D&D: ‘Phandelver and Below – The Shattered Obelisk’ First Impressions
Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk hits stores today, and we return to the village that started it all (for 5E).
For nearly a decade, The Lost Mines of Phandelver has been welcoming people into 5th Edition. And now, with Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, the lost mines are back, much like Vanilla Ice, with a brand new invention. Although, unlike Vanilla Ice, no one will accuse Phandelver and Below of illicitly sampling Under Pressure.
And that’s not because Phandelver and Below goes dun dun dun dundundun dun dun. But rather, the new adventure from Wizards of the Coast blatantly remasters its inspirational adventure. The entirety of the Lost Mines of Phandelver are here. But they’ve been tweaked! And redone in a way that adds to the greater adventure as a whole.
Which mostly just means here and there you’ll learn some strange rumors. But once it starts to cook, boy does the adventure really cook.
Phandelver and Below – What’s in the Book
Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk is a 220-page adventure that will take characters from 1st-12th level. It’s also some of WotC’s most fun stuff to date. A big part of it comes from the strength of remastering the original Phandelver. With a good framework to jump off from, the adventure really sprawls across the expected D&D purview
You could summarize this as the “Eldritch Horror Adventure” and you’d be right. But it does so much more than that.
For starters, it delivers a town that feels alive. And this shouldn’t be a rarity, considering the resources that WotC has to play with. It is, though. But Phandelver and Below is at its best when it gives characters time to feel the town breathing. There’s a great sense of pace here.
And to its credit, the adventure knows it and has all sorts of handy ways to keep the game from moving too fast. DMs will find a lot of really good guidance wrapped up in the adventure. And a big part of that comes in how easy it is to reference the correct information.
If you’ve ever played with one of WotC’s older adventures, you know how tricky it can be to track down the right stat block. Or the right little clue. But all the pertinent information for each chapter is gathered in an intuitive place, right at the front. Which will make this easy for newer DMs to run. WotC doesn’t leave the lion’s share of the work to the DM in this book, and it’s quite refreshing.
A Slow Descent Into Far Realm Horror
The theme of this adventure is its greatest strength. It follows the quintessential adventure structure. Heroes just starting their adventuring career end up wrapped up in events that reach further than they could imagine.
One little plot twist leads to another, and before you know it, you’re ready to attack and dethrone god. The future leftists want turns out to be the adventure archetype that’s been laid out for D&D since before Paizo was publishing 3rd Edition content. Only it’s WotC, and they have a supernatural aversion to actually writing high-level content, so you don’t get to advance beyond 12th level.
And you don’t even hit 12th level until the very very end. So you don’t really get to enjoy it. That’s probably the biggest criticism of the adventure here. There’s such a lovely premise at play here. It’s so simple and easy: the Far Realm comes to the town everyone grew up in, and it’s weird and bad. And it feels like this could be stretched out even longer and with more runway to take players to higher levels.
Perhaps once 2024 D&D is complete, we’ll get to see what WotC thinks a high-level adventure should look like with more frequency. They’re notoriously hard to balance but hard doesn’t mean impossible. That just means it takes work.
In Conclusion
So should you check the book out? If you’re looking for a new twist on an old favorite. Or want to revel in the sort of nostalgic paradigm of small-town heroes as things go terribly awry, I’d recommend it.
This book is one of the better ones WotC has produced. The adventure doesn’t feel as thin as some of the more recent anthologies have felt. The new monsters feel actually threatening at times. And it’s paced very well, right up until the end.
If you want a ton of player content? This book won’t be for you. But Planescape is just around the corner.
Something is stirring in Wave Echo Cave.
