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

[Motorskills]

Yeah my solution will probably be to eliminate the airship.

Actually that's even easier.

 

[Motorskills]

View attachment 77311

Explain these to me, I'm probably not using these right. Where do they appear (on shields or clothes or homes, etc)?
Are they simply symbols that are cool to look at? Or are they actually part of a language?
Do they have actual power?
Do different Giant species use different runes?

(Please provide SKT page references if it helps.

 

[Motorskills]

I like the idea. Another option could be that Imryth is trying to weaken the giants so that they are unable to organize resistance to Tiamat.

Actually having the Giants attack the small folk deals with both the main blocks to Tiamat's glorious return!

 

[Motorskills]

Some shameless self-promotion, if that's alright:

I've just uploaded The Flying Misfortune - A Storm King's Thunder Adventure to the DM's Guild. I've created it to specifically address to points I found lacking in STK: the lack of foreshadowing for Felgolos (Chapter 9) and Iymrith, the Doom of the Desert. Besides that, it's designed to be an exciting adventure to use during Chapter 3 or 4, that should challenge a party of 6th to 10th level.

The download includes:

• A seven page adventure - split into two parts, this adventure first has your party squaring of with Zhentarim dragoncatchers and a bronze dragon, and later sneaking into an ancient dwarven city in the desert, where two blue dragons are laired.
• Two new items - the netlauncher, a mundane contraption great for catching dragons and giants alike, as well as the magical pipe weed Yondalla's Delight.
• Two handmade battlemaps - one is a 30x40 forest road map that has great general usability, and the other is a huge 100x50 map of the desert ruins of Ascore. Both maps come with and without grid, and the map of Ascore has both a DM and a player version.

Even if you don't run the adventure, the forest map is perfect for running random encounters while travelling the Sword Coast, and the map of Ascore can be used if your players find their way there.

I hope you'll take a look at it. It's 1.99$ at the moment, which I think is fair - but let me know what you think

I found your Triboar guide so useful, and I'm using Kraken's Gamble right now, so much fun!!!...I will squeeze in The Flying Misfortune somewhere, somehow. (I may move one of the tribal sites to be close to Ascore for example.)

All your ValeurSKT goodness can be found here!

 

[Motorskills]

I'm not sure of the timeline for the Vovinode construct that the fire giants are hunting, and the Forge of Spells in LMoP....but I made the forge the coal-fired engine of the Vovinode.

Having cleared Wave Echo, all the party know is that no-one would build a forge (furnace) like that, not even a magical engineering one. It was re-purposed from...something.

This works really well. I already dumped the doppelganger from LMoP, makes no sense, and instead of the Black Spider being a renegade, he's actually part of the Drow House that is working with Duke Zalto.

Giant runes (see above!) are inscribed all over the furnace.

I also considered having the engine having been powered by Maegara back in the day (before the Dawn Titan ended up as a cooking implement in Gauntlegrym). Would that work?

 

[Motorskills]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but many of the adventure maps are now available to download from Dragon+:

http://www.dragonmag.com/5.0/#!/art...?loadFresh=true&title=11_22_Maps of the Month

Am I missing something, or is that just the upper level of Ironslag? Is that map available elsewhere?

(In which vein, what about maps for Grudd Haug? I'm less bothered about that, I would just throw JValeur some more cash. )

 

[Motorskills]

I'm just popping in to say that it looks like I'm going to be playing in this adventure, so I won't be able to participate much in this thread for fear of spoilers--at least, not for a while. But for now I'll just leave links to a couple of other related threads that I've found (but again, not read).

Dragon Listing
Background Bonds

Koren spotted these two, but I don't think they are linked in the main page.

Arveiaturace

Arauthator


And of course, as soon as I post this, I spot that you can scroll down the list. : oops : <sigh>

 

[Daern]

The giant runes are magic items in the back. Some of them are kind like these fetishes that can be bonded with an object. So, like, one of the runes can be bonded with you favorite weapon and make it more badass.

 

[Motorskills]

The giant runes are magic items in the back. Some of them are kind like these fetishes that can be bonded with an object. So, like, one of the runes can be bonded with you favorite weapon and make it more badass.

Ah right, I knew I was missing something, thanks!



Edit: and apologies for spamming this thread last night, I was multi-tasking.....badly.

 

[cfmcdonald]

Having now browsed through the amazing Out of the Abyss and seeing what a (IMO) really good mega-adventure looks like, I think I'm giving up on trying to make Storm King's Thunder work.

I will probably mine it for the Sword Coast adventuring info from Chapter 3 and the individual giant lairs/plots (the fire giant one is especially fun and could be the basis of its own mini-campaign), but the overarching structure just doesn't work for me.