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Many of the concept revelations in Storm King’s Thunder have been moved to the Hekaton is Missing! mystery (which will be handled in Part 4), but for the revelations which remain we’ll do the same thing we’ve done with the other revelations – flesh them out with additional clues to make them as robust as possible.

THE ORDNING HAS BEEN DISSOLVED

  • Deadstone Cleft – Area 14: Temple. Kayalithica is conspiring with Iymrith. (She does not know that Iymrith is a dragon.) Iymrith’s latest letter scolds Kayalithica, saying that she is “as impatient as the sisters. Serissa’s reign will end soon enough, but we must not move too quickly. Let her failures continue to mount and her support will continue to wither away. Then the legacy of Hekaton will be undone completely, and the storm lords will be lost in chaos while the fate of the new Ordning is decided.”
  • Ironslag – Area 26: Ducal Quarters. Zalto has correspondence from Countess Sansuri, the Lady of Masks, suggesting/asserting that, with the Ordning broken and the dominion of the Storm Giants at an end, Zalto should swear fealty to her and they could rise together to the top of the new Ordning. (The suggestion has enraged Zalto.) There are also reports from Zalto’s spies, who report that Lyn Armaal seems to have taken up a semi-permanent station above the Evermoors while the cloud giants are searching for something. (Or possibly multiple things.)
  • Svardborg – Area 1G: Throne Room. Jarl Storvald has correspondence from Kayalithica, in which she proposes, with the Ordning dissolved, an alliance between them — one in which her giants will “tear apart all that the little ones have built, restoring Ostoria to its glory” under her rule, while Storvald’s reavers will “rule the seas.” Her letter notes that she has traveled to consult the oracles of Deadstone Cleft in the Graypeak Mountains, and it has suggested that the All-Father and fortune alike would smile on such an alliance.
  • Questioning Giants. Hypothetically, you could talk to almost any giant in the campaign and they’d be able to explain that the Ordning has been dissolved. (This includes Harshnag, p. 118.)
  • Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. If the PCs ask why the giants are rattling sabers, the oracle will tell them the Ordning has been dissolved.

YOU NEED A CONCH TO REACH MAELSTROM

  • Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. The oracle tells you.
  • Ironslag – Brimskarda. In her bodice, Brimskarda has a letter sent to her by Serissa. It appears that Serissa and Brimskarda were once drinking buddies when they were younger; apparently conspiring as friends during various diplomatic summits that their fathers attended. Serissa calls upon these old bonds, hoping that Brimskarda will intercede with Duke Zalto and convince him to honor the fire giants’ contracts for supplying the storm giants with weapons. “Use the conch,” she urges, “And come visit us at Maelstrom. It shall be like old times again.” Brimskarda has not shown the letter to Zalto.
  • Lyn Armaal – Area 14: Castellan’s Quarters. Among Cressaro’s papers is a request from the Lady of Masks to a prepare a plan for using the conch of teleportation to infiltrate Maelstrom. (Cressaro has not yet had time to work on this.)
  • Svardborg – Nilraun. The jarl has had Nilraun using experimental techniques to use the conch of teleportation to cast scrying and clairvoyance spells into Maelstrom. He has discovered that Iymrith is a blue dragon, but has not revealed that information to the jarl.
  • Conch Experimentation. It’s quite possible for the PCs to simply loot a conch, activate it, and end up in Maelstrom.

Note: Another set of “missing” concept revelations in Storm King’s Thunder would be those revealing what the various giant factions are actually trying to accomplish. Questioning various giants is, once again, one way to get this knowledge,  but consider supplementing this with written reports, correspondence, and the like. (Both within the giant lairs, but also — and, in my opinion, more importantly — before the PCs get there.)

Go to Part 3E: Implementing the Revelations

“Never split the party.”

It’s a maxim of the roleplaying hobby.

There are two primary reasons why it’s a good idea not to split the party. First, it divides the party’s strength, making each smaller group weaker and more vulnerable. (This is a particularly bad idea if you’re playing in a paradigm in which (a) adventures are primarily a string of combat encounters and (b) those combat encounters are all carefully balanced to threaten your full group with destruction. Nothing good can come from splitting up in those situations.)

