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Pyramid of Shadows (Dungeons & Dragons, Adventure H3) |  | Authors: Mike Mearls, James Wyatt
Brand: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $11.98
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 65004
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4th
Pages: 96
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 12.2 x 9.1 x 0.4
MPN: 2186374
ISBN: 078694935X
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9780786949359
ASIN: 078694935X
Publication Date: August 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | H3: adventure for characters of levels 7?10 | | • | Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro |
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Product Description
H3 Pyramid of Shadows Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Role Playing Game RPG by Wizards of the Coast
A 4th Edition D&D adventure for characters of levels 7 - 10
The ancient trees of the Shadowsong Forest have borne witness to the passing of epochs, and hidden beneath their dark canopies are the remains of empires long departed. Few souls brave enough to explore the primeval forest ever return, for countless horrors haunt the crumbled ruins. When a band of evil criminals seeks refuge within the darkest reaches of the forest, brave adventurers are needed to root them out. The trail leads to the heart of the woods, wherein looms the greatest secret of all - the Pyramid of Shadows.
H3 Pyramid of Shadows is a D&D adventure designed for heroic tier characters of levels 7 - 10. It can be played as a stand-alone adventure or as the final part of a three-part series. This product includes an adventure booklet for the Dungeon Master, a campaign guide with player handouts, and a full-color poster map, all contained in a handy folder.
H3 Pyramid of Shadows is the third adventure in a three-part series that began with H1 Keep on the Shadowfell and H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth. It can also be played as a stand-alone adventure.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
 Pyramid-of-Scr*wYou July 3, 2010
Grimslade
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
While I normally don't bother with written reviews, this was SUCH a piece of crap I've had to
make an exception for the first time in 8 years. While nearly everyone,including myself on many ocassions has written a truly lame adventure, there are very few that rate the effort of a negative review. This one is SO bad, that people deserve to know before spending money on it.
In the case of my group, we have agreed throw out the last several months wasted playing this adventure, reset our characters to the state they were in when first entering and having the characters wake up to discover it was a just a BAD black lotus trip.
DO NOT WASTE MONEY ON THIS JOKE OF A MODULE!!!!!!
If, of course, you are a masochist, this module IS for you.
Buy an old copy of the Tomb of Horrors and play with a party of naked, first level halflings.
You will last longer between deaths and enjoy it more. While some would call the total lack of a viable ecology in the dungeon an omage to Gygax, this is a polite way of saying, there is no rhyme or reason to this module. If you can't afford this module, just piss off a five year old, tell them they are in charge of telling the running your game, and let them kill of your characters over several months, using any insane BS not in the rules to do so. It will be more reasonable than this module and more entertaining. It also avoids the annoying smarm of a writer who apparently so lacks in sef esteem that he needs to show his brilliance by abusing the near omnipotence of the module writer to demonstrate all the clever ways, outside the rules, he can dream up to kill you. A module that challenges the players is good, the greater the challenge the greater the thrill of victory, or the more reasonable the failure. Modules in which the outcome is almost completely outside the power of the players is a waste of time.
Quite honestly, I do not see how any of the positive reviews for this module occured unless
-The GM was a pushover and did not play to kill as written
-The GM was VERG GOOD and COMPLTELY REWROTE IT
-Someone was paid a great deal to recommend it
What I can say after playing is THANK GOD I DID NOT PAY FOR THE MODULE!!! Had this been my first encounter with the 4th edition rules, I would have seriously considered dropping D&D as having become a joke underserving of further investment of my time.
Grimslade
 It's all about the DM! April 14, 2010
Spiro J. Dousias
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
We just finished POS last night and I have to say, I'm going to miss Karavakos and Vyrellis. I can see how in unskilled hands this mod might fall flat, but with just a little bit of finesse my players loved their time in the pyramid.
The secret to making the pyramid work is to capitalize on diplomacy. True, the Charnel Lord won't listen, but there are many who will. Grash Vren, Camnor, Mendragal, even the White Dragon (who we called Hieverost) should all at least entertain diplomatic discussions, even if in the end they only hope to backstab their allies. In the final conflict with Karavakos, our group had teamed up with the Arboreans and the Shadow Karavakos, only to have the Arboreans change sides mid battle. So much fun.
These mods are a solid starting point for adventures. The rooms and collections of monsters and how they work together make for great battles but ultimately the DM has to breath life into it and customize it for your players.
If you just want to spend some cash and have a game that already does everything for you, go buy a PS3 and a game and you can check your brain at the door. If you want to create a collaborative experience that you and your friends will remember for years to come, this is the game for you.
Sub-par, even for the rushed heroic tier September 15, 2009
Scott Ellsworth (Lake Forest, CA USA)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Keep on the shadowfell was clearly rushed to production, and lost some background pages to the rules pamphlet. That said, it was a fairly fun adventure to run and for my players to experience.
Thunderspire labyrinth was more enjoyable, as I had figured out that skill challenges needed tweaking to be fun, and that the npcs needed serious reworking. That said, there was enough information provided for the rework to be useful. Adding a few colorful personalities, and some of the people they will meet again in the paragon and epic tier made this quite memorable. As another reviewer mentioned, it could be the basis for substantial expansion.
The paragon tier and the two epic tier modules seem pretty good, though I have not played them yet.
