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

[Motorskills]

Well that went.....places.


So the party (L11 x 7) was packing up in the feast hall of the Shrine to Annam. They were all set to oust WormBlod and Fryst, his recently-intelligent Adult White Dragon, from the Great Worm tribe. Credit to our druid, he proposed to use Windwalk, turns the whole party in gas, and they can get to the Great Worm clanhold very quickly, and without cold damage.

Our gridded floorplan can just about fit the whole of the Statue Room with 5x5 squares....that room is 280 x 280


As they were leaving the druid (highest PP) spots that the portal is open. they chit chat a bit and then a storm giantess walks out, and they give each other verbal.

The party doesn't recognise her as Iymrith (no idea why they didn't twig, we had just spent an hour recapping! )


She demands they leave this holy place, they give her grief. It kicks off almost immediately. At 7:1, the storm giantess goes down pretty fast, even with Foresight pre-loaded.

At that point she transforms into the Ancient Blue. This DOES take them by surprise. I is a happy DM.



So I had done a bit of research...trying to find out just how big an Ancient Blue actually is. Couldn't find much online, there were a few references to Ancient Red. However that kinda matched my guesstimate, so I went with my original plan.

Head: 20L x 20W (15' reach)
Body: 80L x 40W (15' reach, wings and claws)
Tail: 80L x 20W (20' reach, and see below)

So I had cut-outs for the three segments. This thing was ENORMOUS.

I sent the relevant PCs flying when she expanded into their space.

I gave her 4 Portent points (made four players roll them for me in secret, write down the number and sign it - all the better for the blamestorming later )

I treated the regular tail attack like the whip-pierce thing that the Alien Queen had, very evocative as a Legendary Action. Same damage as the book, but piercing.

I added another attack style - Tail Sweep - the tail can move 90 degrees, and everyone in the "cone" is hit. Same damage as the book, but bludgeoning, and a chance to get knocked thrown out of the cone and knocked prone (similar to the Legendary Wing attack).

The battle itself took a long time, and I needed to cheat hard all the way through.

I started off with giving her the standard HP, but by the end she had 750HP.

They countered a lot of her spells, and she quickly ran out of Legendary resists.

Her Contingency spell failed, as did her attempt to escape.

Wasn't looking at all good for Team Blue.

It was then that I revealed my Plan C (or maybe it was Plan E by that point).


The party "woke up" back in the Feast Hall, with everything exactly as it was before the fight.

A quick chat with the Oracle revealed that this had all been all a Foretell Future spell / ritual / something cast by Iymrth - she is an Omen-Reader after all - thanks [MENTION=6801060]Demetrios1453[/MENTION].

The Oracle gave them the same play-through as Imyrith had received.

So Iymrith knows all the about the party...and how massive a threat they are.

But she doesn't know that they know....


****

I already announced that I will be tweaking some of [her] stuff before another such fight. Principally with seven or eight bad (good!) guys beating on her she needs more Reactions / more Legendary Actions, and maybe more Legendary Resists, something along those lines.

I really like the Tail Sweep, very evocative, I'll probably make it a Legendary Action costing 2 points.

I also didn't use her Portents to proper effect, my bad (especially as I actually have a Portent Wizard in AL).


Her breath weapon is super nasty of course.


***

So after that, they executed their original plan to hit the Great Worm clan, with the ShaWoman Noori leading the way.

I kinda messed this whole thing up, but I'll figure it out, and I don't think the players realised how nonsense it all was.

Short version, they killed the dragon (who had been receiving insights from Iymrith and passing them onto Wormblod), and Wormblod. This allowed the true totem of the clan to be released (the Couatl). I'll patch the backstory when we next meet up in a few weeks, but the idea is that the party are now the heroes / saviours of the Great Worm tribe. Something like that.


So the deal was that the ShaWoman would give them the giant relic, which they now have. So they can use the shield to "fuel" the conch. I'm guessing they will head straight to Maelstrom, before Iymrith jumps them for real, but they have options in the desert, and also high above Parnast (Blagothkus as a straight swap for Sansuri).