Second, the concern that splitting the party places an undue burden on the GM, who now needs to keep track of two separate tracks of continuity while making sure to juggle spotlight time between the groups.

There’s some truth to both of these, which is why “never split the party” is great advice for newbies.

But in actual practice, there are A LOT of caveats.

As a GM, for example, I absolutely love it when the party splits up. With just a modicum of experience, you’ll discover that running simultaneous scenes – which is the end result of splitting the party – is basically Easy Mode for effective pacing (which can be one of the trickier skills to master as a GM): You’re no longer limited to cutting at the end of scenes, and can now use interior cuts to emphasize dramatic moments and create cliffhangers. It also becomes far easier to smoothly cut past empty time and refocus on the next interesting choice. (I discuss this in more detail in The Art of Pacing.)

As for the players: If you’re in hostile territory… yeah, splitting your strength is generally a bad idea. But once your adventures leave the dungeon, there are going to be lots of times when you’re not operating in hostile territory and can gain huge benefits from multiplying your active fronts.

You can actually think of this in terms of action economy: If you all stick together, you’ll be stuck doing one thing at a time. If you split up, on the other hand, you can often be doing two or three or five things at the same time, stealing a march on your opposition or just moving quicker towards your goals. (This can also make it easier for different characters to pursue actions that play to their unique strengths, making it less likely for some players get stuck in “passive mode” watching other players do everything important. When two actions of the same type need to happen at the same time, it’s also a great opportunity for someone who’s second-best at something to get a chance to showcase their skills, whereas normally you’d usually default to having the character with the best modifier make the check.)

Two easy examples where splitting the party can be favorable are personal scenes (hard to woo your lady love with four wingmen/women hovering over your shoulder) and time-crunched objectives. I find this style of play is more common than not in urban adventures, where meeting with multiple people at the same time can be very advantageous; or one group can be handling the barter while another group is gathering rumors down at the Docks. Being able to pursue multiple leads simultaneously in a mystery scenario is another common example (you’ve got to catch the serial killer before they strike again!), but can be strategically a little more complicated as you run the risk of inadvertently stumbling into hostile territory on the wrong foot.

Now that we know why splitting the party can be awesome, here are some quick tips I’ve learned over the years when GMing split groups.

Tip: Split spotlight time by player, not group.

Regardless of splitting the party, you generally want every player to be contributing equally and to have an equal amount of time in the “spotlight” (getting to show off the cool stuff they can do, being responsible for the group’s success, etc.).

An easy mistake to make, though, is what I call the “lone wolf spotlight,” in which one PC wanders off by themselves and ends up getting fully half of the GM’s attention. This can sometimes be a symptom of disruptive play (with the lone wolf’s activities interfering with the other players’ fun), with the increased spotlight time inadvertently rewarding the bad behavior, but this is not always the case.

Solving the problem is just a matter of keeping in mind the general principle of everyone getting an even share of the spotlight: If one group has four PCs in it and the other group has one PC in it, you should usually spend four times as long focusing on the larger group.

(There can be lots of exceptions to this. Juggling spotlight time is more art than rigid turn-keeping. Maybe the smaller group is doing something much more important and gets a lot of focus in the first half of the session, and then you can make sure the other PCs get extra spotlight time in the second half of the session or at next week’s session. But the rule of thumb here is still to split spotlight time by player, not group.)

Tip: Put the PCs under a time crunch.

The party doesn’t have to be constantly facing do-or-die deadlines, but there are A LOT of benefits to making time relevant to a scenario. It makes every choice between A or B significant, because you may not have time to do A and then do B.

Bonus Tip: You don’t need to set a plethora of explicit deadlines to make time relevant. Just having a campaign world which is active – in which the players can see that significant things happen over time; that situations evolve – will create not just the perception, but also the reality that time matters.

