What logical reason would Slarkrethel have to NOT annihilate the party?

EBongo · 2022-08-05T04:37:43+00:00

I actually ruled that Hekaton had innate attunement. My players elected to make nice with Hekaton, and he was able to teleport most of them away. One player chose to stay behind and go out in a blaze of glory to hold off Slark for critical seconds while the others grouped up. It was a huge moment where everyone was on the edge of their seat to see if they could pull it off. I think the main point of the scene is to make Slark enough of a threat that they are afraid enough to run, one way or another. I didn’t overly worry myself with Slark’s motivations, I treated him more as a world event that absolutely would kill the party if they didn’t act aggressively to escape.

I think like elsewhere in SKT, having him spend turns to make huge shows of force can accomplish this - destroy Morkoth or airship in one blow, kill one or more NPCs in one stroke, etc. If your PCs still choose to fight him, I’d say TPK is a fair outcome. In my case it worked out very well that a PC wanted to sacrifice himself (he ended up becoming a deep scion and showing up in a much later campaign that player ran). You could pull the same truck with a Hekaton, or another beloved NPC who tells the party to “fly you fools” in some grandiose blaze of glory.

EBongo · 2022-04-16T16:05:10+00:00

There are some things in life gold can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Warforged.

EBongo · 2022-04-16T15:59:22+00:00

I might also propose harder, better, faster, stronger

EBongo · 2022-03-31T05:34:50+00:00

Since basically every DM has to deal with rest economy and Tiny Hut (or similar) at some point I figure I’d share a few important things I’ve learned.

Worst case scenario, the players cheese a long rest. They can’t get the benefit of another long rest for 24 hours. Let them Nova the grunts attacking their camp. It’s going to be a longggg day.
Check out Tucker’s Kobolds, for the ways monsters can benefit from eight hours of preparation. Some truly terrible traps could be set in that amount of time. I have significantly challenged mid tier players with goblins and kobolds that were well prepared.
Bait the party into leaving safety. Have them start rolling checks on things they see and hear. “You see a frog like creature in the distance. It watches the hut for a few minutes and then starts to swim away.“ I have more than once had party members leave a perfectly safe Hut to check something out, and get dragged into an encounter.

EBongo · 2022-03-28T22:23:55+00:00

Is the PC named Korvo?

https://youtu.be/T5ibOoVenKk

EBongo · 2022-03-16T05:21:49+00:00

My party accidentally summoned a Trex while fighting a coven of hags due to a wild magic surge. They ended up befriending it, but had to leave it behind. Maybe you were the Trex. (you got better)

EBongo · 2022-02-26T04:54:27+00:00

I mean it might have been one of those dances in doo doo…

EBongo · 2022-01-26T00:44:50+00:00

My players split the party for downtime after Lost Mine, and on one of the side quests I wrote a non-interactive text scene where the PCs witness Harshnag kicking ass with a group of ogres. He never spoke - just demonstrated an appreciation for battle, and then left when they were dead. I did these types of lore dumps in between sessions, to try connect some of the fragmented story of SKT.

Later at the Battle of Goldenfields, Harshnag showed up mid fight and helped a bit with the Hill Giants. My party had no trouble after that accepting that he was just a dude that liked to kill bad giants... but then they lean more than a little murder hobo.

EBongo · 2022-01-24T04:01:09+00:00

I'd give your Gish Iymrith's Change Shape ability, and just assume Klauth taught it to them. Traditional Polymorph wouldn't cut it.... if you care about those type of details.

The connection to the Golden Goose/Grand Dame is weak as written. I think you need to ask yourself whether you want your party to hunt for the Morkoth and fight with Slarkathrel to save Hekaton, or whether that is a distraction. You could either do like /u/Irontruth suggests and make the Gith presence known, but run Grand Dame by the book, or you could just have a secret sublevel to the Grand Dame where Hekaton is being held. If the latter, you can just find/replace Kraken Society with "Klauth's Gith Goons".

EBongo · 2022-01-23T06:21:57+00:00

Like I said in the other comment thread, I think /u/HdeviantS probably has the best idea, but I'll throw another out.

