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

[MiraMels]

1) Since the party has access to the Harper Teleportation Circle network, the Bard can probably teleport to a big city to get the paladin True Rezzed. Which of the locations is most likely to have a 17th Level cleric they can ask nicely?

Waterdeep could plausibly have a friendly cleric of that stature. What faith is the paladin? I don't have the whole city memorized, but I know Waterdeep does have big temples to Selune and Sune. Silverymoon is also big, established, and high magic enough to have a cleric of that level, but you'd have to hoof it from Everlund.

 

[Jan Bernd ten Berg]

What's next?

Just wondering. Still a long way to go. The PC's are now going after Duke Zalto to get their hands on a conch and still have to a long way to go. But then, after defeating Iymrith, reinstating Hekaton on his throne, wrapping things up... What's next? The PC's will be 12th or 13th level and my players have told me that they want to continue with their characters. But what adventure can I play with them after finishing SKT?

Yes, I can think up something myself. Yes, I can have the PC's go after the other Giant Lords. Yes, I can do Tomb of Horrors from YP. But is there any other adventure/campaign I can play? All suggestions are welcome.

 

[Motorskills]

What's next?

Just wondering. Still a long way to go. The PC's are now going after Duke Zalto to get their hands on a conch and still have to a long way to go. But then, after defeating Iymrith, reinstating Hekaton on his throne, wrapping things up... What's next? The PC's will be 12th or 13th level and my players have told me that they want to continue with their characters. But what adventure can I play with them after finishing SKT?

Yes, I can think up something myself. Yes, I can have the PC's go after the other Giant Lords. Yes, I can do Tomb of Horrors from YP. But is there any other adventure/campaign I can play? All suggestions are welcome.

If you read upthread, there are various suggestions / concepts. Myself I am considering running a morphed Rise of Tiamat which will take my party from approx L15 through to L20; I figure stopping the return of a GODDESS will be a fitting endpoint to the campaign.

 

[Motorskills]

Another thought I have is that I haven't done much to foreshadow the Kraken Society. I don't much like the idea of Hekaton on a ship. Much better if he is chained to a dragon turtle floating in the Sea of Swords. But how do the players discover this? There is a clue in Maelstrom, the coin. I set this up in the beginning when the players messed about on a gambling boat from Yartar while at a fancy Waterdeep party. Perhaps the wizard of Pow Ming is the artificer of the chains. They will remember him because they wanted to steal his bag of holding. The only issue is that it is yet another Cult. Perhaps it is better if I make Pow Ming a Dragon Cultist.
Thoughts, ideas?

I think I am going to make the Kraken Society and the Cult of the Dragon flavours of the same thing....but not sure how to do that. Slakarthel (sp?) controls both maybe.

I love the idea of Hekaton being chained to a Dragon Turtle, that's epic.

 

[Demetrios1453]

What's next?

Just wondering. Still a long way to go. The PC's are now going after Duke Zalto to get their hands on a conch and still have to a long way to go. But then, after defeating Iymrith, reinstating Hekaton on his throne, wrapping things up... What's next? The PC's will be 12th or 13th level and my players have told me that they want to continue with their characters. But what adventure can I play with them after finishing SKT?

Yes, I can think up something myself. Yes, I can have the PC's go after the other Giant Lords. Yes, I can do Tomb of Horrors from YP. But is there any other adventure/campaign I can play? All suggestions are welcome.

Since your players are eager to keep playing like mine were, I delayed them getting to Iymrith until they defeated all the giant lords (Iymrith was blocking their scrying attempts, but the last giant lord they fought - Countess Sansuri in my game - had treasonous correspondence with Iymrith which allowed the storm giants to locate her).

If they want to continue even beyond that, drop in Against the Giants from TftYP. Given the sheer number of giants involved, it should still be a challenge even at higher levels, and could easily be tweaked to fit into a SKT campaign...

 

[hastur_nz]

after defeating Iymrith, reinstating Hekaton on his throne, wrapping things up... What's next? The PC's will be 12th or 13th level and my players have told me that they want to continue with their characters. But what adventure can I play with them after finishing SKT?

