u/smokedickbiscuit

https://www.reddit.com/r/stormkingsthunder/s/BlMfAcrOgv

Hey folks - quick question. I’ve decided to run the giant variants due to all giants being kind of similar RAW. My group of 4 lvl 7 players just fought 4 cloud giants. I had them dive out of their sky tower and feather fall towards the ground while one of them used the Harden Air ability. The warlock wanted to try counterspell on it. I ruled that since this is an innate ability and requires no components, it couldn’t be counterspelled. He then tried to dispel magic on the boulder that fell on him. I said it wasn’t really a magical boulder, it was just a regular boulder once the giant manifested it. He still made the save, so he didn’t take any damage. I could tell the player still felt that this was unfair.

So question is, did I play this right? And how should I rule something like this in the future especially since I’ll be using these alternate stat blocks moving forward?

Running storm kings thunder, spent the first 20 or so sessions focusing on all the factions, baddies, world building. Just hitting level 7, we’re now at a point that I want to bring in back stories. I’m just looking for some experienced peoples perspectives on my ideas to see if I’m doing too much or not. I also have a player who won’t be available, so tabling the main story for others feels right.

PC 1: I have a kitsune/foxkin rogue (homebrewed, this is their first character and wanted to play a fox). His backstory is that his father was basically racketeering, over taxing farmers in their hometown and taking some off the top before delivering to the main town while telling the town there was more wheat than there actually is. Riley, his son, didn’t like that. There was a farmer he befriended, and when this farmer told him he was being bled dry, Riley broke in to another nobleman’s house and stole some coin. His father found out Riley did that, but pinned the robbery in the robber friend. The noblemen then burned down the farmers house with the farmer in it. Riley was then disowned and ran away from home. He’s conflicted - he really wants respect and love from his family but they are just kind of terrible people.

He has 2 older brothers. The backdrop of SKT is giants are rampaging across Faerun. Riley and the other PCs have been there from the start, getting to the bottom of the giant activity, killing giants, kraken cultists and dragon-aligned enemies.

My idea is one of his brothers, Ignis, is a Lords Alliance officer. His father sent him on the road with a number of soldiers and carriages of wheat. He knew trade routes would be disrupted, so he’s overcharging the wheat. His brother has had an easy time on the road because Riley and the group have been a couple steps ahead, clearing out most of the danger. Ignis is going to claim the glory of all Riley and his group had accomplished, killing nearly a dozen giants. I’m going to have them in a town square, taking people’s money and claiming victory over fights they had nothing to do with.

I’d love if my group confronted them and they got to talking.

From there, the brother and crew will go on the road, but will be ambushed by giant eagles and cloud giants. A scout will run back to town and alert people, ideally prompting my players to go to the rescue and save the day, earning respect from the family.

Questions here: Am I making the brother too unlikeable? Or should I be ok with the group saying “nah fuck that guy” and there being consequences to his brother being killed or taken captive?

PC 2: Sseth was once a lowly Zhentarim courier. One day, he messed up a shipment for a powerful mage. This mage, being zhent aligned, is beholden to Waukeen, goddess of fair trade. The mage essentially forces the pact on Sseth, turning/cursing him into a Yuan-ti. Sseth is a hexblade with a polearm.

I want to have a dream sequence where Sseth is in a black void. He sees a pile of gold coins a hit away with his polearm sticking out of it. As he approaches, he hears a voice - “you’ve finally begun to use your powers. The time for repayment has begun”. He sees the pile of coins recede a bit by the hilt. Gold runes travel a bit up the hilt. As he reaches to grab it, he feels his coin purse get lighter. He wakes up and finds 50g missing, but the gold runes on the hilt remain.

Still figuring out the end game for this one.

Just would love thoughts and ideas for how people mix in backstory. Am I doing too much?

So I’m running Storm Kings Thunder as my first DM campaign. It’s been a ton of fun. Currently, the players are in Silverymoon. I’ve decided to implant 2 oneshots here for them and tie them back to the main story, Margaster Heist and Barber of Silverymoon. There will be spoilers in this post for SKT and those 2 modules as well. Looking up those 2 for additional context might be nice.

My players got to Silverymoon late in the day and heard rumors of people going missing. They are on high alert because I ran them through Krakens Gamble in Yartar, where an aboleth (who I tied back to Krakens) was kidnapping young noble born men. They handled that pretty deftly, but now they’re in high alert when anybody goes missing.

The Barber of Silverymoon is a one shot where a Hag essentially clones the barber and uses his shop as a base of operations, using an evil clone to kidnap and kill people. My twist here is this is a hag coven, and they struck a deal with Iymrith, the BBEG, to build a small army and wait for Iymriths call to action and take Silverymoon. In Margaster heist, the other one shot, I turned that into a Kraken operation, where the demon the widow is summoning is actually an aboleth, breeding kraken spawn with her and building their own army.