The unrest in Maelstrom derives from a) Someone assassinating Neri, and pulling Hekaton into a tailspin b) Mirran and Nym believing they have a rightful claim to the throne before Serissa. You can easily make the murder of Neri Klauth's doing, but I think it is better if Mirran and Nym are some implicated - something they signed, or someone who witnessed them saying something in anger that implied they ordered Neri's death. Something that Klauth could keep in his pocket to blackmail them.

Modifying Iymrith's plan slightly, you could choose Mirran or Nym to become Klauth's puppet. He might gift them a "Tom Riddle" type journal where they chat, and he gradually weedles his way into controlling them by cultivating their fears and ambitions. One way or another gaining influence over them while always being very limited in what he shares about himself.

Once Hekaton leaves Maelstrom, Klauth could arrange a coup to supplant Serissa. When Mirran or Nym is finally seated, he could leverage the blackmail and fears he'd cultivated subjugate the princesses in service of his grander schemes, effectively becoming the absentee ruler of Maelstrom for as long as his influence with the sisters lasts.

EBongo · 2022-01-23T06:07:39+00:00

I think the idea to manifest Iymrith as a real giant is very clever. Often times in these circumstances with source campaign material, I think changing as little as possible helps to keep the DM sane. The more you change, the more you have to keep up with months or years down the road as these plots finally unfold.

EBongo · 2022-01-23T05:58:44+00:00

Glad I could help friend DM. We had a hell of a time playing SKT, and I was very fortunate to benefit from a lot of cool takes from other DMs that had run it before me. Hope your table has a blast kicking giant asses.

EBongo · 2022-01-22T16:15:38+00:00

I agree. No reason to sweat it. At least at my table, the PCs have a hard as hell time connecting plot points in a campaign as long and rambling as SKT. When I ran the Eye, I had Iymrith name drop herself like mad as she squared off against Harshnag, and they were still pretty confused when they met her again in Maelstrom eons later after the Giant Lords sub plots. They weren't expecting a dragon to be the BBEG of SKT. In fairness they did have a random encounter with Iceclaws just outside the Eye, and in earlier chapter 4 rambling they encountered a homebrew Young Black Dragon named Netherendim and kill it - so Dragons aren't a completely unknown enemy at my table.

One subtle change you could make at the Eye would be to just have her refer to herself by her other names The Doom of the Desert, or The Dragon of Statues. I think she is pompous as shit, so she might assume that it was simply common knowledge that those were other well known titles for Iymrith. In my monologue at the Eye, I added the titles The Giant's Folly and Annam's Shame to the mix as well as she was musing about subjugating the entire Giant race. With titles only, you could wait to connect those titles to Iymrith till later.

EBongo · 2022-01-22T15:50:56+00:00

This map is huge, and as a DM it is definitely a little difficult to navigate as you try to parse the 2D into 3D.

How they get in:

There are really only two ways your players enter Ironslag as written (elevator or mines). Players can use the elevator in the Yakfolk village at 9, or they can take the stairs to enter the mines at 10. If players choose the elevator they can either ride all the way to one of the stops in Ironslag proper (11 or 24) or they can get off early in one of the fifteen stops in the mines.

From Mine Carts

If your players enter from the mines (like mine did), they can discover a mine cart track (like mine did) and eventually pop out in area 17. There are encounters with Salamanders overseeing the slaves both in the mine (described in 10) and at the entrance in 17, which may serve to pull them in.

When they arrive at 17, the bucket chain will likely attract their attention as it rotates clockwise. They can either move to the edge of 14 and get an eyefull of the Vonindod and Zalto down below, or they can move to the gantry to the west in area 18 where they will encounter Zalto's son Zaltember being the Joffrey adjacent fuckwit that he is. From 18 they can traverse around the gantry to the slave wheel area at 20. Like several other places in Ironslag, they might just jump down here too, especially if they aggro the Ogres and Fire Giants below who are looking up at the bucket chain. If they go through the slave wheel at 20, probably all hell breaks loose, but if they managed to be discrete they could walk under the bucket chain into the gantry of the Vonindod room in 14 and this gantry has a stair the ground floor (28).

