Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen, Part I of III (PFRPG) PDF

4.00/5 (based on 1 rating)

Our Price: $19.99

Add to Cart
Facebook Twitter Email

Enter… and die!

Dungeonlands: the isolated realm of the Lich Queen, cut off from the worlds and planes heroes know. This old school killer dungeon is so massive we had to split it into three parts, and LQ1 "Tomb of the Lich Queen" is the first part of that trilogy.

For those who wish to keep playing beyond the conventional adventure path, this megadungeon is designed to challenge high level characters that have been summoned across time and space—from any setting or genre—to see if they can succeed where countless others have failed. The lich queen’s devious machinations, traps and monsters are an impenetrable barrier between your characters and their greatest prize—survival!

Beautifully illustrated in old school style, reminiscent of pulp Conan novels and that rolepaying game which started it all, "Tomb of the Lich Queen" is a treat for any Pathfinder fan looking for a real challenge.

Dungeonlands is part of the Suzerain Continuum, an interlinked set of realms that allow your characters to travel all of time and space, becoming demigods in the process! Check out Suzerain for Pathfinder and our FREE Continuum Guide if you really want to kick it up a notch (or three)!

Product Contains: A stunning 142 page PDF detailing every evil twist and turn in the dungeon. The book is layered so you can switch off the ink-devouring elements to create a print-friendly version on the fly.

Product Availability

Fulfilled immediately.

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

SEGRSDUPFPD001E


See Also:

Average product rating:

4.00/5 (based on 1 rating)

Sign in to create or edit a product review.

An Endzeitgeist.com review of the revised edition

4/5

This massive, revised edition of Tomb of the Lich Queen clocks in at 149 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages backer-list, 3 pages of SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 140 pages of content, so let's take a look!

This review was moved up in my review-queue as a prioritized review at the request of my patreons.

Or rather, let's recapitulate: The original Tomb of the Lich Queen was intended to be the first installment in a 3-parts mega-dungeon crawl of the old-school kind: Deadly, challenging and unique. The first module pretty much botched in two key components: 1) The whole dungeon was opaque - the lack of maps (which were sold separately) hurt the GMing experience immensely. 2) The massive set-up basically had cool ideas - but it violated the rules. The set-up took away unique tricks of classes sans explaining their lack. The resulting issues were significant. Worse, several of the puzzles/puzzle-encounters had only the "intended" way to solve them - guess how the designer is thinking and you could solve it. Failure to do so resulted in pretty problematic situations. The original book, with its neat art and cool adversaries, sported potential galore, but was one of the most frustrating playtest experiences of my GM career. Thankfully, Savage Mojo got capable hands to take a second gander at the series, which resulted in the third book of the series, Palace of the Lich Queen, being a pretty enjoyable experience.

But could they salvage the first book? Let's see. We begin with the same vast and well-written fluffy legend that serves as a the backdrop for the epic that is to unravel within these pages and begin the game pretty much in the iconic "at a tavern"-set-up. Unlike most such set-ups, a fully-detailed song that proves to be both clue and hook, draws the PCs in - and from there on, it's Paxcetel looming: The Lich Queen's domain, a pocket dimension in the Maelstrom. The first thing you'll note are...MAPS. Granted, no key-less player-friendly versions, but a full-page full-color map of the island nonetheless. Nice!

And now that the meat of the module begins, it's time for the players to skip to the conclusion to avoid the SPOILERS that are bound to follow now.

...

..

.

All right, still here? Only GMs around? Great! Exploring the island further increases the prowess of the PCs (herein called "Demigods" as befitting of their lvl 15+ status...) via blessings/curses - you'll also notice something about the dungeon presented herein - the set-up is pretty much modular. What do I mean by this? Well, let's take a look at a sleeping gas-trap - it is coupled with the note that the GM should choose 3 encounters and use them in conjunction with this area - a DiY-set-up, which, while more work for the GM, also allows for a flexible customization of the experience. Beyond these, the depths loom - where ancient pictures show scenes from Ayrawn's life, before she became the legendary lich queen.

The tomb itself does provide a massive array of rooms and encounters for the PCs to explore; that being said, the revised version does and does not address the map-issue of the original book. What do I mean by this? Well, for one, the book now does provide small versions of the maps of the respective rooms - however, the maps themselves offer no information on the scale or size of the rooms, which is slightly and can potentially be a bit annoying. I also sincerely wished the book would feature these maps (particularly that of e.g. a room with a floor that shows a picture) in at least player-friendly one-page hand-out size. Sure- the small renditions provided are better than nothing, but for me, they're still not satisfactory.

