Fathomless Pits of Ill-Intent is the final Tier 3 adventure in Season 7 of the D&D Adventurers League adventures. Written by Eric Menge, it takes the characters into a trap- and puzzle-filled ziggurat where they must stop the Yuan-Ti from summoning Dendar, the Night Serpent.

It pulls it off, too. After a run of adventures that have frustrated my players and me, Fathomless Pits of Ill-Intent managed to prove a good adventure and a good finale.

Much of this is due to its structure. It’s clear what the adventurers must do next, and the adventurers mostly don’t encounter elements in the wrong order. The first puzzle in the main dungeon is also the way to the final encounter, and the adventurers learn when they encounter it what they need to do to solve it. Yes, this means they must explore the rest of the upper level and solve the puzzles and defeat the monsters and traps.

There is one puzzle the adventurers can reach without having first found the clues they need to solve it, and I’d advise in that case the DM should guide the characters away rather than let them get frustrated. The other puzzles proved enjoyable to solve; they were pitched at a level that my players, who aren’t big fans of puzzles, could enjoy. If you’ve got players who are very good at puzzles, they mind find them trivial.

The players do have to solve three riddles to progress. I liked the riddles, as they weren’t too obscure, and my players quickly solved most of them; however, if your players dislike riddles, you’ll likely need to help them through them. Bypassing the riddles isn’t a feasible option, as you need the answers in two places. I think this design is clever, but riddle-hating players will likely disagree.

The combats are complicated and challenging. They feature unusual terrain effects and monsters with numerous powers. They’re clever, but they require a lot of attention from the DM and players. I lost some of the subtleties using Theatre of the Mind. One combat is theoretically not necessary. Dodge the beholder eye-beams while retrieving the puzzle piece you need! I’m curious if anyone did that? My players just fought the beholder. As I ran it for a group of three players, the combats had fewer monsters than would be present in most games, and I still found them at the upper end of how complicated I like my fights.

There are only two combats, but they’re both significant.

There’s a couple of curiosities in the adventure writing, the primary one being “Why does it take a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find a hole in the top of the ziggurat?” There are some checks in adventures that seem to be there just because the designer thinks the players haven’t rolled enough dice yet; this is one of them. I dislike hiding essential information from the players.

The other is what happens if the adventurers fail, and the yuan-ti’s ritual takes place. As a conclusion to the Tier 3’s series, I’d have preferred more consequences.

The maps and handouts are nicely done. I love Travis Woodall’s cartography. It’s very elegant and clear. The one niggle I have – and this goes for most of his maps – is that the grid is very hard to see. As a result, it’s hard to judge distances, either when transcribing to a battlemat or just describing the area for the players.

Overall, this is a superior adventure that is worth playing. It primarily focuses on exploration; combat is a secondary element, and role-playing is mostly absent. It isn’t a great fit for players who dislike riddles and puzzles, but it does the brief of a trap-filled dungeon well. Highly recommended.