Advice on running the Standing Stone

[Altamont Ravenard]

- Sunless Citadel *check*
- Forge of Fury *check*
- Speaker in Dreams *near completion*

So I'll be running the Standing Stone soon. I am looking for Dm advice and Player stories for this particular module. Readers be warned that a lot of spoilers are to be anticipated.

I did a search on the forums, and the only thread I found was Klaus'. There is some information there, but barely a page's worth. The main thing I get from that thread is that modifications are in order if the adventure is to be fun.

Thanks in advance!

AR

 

[Klaus]

My first main advice (after finishing that module): Make the adventurers look tired, worn out and skinny from the shortage of food. Unless you *really* stress that out, the PCs will be suspicious from the get-go (that's what happened to my crew).

The Burial Mound: repetitive and boring. After a couple of tussles with a wight or two, just let the PCs navigate the maze to the burial chamber. If they gain Saithnar's respect, he orders the bound elementals to shape a straight exit for them.

What is your party composition?

 

[kerakus]

I had loads of fun with the Hobyahs. My players hated those things with a passion by the time we finished the adventure, mostly because I do voices at the game table and made their signature "Hobyah" very shrill and annoying.

My group lost a character in the barrow-mound in one of the traps (a rockfall if I remember correctly). Conversely, they breezed through the final encounter. Also, they required a little nudging to figure out what the deal was with the paladin-ghost.

Some notes about tying things together in the series: I changed all of the dwarven weapons from the Forge of Fury to be crafted from Nephelium (the clear steel mentioned in the back of the Sunless Citadel from which Azun-gund was crafted) and had Azun-gund be from the Duergar squatting in the Forge. This is important to Standing Stone because the main bad guy's ex-familiar body guard wields one of the weapons from the Forge. Also, I incorporated Idalla (the Succubus from Forge) into the ongoing storyline as being recruited by the demons throughout the series (notably the Cuckoo from Standing Stone) after her release thanks to the PCs. If you intend to have something of a storyline connecting the adventures, arranging the Cuckoo's escape from the final battle in Standing Stone is advisable. The only adventure I didn't run from the series was Deep Horizon. I just couldn't find a way for it to fit with the rest of the series that made sense and the adventure itself seemed like a chore to run.

Q

 

[Darthjaye]

Hit the story hours and look for Wulf Ratbane's group escapades through the adventure paths and Meepo's by Americano. Both get to the standing stone. Both have some info on how they ran it in particular. Our group made it to here. Our next (if I remember them right) will be Heart of Nightfang Spire. Good luck and you might want to do a little bit of editing before you run it.

 

[Saeviomagy]

When I played through this, the following points stood out:
Travelling through the forest was very annoying. Not challenging or difficult, just annoying.

Most of the encounters were annoying.

There was basically zero evidence to be gained from the whole thing. The entire adventure seems like it's just one big red herring. Of course this is probably from our DM's habit of making every NPC an uncooperative git, but I get the impression that the adventure is written that way. Mind you, if EVERY character we met wasn't a git, then maybe we'd have a better chance of picking out the evil ones.

The barrow maze was annoying. If I was to do it over, I'd probably just do what I originally intended and use spells to burrow into the center.

The hobyahs are more than annoying. I mean really - totally immune to all damage not caused by wood?? Just give them a DR like every other creature in the game, or regeneration.

Essentially, the way the adventure works is one of two things.

a) The characters stumble around randomly, accomplishing nothing. Eventually the bad guys get bored and attack.

b) The characters through one of the following skills
knowledge:nature, knowledgelanes, sense motive work out that the adventurers are bad guys within the first 10 minutes of their first encounter with them and kill them.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

My first main advice (after finishing that module): Make the adventurers look tired, worn out and skinny from the shortage of food. Unless you *really* stress that out, the PCs will be suspicious from the get-go (that's what happened to my crew).

You mean Dyson and his crew? Ok.

What is your party composition?

Sure players:
- Human Monk
- Halfling Fighter
- Human Rogue

Players that will be there ¾ of the time:
- Human Wizard
- Elven Cleric

Player I can't really count on:
- Half-orc Fighter

Player that will come back from China in Mars (if we aren't done yet)
- Elven Cleric no.2

The core group has NO magic users, that's the main problem, a problem I'll probably be facing until the end of the adventure path.

AR

 

[Klaus]

Ooh, tough.

I can expect lots of trouble fighting the Horseman. Maybe you should give your fighter a ghost touch weapon.

With only 3 sure PCs, you might want to scale down some of the encounters, specially the showdown with the Fey Skirmishes.

I changed the hobyah's DR to cold iron. They are demons, and I wanted to keep a consistent reasoning for my DR (devils = silver, demons = cold iron).

Whenever the elven cleric player isn't there, have the character do some investigation in the forest, trying to locate a grugach village that has been incomunicado, on behalf of the nearest elf ruler. Then, if you need to rescue your PCs from a dead-end or a TPK, the elf cleric shows up with one of the fey skirmishers in tow, waving a white flag of truce.

The biggest problem you'll face is not the lack of spell-users (which is relevant), but the lack of wilderness-oriented classes. You might want to downplay the difficulties of cross-country travel.

With a non-magic core group, you'll have to turn the adventure (and the entire Adventure Path) into a sword-and-sorcery-style campaign. There are several encounters that can't be won through force of arms, and that's pretty much all your core group has. In this case, there's the Cuckoo, Dyson, the Horseman, the Elementals...

And with no core cleric, any undead you throw at the party will be significantly harder to kill (specially if Henwen starts animating the dead villagers to fight the PCs in the final fight). And don't even get me started on the rogue's disappointment with the next adventure, 'Heart of the Nightfang Spire' (all undead = no sneak attack ever).

 

[Plane Sailing]

I had tremendous fun with this module (much more than the esteemed Wulf Ratbane) - you can read of my parties adventures in the module from these page onwards of my storyhour http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=122&page=16&pp=20 (starting at post 310).

The key thing for the module to my mind was ignoring the stage directions in the module and taking full advantage of the role-playing opportunities of the various forces. Another DM who had used the module successfully had a good plot element he added - a party member accidentally came across the ghostly horseman grieving over the bodies of tortured and slain unicorns - one of the first hints that there was something odd going on here. A good conversation with Saithnar can really help too.

Cheers

 

[Klaus]

For this adventure I arranged a flowchart of events (like the one in the end of Speaker In Dreams). It really helped me account for player actions and what kind of clues I needed to plant.

 

[ivocaliban]

My advice on the lack of magic-users is simply to create an NPC who can assist on that front. I ran this adventure with a bard as the only arcane spellcaster and the party was nearly crushed. Of course the magic-user need not really want to help the PCs, but he/she might be an old adversary of Dyson or something along those lines and realizes a chance to have some muscle to back him/her up. Also, the fact that you don't have a reliable cleric in the party could be a big problem.

I had a lot of fun with this one, tying it in with my Tharizdun meta-plot. It's the only WotC published adventure I've run, save those from the website. My PCs however didn't feel so good after their encounter with Dyson and his circus freaks.