The Lost Temple of Tiamat is a dungeon-crawl adventure apparently for characters of levels 2 to 4 (EDIT: Now rebalanced for level 6 characters). In it, the characters must retrieve an Orb of Dragon Command from the lost temple. The temple is half-buried in a jungle, and the characters must overcome the tricks, puzzles and monsters of the dungeon to find and gain the Orb.

The structure of the temple is quite unusual: no map is provided, but each level has doors that lead down to each of the three areas on the next level. The doors are colour-coded to indicate the type of challenge that will be faced: Green doors lead to puzzles, Red doors lead to combats, and Black doors lead to traps. This allows a party that gleans the set-up to choose the path that suits them best. It also means that if a certain puzzle or challenge defeats the characters, they have other options to reach the finale. I really like this structure.

The situations provide a good range of challenges, but not all are well-constructed. The biggest problem with this adventure is that the suggested level of characters seems too low. In one encounter, stone slabs blocking the exits disintegrate any who touch them, but a successful Arcana check reveals that dispel magic can get by them. Which is a somewhat challenging spell for fourth level characters to cast, let alone second level characters! There is an alternative way of getting past these slabs, requiring a DC 15 Dexterity check with thieves’ tools, but the adventure neglects to explain what a failed check means.

Likewise, do you think a group of second-level characters can defeat two Animated Armours and a Shield Guardian? The Shield Guardian is CR 7!

The entire adventure sits within a frame story of a group of high-level adventurers hiring the players to recover the Orb, because the high-level adventurers are too busy saving the world to get the Orb. (Which makes sense in every Forgotten Realms campaign, ever!) Unfortunately, these adventurers betray the players once the orb is recovered, as they don’t want it known that they subcontracted out the work. That’s a CR 9 cleric, a CR 6 wizard, a CR 5 rogue, and a CR 9 fighter to face – after dealing with the challenges of the Lost Temple.

Perhaps this is actually an adventure for level 12 to 14 characters?

I want to like this adventure more, as the dungeon’s structure is ingenious and many of the encounters look quite fun, but the chasm between the suggested level of the characters and the actual difficulty of the encounters is likely to cause problems.

ADDITION: Since I posted this review, the author has rebalanced the adventure for level 6 characters, removing several of the problems I had with the adventure.