So to get to the point, the PCs are coming off a full adventure day, and we ended last session with them killing the evil barber clone and some of the minions. They just entered the dungeon lair where the hags reside, definitely with enough resources to complete it if they push forward. The very cautious face of the group said “we should probably rest up before finishing this”, meaning he wants a long rest.

This gives me a lot of opportunity. If they do that:
- the 2 gargoyle statues that were in front of the barbershop will be gone. They are lookouts/minions of Iymrith who are watching over the hags half of the bargain.
- the good clone barber will be there to greet them, after they killed the evil one. They have no idea of this back plot Ive explained so will be a complete shock and confusion for them
- if they go back down in the dungeon, they’ll find the original barber in a hole, along with a couple other prisoners
- they’ll also find a letter written in draconic from Iymrith to the hags, vaguely referencing their deal
- a “cursed” blue dragon scale amulet. It will be able to cast thunderbolt once a day, but it is used essentially as a scrying tool for Iymrith and the hags, as long as it’s attuned to someone (homebrewing this)

Now where to go from here?? The players won’t know they were hags. But now, I should be able to use this to make my players lives hell, right? The Margaster heist, I want the hags little minions to be following them around and potentially messing up the heist, making noise or drawing attention. I want the hags to be wherever the players are going beforehand, disguising themselves and them and destroying their reputation. I want the hag to disguise themselves as a regular NPC and lie to them asking to do morally questionable things disguised as quests.

TLDR: how can I use these hags to mess with my players?

I don’t really have any questions or concerns, I’m just excited about the direction of the campaign and want to talk about it.

I’m running Storm Kings Thunder fairly by the book as my first foray into DMing, but if anyone knows this campaign it requires A LOT of gap filling and sense-making by the DM. It’s a fairly on the rails campaign as far as overarching story, but I’m trying to include as much of my own flavor as I can.

I’ve set up Krakens and Dragons as the antagonists, with the 5 factions being extremely involved in the world. The Giants are more of a red herring antagonist and the motivating factor for the PCs.

Some of the players really bonded with the Harpers (they feel like the most obvious choice to side with), so have given the players access to their teleportation network last session. It feels like we have gone from completely on the rails to now into the sandbox, they had 5 other locations to go to for bigger faction focused quests, but now they have corners of the world they didn’t know existed come in as options to explore.

The first 15 or so sessions were very on rails, setting the stage, introducing the big players, giving them a feel for the factions. I had that whole section planned out for months. Now, I know the big story beats, but I have no idea what or where the players will do/go to next, and it’s an amazing feeling to now have to flesh out this world week by week and throw obstacles and challenges their way.

I’m already starting to drop loose threads that I have no idea where they’ll go and my players are using them in ways I didn’t expect. One of my players had a little romance thing with a courier tied to a smaller faction within the zhentarim. I had her actually be the girlfriend of a guy they were tasked to save as part of a quest. When they were told they have access to a teleporter that would skip another one of their delivery quests, they decided to go ask her to do that quest for them. They also got a letter of recommendation from the waterbaron of Yartar for “taking care of” kraken cultists in the city (they didn’t fix anything, just delayed their progress). When leaving the city through the teleporter, they were attacked by Zhentarim who followed them into the secret teleportation circle. They didn’t kill all of the baddies before they teleported out, so I said the Yartar teleportation circle is down for the foreseeable future, it’s compromised. My players decided to cash in that letter of recommendation and ask the waterbaron to guard the teleportation circle from the bad guys. This has some interesting consequences I’m balancing, but I did NOT expect them to use it that way at all. And I love it.

I also dropped a hint that the krakens were active in one of my players home town that had a teleportation circle in it, just to see what they do with it. It has nothing to do with the overarching story, but he REALLY wants to go there to take care of the problem. I have no idea what’s going to happen there yet, but that’s the fun part. They chose to complete some of their other existing quests first, which makes me feel like the overarching story is really sticky even with all these new opportunities they have.

This is overall a pretty pointless post, but I guess I’m just saying I got the bug real bad. Collaborative story telling is my jam. This campaign will probably go upwards of 60-70 sessions, and now I just want to start working on my own homebrewed world like yesterday.

