SPOILERS FOR CALL OF THE NETHERDEEP

Call of the Netherdeep is a campaign set in Exandria, the world of Critical Role created by Matthew Mercer.

I have virtually no knowledge of Critical Role.

I haven’t read the comic books or the tie-in novels. I haven’t watched the animated series. Of the original show itself, I’ve watched a number of clips, a couple of episodes, and Matthew Colville’s phenomenal recap of the Season 1 finale. (Which still brings tears to my eyes.)

I haven’t even had the time to dive into the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount or the Tal’dorei Campaign Setting.

Nonetheless, Call of the Netherdeep is something that I’ve wanted Wizards of the Coast to do for awhile now: Release a sourcebook for a campaign world (e.g., Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount) and then support it with a full campaign book. (Ravnica, Theros, etc. They’d all be more useful with an accompanying campaign book.)

In any case, this review tackles Call of the Netherdeep on its own terms and only its own terms.

OVERVIEW

Call of the Netherdeep starts the PCs at 3^rd level (and eventually wraps up as they hit 12^th level). Things kick off in the coastal village of Jigow, where the PCs have arrived just in time to enjoy the Festival of Merit. While enjoying the festival games, they fall into rivalry with another group of adventurers who are also competing. As the festival draws to a close, both groups race through the Emerald Grotto, an underwater obstacle course, in order to claim a magical spear that has been stuck into the side of a shark.

When the shark is killed, its death throes knock open an underwater temple that has been lost since the time of the Calamity (a semi-legendary apocalypse). Inside the temple, either the PCs or their rivals claim the Jewel of Three Prayers, an artifact which once belonged to Alyxion the Apotheon.

The PCs are then sent to Bazzoxan, a small city that was built around Betrayers’ Rise, a huge temple complex dedicated to the Betrayer Gods and squatting atop a vast dungeon. The Rise had been abandoned since the Calamity, but would-be explorers delved too deep and awoke Abyssal portals. Bazzoxan is now a military compound — the front line in a war against demons and abominations streaming up from below.

While in Bazzoxan, the PCs will run into scholars belonging to three different factions from the distant city of Ank’Harel who have come to Bazzoxan because [SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER, TELL THE PLAYERS NOTHING]. Heading into the depths of Betrayers’ Rise themselves, the PCs discover another temple that adds extra magical mojo to the Jewel of Three Prayers.

Following one or more of the scholars back to Ank’Harel, the PCs join their faction. After completing a series of faction missions, the PCs are eventually granted access to the ruins of Cael Morrow, a city which was destroyed during the Calamity and now lies sunken below an underground sea beneath Ank’Harel.

Within Cael Morrow, the PCs eventually discover (and enter) the transdimensional prison in which Alyxion the Apotheon has been held since his “death” during the Calamity. Within this prison, the PCs explore manifestations of Alyxion’s memories, learning the true story of what happen to him. In short:

• He was born under the red moon of Ruidus, which is considered bad luck.
• He entire life was, in fact, an endless string of bad luck.
• During the Calamity he prayed to the gods three times for assistance to save those in peril, and three times the gods answered his prayer (creating the Jewel of Three Prayers).
• When Gruumsh attempted to destroy all life on the continent of Marquet with a single blow of his spear, the Apotheon countered the blow with his semi-divine power. Cael Morrow was destroyed, but the rest of the continent was spared.
• The fury of Gruumsh’s blow, combined with Alyxion’s parry and the destruction of Cael Morrow, ripped open an interdimensional space into which the strange energies of Ruidus flowed. This was the Netherdeep, and it became Alyxion’s prison.

Recently the Netherdeep has been leaking, its strange energies escaping in the form of ruidium – a reddish crystal that is both immensely powerful and also corrupting. The PCs have been encountering ruidium since the beginning of the campaign, and it turns out the factions in Ank’Harel want access to its source so that they can either exploit it or destroy it (depending on their individual agendas).