***


Lessons learned...still working on that. But it's a damn long list.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

For some strange reason my players have decided that they want to go find all of the relics instead of taking the two they now have, back to the Eye. There is literally no reason for them to do this other than that they think there are magic items waiting for them (I rolled some random treasure in the previous ones and changed the relic sites to be far more interesting than the bland boringness they're presented as).

Having already murdered Reghed barbarians (the Tribe of the Elk, no less) for no reason whatsoever other than that they were there, the leader of that tribe has sent assassins and champions after the party to either kill them or bring them to justice. Now that this tribe has also learned that the party has received the "Defenders of Icewind Dale" title from Sheriff Markham, the Elk tribe has declared war on the Ten Towns, and is using the incident as a means to unite the other Reghed tribes. Having to go through Uthgardt territory to pursue the party for vengeance has also meant forming an alliance with the Uthgardt. Now that the party has also raided the sacred places of the Uthgardt (the burial mounds), the Uthgardt have begun to talk to each other, and the Reghed tribes, about a super alliance.

So by the time the PC's have gotten to the next burial mound, they're going to find it well protected. And as they traverse the region more, they're going to start to see Uthgardt tribes working together, all of whom have heard, via the shamans and druids of the tribes, the stories of the murderous, pillaging, blasphemous PC's.

What kinda annoys me is that one player in particular is mostly responsible for this, and thinks he's playing a good character, despite outright, cold-blooded murder on numerous occasions. And the more I've put in the consequences of those actions as a dynamic world, the more he seems to get upset at the reaction, as if it's somehow surprising.

All of this meant that I didn't get to run the cool story about the aarakocra yet, and will probably end up wasting the next session dealing with the PC's trying to attack obviously overwhelming (100% TPK chance if they try to take on these defenders of the burial mound) odds. And I'm betting they will, because so far that's been their MO.

Oh well, it's not like I liked SKT anyway.

 

[Ovinomancer]

For some strange reason my players have decided that they want to go find all of the relics instead of taking the two they now have, back to the Eye. There is literally no reason for them to do this other than that they think there are magic items waiting for them (I rolled some random treasure in the previous ones and changed the relic sites to be far more interesting than the bland boringness they're presented as).

Having already murdered Reghed barbarians (the Tribe of the Elk, no less) for no reason whatsoever other than that they were there, the leader of that tribe has sent assassins and champions after the party to either kill them or bring them to justice. Now that this tribe has also learned that the party has received the "Defenders of Icewind Dale" title from Sheriff Markham, the Elk tribe has declared war on the Ten Towns, and is using the incident as a means to unite the other Reghed tribes. Having to go through Uthgardt territory to pursue the party for vengeance has also meant forming an alliance with the Uthgardt. Now that the party has also raided the sacred places of the Uthgardt (the burial mounds), the Uthgardt have begun to talk to each other, and the Reghed tribes, about a super alliance.

So by the time the PC's have gotten to the next burial mound, they're going to find it well protected. And as they traverse the region more, they're going to start to see Uthgardt tribes working together, all of whom have heard, via the shamans and druids of the tribes, the stories of the murderous, pillaging, blasphemous PC's.

What kinda annoys me is that one player in particular is mostly responsible for this, and thinks he's playing a good character, despite outright, cold-blooded murder on numerous occasions. And the more I've put in the consequences of those actions as a dynamic world, the more he seems to get upset at the reaction, as if it's somehow surprising.

All of this meant that I didn't get to run the cool story about the aarakocra yet, and will probably end up wasting the next session dealing with the PC's trying to attack obviously overwhelming (100% TPK chance if they try to take on these defenders of the burial mound) odds. And I'm betting they will, because so far that's been their MO.

Oh well, it's not like I liked SKT anyway.

This also happened in my game -- the players hit all of the burial mounds. They had the airship at this point, and went point to point, so there was no chance of an alliance forming and/or increased defences. I was mostly going to write off the barbarians (without lots of work or huge numbers, they're not much of a threat) but... they picked up the gnome from Deadstone and took him back to Loudwater and let him crawl all over the airship and then (yes, lots of ands here) took the Harper teleport ring to Waterdeep to resupply (the Thane was almost a TPK, something something splitting the party) for three days.

