

Then a page about Orcs as a character race followed by four pages detailing the new stuff the four classes covered so far gain at second level. If you're building up the collection in binders, these pages slot in after the relevant class sections covering first level abilities.

Lore continues the orc theme by looking at the Kingdom of Many Arrows.

Issue six also includes another dice tin and set of dice (two tins and four dice sets now, plus the bigger D20) and four more character sheets promoting the pre-gens to second level.

As previously, I'll look at the Encounters at the end, so you can avoid them if you don't want spoilers.

Summary

Honestly, for me the Encounters are the draw in the magazines. I've found useful stuff in nearly all of them. I will also be sharing the relevant class information pages with any new players in my campaign, though so far this covers only the options chosen for the pre-gens. 

It's interesting to see how the information is presented, and also how things have changed since fifth edition was first published. The inclusion of orcs as a player race so early in the run marks quite a shift. Previously, you had to wait until Volo's Guide to Monsters for this.  It emphasises the shift towards treating the different races as all essentially neutral, with certain individuals, perhaps, giving them a bad name.

The page on levelling up confirms that the Adventures use milestone XP, but does mention XP points as an alternative method.

The features at second level are designed specifically for the pre-gens. Whilst this is fine, and only what the starter sets do, I'd hoped that the collection would build up into a complete set of rules. There is a suggestion that other wizard schools will be covered in future ( the halfling has abduration), but there's no option for readers to make different choices. Of course, D&D Beyond is an option, though it isn't specifically mentioned here.

Given the total cost of the collection, I was hoping that more choices would have been covered.

The Encounters

The Crypt of the Elf Lord is almost brilliant.  It's another one I'm stealing for my campaign.  Briefly, the adventurers follow a lead from Carp Alderleaf, who, judging from his role as 'finder of concealed places' in The Lost Mine of Phandalin, must be a bit of a tear-away.  The crypt  is the last resting place of an Elven king and his crony's.  There is a trap, a puzzle, potentially a couple of combats and a nice treasure.  

However, the crypt is accessible for 'a few nights' only,  and characters can get trapped in it if they remain for more than eight hours.  The Encounter gives no method of escape, meaning a potential TPK. It's relatively easy to address this though, here are a few options that immediately occurred to me.

Extend the time limit and warn the players; Carp got trapped in the crypt for a day, only able to escape the following evening.  Thus he can both inform the characters of the location of the crypt, and warn them that it is likely to be difficult to get out (though he won't know that this is the last chance for a year).  The characters could even start the Encounter by looking for Carp after he fails to return home rather than the hook as given.

Foreshadow the danger; What if others managed to get into the crypt but fell afoul of the transitory nature of the entrance?  The remains of a couple of adventurers will show that there is some danger.  Maybe they are the ones who conveniently placed the silver coins in the goblet, but were unable to solve the rest of the puzzle.  One of them has a bundle of papers that note star constellations, especially Lavarandar's Lantern, with a mention of the dates it should be visible in the night sky.

Make another exit; If we assume that the crypt exists on both the material plane and the Feywild, presumably it should be possible to exit into the Feywild at other times.  The actual exit might only be present in the Material Plane, but the characters should be able to dig to freedom with appropriate Strength checks.

Queen of Scars has yet more orc action. It's an interesting Encounter, presenting a problem with several ways of solving it, though it's clearly intended that the problem be talked through rather than fought through. I'd have liked to have seen the titular Queen being a bit tougher, but that would make a violent solution much harder (its already very tough to fight to a win here). 

It's nice that the Encounters are demonstrating that there should be non-combat Encounters as part of a balanced Adventure, and although the writer discusses various ways of solving the problem, this is not prescriptive.  There are also repercussions to the solution chosen, which should influence the way the characters are viewed in Phandalin going forward.