Review – D&D Arcana Unleashed

Arcana Unleashed are the newest book entries from Wizards of the Coast for players and Dungeon Masters wishing to invoke a little more magic into their campaigns. The books come in 2 flavors: Arcana Unleashed is the Gameplay Expansion, giving players new character options, spells, magical worlds, factions, items and creatures. It also has a small story hook at the end. Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall is the Adventure Expansion that boasts the tagline, “Szass Tam Must Die,” on the back of the book. Deadfall is a magical spy-thriller campaign for characters level 11-20. So, are these books a magical read or do they regularly get turned away at the gates of Candlekeep? Read on for the review!

Content Guide

This is a set of books focused on magic, so bear that in mind along with the usual D&D warnings. Also, Deadfall is centered around sneakily undermining a lich who has eyes on turning his own people into undead masses. Players could run into skeletons, zombies, evil mages, a lich, and a whole lot of other magic and creatures in-between. 

Review

Right off the bat, I want to get my main gripe about these books out of the way: why weren’t they a single book? In the past, we’ve gotten books that weighed in around 250-275 pages, whereas these books are 160 and 128 pages for the gameplay and adventure, respectively. The argument that first pops into my head is they split it for people who just wanted the Szass Tam adventure or just wanted the mechanics in the gameplay expansion, but why split them? Most people who would want one would at least find some interesting things in the other. 

In the gameplay book, you’re led along by notes in the margin, this time from Alustriel Silverhand, a human daughter of the god of magic Mystra. Alustriel’s kind and supportive notes, from an obviously lawful-good point of view, feel like the polar opposite of, say, Tasha’s notes from her book. It’s not that Alustriel’s notes weren’t informative, they just felt like they told me more about her than the nature of magic. 

There are 6 chapters plus an Appendix with a level 1 adventure hook, and while there are some interesting character options, many of them ended up feeling like you just took a level of wizard rather than something unique and distinct. I would love to play an Arcane Archer – a fighter who weaves magic into their archery – but it didn’t feel distinctly different from how you could make a Fighter into a powerful archer already. The other interesting option was making a Necromancer Wizard, especially if you were going to be either in a party of mostly not-evil characters or going up against the big bad lich himself, Szass. 

The other chapter that I loved was number 4, on Magical Factions, which presents 9 different groups that adventurers could endear themselves to, thereby earning renown and rewards.  The 2 that I would most like to put into a future campaign are the Crucible Keepers and the Ninth Quill. The Crucible Keepers are the D&D version of tornado chasers, studying and containing natural disasters as they thrill-seek and learn more about Evocation magic. The Ninth Quill are spies and saboteurs who steal items and lore from powerful beings in order to ‘safeguard’ them; while the cause sounds noble on paper, some are motivated by greed. 

Deadfall sees the party recruited by one of the most powerful red mages in all of Thay, known as Zulkirs. The Zulkir recruiting you is loyal to Thay itself and doesn’t want to see it overthrown by Szass Tam again and plunged into an undead dictatorship. So you and your comrades must take on code names and commit covert operations – staying off Szass’ radar is integral to your success. Should he find out what you’re up to he’ll most likely wipe your party and everyone they ever loved off the face of existence.  So don’t mess up!

Everything I knew about Szass Tam I learned in D&D: Honor Among Thieves, so it was great to learn a bit more and see just how evil he is. Deadfall feels like an epic movie with big stakes, and nothing short of the fate of an entire country on the brink of destruction should you fail! If they ever get around to making a sequel to Honor Among Thieves, it could be a lot worse than something like Deadfall. 

Both of these books have a lot of interesting content. I still am scratching my head as to the reason why they were split apart rather than kept as a singular volume (I know, I know, money). If you don’t want to fight against a lich, you can stick with the Gameplay book; if you don’t care about magical subclasses and sorcerous societies, get Deadfall. If you want all the magic stuff, then save up and get both. 

Review copies of both books were provided by the publisher.