At the campaign’s finale, the PCs confront the Alyxion in three different forms, ultimately deciding whether to kill the Apotheon, redeem him, or unleash him. A decision which will have consequences for all of Exandria.

THE RIVALS

So if we strip away the Critical Role tie-in, what’s the log line for Call of the Netherdeep? What’s the pitch? Why would you pick this campaign over any other campaign?

Well, as you can see from the summary, this is an epic adventure: From humble beginnings, the PCs journey across vast distances to save the world.

There are, of course, any number of such campaigns, but Call of the Netherdeep is a well-formed one. The transition from the gothic depths of Betrayers’ Rise directly to the sun-drenched streets of Ank’Harel, for example, is beautifully vivid, and speaks to the varied and richly realized milestones in the PCs’ journey. The underwater themes of the adventure — in the Emerald Grotto, Cael Morrow, and the Netherdeep —  also give it a distinctive flair.

But Call of the Netherdeep’s truly unique calling card is the Rivals: Five NPCs who form their own adventuring party and dog the PCs’ heels throughout the campaign.

So my elevator pitch for Call of the Netherdeep would be:

It’s an epic adventure, like the Lord of the Rings. But you have a group of rivals who are competing with you for glory.

The best thing about the Rivals are the rivals themselves: Ayo Jabe, Dermot Wurder, Galsariad Ardyth, Irvan Wastewalker, and Maggie Keeneyes. Each is given a great backstory and strong personality, which are then expertly presented in three or four paragraph briefings. Each is also given an individual goal to pursue.

The result is very easy to pick up and play, with lots of varied opportunities for cool interactions. In fact, if you paired these up with character sheets, you’d have a great party of pregenerated PCs, which speaks to just how solid these characters are.

The Rivals are then given a really great introduction, being individually introduced during the festival games in Jigow, so that the players have a chance to form one-on-one relationships with them (instead of the Rivals just becoming an undifferentiated mob).

Unfortunately, in practice, the Rivals are then marred (possibly crippled) by the adventure’s execution.

The core problem is that the campaign is railroaded. Or, more accurately, that it’s railroaded badly. We’ll discuss this in more detail momentarily, but as far as the Rivals are concerned, this railroading hamstrings their ability to actually have a rivalry. A rivalry generally requires you and your rival to be in competition to achieve a common goal and/or to demonstrate your superiority in a field of endeavor.

But like most bad railroads, Call of the Netherdeep (a) scripts predetermined outcomes and (b) struggles with presenting a clear, actionable agenda.

So the rivalry largely works at the beginning of the campaign — when the PCs and the Rivals are both clearly aimed at winning the Emerald Grotto race — but then rapidly falls apart. You can’t race to achieve a goal before your rivals do when the campaign has failed to define what your goal is. Nor can you meaningfully race someone if they’re scripted to show up in the next cutscene.

The other major problem is that the relationship between the Rivals and the PCs is defined entirely by attitude: The Rivals are Friendly, Indifferent, or Hostile.

This gauge is basically designed to produce fail-states in the rivalry.

If the Rivals are Hostile, for example, they are constantly framed up to either:

• try to steal the magical artifact from the PCs; and/or
• attack the PCs and try to kill them.

In my experience, there are two Unforgivable Sins that an NPC can commit:

1. They can kill a PC’s pet.
2. They can steal the PC’s shit.

Anything else (even assassination attempts) can probably be forgiven, but if an NPC does either of these things? The PCs will never forgive them and will almost certainly kill them on sight.

So if the Rivals go Hostile, the overwhelmingly likely outcome is that the PCs will kill them very early in the campaign. And then, obviously, no more rivalry.

On the other hand, if the Rivals go Friendly, the logical outcome is that they’ll offer to work with the PCs. As Call of the Netherdeep says:

If [Ayo Jabe] gets the sense that the characters have stumbled onto something big, her eyes grow wide. She decides that she and her group want a piece of the action and proposes that they travel with the characters, saying that there’s safety in numbers. A character makes a successful DC 13 Wisdom (Insight) check realizes that she isn’t hiding anything and wants nothing more than to be part of a grand adventure.

