Tales from the Yawning Portal : Worth a buy??

[Azgeroth]

anyone own this book?? or seen it in person??

does it contain enough content to worth a purchase? not just in terms of actual dungeons, but general lore, mechanics, beasties???

[hymer]

anyone own this book?? or seen it in person??

does it contain enough content to worth a purchase? not just in terms of actual dungeons, but general lore, mechanics, beasties???

If you're not intending to do anything with the scenarios, not even use them for inspiration, then I'd say you'd be wasting money buying it. There are less than twenty pages of monster/NPC stat blocks and about two pages of magical items. The other 200+ pages are the scenarios.

[BlizzardMayne]

So far I've run one dungeon from it, and I feel like I got my money's worth. I was very much grasping at straws for inspiration so the book was a great help. My group (including myself) had never played out of such an extensive adventure so it was a nice change of pace. The dungeons are well laid out and flow nicely. In conclusion: yes if you're going to use the dungeons.

[Oramac]

I bought it specifically for Tomb of Horrors, with which I am satisfied. Other than that, the other dungeons and such are pretty cool too. There's comparatively little as far as magic items and monsters go, but the ones that are in there are pretty neat.

[GlenSmash!]

I haven't bought it yet but I want to.

I and others have been asking WotC to release a book that wasn't a big campaign for levels 1-10 or 1-15. If I want another one I should buy this one.

[tenshiakodo]

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

Go find pdf's of the original adventures. They aren't all that hard to convert to 5e. It may take some work, but I assure you, the conversions of the adventures in Yawning Portal are LAZY. They don't seem to understand that 1e and 2e, for example, had different units of time in and out of combat.

There is a "death trap" in one adventure that takes 10 minutes to kill you. A Wizard with a dagger can break out in 7.

Many things are poorly explained. If you have a party that is stronger than intended for the adventure, you will have to do all the rebalancing on your own, there are no suggestions or guidelines in the book.

Having bought this thing and having to run it in public play, I can tell you you aren't getting much for your money.

Also, they didn't even bother to reprint the original art or player handouts from the original adventures, which not only would have been a nice touch, but makes running the older ones so much easier.

It really feels like they did not playtest this book at all.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I'd say it's a good pseudo-retro book for gamers that you can't convince to do the original modules in their native setting. You could probably update any of them yourself better, especially if you have the originals on hand, but this saves time if you either don't own those modules or don't want to convert everything.

If you run a single group through everything in the book, it's a pretty good taste testing of different types of dungeons. Every dungeon has a different feel to it and a unique gimmick. Everyone has a love/hate relationship with Tomb of Horrors and recommends not running anyone through it, especially at the end of any long running game, but I'd say the opposite- run players through everything in the book from the very start, letting them know up front that their likely end is going to be in ToH. It's exactly where it should be, at the very end of the journey.

[Twizzly513]

I've run two dungeons from it, and I've found inspiration from the dungeons themselves and the magic items. Everything is well put together, and has advice for putting the dungeon in other settings. I'd definitely recommend getting it

[Vaz]

To spoil the non adventure stuff;

Good Magic Items;
Eagle Whistle; 3/day, whistle for (5+(5*Con Mod)) rounds to fly at 2*Walking Speed for duration. Letting any non-magic user/Sorcerer fly for basically a minimum 45 rounds each day at 60ft speed? Yeah, who is NOT going to want this? Awesome item.
Night Caller; Animate Dead 1/day (but can only raise 1/7 days) is awesome. Gives the party new ablative hit points/action economy abuser/flank giver/Sneak Attack giver/grappler etc.
Potion of Mind Control; Can spend 2 actions to cast a non-Concentration Dominate, and forces Disadv to break Conc. Dominate's short duration, it's save allowing ability and it's low DC makes it less useful however, but can be fun. 3 variants.
Wand of Entangle; DC13 is kind of naff, but hey.

