D&D 5E Enhancing "Storm King's Thunder"
tardigrade
Explorer
Agreed - can you elaborate on your workaround (or point me to a post with it) ?
I would also be interested in this - as it is I'm tempted to just let the Oracle give them the answer straight away (but adopt the idea mentioned elsewhere in this thread that each conch only transports one player, so they have to take out multiple giant lords).
MiraMels
Explorer
Agreed - can you elaborate on your workaround (or point me to a post with it) ?
I'd be happy to share what worked for me!
So, the Oracle room really serves two key purposes in the adventure: It informs the characters of the situation at Maelstrom that led to the breaking of the Ordning, and it directs the players to the Evil Giant Lords who are directly sowing chaos in the North. So removing the Oracle Room and its corresponding fetch quest means you gotta make sure those two element make it in somehow.
In my game, I have a character who is an Uthgardt, a character who is a Harper, and a character who goes out of her way to make friends wherever she goes. I had so many opportunities to seamlessly pass along bits and pieces of background and exposition over the course of their Chapter 3 travels that they zeroed in on one of the troublemakers before I'd even had a chance to run Chapter 4, it was awesome. I didn't give a conch early, for obvious reasons, but I doubt I'll have to try too hard to point them in the directions of the others later on.
The exposition around the breaking of the Ordning and the political situation at Maelstrom will be delivered to the party by the Court Oracle of Maelstrom, a lean hill giant woman who was banished to the surface by Mirran after she failed to predict Queen Neri's murder, who will be tracked down by Harshnag with the help of the party.
Davelozzi
Explorer
How do people feel about the amount of magic items and other treasure in the campaign as written? I haven't played 5e long enough to really have much of a handle on that, but considering the limit of attuning 3 items per character, reading through the book I feel like I am seeing an awful lot of calls to roll for magic items. Have you guys found the need to adjust or has it worked out fine as is?
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Prakriti
Hi, I'm a Mindflayer, but don't let that worry you
It was bordering on too much, but a lot of the rolls were pretty terrible. 5/8 of the random items in Ironslag were potions (and 3 of those were healing potions). The remaining three were a driftglobe, a cap of water breathing, and boots of elven-kind. Not exactly game-changers. And, in any case, the party missed most of the treasure. The only items they found were the boots and 2 potions.
No, the big game-changers for us were the non-random items: the greataxe of giant-slaying from Zymorven Hall and the Yakfolk chieftain's flaming greatsword. Those are amazing items to be handing out at levels 6-8.
Whatever you decide to do, I recommend rolling random treasure in advance so you can filter out any items you don't want in your game. For example, I never want to see another weapon of warning again, and some items are just too fiddly for my tastes (figurines of wondrous power, bags of tricks).
Prepping Chapter 4 "The Chosen Path" and quite unimpressed that Harshnag (or Blagothkus in my case) is unable to recognize runes other than for his own kind. That seems unlikely to be believable to my players...
My idea: these runes are ancient and their forms have evolved through the millennia such that the modern forms bear little resemblance. The giant can only comfortably recognize their own rune (because of history) and will have to guess to pick any of the others.
(I'm preparing a handout of the runes which I'll upload here once I'm done. Edit: It's here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1401 )
My idea: these runes are ancient and their forms have evolved through the millennia such that the modern forms bear little resemblance. The giant can only comfortably recognize their own rune (because of history) and will have to guess to pick any of the others.
(I'm preparing a handout of the runes which I'll upload here once I'm done. Edit: It's here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1401 )
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Inconnunom
Explorer
They discuss giants in greater detail in Volo's guide. It explains that most giants are illiterate, especially hill, frost, and fire. Even if Harshnag is a literary genius with common, there isn't anyone around that can teach him ancient giant runes. speaking a language =/= reading. Especially for giants who spend most of their days hunting, fishing, and just surviving in general.
Ah - well that helps explain things. So it's just a problem for me because I've got Blagothkus with the PCs and he's pretty fluent in the runes...
Davelozzi
Explorer
Would you consider Volo's guide to be a pretty useful resource for someone running this campaign? I've never had a chance to check it out.
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Inconnunom
Explorer
In a heartbeat. The book itself is really well written. The giants section is a great read that clues you into the culture. And the NPC's at the back are much better examples of "high level" NPCs than some in the MM. There is even a Kraken Priest.
Basically, a lot of tools that you can use to flesh out the world so it doesn't feel like a World of Warcraft style quest-chain to get loot.