One of the things that will happen as a natural result of this is that the players will be encouraged to split the party: Faced with a difficult choice between doing A or B, they’ll cut the Gordian knot by breaking into two groups and doing both.

So have multiple stuff happening at the same time: Two different patrons want to hire them for jobs on the same day. An unexpected crisis breaks out just as they’re getting ready to go do a thing. When they’re in the middle of doing something, use a cellphone or sending spell to have a desperate friend call them for help.

Tip: Cut in the middle of scenes.

I touched on this earlier, but it can be easy when running a split party to fall into the habit of playing out a full scene with Group A and then playing out a full scene with Group B. (Or, more generally, resolving everything Group A wants to do before switching to Group B.)

This approach can work (and there may be times when it’s exactly what you want to do), particularly if you’re blessed with a group who thoroughly enjoys audience stance and can happily sit back and watch the other players do their thing, but more often than not this will result in Group B becoming bored for half the session and then Group B becoming bored for half the session.

So read the room and cut before people start tuning out. In my experience, it’s almost always better to cut too often than it is to wait too long, so err in that direction.

Tip: Swap groups when you’re not needed.

Are the players in Group A discussing their options? Or rolling dice to make their skill checks?

Cut to Group B!

There are a bunch of more advanced techniques you can employ for effective, dramatic cuts, but watching for those moments when the players don’t need the GM to continue playing are absolute gimmes.

(It’s also another example of why splitting the party can be awesome: If Group A is roleplaying amongst themselves while Group B is resolving stuff with the GM, then everyone is magically getting bonus playing time in your session.)

Tip: Scale time to balance table time.

Another common pitfall is to think that you need to keep time between the two groups strictly synced. So if one group is staying put while the other is driving fifteen minutes across town, you would need to resolve fifteen minutes of activity with the first group before you could even think about cutting to the other group.

This can very easily make it impossible to effectively split spotlight time or cut between the groups.

The solution, of course, is to simply not keep time synced: Start running the scene with the first group, then cut “forward” to the other group arriving at their destination. Run a bit of that interaction, then cut “backwards” to the first group.

This can sound complicated, but in practice it really isn’t. You can stress yourself out thinking about all the ways that the PCs could hypothetically violate causality, but you either (a) say that isn’t an option or (b) perform a simple retcon or flashback to resolve the conflict (whichever is most appropriate for the situation). Your players will help you do this in a way that makes sense for everyone. (Plus, in practice, timekeeping in the game world isn’t that precise to begin with, so you’ve usually got a pretty wide margin of fuzziness to fudge things around.)

Note: What if the PCs have cellphones or some other form of continual communication unlimited by distance that can trivially breach the continuity between the two groups? Often, the net effect here is that the party ISN’T actually split: Even though they’re in two different locations, each group is able to participate in what the other group is doing (by offering advice, expertise, etc.). This makes it substantially less important to balance spotlight time between the groups, since players can grab a slice of spotlight for themselves over the comms line.

Tip: If the PCs split up and get into two fights simultaneously, make a single initiative list.

And then you just swap between the fights whenever the initiative order tells you to.

(This generally works regardless of what type of initiative system you’re using. If you’re using hot potato initiative, for example, you and the players can choose to throw initiative between the two fights. If you’re using the 2d20 System, in which PCs always go first each round but the GM can spend meta-currency to seize initiative for one of the NPCs, you can simply do that for whichever fight you want at any time. And so forth.)

Running two combats at the same time is often seen as one of the hardest possible thing for a GM to do with a split party; a kind of worst case scenario. But the structure of the initiative list can actually act like training wheels. If you’re trying to get a feel for what running simultaneous scenes should feel like – cutting between scenes, balancing spotlight time, etc. – I actually think running simultaneous combat is a great way to do it.

5E Monster: Bloodwight, Lesser

January 23rd, 2022

Lesser bloodwights are either the pupa-like clone-spawn of true bloodwights or the first stage of recovery for a bloodwight who has been reduced to a desiccated state.