Then we have this. It is a dungeon crawl, but I could live with that. It seems, though, based on a read-through and some limited playing, that it is that worst of all possible worlds - a linear dungeon crawl. It tries to be a locked room mystery, but only succeeds in preventing the players from going to any nearby areas, and since they are likely to have build some kind of character context over the first two modules, this is a problem.
In addition, since it is such a break, and not available after the players finish the adventure, it has no long term impact. This does not, imo, make for good role playing.
All in all, this is the only one of the wizards 4e products I have bought so far that does not seem to have been worth the money. I am going to run my main group through a re-worked Red Hand of Doom instead.
Pyramid of no where and nothing February 17, 2009
D. Nguyen (Baghdad, Iraq)
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Module is garbage. Especially after how the previous module was pretty good I was expecting a lot more from this, but it's total garbage. Players get locked in this pyramid and make all their levels within it. And it's just not vast and diverse enough to keep players interested for so many levels. There are some good ideas but they get suffocated as again, players are locked inside the pyramid. If this was re-written so instead of a pyramid the different areas and factions are in different locales throughout the land, this would be stronger.
 A good Gygaxian dungeon romp February 8, 2009
Michael Shea (Alexandria, VA USA)
24 out of 25 found this review helpful
This review is intended for Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters. It will contain spoilers. If you plan on playing through this adventure, stop now and go read some Penny Arcade instead.
Pyramid of Shadows is the third published adventure by Wizards of the Coast for the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It is also the third adventure in my current campaign. I will save you some time by skipping over the vital statistics of the adventure which you can find from almost any other review. Instead I will tell you what my group and I thought of the adventure.
I also recognize that sharing stories of someone else's D&D game is the nerd equivalent of sharing baby poop stories with other parents. You only REALLY care about your own baby poop story, so you suffer through another's poop story just so you can get out your own. I will skip the details of our own poop story - or our own travel through the Pyramid - and skip to what I believe to be useful information to run your own poop story...I mean Pyramid of Shadows adventure.
In short, Pyramid of Shadows is an excellent, entertaining, and balanced adventure. It is well worth the $17 from Amazon. The players' primary complaint was the lack of any sort of town where they could rest and buy and sell gear. This is sort of the point, however, so one cannot hold too much against it for that.
From a DM perspective, the Pyramid is an excellent throw back to the Gygaxian dungeons that made no ecological sense. Why on earth would three orcs be in a room right next to two umber hulks? What do they eat? Why have they not killed each other? How did they get past that huge spiked pit trap?
The adventure explains this by describing the Pyramid as a living changing structure. The walls, floors, and entire environments begin to morph and shift into a museum-display version of the habitat the inhabitant is used to. The white dragon has his own icy lair and the plant Arboreans have their own jungle habitat.
I took this part of the adventure a step further by describing, later in the game, that the pyramid itself is a living entity. It is a hellish construction, stuck out floating in the Far Realm, that twists and morphs itself around those living inside. For example, the bandit lord and his minions ended up in some strange bar or inn with fake mannequin-style barmaids and beer, neither of which brought real satisfaction to the hungry and randy bandits.
I made a few other modifications to the adventure that I thought built it out a bit better for our group. For one, in the Far Realm rooms later on in the adventure, I had an actual rift in the wall of the pyramid in room T5. It would seem the splinter of Karavakos within this section actually managed to tear open a wound in the pyramid but the terrible nightmarish void of the Far Realm warped him into the Far Realm Abomination. When the party killed him and left, the pyramid shut off this whole section, like cutting off a rotting hand.
I also made some major changes to Vyrellis. First, I had an actual physical skull I bought at a party store after Halloween. As the players found Vyrellis's gems, I put balls of construction paper into the eyes and teeth. Little did the party know that, all along, they were slowly building her out as a demi-lich. In the final battle, as the real Karavakos fell, she used her drain soul power to suck his soul into her tooth. Should the party had decided to battle her, I was prepared to use the Acererak Construct from the newly released and totally awesome Open Grave sourcebook for her stats. Alas, the party accepted her offer to leave the pyramid so she could float freely within her new tomb deep within the Far Realm while her astral projection explored all the planes had to offer.
The pyramid has many memorable encounters including a battle against an ettin head-taker, a white dragon, a powerful solo Otyugh called the Charnal Lord, a beast the pyramid uses as a huge garbage collector, and even a super mario style room of water and pipes. Overall my gaming group enjoyed the encounters. Again, their only complaint was the lack of any real place to stay.
The Wizards published adventures have only a couple of real disadvantages. One, they only come with two to four encounter maps. The Pyramid came with three. Given the huge number of rooms, it is unreasonable to assume they would include them all, but worse, Wizards own Dungeon Tiles don't work well to build out the other rooms. Why Wizards would not capitalize on their own products makes little sense. This same problem exists with the minis. Enough D&D miniatures have been released to this point that just about any creature in an adventure has a mini available, but it runs about $40 to $50 on the secondary market to buy all the minis required for an adventure. This gets really bad when the adventure calls for multiple rare minis such as three Skeletal Tomb Guardians (which run $8 a piece). Why Wizards is unable to coordinate their own products better is beyond me. Still, this is a minor complaint.
Overall, given the cost and the hours of entertainment for you and your group, the Pyramid of Shadows is an excellent adventure. The story is good, the encounters are fun, and the quality is high. My group enjoyed it one evening a week for ten weeks. I highly recommend it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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