My game isn't even quite that far advanced, but I've also given it some thought, for the same reason. My initial thoughts were as tabled here, but now I'm thinking more like these options:
* the last two adventures from Rise of the Runelords (not just fighting giants, but very much big dungeon-crawls, though)
* the Against the Giants adventure book published for 4e (was Paragon tier i.e. mid-to-highish level - definitely lots of giants, but goes off the material plane and could tie in to the Primordial featured in Ironslag)
* the Epic-tier parts of Scales of War (4e; a 5e conversion is in progress) - you skip the whole Githwanki story line, and jump right in to a plot that centers around what the Dragons are really up to.
* a Paladin in Hell (2e) - definitely come epic-style adventures to be had, although the plot-hook could probably do with some changing

Personally I'm favouring the Scales of War, because it's not just yet more Giants, and it has a genuine Epic feel about it i.e. the PC's have grown too powerful for just the Sword Coast, now it's time to start plane-hopping and 'save the world'...

 

[hastur_nz]

1) Since the party has access to the Harper Teleportation Circle network, the Bard can probably teleport to a big city to get the paladin True Rezzed. Which of the locations is most likely to have a 17th Level cleric they can ask nicely?

2) Assuming they head next to the Shrine of Annam (I'm going to have Harshnag make an appearance and suggest it), I'm interested in all y'all's views on making the "barbarians at the gate" fight significantly tougher. (Location 4)

1) totally depends on your world view - in my world, maybe no-one? Maybe go find Elminster? WotC have tried, in 5e, to make the Sword Coats a place where level 10 PC's are heroes of legend, with no obvious high level NPC's around.

2) you know your group better than mine (I've never played with more than 6 players, and even that was a drag). But it sounds like you're putting up a huge number of moving parts. I think some of your environmental benefits for all are good, but adding lots of additional possible actions is just going to make the combat slow and complicated for you. Keep it simple - add a couple more berserkers, and beef up the three main NPC's, that should do. Do you have Volo's Guide? The NPC Archdruid is CR12, which can cast 9th level spells - as a rough guide, that's probably too tough when added to so many allies (and is kinda unbeleiveable to boot), but you could scale it back to make it more like level 13 max.

 

[Motorskills]

1) totally depends on your world view - in my world, maybe no-one? Maybe go find Elminster? WotC have tried, in 5e, to make the Sword Coats a place where level 10 PC's are heroes of legend, with no obvious high level NPC's around.

2) you know your group better than mine (I've never played with more than 6 players, and even that was a drag). But it sounds like you're putting up a huge number of moving parts. I think some of your environmental benefits for all are good, but adding lots of additional possible actions is just going to make the combat slow and complicated for you. Keep it simple - add a couple more berserkers, and beef up the three main NPC's, that should do. Do you have Volo's Guide? The NPC Archdruid is CR12, which can cast 9th level spells - as a rough guide, that's probably too tough when added to so many allies (and is kinda unbeleiveable to boot), but you could scale it back to make it more like level 13 max.

1) Yeah, I think I am unliking Disintegrate, makes things...messy. I think I will allow 7th level Rez to work as they have the dust, but still charge them all the money. They have a friendly 13th level cleric already on the books, so that actually works really well.

2) I'm thinning back some of the environmentals for the reasons you give, but I don't mind the moving parts in general terms. I just need a big enough DM's table is all.
I do own Volo's, and thanks for the reminder about all those high-level versions, very helpful!
However I think a CR12 Archdruid is just too OTT at this point...but I might use her later!

 

[Motorskills]

I'm continuing to fine-tune the upcoming encounter with the Great Worm tribe in the Shrine of Annam.

I had forgotten that I owned JValeur's guide to The Chosen Path, where he breaks this chapter down as expertly as ever.
JValeur's tactical suggestions might mean I need to scale back the pain a little more as well, we'll see!

 

[Yavathol]

I've had a great idea for Countess Sansuri!! The adventure doesn't specify exactly what she is trying to acheive, other than it involves dragon magic. The adventure also doesn't say which giant lord stole the Nightstone from the village. Finally the adventure doesn't place much emphasis on the Wyrmskull Throne, which apparently had a bigger part in the story in early drafts..

As I read the description of the Wyrmskull Throne, I realised that it is made of obsidian, like the Nightstone is. So what if Sansuri took the Nightstone in an attempt to create her own version of the Wyrmskull Throne? Having a throne like that would massively help convince other giants that she should replace Hekaton! But it needs four ancient dragon skulls, so that is why Sansuri has captured the young bronze dragon - she is trying to locate its parents in order to kill them.

In my campaign, the PCs are quite likely to get out of their depth when dealing with some of the dragons in the game, like Claugiyliamatar and Klauth. Having this plot point in play means that if the PCs are ever facing a TPK then Sansuri and some cloud giant followers can show up, kill and decapitate the dragon, and ignore the PCs, considering them beneath notice. I like having plausible in-game reasons for any deus-ex-machina rescues that may be needed