It seems rather likely that the PCs will agree with Ayo Jabe’s logic… and now you have five GMPCs to deal with.

This, honestly, feels like a huge headache to me. Even running one NPC companion can create issues with spotlight time and bias (perceived and actual), as I discuss in more detail here. But the really big problem is combat balance: Running 5^th Edition D&D for a group of ten PCs is infamously difficult because the action economy means results in any encounter with a small number of opponents (one or two or three) just getting absolutely curb-stomped.

Crucially, Call of the Netherdeep is not designed for this: The encounters are neither CR-balanced for ten party members, nor are they designed for large groups. Betrayers’ Rise, for example, is made up entirely of encounters with 1-3 opponents, and will be absolutely steamrolled if the PCs and Rivals have teamed up.

The campaign clearly knows it has a problem here, so — even though it explicitly mentions that Ayo Jabe will offer to work with the PCs — it just silently assumes that the PCs won’t do that.

Problem solved, right?

No.

Rather the opposite, actually, because the book, as part of its bad railroading, just blithely includes multiple pre-scripted scenes which assume that the Rivals are definitely not working with the PCs.

This is actually something that Call of the Netherdeep does quite often, and it’s honestly kind of bizarre: An NPC will approach the PCs, offer to work with them… and then the book just assumes that they don’t do that.

Maybe the authors have just literally never had players willing to work with NPCs before?

Regardless, the result is badly broken.

To sum up: The Rivals are incredibly cool. But if you run them the way the book tells you to, then somewhere around Chapter 2 they will end up either:

• dead;
• no longer rivals of the PCs; and/or
• breaking the campaign.

I think we can mark this down as “rough around the edges.”

Go to Part 2: The Dungeons

Frostbanes are skeletal figures case in ice, but with a flame burning within their chest. Through its icy sheath, this flame burns fiercely — usually in shades of blues, but often purple or green or even crimson.

The Frozen Damned. Frostbane are powerful undead created from corpses which have been frozen for at least a century (usually within icy glaciers, although there are tales of reaping fields upon the Plane of Ice which are maintained and harvested by ancient liches patient enough to mortal lifetimes for their schemes to unfold).

Ice & Fire. Their existence is born from paradox and their mockery of life sustained through an antithetical balance of elemental forces, for the necromancer kindles within their frozen breast a magical flame. This flame slowly consumes their dead flesh, but does not affect the ice which was their death and tomb. Thus heat and frost are maintained in an eternal, impossible tension.

The frostbane thus thirsts eternally for the warmth it is denied — drawing in the heat of life and flame around it, but instantly converting it into the deathly grip of ice.

FROSTBANE

Medium undead, neutral evil

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Armor Class 17

Hit Points 98 (15d8+30)

Speed 30 ft.

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STR 15 (+2), DEX 16 (+3), CON 15 (+2), INT 11 (+0), WIS 12 (+1), CHA 8 (-1)

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Saving Throw Dex +6

Skills Perception +6, Survival +4

Senses passive Perception 16

Damage Immunities fire

Condition Immunities exhaustion, poisoned

Challenge 6 (2,300 XP)

Proficiency Bonus: +3

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Aura of Ice. Anyone within 40 feet of the frostbane suffers 4d6 cold damage per round (DC 14 Constitution saving throw for half damage) Anyone touching the frostbane suffers an additional 2d6 cold damage (no save). Anyone hitting the frostbane with a melee weapon suffers 1d6 cold damage (no save). Every 3 points of cold damage heals 1 point of damage to the frostbane.

