In Short
Far from a comprehensive guide, Secrets of Xen’drik provides adventure locations and a few setting details for the savage continent while still leaving plenty of room for a DM to add their own ideas. Primarily a DM tool meant to facilitate adventuring in Xen’drik, this product adds little in the way of new mechanics or setting details, instead focusing on example adventure locations and encounters.
The Physical Thing
This 160 page hardcover showcases above average production values. Full color art, including detailed maps of adventure locations, really adds the feel and utility of the book. The excellent use of fonts and formatting makes the book easy to read. While the margins seem a little large, the text is dense and plenty of material is presented. Despite this, some readers may feel that they are getting little useful material for the $29.95 price tag.
The Ideas
Xen’drik is the rediscovered continent to the south of Khorvaire, where the five great nations and most of the action in Eberron takes place. Once the home of a great giant empire, Xen’drik is now a great expanse of untamed wilderness ready to be rediscovered by adventurers of all sorts. The adventure destination of choice for many Eberron campaigns, this uncivilized frontier makes an excellent location for all manner of peoples, places, and events.
Under the Cover
The book begins with an index-like table of contents that lists every entry, as well as the side bars, for easy references.
Chapter 1 Welcome to Xen’drik 16 pages.
Without a doubt the best part of this chapter is a large, detailed, full color map of Xen’drik that spans an entire page. Major locations are noted, including many that have appeared in the Dungeons and Dragons Online game. This map is cool, useful, and something that I will reference for many future games.
The chapter begins with a discussion of the Thunder Sea. How to cross it, travel times, information on the sahuagin that patrol the waters, major ports of call, and other such details are presented to flesh out a traveler’s introduction to Xen’drik. Immediately following this is a discussion of Stormreach. A page is devoted to a full color map of Stormreach, complete with important locations through the city. A side bar presents stats for half-giants, more common in Xen’drik than elsewhere in the world, for those that do not own the Expanded Psionics Handbook.
Once again, those who have played the Dungeons and Dragons Online game will find a substantial amount of material borrowed from the game. Since the game is set in Stormreach this isn’t surprising, but product fails to improve on the very basics of the town found in the online game. My biggest objection is that Stormreach feels more like an MMORPG town map copied over, and not the living city that I would prefer. For example, there aren’t really any places where people seem to live in Stormreach. The Harbormaster’s House, an important location in the online game, is noted but there is no poor district or any of the other trappings one would expect from a fantasy town.
Dar Qat, an outpost for Riedra, is presented briefly in terms of how characters might infiltrate it and what its basic role is. Several side bars present information on trade goods that come from Xen’drik and other interesting tidbits of knowledge. Side bars like this are found throughout the book and often offer the most interesting ideas.
I purchased the book because I wanted a detailed overview of Xen’drik, similar to the setting chapter in the Eberron Campaign Setting but vastly expanded. That is included here too. Two and a half pages are devoted to a discussion of the geography of Xen’drik. That’s it. Xen’drik has a desert, some glacial areas, and a whole lot of jungle. Drow live there. If I sound harsh it’s because this feels like a bait and switch. The back of the product says that it contains a “Comprehensive overview of the continent of Xen’drik and the gateway city of Stormreach.” There is more material here, reproduced directly from the online game, about Stormreach than Xen’drik.
Chapter 2 Adventure Sites 24 pages.
Those familiar with the adventure sites presented in other Dungeons and Dragons products, such as the Explorer’s Handbook, can expect more of the same here. In short, Chapter 2 presents a lengthy and varied array of interesting places for characters to explore. Color maps with notes are provided, making the DM’s work much easier. The locations are presented in terms of visual description and mechanics, meant to be slotted into existing campaigns and tailored to a DM’s wishes.
From a pure dungeon crawling perspective these aren’t bad. Some of them are a little on the unusual side, but there are enough old ruins and temple entrances to really benefit those DMs who would be inclined to use them. I have a problem with this chapter’s approach, however. Most of these sites are just generic adventure locations, there’s nothing Eberron-specific about them. The developers clearly chose to use the varied geography of Xen’drik as an opportunity to include a chapter of generic adventure locations. However, the adventures and encounters provided later in the book can bring a Xen’drik flavor to these locations.
Chapter 3 Encounters 42 pages.
This chapter is somewhat similar to the adventure chapter, but instead of a list of locations it is a list of things for the characters to run into and fight. From raging badger familiars to two headed tyrannosaurs to demi-humans of all sorts, this chapter offers a large number of different encounters. The encounters are almost exclusively “hunting parties” or other sorts of groups meant to be fought and killed. They also tend to be strange.