Trash
Amulet of Protection from Turning; Adv on Save vs Turn Attempts, and 3/day automatically pass them, recharging at dawn. Pointless loot, given that there's no legal way to yet play as an Undead character. And do you really want to sell that loot out into the wider world when any old evil lich can get its hand on it? Put it into a bag of holding and get a Simulacrum to asplode it.
Balance of Harmony; Ritual Detect Evil and Good that you cannot move around. Pointless
Bracelet of Rock Magic; DC15 Flesh to Stone 3 times, then you can Stone Shape 13 times. Casting it on Earth-affinity creatures (e.g Stone Giants and Dwarfs) have Adv, and if successful, breaks your attunement, it's cast on you, and you make the save with Disadv, and instantly Petrifies you. Yeah, cursed items. Woo. Really useful.
Loadstone; not identifiable by Detect magic (appears as a dumb rock), appears as a 150gp gem that suddenly curses you to slow you by 5ft, and reduces your encumbrance limits (who plays with those?). Woo Cursed items.
Mirror of the Past; Random Cryptic information is not divination, even if you can tell it who you're looking for random cryptic information. I don't think anyone needs to know about that time Jonny the Lich was laughed at for having a bogey shown through the medium of interpretive dance.
Robe of Summer; A robe that has the same effect as wearing a ring. You might struggle to wear more than one robe easily (and look odd for doing so), but 2 rings is fine. I mean, it's not bad, I suppose. Just... what's the point? You get to resist both extreme heat and extreme cold? ooh wow. I suppose it's useful if you go from an area with lots of creatures dealing cold damage to an area that's very hot. Just... does that happen that often?
Shatterspike; +1 Longsword (BORING), dealing auto crits to objects and deals Bludgeon or Slash (as opposed to Piercing, you know, being SPIKE), and is immune to damage from nonmagic sources (because DnD is renowned for having players try and destroy the loot)
Spear of Backbiting; +2 Cursed Spear dealing double damage dice, with long range? Why is this bad? Is it something to do with the fact that while attuned you have Disadv with all other weapon attacks and if you roll a 1 to hit, make another attack roll against yourself with advantage? Because that's fun. it's also Tomb of Horrors, which is godawful for putting in a game that's nothing more than "bring 10 character sheets homies, we're running ToH". If you do include this item, either expect it to never be used (a Fighter having a greater than 20% chance of attacking himself with it every time he takes the attack action is not fun), or just find a way to cleanse the curse completely. Otherwise, it would be a really nice weapon. Otherwise? Yeah it sucks big hairy balls dipped in melted cheese in a can.
Stone of Luck; Now you have a curse for -2 to saves. It's kinda crap.
Waythe; +1 Greatsword, but Legendary. Giving you +2d6 damage vs Giants, vs DC15 Strength Saves or prone (Cloud Giant with a +8 without proficiency, what up?). Wand of Enemy detection is Rare. But at least it doesn't crumble, hey? +1 Greatsword is Uncommon. And together, it's Legendary. Pass. Be well upset if I rolled that as a weapon at 17th level. Compared to say Wave or Moonblade.

Monsters are on the whole boring and uninteresting. Barghest, Chokers. Giant Subterranean Lizard gives swallow to a CR4 Trex, while Kelpie's give CR4 save or suck and instantly force drowning while looking indistinguishable from seaweed from 150ft away. The CR10 Kraken could be pretty good so you're not killing your party pitting them against the true Kraken.

[Bahamut7]

Yes.

I bought this specifically for tomb of horrors and to have adventures to lead up to the tomb. I am running my first 5e game and while I built my own world, I easily slipped each dungeon into the world. My players are enjoying it greatly. You will need to build your own atmosphere at times, but adjusting for more or less players (the adventures recommend 4 players) is really easy. It adds gives some new monsters and treasures that each have their own feel to them.

My only complaint so far is that the Sunless Citadel map is small. All the other dungeons have bigger and better views of the layout. Aside from that slight problem, I haven't noticed anything else.

I would recommend to this to any DM. You get 7 adventures that have good story, a variety of hooks, and a variety of encounters (both social and combat).

[Smitty Wesson]

If you want a bunch of short adventures, you very much get what you're looking for. I got it mainly for White Plume Mountain (because I'm a hipster like that and like it better than Tomb of Horrors) and am pretty happy with it.

If you want monsters...the slim batch of monsters isn't much to get excited about. The crunch part of the book is very small and not something I would buy the book for.

[Azgeroth]

thanks for the responses!

i do already have the other 5e books (PHB, DMG, MM, Volo's) and the SCAG and EE Companion in pdf formats.

inspiration for dungeons is always a good thing and having not played anything prior to 5e, save for one homebrew in 4e that lasted about 6 months (thats when 5e came out) the more material i can get my hands on the better.

[Vogonjeltz]

Amulet of Protection from Turning; Adv on Save vs Turn Attempts, and 3/day automatically pass them, recharging at dawn. Pointless loot, given that there's no legal way to yet play as an Undead character. And do you really want to sell that loot out into the wider world when any old evil lich can get its hand on it? Put it into a bag of holding and get a Simulacrum to asplode it.


Shatterspike; +1 Longsword (BORING), dealing auto crits to objects and deals Bludgeon or Slash (as opposed to Piercing, you know, being SPIKE), and is immune to damage from nonmagic sources (because DnD is renowned for having players try and destroy the loot)

The contradiction is great.

Also, Shatterspike is a name descriptive of what the weapon can do (shatter spikes), and bludgeoning is a great additional choice given the rules on destroying objects in the DMG. Piercing would be pretty worthless as a second damage choice.