A good mix of exploring and combat. My players liked it. But some things need to be explain better. Is the magical restrictions still on if Markoth dies? Which ship combat rules do you use. Part 2 the dungeon was great fun and theatre of the mind works well with this. Part 3 the Golem battle is fun but can be a long haul. Part 4. Ok. I change the name of the boss to the baron because it made more sense. Depending on how you rule ship combat, this can make or break the fight. If the ship can only move 60, the ship is not going to make it the castle. If the Magic restriction is still in effect then the combat can go either way. However, there were NO adjusing combat encounter suggestions. I took a group of 4 which should be average and treated them as weak. The ship combat when their way. But even using only 1\2 the suggested monsters and dropping one set of them, the castle battle is deadly.

The story was solid and well written. The ecounters were tough and the group had allot of fun.

Personally not a fan of this Tier 4 module. It has a lot of exploration that doesn't really add to the overall storyline. There's an interesting mechanic involving golems, but I feel that it protects the players too much. The final battle is a major slog fest, which I'm really not a fan of. Overall, it's a decent module but it has to go through several variations.

T4 adventures seem to fall back on a few ways to increase the challenge:

• Gimp the heroes, either by neutering some of their powers or tossing them underwater, where martials are at a huge disadvantage
• Throw damage sponges and hope they do enough damage to the players
• Increase number of spell-casters

This module mostly avoids the first point compared to the first of this series, and chooses the second point to focus on, with a bit of the latter. Our group took more time than usual for these combats, but mostly just cause we had to get through all that HP. That resource drain did make the final encounter slightly more challenging, but if you have a party with enough GISH/Casters, it is still managable.

The first major combat encounter can also be reworked to play up some of the fun potential of the scenario and/or actually merge it with the final encounter. I might try this when I run it for myself at a future time.

A solid finish to the fifth season. The 3D nature of encounters add a challenge even for T4 characters. And the final encounter (which can take a bit of time to run) manages to make the combat epic without gimping any class abilities. (I'd suggest bringing in most of the combatants fairly early, as there's a lot of early fodder as written.) Unlike Mysterious Isle (which is about two hours too long), the exploration portion of the module is engaging and a sense of urgency the first part lacks.

This one was a bit more fun than the former with an interesting ploa and the combat wasn't particularly hard. I did find the second half a bit messy to run and there is the potential for a lot of confusion during the final encounter depending on how it is run - especially if the PC's had some level of delay to their persuit of the giants. I had given it a read through before hand, but the final encounter still felt a little overwhelming to manage.

Weird sort of compartmentalising with this adventure, the first half is essentially a walk-through where the characters pick up cool stuff, the second half is a chaotic combat that will easily take upwards of 2 hours to complete.

Not a whole lot else really.

This can easily run long but the end fight is suitabily epic and mechanically there are a variety of challenges throughout. Good capstone adventure for this season. Not a ton of RP opportunity unless the party forces it.

Fun but messy!

The first part is really cool and really theatre of the mindable. Full of random stuff happening and confusing for the player, it sets a great feeling for the adventure.

The second part is great too. But the mess being. There is waves and waves of monsters that comes in. Most of large and huge. The map gets crowded really fast. I runned it theatre of the mind. It was way more simple. The players enjoyed!

The last part was crazy (but crazy cool!) The module doesnt not mention the dimension the airship dimension. I drew it too small. Dozen of trolls, bunch of cloud giant, scrag, wyverns... a lot of stat block to manage and my trolls could not attack because they could not reach the PC. Nonetheless we had a lot of fun! I swapped the boss 8th level spell of Antimagic Field. In last resort I had him grapple a caster and jump out of the ship... kamikaze style, was funny.

Player can easily miss the treasure of the Morkoth, I don't know how intentionnal that is... If you are a kind DM you just say "you sure you dont wanna check the room before you start chasing the giants?". It's up to you!

Also general note, all of the fights are overall pretty easy. Don't hesitate to max HP every creatures!

Final note : The story send you after Rajiram, but in the end, it is not him. But nobody says it. How does the players know that Dworkin is not Rajiram? ... Might be a good idea from the storytelling point of view to add a letter on Dworkin... Like a letter from Rajiram saying "yeah go grab the eye for me thanks bla bla bla"

It was a fun 2 parter, its a throw away Legendary item but useful for som. The story keeps this going not the combat making it hard to run on the fly but satisfying if you have the time to run it! -DM Ace

This adventure has a similar lack in combat difficulty to 5-18, but makes up for it with even more compelling story and intrigue. Overall, a great module for any tier four party.

This adventure is not challenging at all, but you know what? I'm over it. The story is super fun and my players really enjoyed breaking out all their T4 goodies to smash the bad guys, and they told me they felt like the module put a lot of pressure on them anyway. I especially love the Morkoth's museum. The Toga of Zagyg was particularly amusing. But the setpiece battles were also a lot of fun. I'm glad I didn't ramp up the difficulty—playing it as written, we finished in almost exactly 4 hours. In the last one, I managed to make the players actually fear for their lives by throwing Slarkrethel at them, but it also made the game go way over time.

One thought I had that I didn't end up going with was having Dworkin open up by casting Antimagic Field, under the theory that, yeah, he's a powerful mage who'd be giving up his magic, but the adventurers are powerful mages too, and if nobody has any magic, they're puny humans, but he's still a giant. Ultimately I decided the 8th level spell he had as written was more important.

There is one awkward thing about this module, which is that players never get the opportunity to fight Baron Rajiram himself. You're supposed to fight him in DDEP05-02 Ark of the Mountains, but now that that adventure is retired, anyone who didn't face him then will likely never get the chance. Kind of a shame, but I guess that's how the story was designed.

This module was very enjoyable - traveling into the "Menagerie of Wonders" was fantastic - seeing parts from different worlds and interacting with other creatures who are prt of that was really interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also thought the Crystal Golem mechanic was intersting, albeit a little confusing. The final battle felt very drawn out, but it was overall fun. Very fun finale to the Season 5 storyline.

Recommend Purchase: Yes. XP Range: 18750-25000

The Season 5 Hardcover (Storm King's Thunder) is an amazing sandbox that spans the entire northwest Swordcoast. Unlike seasons 1-3 these storyline modules actually occur in the same area and mesh well with the hardcover. This is the first season to include the digial certificate for permanent magic items.

Before running any Season 5 module, you should download the following content from DMSGUILD and read it fully:

• Season 5 Narrative: Parnast, Stagwick, & Beregost Sadly this was released only AFTER the season was over :(

• A Guide to the Factions of Faerun Lots of Faction stuff in Season 5, so your players should be engaged with the Faction they've chosen.

Felt lacking for T4 content, interesting story, poor combat.