Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Issue 7

Yes, another week, another part work, though this was two weeks coming due to 'production issues '. Perhaps there was a shortage of glow worms for the dice?

Sage Advice

Sage advice completes the conditions started in issue 3? with Exhaustion, Grappled, Paralysed, Petrified and Stunned (once placed in a ring binder these will be adjacent pages), then a page looking at currency. There's a bit on different types of treasure along with a description of the different standard coins. 

I do like the sentence for each giving an idea of the sort of things one such coin will buy. 

Then a page introducing puzzles. Sample puzzles are given, along with ways to integrate them into an adventure. The importance of the DM being prepared for the players failing is mentioned. There are no mechanics for puzzles given, perhaps in future issues? 

Puzzles are a divisive issue in D&D. There is an argument that puzzles properly only test the players, not their characters, relying on the players to work out the answer from their own knowledge. Conversely, the solution can simply require one or a series of successful dice rolls, player skill has no bearing, except, perhaps, in choice of skills.

The final Sage Advice page looks at Actions and Bonus Actions, including a list of possible Actions in combat. There was a similar list in issue one in the combat booklet.

Character Creation

Character creation looks at weapons and armour over two pages. Complete lists are given, along with the definitions of the keywords. 

At last, the heroes have something to spend their treasure on.

Finally, an introduction to gnomes, as we are getting a new pre generated character soon - every DM's favourite, the gnome bard.

Lore

This issue has no lore section.

Conclusion

I found this issue a little underwhelming. Completing the conditions, for instance, or a full two sides on coins and currency.  Both these articles contain something of use, but nothing I felt really exciting.

This is an issue that the format emphasises.  There are some parts of the rules that may be important for play, but are pretty mundane.  Important, but not exciting,  they do need to be included.

The puzzles articles is it's saving grace, though as I mentioned above, including puzzles in an adventure is very much a matter of personal taste (This short video addresses the issue rather well I feel).

A quick check on Amazon shows that equivalent dice are £7.59 for a set, so I suppose the cover price is still worth it.

If you want glow in the dark dice.

And finally...

Encounter - Graywind's Conundrum

This should have been excellent. A puzzle box that the players/characters have to solve. It ties into this issue's pages covering both gnomes and puzzles. There is a nice reward for solving it, but sadly the actual solving requires very little choice from the players.

They have to choose the correct order in which to do six tasks, but these tasks are simple Dexterity checks. There are consequences for failed checks, such as combats or effects applying conditions to the characters, but nothing to stop repeated attempts, other than a time limit for the whole exercise.  

The earlier article on puzzles discusses the use of props, and the encounter suggests that the DM show a picture of the cube to the players. However there is only one picture of it in the Encounter (there is a nice picture of a different cube on the first page, but that's an irrelevance) and it only shows two of the faces. It seems as if each Encounter gets one or two new pieces of artwork, I would suggest that an exploded diagram of the cube faces would have been far more useful here.

A couple more grumbles; it's another Encounter where the characters just happen upon an NPC who asks them for help. There's no extra information given on the NPC, though the assumption is that the PCs will be spending their treasure at her shop. A page or two for DMs on how to start adventures would be really useful (to be fair, it may yet be presented in the future), but the series seems happy sticking to the format of the rest of the Encounters with their 'you just happen across' hooks.

There's another example of wrong artwork here as well. One of the monsters has a half page illustration, but it's actually of a different monster. Both constructs, but not the same, and the picture is misleading as to it's capabilities.  If they couldn't find a picture of the actual creature that would have been another use for new artwork, though I'm pretty sure that earlier editions featured suitable illustrations.

This is an Encounter that works OK, but I had such hopes for it.  Since I have been so scathing, perhaps I should offer some suggestions for improving it?

Make your own version of the box.  You'll have to redesign the different faces, but that also allows you to remove references to wombats!  In essence, each face needs a different number of creatures, and those creatures should have some sort of tenuous link to the effect triggered if they are chosen out of sequence.  I'll leave you to decide what, as it may well depend upon the lore in your game (or real world folklore that you and your players are aware of).  I'd certainly keep the dragon and the six hound creatures.  Dormice might work instead of badgers, with a sleep effect.  In fact, different colour dragon heads with appropriate traps could work for some of the faces.