D&D 5E Enhancing "Storm King's Thunder"

This is a pretty good blog. A DMs report of AL play. http://www.firstsightsecondthoughts.net/?p=1570

Demetrios1453 said:

Tiger Totem: Just fine so far - just tonight [the PC Tiger Barbarian] he was using his powers to make some particularly prodigious jumps in Ironslag in SKT...

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Ha, I used these guys with an Uthgardt shaman today. STR 15 + Tiger + Jump spell......equals 75 long jump. Hello weakling party members!!!

***

Insane fight.

Halfway between Everlund and Silverymoon, 7 x 7th level PCs took on the Red Tigers, they received a charge after sorta triggering an ambush.

The make-up of the horde wasn't all that thematic, but it looked amazing and ran even better.

Five warbands each converged on the party (who had 6 Zhentarim Guards and 1 Zhentarim Veteran to assist).

5 x tribal warriors
2 x berserkers
1 x shaman
1 x statted barbarian (per PHB/SCAG) (2 x 3rd, 1 x 6th, 1 x 9th, 1 x 11th wielding two +1 battleaxes)
The statteds each rode a sabre-toothed tiger (who have a really nasty attack if they get a run-up)


Insane fight, went right down to the wire. Four PCs dropped (one three times!). One died but was revivified.



Shadowtop Cathedral worked beautifully. I used Turlang to explain about the Ordning and the disappearance of King Hekaton. The Enclave recruited a second PC. The party were then plant-teleported to Everlund.

In Everlund the party learned from the Harpers that the forge in Gauntlgrym had been "switched off" a couple of weeks ago. The Harpers have no idea why this is a big deal (why not just re-light it?), but they are aware that the dwarves have gone berserk in the Underdark searching for something(s) or someone(s).

(Of course what's happened is that the Drow are making their way towards Ironslag with a Titan-In-A-Bottle. At the next session, the party will come across some dead dwarves / live Drow who have surfaced at a convenient point because it is temporarily faster. Details TBD, but I won't let the party capture the Drow courier, too much fun to let them figure it out in Ironslag).

The party also learned at some point that six fire giants spent two days digging out the entrance to the Found Mine of Phandelver and then another "unplugging" the Forge of Spells before heading off towards Ironslag. They are starting to put two and two together.... (IMC the forge is actually the engineblock of the Vovinode). They also learned that the Zhentarim Jasper Dimmerchasm was helping those fire giants, but the Zhents are unclear if this was voluntary or not. Either way, the Zhents have offered a future favour if the party gets Jasper back.
(Jasper is the dwarf that is INSIDE the macehead of Duke Zalto. )

I ran the theft of magic items from Othovir's estranged family basically as written, albeit I doubled all the baddies. 4 Cambions and 2 Mages (MM).
The party picked the Arcane Lock, but didn't know that Alarm could be telepathic and got jumped real bad, I "warmed" them up with two Cones of Cold from the nearby mansion-tower.
Tough fight, lots of fun.

More in a couple of weeks!

Daern said:

Tell us more!

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Well, the party descended through the mines from the yakfolk settlement, freeing the slaves along the way. The slaves hid them in the ore carts, allowing them to get the drop on the salamander guard in the ore depository room. They freed the slaves there, who asked the party to free the remainder of the slaves in the slave wheel room. Unfortunately, the only way the slaves knew of to get there was to go through the upper level of the Foundry, where they would have to go through Zaltember and the ogres there, as well as having to deal with the fire giants below, who would likely alert the whole complex to their presence. After scouting that way, they decided that the only other option was to ride the buckets around the chain loop, although the slaves couldn't tell them who or what exactly was in the ore refining area. The party rode in the buckets through the main room, getting a great view of the Vonidod and Duke Zalto playing fetch with his hell hounds. Upon reaching the ore refining room, they quickly dispatched the orcs and giant there, then moved back to their west to another overview of the main room...

At this point I thought it would be a good time to introduce the drow and the Maegera subplot, so they witnessed the drow arriving with the iron flask and heard Duke Zalto saying how pleased he was that they had brought what he wanted to him and how much easier his plans would be now (never one mentioning what exactly the drow had brought, only that it came from Gauntlgrym). The drow went over to the adamantine forge, began to unstopper the iron flask... at which point one of the players shot it out of the drow's hands. I assigned a high AC and even stated that it would be at disadvantage, and he still made the roll! The flask flew away, the stopper fully opened, and now there was one angry flame primordial loose in Ironslag! Since it was the player's shot that technically freed Maegera, it was bound to serve him for an hour, so, upon it asking what the player commanded, the player not unnaturally told it to attack the drow and Duke Zalto. The drow dropped in two rounds, and Duke Zalto didn't last more than a few more (I fudged a bit and allowed Maegera's legendary action to suppress fire resistance to affect a fire giant's natural fire resistance - after all it would be an almost supernatural heat - which make Duke Zalto probably the first fire giant in D&D history to be burned to death!). At that point, the remaining fire giants and ogres who had come running to the main room (basically all the regular fire giants as well as the Duchess and Zaltember) thought discretion would be the better part of valor and rapidly fled through the main doors out of the complex, all pursued by a still angry Maegera. The party then went around looting, freeing the remaining slaves, reassuring freaked out goblins, and telling a relieved Cinderhild that her family was now likely all dead, all pretty much at their leisure. They then went back to the airship, followed the trail of destruction and burnt bodies, and found Maegera; they then commanded it to return to Ironslag, melt down the Vonidod, and then seal itself into the complex by welding the main doors shut. Granted, the dwarves of Citadel Adbar and Citadel Felbarr aren't particularly sure that this will keep it in, and were noticeably nervous about the situation when the party talked to them...

