Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall, the level 11 to 20 spy campaign, and what the reviews say

What the book is

Deadfall is the adventure half of the Arcana Unleashed pair, the sourcebook having been covered here already. Dungeons and Dragons Fan's review, with Amanda Hamon named as lead designer, gives the structure as an introduction and seven chapters: Thay lore and campaign setup, then eight named missions spread across five chapters, then a two-part finale. The print edition is listed at $29.99, the digital at $19.99 and the bundle at $49.99. The EN World listing gives 20 dedicated maps, a gazetteer of Thay, high-CR stat blocks including Szass Tam at CR 23, and a set of magic items; the two sources count the stat blocks as five or six and the items as fourteen or fifteen.

The gazetteer runs to 24 pages by Dungeons and Dragons Fan's count and covers the ten wards of the capital Eltabbar, the eight zulkirs who rule under Tam, and the eleven tharchs, each with adventure hooks. Both reviewers liked this part; Wargamer called it delightful for a group new to the region.

The spy mechanic: three failures

The book's structural idea is a secrecy subsystem that tracks how badly the party's cover is blown. Dungeons and Dragons Fan describes it as a count of three failures, with ways to walk one back by destroying evidence, faking a death or bribing whoever cleans up after a mission. Mission order is flexible and the party chooses how to execute each one, which that review reads as genuine player agency with organic consequences.

Wargamer read the same missions the other way. Mollie Russell's review describes a set of fetch quests whose sabotage options are all pre-written, so that agency is replaced with what she calls a bedazzled shopping list. Both readings can be true of the same book: the missions offer choices, and the choices are enumerated rather than open. Which side you come down on depends on whether your table wants a menu or a blank page.

Szass Tam at CR 23, and the fight that went wrong

Wargamer's review is unusual in that its author ran the finale. Her wizard was paralysed on initiative by Szass Tam's Paralyzing Touch, which the review says needs no saving throw and turns hits on a Paralyzed target into automatic criticals, and was then killed by Power Word Kill before taking a turn. That is the basis for the review's word unfair, and for the 6 out of 10.

Dungeons and Dragons Fan's reviewer did not run it but flags the same shape of problem from the other direction: a heavy DM burden and combat that drags at high level, with the spy pacing giving way to two sequential dungeon crawls at the end. The finale branches. Win, and the party gets a Legendary item and a political seat in Thay; lose, and the epilogue has Tam's undead army killing thousands and the survivors becoming a resistance. That second ending is the book's most interesting page and the one a DM should read first.

• Szass Tam is CR 23 with Paralyzing Touch and Power Word Kill, per Wargamer's playtest.
• Two dungeon crawls end the campaign, whatever the spy framing promised.
• Losing has a written epilogue, which most published adventures never provide.

The two verdicts side by side

Wargamer, 6 out of 10: fun for a group that wants high-powered, unpredictable combat, and otherwise narratively shallow, structurally repetitive and often unfair, with a villain who is a threat but not a character. Dungeons and Dragons Fan, 17 out of 20: innovative mechanics, gorgeous interior art, sharp writing, real player choice, and the same complaints about combat length, recycled Thay lore and a paper-thin villain, judged as flaws in a book still worth running.

The EN World thread on the announcement, from before either review, had already raised the question the reviews answer: whether ten levels of adventure plus a gazetteer can fit in 128 pages. The answer from both reviewers is that they fit because the missions share a template, which is either efficient or repetitive depending on your view.

Running level 11 to 20 fights on a grid

High-level combat is where a map earns its keep or loses it. A CR 23 lich with legendary actions and a party that can teleport, fly and drop 20-foot-radius spells makes positioning matter more, not less, and it makes the DM's bookkeeping the limiting factor. Three habits help. Draw the areas rather than remembering them; a 20-foot radius is 4 squares out from the point in every direction. Track conditions on the tokens, because Paralyzed and Restrained are the conditions that decide these fights. And use the twenty maps the book gives you rather than improvising at this level.

TerrainTale is one place to put those maps: tokens sized to their creature, an initiative tracker with conditions in play mode, and a ruler in feet that counts height for the flyers. It has no rules engine, so the lich's turn is still yours to run, which at CR 23 is the job.