Contingent Regeneration. If the frostbane is within 40 feet of a living creature or source of heat, it regains 5 hit points at the start of its turn. If the frostbane starts its turn at 0 hit points doesn’t regenerate, it enters a dormant state and appears “dead.” If someone approaches within 40 feet of the dormant frostbane, however, they can attempt a DC 14 Wisdom (Perception) check to notice an unnatural chill in the air. If the dormant frostbane remains within 40 feet of a living creature or heat source for 5 minutes, it will rouse from its dormancy (and begin healing from itsaura of ice).

The frostbane only truly dies if it suffers cold damage while in its dormant state (snuffing out the flame at its heart).

Heart of Flame. Frostbanes are immune to fire damage and heal 1 point of damage for every 3 points of fire damage they otherwise would have suffered.

Frostspawn. Any humanoid slain by a frostbane rises as a zombie (MM, p. 315) in 1d4 rounds. There’s a 10% chance that such a zombie will transform into a frostbane 1d4 hours later. (There may be rites a necromance could use to increase these odds by helping to kindle its nascent flame.)

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ACTIONS

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) cold damage.

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Frostbanes appear in The Mrathrach Agenda.

These detailed notes, written in silver ink on black vellum scrolls, constitute the exploration of an alchemical process referred to as azh-thalar, a dark elven word which can be translated as “boneforging.” And, indeed, the text refers to the work as deriving from the “lore of the dark elves” and, elsewhere, “the teachings of Su-Thanaz.” Several excerpts of the original body of work are directly included, without translation, in the text itself.

Once translated in full, however, the text describes a process by which bone is taken from a dead or undead creature and then molded using alchemical processes into a new form. The items so created can be almost limitless in their variety, and part of the alchemical process specifically tempers the bone to be as hard as steel (allowing effective weapons, armor, and the like to be fashioned).

Particularly intriguing, however, are the advanced methods of undead boneforging, in which the powers of the undead creature can be infused into the bone itself after the shaping is completed.

BONEFORGING

Boneforging requires alchemist’s supplies and a successful Intelligence (alchemist’s supplies) check, the difficulty of which is dependent on the size of the item desired, as shown on the table below.

Obviously, the alchemist must also have the requisite supply of bone. Complex or artistic items may require additional crafting checks at the DM’s discretion.

Boneforging is generally only appropriate for solid, static items (e.g., a chair, knife, bowl), but boneforged components could be combined with other material. Supple material (e.g., a rope) can be forged from cartilage, but this is a more delicate process and the Intelligence (alchemist’s supplies) check to make the item is made at disadvantage.

ADVANCED BONEFORGING

An alchemist creating a boneforged magic item from an undead creature can attempt to replace one spell required by the item creation with the raw necromantic power of the undead from which the item is being crafted. (Note that these items are not made from the remains of the dead; they are forged from undead still possessed of unlife.)

This process can generally be used to replace a spell with a level equal to 1/3^rd of the undead creature’s challenge rating. (So a CR 9 undead could be used to replace a 3^rd level spell.) A skeleton or zombie, however, can only be used to replace a spell with a level equal to 1/6^th their HD. (The simplistic energy which animates such mindless undead is not particularly useful for the complex matricies of the advanced boneforging.)

Advanced boneforging requires an Intelligence (alchemist’s supplies) check (DC 15 + the spell level being replaced). If the check fails, the spell is not replaced and must be provided normally or the item creation process will fail.

Boneforging does not reduce the cost of creating the magic item. (The cost of the alchemical supplies normally required by boneforging is included in this cost, however.)

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

Blood terrors are a pure extension of the Blood of the Beast. Their glistening bodies – with skin-less musculature defined by clotted coagulations – boil with a raw, powerful rage.

Legacy of Giants. Blood Terrors appear to be immortal, and are often found as tomb guardians in the cyclopean barrows of the Tyrannis Gígās (the Tyrant Giants). Long mistaken for some sort of transformation of the Tyrannis’ skyldur (their human serfs or chattel), the true nature of the Blood Terrors was rediscovered when the long-forgotten Idol of the Beast was recovered among the island kingdoms of the south.