So Ellister stole the airship and is now off on a joyride of the Sword Coast. And this is a perfect moment, with the party now having to chase reported sightings, to do the work and bring back the highly offended barbarians, Reghed and Uthgardt, who have very, very personal bones to pick with the now landbound party. So, moral here is, sometimes it works out, don't lose hope yet.


And I also heavily changed almost all of the mounds. They're insanely boring as written. Why have such pretty, pretty maps for 'you see 2 Elk; they run away?*'

* in fairness, I actually ran that one as written. There needed to be a break and that one worked out.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I was mostly going to write off the barbarians (without lots of work or huge numbers, they're not much of a threat) but...

I'm reskinning stuff like the warlord, champion, archdruid, archer, etc. from Volo's. I'm also assuming that the druids/shamans, have enough magical capability to communicate across large distances. Having read up on the history of the Uthgardt and Reghed barbarians, they're linked in some ways, and the Uthgardt especially have threatened large swathes of the Savage North when they've banded together, all they've ever really needed was a reason: enter the PC's slaughtering their people.

And I also heavily changed almost all of the mounds. They're insanely boring as written. Why have such pretty, pretty maps for 'you see 2 Elk; they run away?*'

Yeah, I thought the same thing. There are things were maps would've been really useful, and then there are maps where they're not needed (according to the adventure requirements). I'm guessing that there was material done for these maps that was cut at some point, probably to shoehorn the Nightstone adventure in.

 

[Charles Rampant]

You could get quite brutal and have the plot develop so that a major city (Silverymoon or Mithral Hall) gets attacked and destroyed by the Barbarians because of the characters. Then when the Good character's player comments, you can just quietly change the G on his sheet to N; after all, it was his actions and thoughtlessness that led to disaster.

Of course, I wouldn't do this unless you had adequately signposted what was going on. If the players had been presented with the fact that their actions were causing problems, and would cause far greater problems, then it is fair to hit them with consequences; but if this all comes out of left field then you might just come across as the guy who ruined their fun for obscure reasons that were not communicated.


Sent from my iPad using EN World

 

[Motorskills]

Likewise, I am having the Giants versus Barbarians, Giants versus Smallkin, and Barbarians vs Smallkin.

The Giants are not in civil per se, but are competing against each other, and it won't stay nice for long.

Total chaos in northern(?) Faerun, all of which feeds beautifully into my master plot for the Return of Tiamat, taking the PCs from (approx) L15 to L20.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Of course, I wouldn't do this unless you had adequately signposted what was going on. If the players had been presented with the fact that their actions were causing problems, and would cause far greater problems, then it is fair to hit them with consequences; but if this all comes out of left field then you might just come across as the guy who ruined their fun for obscure reasons that were not communicated.

It's playing out fairly slowly and with a progressive element to it that is clearly being communicated to the players. About the only thing I think I haven't made clear is how much time has passed. By that, I mean, it's easy to forget that after ten times of me saying, "You travel for 3 days without incident," that it adds up to a month. So far, the PC's have taken just under two months to do all of this stuff (ironically, they could've sped this up immensely but they kept actively and passively neglecting to follow up on multiple opportunities to get the Harper Teleportation Network Map). That's ample time for things to develop, rumours to spread, alliances to be forged, etc., especially if magical communication (again, I'm assuming druids/shamans are active in the barbarian tribes and enable some of this) is taken into account. Plus I've had them engage in encounters with numerous barbarian tribes so they've had conversations with NPC's about it, over the course of several sessions.

Bryn Shander is currently the number one target, as far as the Reghed are concerned. The Elk Tribe being outright murdered (with witnesses who were able to flee) by the PC's for no reason (they were sneaking past and decided to attack them because one PC failed the check, there were reasons at the time not to do it as a group check because they were well dispersed) is a major catalyst. They were working with the Ten Towns to counter the orcs and frost giants in the area. I even described the barbarians as being over the bodies of orcs on the road after having just killed them. Up until the PC's were named as Defenders of Icewind Dale, by the Sheriff of Bryn Shander, the barbarians were willing to simply either get revenge on the PC's, or bring the PC's to their chieftain for judgement. But now it has played out as Bryn Shander betraying the alliance and sponsoring murderers. Add in the Uthgardt who have so far had two of their sacred burial mounds plundered and several of the guardians of those mounds butchered, and the Reghed travelling through their territories in pursuit of the PC's and consequently telling the Uthgardt about these marauders, and thus the seeds of a super alliance are sowed.