So I’m playing Storm Kings Thunder with my group as my first foray in DMing, it’s involving a lot DM prep and story homebrewing outside of the story to make interesting but I love it. My group of 5 lvl 6 players just did the krakens gamble storyline I added in, and they loved the fight mechanics that were included which turned the battle with the aboleth more into a puzzle of figuring out inflow and outflow of water to prevent flooding the chamber and giving the aboleth an upper hand. I got great feedback, even though they are extremely minmaxxed and are power gaming, it was way more challenging and fun for them to do an objective-based battle. I want to lean into that more.

So on to the question/situation: They’re going to get invited to teleport through a portal in the town they’re currently in from a faction they’re pretty tied to. They’re carrying some very valuable giant artifacts that another faction is interested in, who they just recently beat the shit out of. I’m planning an encounter and want to know if it’s too much, too convoluted, etc, just looking for feedback.

They’re going to be approached by a friendly faction member that they saved on the road who was very interested in their giant artifacts. He split from the party when they got to the city to take the hidden teleport circle to relay some information to their faction leaders about giant activity. The group now has intel that the kraken is working with the blue dragon, and may have caused the destructive giant activity by breaking the ordning. This info is very valuable to the faction as well.

Once they collect their rewards for dealing with the aboleth, they’ll be approached by that faction member so he can take them, their knowledge and artifacts to the faction leaders. They love him and immediately wanted to go to him after the fight with the aboleth, so they’ll follow him anywhere.

On the way to the teleportation circle, I’m going to have them followed by enemy faction operatives through the city. I was going to roll stealth checks against the players passive perception to see if they notice the tail. If they do see them, idk what I’m going to do. I’ll probably have the baddies back off after seeing they were eyed. It might just be a way to telegraph to them some shit might go down.

Once they get to the secret teleportation circle, the guy who mans the portal will start the 10 minute ritual to teleport them.

At about a minute til the end of the ritual, the baddies will barge in and demand they hand over their artifacts, or pay with their lives. They beat these guys in a battle pit the day before, so there’s an air of vengeance as well.

For the mechanics/fail states

- there will be 30 seconds (5 rounds) to the end of the ritual. The players will need to protect the caster so the ritual isn’t interrupted.
- each player will need to be in the 40 ft wide circle at the end of 5 rounds to teleport. The baddies main focus is control and disruption, pulling players from the circle. If at the end of the 5 rounds one or more are out of the circle, they do not teleport. This feels risky to me to include
- if they fail to kill the baddies, this teleportation circle is no longer a secret and will be inoperable until another circle is created.
- the bad guys will also try to steal the artifacts, grapple their non-combatant faction companion, on top of pulling them out of the circle and trying to stop the ritual

There are tons of ways this could affect the story and the characters, but really it’s just a one off encounter I’m implanting based off the story we’ve made so far.

Is this too many fail states? Should this be simplified? Or am I just overthinking? I also want to include another monster or enemy to make it difficult but a city is tough place to sensibly implant a monster.

Spoilers for storm kings thunder and krakens gamble.

So I’m running Krakens Gamble in the middle of storm kings thunder. My players got word of young nobles getting abducted, and a woman in purple might be involved, as might the gambling boat The Grand Dame. I even had someone who pointed them that direction mention the boat captain might be involved with a new cult in town. This Kraken Cult is pivotal to the end game here, but I didn’t want to drop too many hints. My players know a kraken cult is involved in the over arching story, just not to what degree.

So my players were able to persuade 4 out of 5 young noblemen to give them their tokens for entry to the boat, leaving 1 they needed to find a way in. They went to the docks to do some recon, and the boat captain and floor manager were sizing up the nights wait staff in front of the boat. My 2 most charismatic players decided they’d team up and try to infiltrate. This is where my question/problem arises.

They both proceed to roll incredibly for about 20 skill checks straight. They impressed the captain to get on, and throughout the night, they passed every dexterity check to see if they’d drop drinks. They passed every performance check I threw at them for seeing if they’d convincingly impress the floor manager. They passed every sneak check as they attempted to listen in on conversations pertaining to the purple lady.

They rolled so well that in fact the floor manager consistently gave compliments even though she runs a crooked gambling boat for an evil kraken society.

My players then with that foundation started asking questions, but not the right questions. They also didn’t press me when I gave purposefully obtuse responses. They asked a bartender if the purple lady was affiliated with the boat at all. I said “she popped up a couple weeks ago and seems to know people, but ya know everyone knows people”. I said he was uncomfortable when he said that. They just took it at face value. They asked the floor manager if she works with the boat. The floor manager said “she comes, she plays her game, she leaves”. He didn’t see that as a non-answer.

