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

[JValeur]

I've been inspired by the discussions here, as well as the great work from McGovern (which can be found at the DM's Guild). I haven't read through the entire adventure, but so far I know that I want to.

• Make Hekaton's disappearance the source of the giants' unrest. I think I'll leave the throne vacated, or only under the stewardship of Serissa, until Hekaton either returns or is confirmed dead.
• Give more vague clues, but stronger motivation for which city the party should travel towards after Nightstone. I don't like the 'travel 800 miles north to tell someone that someone else died, without promise of reward or real sense of urgency'. I have a really hard time seeing my players going for that. Instead I want to leave subtle clues for the party, about which city to travel towards: a) Morak Ur'gray tells the party, when rescued, that he's received letters from his cousin, Augrek Brighthelm, in Bryn Shander far to the north, about frost giants roaming the frigid north, apparently looking for something, but he never thought they'd have giant problems this far south. Perhaps the northerners, more accustomed to giants, would know more? b) Use Felgolos - see below - and have him throw an off-hand remark about Goldenfields, a town less than a 100 miles away being attacked by hill giants. c) have Daphne Featherstone, Lady Nandar's lady-in-waiting say that Naxene Drathkala, a studious woman with the Lord's Alliance, visited Lady Nandar not that long ago, and had impressed the lady with her vast knowledge of giants and dragons. If the party wants to know more, visiting her in Triboar might be a good bet.
• Use Felgolos as a recurring ally, starting already in Chapter 1 (stolen from McGovern). I loved the idea of him crashing into the temple steeple during the battle with the Seven Snakes, warning the party of Zhentarim in Daggerford and hill giants attacking Goldenfields a short while ago (see above), before flying off again, looking for more Zhentarim to slaughter. I'll make him a young dragon too, instead of adult.
• Foreshadow Klauth. When the party is being flown towards Bryn Shander, or otherwise travelling in the area of the Klauthen Vale, I'll have Zephyros (or just a random NPC) go 'We'll have to make a detour here, this is the Klauthen vale, home to the red dragon Klauth. 'Old Snarl' is not one you want to anger, bla bla bla'. A few omens and warnings make him more significant when his skyship gift shows up in chapter 4.

I'll be adding more to this, but in general I really love this adventure, in the sense that it allows you ample opportunity to alter and enhance it, while keeping the overall arch the same, and providing a plethora of interesting locales and NPC's.

 

[Daern]

[MENTION=27425]Demetri[/MENTION]o1453 Great stuff. Please keep posting about your sessions. It will be really cool to see how you roll through this one. Any big changes you've made or are you running more by the book?
[MENTION=6795723]JValeur[/MENTION] Those mission hooks are exactly what I'm talking about. Just a little more in terms of possible information.

 

[pukunui]

Here's a good size map of Triboar.

 

[Demetrios1453]

@Demetrio1453 Great stuff. Please keep posting about your sessions. It will be really cool to see how you roll through this one. Any big changes you've made or are you running more by the book?
@JValeur Those mission hooks are exactly what I'm talking about. Just a little more in terms of possible information.

I'm running it by the book with a few minor additions. I had the party run into a hill giant after leaving Nightstone but before Zephyros picked them up, in order to buff up the 4-to-5 leveling experience a bit (and to drop a hint on the hill giant storyline - the hill giant was stealing livestock and stated a few times "Must get food for Guh!"), which otherwise seemed a bit sparse at just 2 encounters at most. I'm adding a couple of side adventures in and around Triboar as well like I mentioned in my earlier post to buff the 5-to-6 leveling experience and to form a greater connection with the town. I don't plan on changing much in the upcoming chapters other than seeding some hints concerning Harshnag and the Eye of the All-Father (the party will come across a recently attacked farm, but the attacking giants were driven off by a friendly frost giant; sages the party may confer with have heard vague rumors of a giant oracle up in the mountains).

Later in the campaign, I do plan on running all five giant encounters, just with four of them after the party's successful or attempted rescue of Hekaton - Iymrith will have made it so the storm giants' scrying pool can't find her, so it will take some time for the storm giants to locate her lair. Meanwhile, the storm giants do know where the rebellious giant lords are from their scrying pool, and since perhaps the giant lords may also know some information on Iymrith's whereabouts, the storm giants encourage the party to go defeat them and gather what information they can find. I also plan for the evil storm giant princesses to stage a coup while the party is out dealing with the last of the rebel giant lords, making the storm giant settlement a hostile encounter once the party returns (and as another nod to the adventure's King Lear roots, although I probably won't go as far as Shakespeare did!). This should get them to level 14 - 15 when they go fight Iymrith, and extend the campaign a bit (and allow the use of all the giant settlements, which is encouraged on page 224 anyway).

