Dungeon Magazine Annual TOC?

[jasonbostwick]

HDoes anyone know if they did some rewriting to make it work as a standalone adventure or was it pretty much standalone from the beginning?

I flipped through it yesterday with exactly that question in mind, and as far as I could tell they didn't do any rewrites to the module. The module is definitely not standalone, set as a grand reveal for the first half of the SoW series.

The 'behind the scenes' sidebars don't really offer any suggestions into making it a standalone either, so I suppose the entire point of including it was to get people interested enough in the AP to subscribe to DDI to see the earlier adventures.

 

[Netherstorm]

Out of the paragon tier Scales adventures, Stone-Skinned King is probably the one with the least involvement in the path and the one most easily used as a stand-alone. But partly for that reason, it is also the weakest of all the paragon adventures.

If they needed a short one, I think Alliance at Nefelus would have been much better.

Spoiler

The encounter where you're on an ice-cutting ship and you have to plow through a glacier that's got about 8 frost giants on it ready to kill you is one of the best encounters in the entire path. And the battle at the end is epic, too. It's a two headed white dragon that's an exarch of tiamat!

Stone-Skinned King's final fight is really good, but the module is killed by the fact that after you meet the king, you and your fellow heroes are supposed to sit around for two days in his tiny lair to wait to talk to him again. Even while the king's enemies burrow into the lair to try to kill you.

 

[firesnakearies]

I've run Icy Spire. It's a pretty weak adventure. Nothing particularly special or cool about it at all, really.