Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen and Lair of the Drider Review – A New Shade Of Underdark

Drow have a tumultuous history in fantasy TTRPGs. They are a staple of Dungeons & Dragons, a group of subterranean elves characterized by ruthless ambition, cruelty, and sharp cunning. They have been the source of controversy given their potentially problematic design and coding, as well as the source of iconic heroes like Drizzt Do'urden. Now, Steamforged Games has their own take on these long-lived warriors in Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen and Lair of the Drider.

What is in Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen?

In Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen, your adventuring party attempts infiltrate the underground city of the drow. This is done by the group sneaking into the city by boat. As for whether or not the party fights or talks their way through customs is for the dice to decide. From there, it escalates into storming the titular palace.

Naturally, the drow or more than prepared for any opposition. The enemies contained within the box are as follows:

• 4x Drow Warriors
• 4x Drow Crossbowmen
• 2x Lizard Cavalry
• 2x Drow Whirlwind
• 3x Oneiromancer
• 1x Drow Queen

In broad strokes, Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen is an enclosed, uphill battle. The party starts the first map on a boat surrounded by guards, are bottlenecked by a gate, and are overwhelmed by lizard-riding cavalry at the docks. The second map, continues this push into the palace with traps and strategically placed units. Much like the Bandit Camp encounter, the Drow intelligently leverages a homefield advantage against the players at every turn; making every inch of progress feel earned.

This is also the first Epic Encounters box I have used where the different Drow statblocks have scaling rules. Every Epic Encounters box has different difficulty numbers and damage dice based on your group's play tier. Level 1-4 characters have environmental hazards that deal damage in D4s, and Level 10+ characters get hit with d10s from their surroundings. The enemy scaling does something similar, adjusting ACs, attacks per turn, available spells, and health.

This is great since the enemy placement in Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen is very deliberate. The module as written is light on monster closets or incoming waves of enemies. This is good because each Drow enemy poses a challenge in their own right.

Steamforged Games manages to put their spin on the Drow in this box. In addition to the more familiar trappings: matriarchal society, gothic architecture, lizard mounts, etc., they have traits connecting them to spiders and drider monsters. It isn't completely gratuitous body horror, but it does give the Drow more distinct physical characteristics. There's even a unique bit of culture with mind and memory magic with their oneiromancers. It all blends into this wonderfully macabre take on the underground elves.

What is in Epic Encounters: Lair of the Drider?

Rounding out Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen is the boss box, Epic Encounters: Lair of the Drider. Like other box boxes in this line, you get one gigantic drider miniature, a double-sided battlemap, and some minion tokens.

As an extension of the mental magic and low-key body horror elements in the first box, Lair of the Drider is a daunting boss encounter. Its different lair abilities and spells are a potent combination of area control and debuff. Faerie Fire, Dancing Lights, Cone of Cold, Web, all and more are present.

The arena itself is even more brutal, There are known hazards such as getting caught in webbing, as well as dangerous tactical hazards like crystals that gush poisonous gas and geographically confusing tunnel passages. For especially sadistic DMs, there are even cracks in reality that form during the fight. If a character fails their save against that, it is an instakill.

What keeps Epic Encounters: Lair of the Drider from turning into a tedious slog of overlapping inconvenience is the nature of the drider boss. The booklet expressly states, as a result of its creation involving mental magic and body grafing, the Drider can't commit to a single idea or plan. This scatterbrained mentality is not just a great worldbuilding detail, it is something the players can use to their advantage.

My one critique of the encounter plagues all official D&D Fifth Edition adventures. While the Drider can cover the area in darkness, webbing, teleport, and mess with the environment, it is only on one axis of terrain. If you're a DM that allows aarokocra or owlin PCs in an adventure, they may trivialize this boss encounter through air superiority.

Should I Pick Up Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen and Lair of the Drider?

Overall, I love Steamforged Games' grotesque and esoteric take on drow in Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen and Lair of the Drider. The encounters in the former are brilliantly crafted with solidly scaled threats and the latter is a nail-biting exercise in resource and mobility management. If you want to spice up an underground encounter, you can't go wrong with either of these boxes.

The copies of Epic Encounters: Palace of the Drow Queen and Epic Encounters: Lair of the Drider used to produce this review were provided by the publisher. All photos were taken by the reviewer over the course of the review.