D&D 5E What should I steal from these 5e adventure books? (+)

[Shardstone]

So today I took my daughter to the library and while there I noticed they had D&D books!

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While I have no plans to run these, I figured it might be fun to see what these Adventure Paths are like and more importantly to steal whatever seemed good or re-workable for my homebrew games.

So what do you think, if anything, is worth stealing? Locations? NPCs? Magical items? Monsters? Plot elements? Maps? What sections should I spend my time looking at?

If it matters, I tend to run fairly grounded and serious games with a homebrew setting with a moderate degree of magic - though anything that is truly interesting can probably be reworked to fit, if not in my current campaigns, then future ones.

Oh, and notice the "+" in the thread title. If what you think is that there is absolutely nothing in either book that is useful or interesting, I am sure there are other threads to post in.

Out of the Abyss has the best finale of any official adventure. Each player takes on the stat block of a Demon Prince and they all fight each other. The last one standing then immedietly fights the actual PCs of the adventure. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It is the best delivery on a "cool promise" in all of the 5E adventures; nothing else comes close except for the really sick bossfight against Auriel in Frostmaiden (three stat blocks! wow!)

 

[Shardstone]

I had no idea I had posted in this thread before, so I repeated myself like a fool. Lol

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

OotA ended up very underwhelming. Didn't want to run it, didn't enjoy reading it and didn't end up mining it unlike PotA.

Individual section might be useful in underdark games.

We had a great time with OotA. Everyone made 2 characters in the beginning, choosing one as their primary, and aft the other was an NPC that would be "found" later if the first died. There were fascinating regions, great fights, and several good deaths. Glabbagool was awesome.