My guys are doing Ironslag before the Eye Of The All-Father, probably will get inside next session. Thanks so much for playtesting it for me.

My lot have just left the Storm Kings Court and are working on tracking down the source of the GG coin

Daern said:

Cool. I had a thought today that maybe Harshnag's gig is that he is going around digging up the Uthgart burial mounds to find ancient giant treasures in hopes of re-establishing the Ordering. Perhaps he asks the group to help him out and once they find something he wants to go to the Oracle to have it checked out. Just a thought.

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I actually like that a lot.

Since the party are not too far from Ascore, I will be running The Flying Misfortune shortly, to introduce the party to the concept of Imryith the Ancient Blue Dragon. On a separate track, perhaps at the Oracle, they will learn that an advisor to the Storm Giant Princess is causing disruption...who also has the name Imryith....


I'm still struggling with the airship. Why would Klauth care that the giants are running around causing havoc? Would helping the party make the havoc worse? Doesn't seem to make any sense

Default - just go with it, Klauth has his own reasons. Maybe he hates the Kraken, maybe he hates Imryith.

Option - just drop it. Not a fan of this, I like the idea of the party having air travel, and airships are cool!

Option - the airship doesn't belong to Klauth. Maybe Harshnag calls in a favour from the Grey Hands. That works, but is possibly undermined by the fact that the first thing the party does is explain to the crew that they got Harshnag killed (sorta!)


I'm moving away from tagging Rise of Tiamat onto the end of SKT. I don't think it is needed, and would feel very shoe-horned.

There is enough stuff in a "stretched" SKT to take the party to L20 (or thereabouts). An epic fight against a full-on Ancient Blue, plus all her allies (gargoyles, a couple of lesser Blues maybe) would be a perfectly climactic way to end the campaign.

I will have the party raid each of the five giant clans, and rob a bunch of Uthgardt shrines. Plenty of advancement possible there.

Motorskills said:

I actually like that a lot.

Since the party are not too far from Ascore, I will be running The Flying Misfortune shortly, to introduce the party to the concept of Imryith the Ancient Blue Dragon. On a separate track, perhaps at the Oracle, they will learn that an advisor to the Storm Giant Princess is causing disruption...who also has the name Imryith....


I'm still struggling with the airship. Why would Klauth care that the giants are running around causing havoc? Would helping the party make the havoc worse? Doesn't seem to make any sense

Default - just go with it, Klauth has his own reasons. Maybe he hates the Kraken, maybe he hates Imryith.

Option - just drop it. Not a fan of this, I like the idea of the party having air travel, and airships are cool!

Option - the airship doesn't belong to Klauth. Maybe Harshnag calls in a favour from the Grey Hands. That works, but is possibly undermined by the fact that the first thing the party does is explain to the crew that they got Harshnag killed (sorta!)


I'm moving away from tagging Rise of Tiamat onto the end of SKT. I don't think it is needed, and would feel very shoe-horned.

There is enough stuff in a "stretched" SKT to take the party to L20 (or thereabouts). An epic fight against a full-on Ancient Blue, plus all her allies (gargoyles, a couple of lesser Blues maybe) would be a perfectly climactic way to end the campaign.

I will have the party raid each of the five giant clans, and rob a bunch of Uthgardt shrines. Plenty of advancement possible there.

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There is definitely enough to stretch it out to level 15 or so with no issues whatsoever. Right now, my group has been asked by King Hekaton to retrieve all the conches from the remaining traitorous giant lords while he and his court try to locate Iymrith's lair. I'm letting them level up after each giant lord (instead of every 2 giant lords as recommended) since large combats with multiple giants and minions are still pretty challenging even with levels in the low teens.

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The thing to remember about Klauth is he's a raging paranoid freak, and anything that might be a threat to him is something that needs killing. Rampaging giants would probably be viewed as a threat.

My group have an uneasy relationship with the airship crew. The cultists think the party sickly sentimental and weak. Party are sure they will be betrayed anytime soon

Last night session ended in a flurry of poor rolls and bad choice of words so abject failure to blag way onto the Golden Dame

Next session starts with a roll for initiative. End of that scene will level them to 10th

Have combined SKT, ROT, POTA and eventually OOTA