 

[Daern]

Cool. I had a thought today that maybe Harshnag's gig is that he is going around digging up the Uthgart burial mounds to find ancient giant treasures in hopes of re-establishing the Ordering. Perhaps he asks the group to help him out and once they find something he wants to go to the Oracle to have it checked out. Just a thought.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Oh also one further thing I plan to do as well - drop some hints that the party shouldn't just go in guns blazing when it comes to the storm giant section. That's the one real flaw I find with the adventure (although it's a rather minor one that can be worked around) - that if not suitably forewarned, an aggressive party can easily throw the adventure completely off the rails by alienating Serissa. Harshnag is going to be the biggest help here - undoubtedly the characters will want some information on the storm giant court, and Harshnag will volunteer what little he knows (but that should hopefully be enough to keep the party from indiscriminately murdering the evil princesses). I wouldn't be surprised if they ask the oracle as well, so that's another good place to drop hints not to go crazy in the storm giant settlement.

 

[Demetrios1453]

@Demetrios1453 Great stuff. Please keep posting about your sessions.

So I ran the Triboar part of the campaign today. The party did, with a bit of encouragement from the town leaders, confront Hyuth Kolstaag and his gargoyles. The gargoyles tried to stop them from reaching the mansion, so a melee broke out, which drew the mage's attention. My sorcerer was busy using fireballs, scorching rays, and so on the gargoyles and taunted Hyuth asking if he liked his gargoyles deep fried. Hyuth responded "You can do deep fried, I can do flash frozen!" and proceeded to cast cone of cold and knock two characters unconscious (including the sorcerer). Luckily, the party was quickly able to subdue the mage and drag him back to the town keep for justice.

They then were tasked to see if the orc attacks were still happening in the outer farms and ranches. They had a nasty little fight with a bulette and an earth cultist (borrowed from PotA - after all SKT has air cultists, so why not earth cultists as well?). They found the town guard was in the mopping-up stage of the orc attack and returned back to Triboar...

... where immediately they had to deal with the fire giant attack. I have to say, this was one of the most fun and challenging battles I've done as a DM. Five characters, five NPCs, two fire giants, twelve magmen, six orogs, and five orcs on five axebeaks all crashing around a town partially on fire made for a chaotic and interesting battle. The characters quickly realized that the fire giants were searching for something and weren't immediately looking for a fight, so they wisely focused in on the lesser attackers. NPC positioning made it interesting, as two NPCs (Othovir and Ghelryn) are basically cut off from the rest of the characters and NPCs by the placement of the attack (and Othovir's shop is one of the places directly attacked). Ghelryn is tough enough that he was able to hold his own, but Othovir dropped unconscious during the attack and was only just barely saved from death (and the characters losing his quest). The characters and the rest of the NPCs wore down the other attackers while the fire giants dug out the section of the Vonindod they were looking for, and they were just pulling it free as the last of the remaining attackers were taken care of (by sheer good luck and not DM medding). The party's barbarian attacked them while they attempted to withdraw, but one quickly disengaged with the Vonindod fragment, leaving the other as a temporary rearguard. The giant pummeled the barbarian to unconsciousness and then withdrew himself. The party got the giants down to the 50s and 90s in hit points, so it would have been interesting to see how bad it would have gotten had the giants not been wanting to withdraw...

 

[Daern]

Rad. How did you lay out the battle? Did you draw out the town and put markers or minis? Did it have a bit of a wargame feel?

 

[Demetrios1453]

Rad. How did you lay out the battle? Did you draw out the town and put markers or minis? Did it have a bit of a wargame feel?

Lots of minis. We ran out minis, so we used pennies for the magmen. And since we had no huge minis, the giants were represented by figurines of Deadpool and Harley Quinn that one of my players had. Which made for some interesting remarks during the battle...

 

[One_Shots]

Does anyone know of any fan-created maps for this adventure? Blando's & Schley's offerings are a bit spare.

Perhaps a loyal retainer was able to trap Queen Neri's soul in a ring and whisk her away before being killed by Kraken Society operatives?

Or she could've simply been wearing a Ring of Mind-Shielding.