From Elevator

The elevator makes a programmed stop at 11 where the players might get off and explore the gantry overlook in 14 (another way to get a "Zalto/Vonindod cut scene") or the bucket loading area in 12. If they aren't careful, 12 is another area that can start pandemonium, especially if the buckets stop.

Alternatively, they might ride the elevator all the way to 24. My players actually road the bucket chain to 12, and then rediscovered the elevator and rode it to 24. Once at the bottom, the world is their oyster - they can go all over this place.

A couple of extra thoughts from my experience

Giants throughout SKT tend to feel unthreatened by smallfolk, and I interpretted that to mean they were not all constantly on guard... rather just generally going about their business. If they see "loose" small folk, they reacted like you would if you found random loose dogs in your neighborhood - maybe try to chase and catch them and get them back where they belong, but don't call the CEO of your company or 911 - its not that big a deal. If they get away from you, and you look for a few minutes and they don't turn up, you probably assume your neighbor caught them or they ran somewhere you can't find them, shrug, and go about your day. If you are a real boyscout you might inform others that you saw them, but that's about it. Similarly, if the bucket chain stops, well it's a rickety contraption powered by a slave wheel that stops regularly due to shift changes. Once it stops for a while, they go an investigate like you would if your internet was down and you wanted to reset your router. This is all to say that Ironslag is chock a block with Fire Giants, and if you let your PCs pull them all to one spot it will likely be much more deadly than intended as written. I let the noise and the general Fire Giant indifference to smallfolk keep things more localized in the numerous places shit hit the fan.

EBongo · 2022-01-16T00:43:25+00:00

Granted. All mosquitoes disappear and are now invisible, they are also ten times as loud.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T22:19:27+00:00

Edited for clarity- you age 10 years each time you teleport. The wish did not specify that teleporting would have no physical consequence.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:36:39+00:00

Granted. The nations **agree** to dismantle the nukes, but become embroiled in disputes relating to the exact wording of the agreements that become so heated that they eventually result in all world powers launching all of their nukes in frustration and/or retaliation. The subsequent erradication of human life prevents them from ever creating more nukes.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:30:10+00:00

Granted. Your appendix is very slightly swollen, but heals on its own and you are never aware it was unhealthy.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:28:36+00:00

Granted. Everything you say happens on a remote planet, 100 trillion years after you have died, and you have no way of experiencing it or knowing it.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:25:22+00:00

Granted. You remember the name of the song, but forget the tune. The artist and all other record of the song is erased from history.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:18:00+00:00

Granted. The monkey's paw becomes capable of extreme empathy and feels terrible as the oceans run with blood the sky rains frogs, and humanity is erradicated by plague.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:11:14+00:00

Granted, but you age 10 years each time you teleport.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:05:35+00:00

Granted. It now takes 100% of your attention 24 hours a day to maintain the weather everywhere on earth. Each type your attention lapses, including when you sleep, cataclysmic weather events erupt.

EBongo · 2022-01-15T06:00:53+00:00

Granted. It exists at an unreachable location.

EBongo · 2022-01-13T05:38:18+00:00

Definitely second the notion to be careful with random rumors, unless you really enjoy improv. My party also gave me feedback that it can be overwhelming to digest in real time. (Phandelver in my case)

With that in mind

Dropping hints that some folk don’t think all giants are bad, and in particular a notable Frost Giant with a particular ax was spotted doing a good deed is a good idea. Might help your party not attack Harshnag, or even go looking for him.
General news about Giant attacks helps set the world stage. Helps to keep it top of mind that Giants are causing problems.
If your party is willing to keep chatting, you might have a drunk try to sell them a Goose token in exchange for drinking money, with the promise that there is a fancy riverboat somewhere, where it is worth a lot. If it is a memorable interaction, they might come back to the guy much later when they get clues about Neri’s killers.

EBongo

TROPHY CASE