The Crimson Sheen. The signature of the bloodwights is the sheen of blood which they cause to erupt on the skin of the living. They are so inimical to life, that mortal flesh erupts in a hemorrhagic rejection of their presence. But the bloodwight itself thirsts for the warmth and energy of life, their limbs growing sleek and supple in its presence.

The sheen notably does not require line of sight, allowing bloodwights to lurk in sealed up attics or glide through city sewers. There are tyrants who have been known to wall up lesser bloodwights in oubliettes, into which can be thrown doomed prisoners.

Blood-Damned Nests. Bloodwights have a strong nesting influence, constructing mounds from whatever material may be at hand (furniture in mortal dwellings, detritus in ruins, leaves or fallen trees in forests, and so forth).

There may be a hunting component to this behavior, as the bloodwights can lay hidden within a nest while nevertheless feasting on any living creatures who pass by. In some cases, those excavating these nests have found them to be connected to other nests in the same area through shallow tunnels.

BLOODWIGHT, LESSER

Medium undead, neutral evil


Armor Class 14

Hit Points 45 (6d8+18)

Speed 30 ft.


STR 14 (+2), DEX 12 (+1), CON 16 (+3), INT 11 (+0), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 16 (+3)


Skills Stealth +3, Perception +3

Damage Resistances cold, necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons

Damage Immunities poison

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13

Languages Any

Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +2


Bloodsheen. A living creature within 30 feet of a lesser bloodwight must succeed at a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or begin sweating blood (covering their skin in a sheen of blood). Characters affected by bloodsheen suffer 1d4 points of damage, plus 1 point of damage for each bloodwight within 30 feet. A character is only affected by bloodsheen once per round, regardless of how many bloodwights are present.

Health Soak. A lesser bloodwight within 30 feet of a living creature gains 2 hit points per round. A lesser bloodwight benefiting from health soak will gain hit points even after their normal maximum number of hit points has been reached, up to a maximum of 66 (the maximum number of hit points possible per Hit Die).


ACTIONS

Multiattack. Lesser bloodwights make two claw attacks.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) bludgeoning damage.

Blood Welt. When a creature is struck by a lesser bloodwight’s claw attack, they must succeed at a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or suffer a blood welt. A blood welt bleeds for 1 point of necrotic damage per round. The victim can repeat the saving throw at the beginning of each turn, ending the effect of all current blood welts on a successful save. Alternatively, the bleeding can be stopped with a DC 14 Wisdom (Medicine) check.

Bloodwights appear in The Complex of Zombies.

The Complex of Zombies - Justin AlexanderTrue bloodwights are among the deadliest of the undead banes, capable of achieving power to rival even the most potent liches. If they become trapped and unable to feed, however, their blood-drenched flesh dries to desiccated husks; their desperate and unquenched need for living energy driving them first to madness and then to near-brainlessness.

Shambling Gait. When adventurers first encounter a desiccated bloodwight, they’ll often drawn the wrong conclusion. The shambling gait and limited actions of a desiccated bloodwight are likely to leave them thinking that they’re facing common zombies.

Bloodsheen. The first indication that something is wrong will come when they start sweating blood and their skin becomes coated with a scarlet sheen. As the blood drips from them, it will pool on the floor and flow towards the desiccated corpses which grow in strength with every passing moment.

Transformation. When a desiccated bloodwight has drained enough energy from the living, it will transform into a lesser bloodwight. Its dry skin will crack open as the undead horror literally tears itself out of its own body. The thing which emerges is a glistening mass of raw muscle, pulsing with thick veins of crimson-black blood. Its fang-like teeth glitter as its mouth parts in a ghastly, hissing smile…

BLOODWIGHT, DESICCATED

Medium undead, neutral evil


Armor Class 8

Hit Points 22 (3d8+9)

Speed 20 ft.