On the plus-side, the very first obstacle already shows an improvement in design-philosophy: The room sports an extremely complex, huge array of tile-traps. However, the pdf no longer forces the players to play by its rules - they can just fly by, should they choose to. On a nitpicky side, though, this room does sport some issues - for one, the trap fails to note how many Disable Device-checks would be required to clear a path through the room. The obstacle also repeats, unnecessarily, some information, "[...]may make a DC 15 Perform (sing or instrument) check (DC 15)[...]" - which also contradicts itself later: " This requires either an Acrobatics or Perform (dance) check at DC 15. This requires a DC 15 Acrobatics check or a DC 13 Perform (dance) check." Granted - this does not break an otherwise cool set-up, as the PCs hopefully dance through the trap to the tune of the ethereal music playing...but still. Such small hiccups render the overall experience not broken by any traditional means, but they do somewhat mar the sense of refinement that e.g. Palace of the Lich Queen, the third part, featured.

At the same time, I would be lenient in my duties, were I not to comment on the general quality of the obstacles faced: Concept-wise, the challenges faced are delightfully dire - sometimes even approaching Grimtooth-level of evil. What about, to name just one example, a crushing walls-trap, supported by a floor with spring-laden traps that make movement over the bouncy tiles slow and anyone attempting it, prone to fall? Cool, right? At the same time, while the trap is pretty awesome, there still are some rough patches to be found here - "anyone outside of the room can provide assistance using the Aid Another action."...yes, generally, that works. I still wish the wording was slightly more concise here. Why? Well, aid another's text usually refers to melee combat, which is predicated on being close to the target foe to be hampered. I *get* why this was phrased the way it is written and it kind of does work - but in the execution, it could have used a tad bit more refinement.

At the same time, while this nitpickery of yours truly may sound bad, the book has made HUGE steps in the direction of being significantly more refined: Whether via spell-terrain-interaction or via similar means of displaying rules-awareness, the trials and tribulations in these pages are quite frankly, simply significantly better crafted than before. Let's take an example: There is a round that deals damage by action performed via sound application - Invisibility's bonus to Stealth does not apply here. It's rules-awareness like this that has been absent from the original version - and it constitutes a significant improvement.

What about a room that is essentially a ouija board puzzle? The option to battle the "Champion of Woe?" Of course, the Reclaimers, the creepy wardens of the tomb and the machine below influence the areas and may even return the dead back to life - including e.g. a dragon forever oscillating between being pure and good and a berserking beast. Indeed, the adversaries, from the powerful false lich queen to the hound witch and her unique beasts, to unique demons and the headless horror, this book left me with some rather cool, inspiring adversaries and set-ups.

It should be noted, though, that the aforementioned "modular" set-up of the dungeon also results in some components that could be considered unpleasant: For one, the respective rooms and corridors share, at least partially, pretty similar dimensions, which makes the dungeon feel not that organic - sure, it's constructed and moving...and probably SHOULD feel like a high-fantasy version of CUBE...but some groups may be annoyed by this. A second aspect that deserves consideration is pretty simple: There is, by virtue of this set-up, no map that contains all the rooms, no overlook map. If your players are like mine and try to understand everything, you'll have your hands full - basically, my players sought to understand the metrics and system behind them dungeon's configuration - and the book does not perfectly render cues for the PCs to unearth these components. So that may prove to be another stumbling stone for some GMs.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good - while we still have some minor hiccups and textual redundancies, the rules-relevant components of this book have tremendously improved. Layout adheres to a gorgeous 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks for your convenience. The book also sports a mixture of great original art and some taken from an obscure 3.X-resource; In any way, the artworks are stunning. Cartography is pretty solid, though not mind-boggling. The lack of a key-less player-friendly map for the overworld is a minor detriment. The lack of hand-out-style versions of the maps for the rooms is a further comfort detriment, but at least a step forwards from the original version.

The original "Tomb of the Lich Queen" was the most aggravating mega-adventure I have reviewed - It cheated high-level PCs of their tools of the trade, imposed arbitrary solutions on problems and did not work well with the rules. At the same time, unfortunately, it also was pretty inspired regarding the challenges it posed and while I *really* didn't like it, I saw ample of merit in the book.