The super alliance is a long way off, mind you, but if the PC's continue to antagonise the parties involved, it could speed up significantly. As things stand, the alliance between the Elk Tribe and Ten-Towns has already been shattered, and has helped facilitate a possible war alliance with other Reghed tribes, and so the Ten Towns are now not only facing the possible threat of a barbarian attack, but they won't be getting anymore assistance against the frost giants or orcs.

And they just got done murdering a lord of Yartar and several citizens, making further enemies along the trading route to and from Waterdeep. That's going to make things interesting when they find they have to return to Yartar and resurrect that lord...

 

[robus]

I'm getting worried that the players won't connect the dots that Iymrith is the advisor to Serissa (I changed her name because the giants would surely know the name of a ancient blue dragon given that they are mortal enemies, I did give her blue hair as a hint to my players).

In the adventure the only clue is some terrible sleep-scratching by the captain of the ship holding Hekaton (really uninspired IMHO).

I think I'm going to have the river boat boss also know about Iymrith and spill the beans (or at least a few more of the beans).

As for the captain I'm going to have his orders from Iymrith pinned to the wall above his desk as a reminder of why he has been cursed - but the promise of great reward on Tiamat's return is all that's keeping him going.

 

[Motorskills]

I'm getting worried that the players won't connect the dots that Iymrith is the advisor to Serissa (I changed her name because the giants would surely know the name of a ancient blue dragon given that they are mortal enemies, I did give her blue hair as a hint to my players).

In the adventure the only clue is some terrible sleep-scratching by the captain of the ship holding Hekaton (really uninspired IMHO).

I think I'm going to have the river boat boss also know about Iymrith and spill the beans (or at least a few more of the beans).

As for the captain I'm going to have his orders from Iymrith pinned to the wall above his desk as a reminder of why he has been cursed - but the promise of great reward on Tiamat's return is all that's keeping him going.

See above, Felgolos is great for that. He doesn't know that Iymrith is masquerading as a Storm Giant, but he would refuse to call her "Doom of the Desert". Have him appear in halfling and/or bronze form. You don't need The Flying Misfortune, but it is an option.

 

[Greg Benage]

I'll get to my enhancements as the campaign progresses (mostly added content, especially levels 1-5), but so far my party cleared Nightstone of goblins, and then...when the Seven Snakes showed up, they said, "Okay, all yours, bye." And they left for the Dripping Caves. So they roll out of town (they have a gypsy wagon...they're a traveling carnival troupe) and the Snakes raise the drawbridge. Then the orcs show up, but the party manages to evade them as twenty orcs on the move don't exactly sneak up on you. The orcs head for Nightstone as the party skirts around them and heads to the Dripping Caves. At level 2.

They don't look for alternate entrances. The druid goes in as a weasel, hears and smells goblins and some unfamiliar things. The half-elf monk tries to sneak in and is immediately spotted by the goblin archers. There are six PCs, but they still get their asses handed to them. One dead (his "cousin" shows up looking for him after the fight), several unconscious bodies dragged from the cave in the general retreat. They did manage to kill the ogres and several goblins. They take a long rest and I level them up to 3rd. Now they go back to the cave, there's a crude sign out front reading "WE MAKE PEESE," but they're pissed off, 3rd level, and don't offer Boss Hark anything he can work with. Boss Hark has deployed his rats out to the ogres' nest, along with a couple goblin archer reinforcements on the ledges, and he's got Morak in his cave with a knife to his throat, but the PCs call his bluff and he waits too long to follow through. There's some more tough fighting but the PCs get it done and rescue the villagers.

They repeatedly point out what a rough stretch this little town in the middle of nowhere has had: giants drop rocks on you and steal your eponymous megalith, you retreat to goblin-infested caves, the goblins loot your town, the carnival troupe shows up and clears it only to have the Zhents arrive and occupy it, then an orc war-party shows up and attacks it again. Who's wearing the amulet of monster attraction?

Now it's back to Nightstone where I have to figure out what happened between the Ear Seekers vs. The Seven Snakes, Kella and the guards.