Review: “War of Dragons” by Robert Wiese

It's another module from the “Original Adventures” series, put out by Wizards of the Coast to support D&D 3.5. This is War of Dragons, for 18th-level adventurers, written by Robert Wiese. No books outside the core three are required, although Wiese does recommend turning to the Draconomicon for advice on dragon tactics. This module can be run using Pathfinder but will require a small amount of conversion.  Although the module isn't free any more, the charge is $0.99 for a copy of War of Dragons.

The "Map-a-Week" feature provides the module map, and Wiese recommends getting the originals rather than using the version included in War of Dragons.  I tend to agree - get them at the archived page.  For once, I found myself a little put out that Wizards didn't include any illustrations. It's not as though they would be hard up for stock dragon art!  The proofing for this module was not particularly good and it's clearly lacking punctuation in some places.

War of Dragons is set in the idyllic town of Silversands, founded by a group of gold dragon fanciers. Their protector and object of admiration, Miraxacalas, has the sort of saccharine personality that one can only really assign to a giant flying spellcasting engine of destruction, and if the party had to put up with her for the majority of the adventure I would certainly get sick of speaking for or listening to her. The citizens of Silversands are not given much detail in War of Dragons, but what's there makes them out to be almost as annoying as Miraxacalas. Thankfully – at least for stone-hearted cynics like myself – the gold dragon and her protectorate are presented in a pitiable state, due to the efforts of a cunning black dragon, Vrinthralix. While his name is even harder to pronounce, I found him a more appealing character than the gold. Maybe I just don't like feeling morally inferior?

One of these guys is a fun party guest, the other will make your liquor cabinet go further.

Enter the PCs, motivated by the need for treasure, ill-will to chromatic dragonkind, or attachment to their turf. Wiese acknowledges that 18th-level characters shouldn't have any trouble getting information from a friendly population. Silversandsers answer questions about their plight as honestly as they are able, and gladly direct the PCs on to more knowledgeable townsfolk if required. While in town, the party can easily learn the location of Miraxacalas' lair and gathering further useful information is really just a matter of initiative. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, the main course of the module is a bit disappointing, especially when comparing it to other Robert Wiese modules in this series. He has some “Random Encounters” that he proposes using arbitrarily (i.e. if the DM feels like it), and while I'm prepared to cut some slack on the basis that putting enough statistical information into the module to provide proper random encounter tables would probably double its size, I don't like the results. It's possible that Wiese set up these Arbitrary Encounters because high-level characters have a pretty easy time bypassing so many threats using travel and stealth magic, but if that was the intent – why not say so directly? The set-piece encounters are thoughtful, but I think that two of them have exaggerated ELs, one because the powers of the class levels in the encounter don't stack and the other because the threat is considerably reduced by mitigating circumstances. It's only the third set-piece that is a real threat, and even then I think that the tactics Wiese has laid out are a little, well, dated. Without giving too much away, flight is a very useful ability and 18th-level characters are unlikely to be without it.

There's not much written on expanding the adventure, and I was slightly disappointed that my preferred course from the synopsis was forgotten about. I'm sure you can figure out what I mean.

My rating is 3/5. It's not a bad scenario and the adventure wasn't phoned in, but I really feel that War of Dragons is a bit easy. As I noted with the far inferior Force of Nature, high-level PCs make things difficult for the designer and DM alike. If your group is relatively inexperienced or lacking in strong spellcasters, the module should present a decent challenge.