STR 12 (+1), DEX 8 (-1), CON 16 (+3), INT 6 (-2), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 16 (+3)


Skills Stealth +1

Damage Resistances cold, necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons

Damage Immunities poison

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10

Languages Any

Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +2


Bloodsheen. A living creature within 30 feet of a desiccated bloodwight must succeed at a DC 11 Constitution saving throw or begin sweating blood (covering their skin in a sheen of blood). Characters affected by bloodsheen suffer 1d4 points of damage, plus 1 point of damage for each bloodwight within 30 feet. A character is only affected by bloodsheen once per round, regardless of how many bloodwights are present.

Health Soak. A desiccated bloodwight within 30 feet of a living creature gains 2 hit points per round. A desiccated bloodwight benefiting from health soak will gain hit points even after their normal maximum number of hit points has been reached, up to a maximum of 33 (the maximum number of hit points possible per Hit Die). If a desiccated bloodwight reaches the maximum number of hit points possible per Hit Die, they benefit from a restorative transformation (see below). If a desiccated bloodwight with more than their normal maximum number of hit points is no longer within 30 feet of a living creature, they will lose 1 hit point per minute until they return to their normal maximum number of hit points.

Restorative Transformation. A desiccated bloodwight who reaches the maximum number of hit points per Hit Die as a result of their health soak ability is transformed into a lesser bloodwight as a bonus action. From that point forward, the desiccated bloodwight is treated as a lesser bloodwight in all respects.


ACTIONS

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d6+1) bludgeoning damage.


Design Note: Bloodwights originally appeared in my 3E adventure The Complex of Zombies, which reinvented the typical cannon fodder zombie of fantasy roleplaying as a terrifying monster of horror commensurate with its cultural cachet. You can read some behind the scenes commentary here.

Sacred Temple of Ivy Sarsens - Kolbass

The Art of the Key breaks down how you can organize and format the room keys in your dungeon to make them easy to prep and run. But what do you actually put in the key? What do you fill your dungeon rooms with?

Every dungeon is a unique snowflake, but my general process is:

  1. Make a list of ideas. “Section of dungeon that looks like a Mongolian temple,” “dracolisk hatchery,” etc. Often this is just a list of cool/necessary rooms that I want to include, riffing on the general theme or purpose of the dungeon. (You can use techniques like the Goblin Ampersand to juice a basic concept and help spur your creativity.)
  2. Draw the dungeon map, making sure to include all the cool ideas. (This will often involve combining multiple ideas into a single area to make them cooler in combo.)
  3. Flesh out the key.

“Fleshing out the key” covers a variety of sins, but our key tip today for making awesome dungeon rooms is to avoid having rooms that are just one thing*.

It’s not just the room with the goblins; it’s the room with the goblins and the bubbling stewpot and the chandelier made from kobold bones.

It’s not just a room with some bookshelves; it’s a room with bookshelves, a slate table with a hidden compartment, and a looted rug from the Cambarran Dynasty.

A good rule of thumb here is to include at least three interactive elements (i.e., things that require or reward the players for doing more than just looking at them).

There are a couple reasons why this is good praxis.

First, the interplay between the elements tends to result in gameplay that’s greater than the sum of its parts: A fight with goblins is interesting. A chandelier made from kobold bones is a nice bit of set dressing. Goblins swinging on a bone chandelier during a fight? That’s awesome.

Second, a room with multiple interactive bits (i.e., things that are worth checking out) will encourage the group to split up and all check out different stuff.

Lisa: I’m going to scan the bookshelves for interesting titles.

Roberta: Can I make a History check to learn more about the antique rug?

DM: Go ahead and give me that check. Sandra, what are you doing while they do that?

Sandra: I’ll examine the table in the middle of the room.

If each room just has one thing for the PCs to interact with, you’ll often find the group falling into a routine where one character defaults into being “the guy who checks out the one thing in the room worth checking out.” (Usually the rogue.) If you break that up with multiple, simultaneous interactions, over the course of the dungeon you’ll make it more likely that everyone in the group will feel engaged with the exploration.

* The exception are empty rooms. In my dungeons, empty rooms are rarely truly empty (in the sense of being barren and featureless). Instead, “empty” rooms commonly feature one flavorful thing which does not have a significant interaction. (“Cool mural! Okay, let’s go left.”)

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