Want to quickly create a high level party leader? Throw in the High-Level Leader encounter, a Shifter Ranger 5 / Horizon Walker 10. Not only is this random NPC more powerful than any of the notable people in the world, how many times does a DM really want to use a Ranger/Horizon Walker for a generic party leader character? How useful is the Yak-Folk encounter? Does an entry that effectively says “there are Raptorans here, use the stats found on page x of Races of the Wild” really help the DM?
New monsters are introduced here as well, and they’re a mixed bag. I wish the authors had chosen to discuss the ancient warforged found in Xen’drik instead of providing stats for a level 4 Barbarian “Quorcraft Warforged.” While leaving many of the mysteries of a setting unanswered is a great choice (since it spurs forward campaigns), it would be nice to see those ideas expanded upon in setting books. New giants, vermin constructs, and a snake with a sleep gaze are presented as well.
The most useful part of this chapter is likely the Drow warbands presented. Stats for all levels of play are provided, so a group of level 3-5 PCs will be dealing with Drow that have NPC levels while a group of high level PCs will be fighting high level Drow. Clerics, Sorcerers, and especially Fighter/Rangers are presented.
Finally, six example traps as well as a trap template are presented over four pages. The traps seem fine, if somewhat plain. This section is a great example of how the book is filled with little bits of everything, often presented in a plain and simple manner meant to make work easier for a DM.
Chapter 4 Adventures in Xen’drik 30 pages.
Name, Concept, Hook, Sites, Adventure, Rewards, Development. Thirty pages of these loosely structured adventures that take advantage of earlier maps and later magic items are presented. These are a good resource for DMs that have difficulty creating adventures, or who just don’t want to invest the time to create their individual content. The adventures are non-specific enough that a DM can easily modify them to suit their own desires.
The feel of Eberron is better represented in these adventures than any other part of the book. They’re above average in quality, and do a great job of making full use of this product. In fact, I would go so far as to say that these adventures will make or break this product for most DMs. They pull together the disparate bits found throughout the book into a variety of different, lightly fleshed out adventures that can be inserted into any game that calls for “adventure in Xen’drik.” Each adventure ranges from a page and a half to two pages of text. A variety of levels of adventure are presented, and it would be a simple matter to increase or decrease the level of encounters by making small alterations to the adventure.
Chapter 5 Xen’drik Unveiled 34 pages.
New feats, prestige classes, spells, psionic powers, magic items, artifacts, and all the other crunchy aspects of d20 are presented here. The Landforged Walker is a Warforged, probably a Druid originally, who begins growing plants from his body while advancing as a divine spell caster. It’s a neat class and has a strong Swamp Thing feel to it. The Primal Scholar is a generic spellcasting prestige class that gains Ancient Secrets (mini-feats) and has a special sort of Bardic Knowledge that only applies to Xen’drik.
The Scorpion Wraith (I like saying the name) is an elite Drow prestige class. It has prerequisites involving Rogue skills and gains Poison Use, Sudden Strike progression, Darkness-related powers, and full BAB progression. Each of these prestige classes gets the full expanded treatment, including Knowledge checks to know information about them and example NPCs.
The 10 feats presented mostly involve the Drow and Giants and, on the whole, seem extremely specific to Xen’drik. It’s good that the feats are flavorful, but most of them seem unlikely to be chosen by players. Giant Banemagic, for example, is a feat that allows spells to do more damage against Giants. +2 to the save DC and +2d6 damage. That’s pretty potent, but unless the game is going to focus on giants as a major bad guy it seems unlikely that a player would even consider the feat.
As for the other crunchy bits, nothing remarkable stands out. Six new exotic weapons are introduced, all racial specific weapons. Sometimes this seems a little silly. The Drow long knife, for example, is a piercing weapon that does 1d6/19-20 and can be thrown. Effectively it is a short sword balanced for throwing, which is exactly what the description says, yet it has its own entry and stats. The entry also goes on to explain that if a character is proficient with the knife, then they can take and apply Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization to it. These sorts of entries are just wasted space. The Drow long knife adds no flavor to Xen’drik, but does add another exotic weapon that almost exactly mirrors an existing weapon.
My Take
I was excited about this product going in, but my expectations didn’t pan out. What I thought was going to be an overview of Xen’drik, with focus on the continent’s history, geography, peoples, and everything else is actually a DM aid meant to make running adventures in Xen’drik convenient. Given the choice to go back I wouldn’t buy this one over. While it is well written for a product meant to provide mini-adventures, it fails to be the inclusive traveler’s guide to Xen’drik I had hoped for.
If you want a product that will reduce game prep time by presenting locations, encounters, and adventures focused on Xen’drik then you will enjoy this product. Fans of open ended modules that can be inserted at any stage of a campaign will likely enjoy the mini-adventures provided. Those who want a product that reads more like a book and less like a statistics filled game manual, however, should pass on this one.
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