Idol of the Beast. The idol once sealed the Beast’s connection to this world, but it was corrupted by the dream cults who still honored the old ways. The Idol became a conduit through which the Beast’s will could be made manifest and around which new cults could arise in dim memory of a primitive and bestial past.

Blood terrors can now be found in the wake of the Idol, serving the cultists who have performed the strange rites of creation/summoning which signify their loyalty to the Beast.

Creatures of Blood. Blood terrors “contain” a seemingly impossible amount of blood. It is perhaps more accurate to think of them as extrusions of the Blood of the Beast, pumping their way through the planar skein of reality. When their manifest forms are violated, their strange blood – which is paradoxically antithetical to natural life – is eager to spew out into our world.

BLOOD TERROR

Medium aberration, chaotic evil

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Armor Class 17

Hit Points 94 (11d8+44)

Speed 30 ft.

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STR 16 (+3), DEX 12 (+1), CON 18 (+4), INT 10 (+0), WIS 14 (+2), CHA 10 (+0)

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Skills Acrobatics +4, Athletics +6

Damage Resistances acid, cold, fire

Damage Immunities poison

Senses passive Perception 15

Languages Giant, Issyl, telepathy 100 ft.

Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +3

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Blood Blight. Once per day, the blood terror can exude a 20 ft.-radius mist of blood that lasts for 1d4 rounds. Non-evil creatures who enter the mist or who start their turn within the mist must make a DC 13 Constitution save or suffer 4d8 damage and gain the poisoned condition. (On a successful save, the damage is halved and the character does not suffer from the poisoned condition.)

Blood Spray. When the blood terror is injured, it releases a spray of blood that covers the ground in a 10-foot square centered on the blood terror. This operates as per a grease spell (DC 13) and lasts for 1 minute. Other creatures of the Beast are not affected by the blood spray.

ACTIONS

Multiattack. Blood terrors make two claw attacks.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d6+3) slashing damage.

Hundreds of parchment pages arranged in thick leather folders record an almost manic obsession with and study of dealing death to humanoids. Minute experimentation in dosage, placement of blows, and the like is exhaustively studied through what appear to be actual trials and experimentation.

Beyond that, the “subjects” of these trials appear to have been revivified through the arts of zombification on a vast scale. Hundreds of corpses were created, reanimated, and then exmorisected for an active study of undead tissue and simulated organ operation in the face of wounds and poisons.

Use of this research grants advantage to Medicine checks made to identify the cause of death for humanoids.

PRIME CORPSE

PRIME CORPSE
4^th level necromancy (Cleric, Wizard)

Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 10 feet
Target: Up to four corpses or piles of bones within range
Components: V, S, M (one 100 gp black onyx stone for each corpse)
Duration: Instantaneous

Prime corpse allows you prepare a number of corpses or skeletons for animation using the animate dead spell (or similar method), making them easier for their animator to control. If and when these corpses become undead, each only counts as half an undead for the purposes of their creator commanding or controlling them. (Other characters seeking to command or control them do so normally.) This does not affect the number of undead created by the animate dead spell; only the number controlled.

For example, a normal casting of animate dead can allow the caster to control up to four zombies or skeletons that were previously created. If these undead had been targeted by prime corpse before their creation, their original creator would be able to control up to eight of them for each casting of animate dead (instead of the normal four).

The caster of prime corpse need not be the same caster as the one who animates the undead. Undead who are already animate are not affected by this spell; it must be cast on corpses prior to animation.

At Higher Levels: If cast with a 6^th level spell slot or higher, this spell has a similar effect on the targets of a create undead spell, although it requires 400 gp black onyx stone for each corpse.

Design Note: If the Romans had faced a zombie plague, they might have invented the word exmortuus to describe the undead (“mortuus” being the dead and “ex-” being from or out of; thus those come from or out of death). Much later, the same bloke who invented the word “vivisection” might have also invented “exmorisection.”)

This material is covered by the Open Game License.