The good news first: Jason Allard, Kevin Andrew Murphy, John Wick, Aaron Acevedo, Travis Anderson, Miles M. Kantir, Darren Pearce, Joel Sparks, Lee Szczepanik, Richard T. Balsley, Paris Crenshaw, G'Andy, Vladimir Presnyak and George "Loki" Williams have created a revision that is superior to the original module in almost every way - I do believe that a halfway decent GM can run this pretty smoothly. At the same time, I wished the cartography-support was more pronounced. And there would be one component the better rules-integration has eliminated, at least partially: The lethality of this book. The Tomb of The Lich Queen is still a deadly mega-module; but it's not as deadly anymore. Where before the book said "You can to do Y." or "You can't do Z.", the new version is a bit too lenient - flight and teleportation can mitigate A LOT of the challenges herein and trivialize some of them. This is okay. I still found myself wishing the book offered e.g. tougher conditions for their use - i.e. make the tricks work, but also make them require skill of the PC's level. Caster level-checks, flight-spell dispels conditional on flying PCs - you know, the school of evil, hard knocks.

Also, as a module itself, the book has NOTHING on the imaginative tour of the Suzerain Continuum displayed in Part III - and to me, it works better as a collection of devious traps and NPCs than as a module. That being said, if used for the former, it is a well-presented collection of nasty obstacles. How to rate this, then? Quite frankly, I expected a bit more from the revision than it delivered. At the same time, I no longer personally hate this book, which should be considered a huge achievement. This is no masterclass-adventure, but it's a solid one; it's an even better scavenging ground and may be worth it for the lead-in to Part II and III. (Part II's review coming up once the revised edition's done, btw.!) In the end, I will eliminate my ranting on the original; as a module, this is well worth a final verdict of 3.5 stars. For the virtue of a stand-alone adventure, I'd round down. As part of the series and for its scavenging options, I'd round up, though - which is why my final verdict will reflect the latter, rather than the former: 3.5 stars, rounded up by a margin.

Endzeitgeist out.


Webstore Gninja Minion

Now available!


The product description does not say what levels the module is for. So....? ;)

Sovereign Court

As a patron, I have the .pdf but did not get the chance to read it yet, since I am waiting for the physical book.

It is however gorgeous.


Gericko wrote:
The product description does not say what levels the module is for. So....? ;)

According to the Kickstarter page HERE it starts at Level 15.

-- david


Sounds good but the price is too much for just a pdf. I might buy it if it ever includes a print copy along with a pdf.


PathfinderFan64 wrote:
Sounds good but the price is too much for just a pdf. I might buy it if it ever includes a print copy along with a pdf.

I am thinking the same thing. Way of the Wicked is only 10.00, and it has 100 pages.

Before I even consider paying 10.00 dollars for another 42 pages I would need some very good reviews. Maybe a subscription option or a pdf bundle for a lower price might work.

Liberty's Edge

Sure would love to see a comprehensive review or 2 before dropping 20 bucks on the PDF. As others have said, it's a bit pricy. In fact, the actual *game* itself (the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook) is only 10 bucks...soooo...


It is not that I mind dropping $20 on a PDF, it is that this is part 1 of 3, so in essence it is $60 for the complete thing.

-- david


This one's on my to-review-pile, if anybody's interested...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Check out the free bonus material for it.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

Yes, $20.00 for 142 pages. Most of the $3 - $6 PDFs are maybe 20 to 30 pages.

Sovereign Court

Most .pdfs don't have that quality of art, and suck.

Sovereign Court

I can't believe no one has reviewed this, yet.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Is a print edition in the works, perhaps?


@stereofm: It's on my list - the thing is, complimentary copies get done first and this was not one, so to be fair to the publishers who send me copies (since my verdicts are not influenced, that's their one incentive to do so), their stuff gets done first - to a degree. This one has slipped to far back I'll HAVE to tackle it soon.


Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek & GMS magazine and posted here and on OBS.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thanks for the review. I now will never consider buying this. $30 for the maps is crazy. Even then it is just a pdf. Print it yourself and spend even more on ink. There is no mention in the product description that the maps are not included. I have a feeling that parts 2 and 3 will never appear since few people will be buying part 1. If the company that made this expects to sell this then they need to think about the price they are charging and include the maps with the product.


Greetings! I'm Loki, the guy who took over as Pathfinder Line Developer just less than a year ago. I've got a new version of this and the subsequent books coming soon.

The rules have been re-edited and redeveloped, there will be extremely cool, new covers, the maps will now be part of the book, and Endzeitgeist is already expecting them for a fresh review. (He just gave Palace of the Lich Queen 4.5 stars and his seal of approval.)

I hope that once the Continuum Edition hits some of you will reconsider checking it out. In the meantime please feel free to hit me up with any questions or comments you might have.

It's a new era over here, and I hope that you enjoy what our new team is producing.

Community Manager

Updated!


Reviewed the updated module first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop.

Kudos to Savage Mojo for improving this book to such an extent!

Community / Forums / Paizo / Product Discussion / Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen, Part I of III (PFRPG) PDF All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.