Monastery of the Shadow Sorcerers, 8th-Level Adventure (5E)

Another fun adventure from the Library! Took our group two sessions and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun with it. They missed some of the NPC encounters, so it may have taken longer to complete if they had done everything 100%.

Good level of difficulty - a couple of PCs got knocked down despite everyone having broken characters and too many magic items; and if they hadn’t caused the final boss to skip a turn, it could have snowballed into an even more dire situation.

I was able to run it as-written with no prep other than loading the maps onto the VTT. The only change I made on the fly was having the party split up to complete all three trials on level 2 simultaneously, rather than just choosing one to complete. As a DM, the final boss was fun to run because of his mobility, damage resistances, and magic missile reaction. The other big combat against 15 humanoids was a little bit of a slog but I think the players enjoyed mowing down a large group of enemies with relative ease.

Overall, a great short adventure with an interesting theme and some good interactivity, and the Arcane Library standard of brief, evocative descriptions, good formatting, and a mix of fun encounters to keep it interesting along the way!

Great setting for a one shot. Easy to run but varied NPCs who were fun to use. Used it mostly unmodified for a party of 5 level 7 characters with veteran players. Final battle is probably very swingy and luck dependent with definite TPK potential - i.e. perfect for throw away characters. Very well written and produced.

Just ran this tonight and it was a blast. I made some slight changes for flavor but otherwise largely kept it the same.

The only reason I removed one star was because, other than the numbers, the guide doesn’t explicitly state which area is where. For example, it’ll say there are two doors, one north and one south, but without looking at the numbered map (which I accidentally didn’t print), it’s not clear where those doors lead because the subsequent rooms will just have the number that’s on the map. It’s also not always clear when stairs lead up or down. Would be good to have just a little extra support in the guide so you don’t have to refer to the map all the time.

What I loved about this module though was that it gave me plenty of flexibility so that I could adapt it to the story I had in mind.

First purchase from arcane library but definitely will buy more. Very user friendly and would be top recommendation for first time dm. The PDFs has links to spells and abilities. They also include a video over view. Story was great and my party really enjoyed it, although they really hate statues now. Definitely worth running as a one shot or supplement to a campaign.

I ran this adventure for my family and we all had a good time! Like all Arcane Library adventures, this one is organized and efficient in it's presentation, providing just enough detail on locations and NPCs, while leaving room for improvisation and embellishment. Theres a good balance of exploration, traps & puzzles, social encounters, and combat. The only problem was that my all-too-clever players skipped a lot of the locations, and missed out on most of the lore explaining who the Ras-Godai are and what they want. I was able to fill them in a bit with the NPC Amara, but they never even met the Oni, Janu!
I re-skinned the adventure a bit for the Elemental Chaos theme of our campaign (which includes a healthy dose of Wild Magic for extra entertainment) and swapped out the final boss battle with something more appropriate for my party's size, and they barely escaped with their lives!