The other people who were posing as regular patrons took some encouraging to sit down and interact and play the gambling game with the purple lady. The one who did didn’t ask any questions until I hurled 5-6 questions straight at him. I had her talk about how she was supposed to meet some young nobles that night that never showed. I rolled perception on her 2-3 times to see if she’d recognize them (she saw them in a fight earlier that day) and I never rolled more than a 7. He eventually rolled very well on a persuasion check I forced on him when he asked a question, and he rolled so well she decided to telepathically tell him she needs help and to follow her after they dock.

They followed her and she is supposed to say she’s a damsel in distress when really she’s just using the party to kill the one making her abduct nobles so she can usurp his place. They never asked the right questions and took her at face value. They even said “wow I can’t believe the boat isn’t actually affiliated with the kraken and I can’t believe the purple lady isn’t a dangerous kraken cultist either”. Little to they know, she is sending them into an aboleths den.

So now I’m torn, and here is my real question - am I technically punishing them for rolling well? The purpose of what I want them to get from these encounters was missed, but is that because of me “rewarding” these good rolls in context of the moment, or because they weren’t inquisitive enough? For the most part, they are great at interacting with what I put in front of them and problem solving, but they haven’t learned yet that things often aren’t what they appear.

Part of me thinks I’ve set them up for the plot twist of the campaign so far. I think I’m just giving them more questions, and in their minds it won’t make a ton of sense. That could be a good thing that wraps them further in the story, but it could also lead to unclear messaging and perceived bad hint dropping.

Thoughts?

Hey folks! I’m running storm kings thunder with 4 players. In the beginning, I invited a buddy to play who had never played before who didn’t pan out. He made it 9ish sessions in before letting me know he wasn’t as invested as the rest of the group and wanted to drop because he just didn’t feel like he was enjoying it/wasn’t for him. That’s besides the point, but it was extremely amicable and I respect tf out of him for saying it.

Anyways, my other buddy invited in someone. We’ve played in a previous campaign, he’s hilarious and probably will be one of the most heavy on RP out of the group, I’m pumped for it.

Team comp is barb, rogue, sorcerer and cleric (I DMPC, no one ever wants to support lol). He gave me 3 ideas for characters he had, a gloomstalker, a fighter and a Hexblade. I talked to him about the rest of the comp and recommended Hexblade as we’d have 3 martial non-magic users, and a Hexblade would round out things very nicely I think. Hopefully I didn’t come off as too forceful with my recommendation, but he already had a pretty good backstory in mind for it, moreso than his other options.

I’m mainly looking for some recommendations and thoughts to my approach on introductions and generally how to handle new PCs.

The set-up:

We’ve made it to Yartar. The group sold 2 of their 4 giants heads to the gate guards. I have a faction system with the 6 present factions, and one of them is to give giant heads to Lords Alliance towns to show they’re protecting their lands/cities, and another to sell giants ears to Zhentarim. Each increase their valor/prestige within the factions.

The new players concept for the Hexblade was a Yuan-ti, but he wanted to make his snakelike appearance be a curse less than a racial feature. I suggested that he is affiliated with the Zhentarim and gave some info on them, that they’re morally grey and care about money and power and like working in the shadows. He seemed to be on board. I suggested he botched a shipment from a powerful sorcerer who cursed him with this appearance. He seemed to like that idea.

So since they sold the heads, I suggested for intro that his character noticed them selling the heads and he knows some people that might want the ears, so he walks up and introduces himself and offers to take them to a Zhentarim hideout to sell them. There will be a fighting pit at the hideout where he introduces them to the Zhentarim boss, and he’ll actually have pretty good rapport with him to build some credibility. The boss will mention some weird things going on in the city which SHOULD make my players intrigued. Then he’ll say “if you want more info, you’ll have to fight to earn it”. I’m going to tie some things in the lair to the main plot and Krakens Gamble, where during the pit fight they see the lady in purple talking to a bunch of rich frat kids giving them a golden goose coin which will point them to a casino boat, both hints that they’ve already heard but not connected. This gives my new PC a chance to show he’ll fight with my guys and get him involved in the story.

I told the new guy what part of Yartar to go to, the name of the bar that is fronting this hideout, the name of the zhent leader, but that’s about it outside of the other background/faction stuff. He also has access to an amazing backlog of notes and recordings of previous sessions.

So - is there anything that I might be overlooking in introducing a new PC? I was definitely going to pause and let everybody describe their characters upon introduction, and I’m going to make sure it happens ASAP next session. What am I missing/overdoing?

I know we’re all proud of how we make numbers go up, but my monkey brain just wants to see the build go boom. 5 seconds per item/skill, 50-60 seconds of waiting for a 3 second fight feels silly. Can we make showing the fight first the standard?

Tell me if I’m wrong or why you might prefer to see the items/skills first, but I’m seeing this trend more and more and I’m wondering why.