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

[MiraMels]

I'm also interested in this.

Also I'm wondering about adding in Against the Giants (which starts at level 11) before dealing with Iymrith. Or possibly after. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I think it makes more sense to run it before confronting Iymrith. I haven't done the math, but if you ran more of the pre-Malestrom chapters than you need to, you could likely get enough XP to hit 11th level. And then, if you run through Against the Giants, and then circle back to fight Iymrith, the PCs would be, what, 12th or 13th level? It would make more sense for characters of their stature to be facing Iymrith, and you as the DM could pull fewer punches. Sounds like fun!

(If you were running your game AL-legal, however, you'd have to run Against the Giants after completing Storm King's Daughters. The level cap for SKD is 10th, and you have to be tier three to play Against the Giants.)

 

[Prakriti]

Re: Iymrith.

The fight was pretty close for my group; one character died, and a TPK was not far off. That's about where I wanted things to be, difficulty-wise, so I was happy.

A few notes:
* The party was level 10, and there were 5 characters.
* I had the yuan-ti malisons attack the party, but run if they themselves were attacked. Most of the yuan-ti, however, didn't get a chance to run before they died. (Also, the book is inconsistent about how many yuan-ti malisons are present. I opted for six.)
* I never gave the party the Claw of the Wyrm Rune, which made the fight significantly harder.

 

[tardigrade]

I'm still looking for ways to give the Kraken Society a more prominent role throughout the campaign; I'd like Slarkrethel to have at least one secret plan that Iymrith is unaware of. One possibility I'm considering is making the recovery or destruction of Ulutiu's necklace, causing the melting of the Great Glacier and flooding of low-lying areas of the Sword Coast, one of Slarkrethel's secret objectives (is there any information about whether the formation of the Great Glacier in -2550DR changed the sea level of Faerun, and if so how?) but I'm open to other suggestions. We're also likely to have a brief detour via the Purple Rocks for some Innsmouth-y fun, and I'll be using the Kraken's Gamble adventure from DMs Guild later on too.

 

[Prakriti]

I'm still looking for ways to give the Kraken Society a more prominent role throughout the campaign

In my campaign, I minimized the Kraken Society's role as much as possible. Slarkrithel was never mentioned, either in name or in allusion. I think you're setting yourself up for trouble if you do otherwise, since SKT is convoluted enough as it is. If Slarkrithel's role is revealed to the party, then I'm afraid they'll want to go off in search of him, rather than Iymrith, as they won't know who the real villain of the campaign is.

If it had come down to it, I think I would have told my players that Iymrith had hired the Kraken Society herself and that Hekaton had been shielded from divination with "ancient dragon magic" or something, leaving Slarkrithel out of it entirely. It makes about as much sense, and it tightens up the plot.

 

[Prakriti]

We have a Totem Barbarian who took the Elk totem feature at 6th level, which doubles the overland movement speed of the party, so they get around quite quickly without any of the additional movement options the book allows for. Between her and the Harper's teleport circles, I'm not sure they're going to need any additional travel abilities. (All the better, the airship is a little silly for my tastes.)

I liked the airship because it sped up traveling, which started to get dull after so many sessions. It also created some interesting new combat situations (fighting on an Airship!). And, of course, there's the fire elemental, which my players really seemed to enjoy (and almost named Calcifer).

The main purpose of the airship, however, is transporting the giant relics, some of which weigh a hundred or more pounds. Without the airship, I'm not sure how my party would have transported them.

 

[MiraMels]

I liked the airship because it sped up traveling, which started to get dull after so many sessions. It also created some interesting new combat situations (fighting on an Airship!). And, of course, there's the fire elemental, which my players really seemed to enjoy (and almost named Calcifer).

The main purpose of the airship, however, is transporting the giant relics, some of which weigh a hundred or more pounds. Without the airship, I'm not sure how my party would have transported them.

OH RIGHT, the giant relics. The barbarian is also an Uthgardt herself (she took the Uthgardt Tribe Member background from SCAG), so when I was first looking at the adventure to prep, I cut the whole 'loot the Uthgardt holy sites' quest.

 

[Demetrios1453]

OH RIGHT, the giant relics. The barbarian is also an Uthgardt herself (she took the Uthgardt Tribe Member background from SCAG), so when I was first looking at the adventure to prep, I cut the whole 'loot the Uthgardt holy sites' quest.

Interesting, I had an Uthgardt barbarian in my group as well, and he was perfectly fine with looting rival tribes' sites, as long as his own tribe's remained undisturbed. In his opinion, if they allowed their holy sites to be looted, they were obviously inferior and not worthy of being considered true Uthgardt...

 

[MiraMels]

Interesting, I had an Uthgardt barbarian in my group as well, and he was perfectly fine with looting rival tribes' sites, as long as his own tribe's remained undisturbed. In his opinion, if they allowed their holy sites to be looted, they were obviously inferior and not worthy of being considered true Uthgardt...

That works. In my case, the player of the half-orc barbarian had her own copy of Sword Coast Adventure Guide, and she was really keen on the characterization of the Uthgardt that you find in there, but the characterization the Uthgardt get in Storm King's Daughters seems a lot different? So I kept the SCAG characterization, and just swapped the Reghed Barbarians in as the "hostile mook barbarians" because they didn't really have much differentiating them from the Campaign Uthgardt, so I let them have the Mook Role and spun out a much more cooperative and unified culture for the Uthgardt.

Plus, I found the notion of raiding burial sites to be distasteful. "Magic Plot Room demands you collect Plot Tokens and put them in the Coin Slot before it will dispense Plot" wasn't a compelling reason to ask my heroic characters to desecrate holy sites, so I came up with a workaround.

 

[Prakriti]

"Magic Plot Room demands you collect Plot Tokens and put them in the Coin Slot before it will dispense Plot" wasn't a compelling reason to ask my heroic characters to desecrate holy sites, so I came up with a workaround.

My interpretation of the ancestral mounds was that they existed before humans arrived in the region. The giant relics certainly did. The Uthgardt simply moved in and claimed everything as their own. In that sense, by returning the relics to the giants (their rightful owners), the characters are actually putting things right.

Of course, even if you accept that line of moral reasoning, it doesn't make the fetch-quest nature of it all any more palatable. As a DM, I found that whole chapter pretty dull and uninteresting. There was little no dramatic conflict outside of the Great Wurm Tribe's cavern, as most of the other sites are empty. I'm not sure if my players felt the same way, but they did end up looting 4 mounds instead of 1, so maybe they got a kick out of it. But I didn't feel like SKT really got underway until we we reached the giant lords and put all the cross-country wandering behind us.

 

[Davelozzi]

I didn't feel like SKT really got underway until we we reached the giant lords and put all the cross-country wandering behind us.

Interesting. I was really looking to making the most of the exploration of the Sword Coast North aspect of this campaign, but then, I've always had a soft spot for the region. I wonder if my players will disagree.


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