I just finished up Tower of Storms from Dragon of Icespire Peak and now all my PC's have the Charm of the Storm ability.
After they defeated Moesko and the harpies they had their druid use the Call Lightning spell from the rooftop. He then repeatedly struck the lightning rod with bolts of lightning which recharged the altar. This gave all the characters a chance to touch it and gain the Charm of the Storm. I allowed it because I figured it was technically lightning from a storm which is what the altar required.
What I'm trying to decide now is how to deal with my storm charmed party. Does the Charm of the Storm last forever until all 3 charges are used or does it (should it) disappear after a set time? I couldn't find anything that said how long it lasted. Any suggestions on what to do or am I now stuck with my supercharged PC's?
If it runs on charges, I would assume that they last until the charges are expended. You may just chalk it up to one of those things where the players outsmarted the adventure and got a nice little temporary bonus for their trouble.
Yeah it’s charge based. If players start exploiting it perhaps chuck enemies at the players who can deal with lightning attacks. Like maybe have anchorites of Talos have resistance to lightning damage, and have them bless their comrades with lightning resist. (Only do the bless comrade option if they really...really exploit it.) You could also have blight enemies, in situations where it makes sense and is balanced, be replaced by a singular shambling mound.
Feel free to ask me any other questions about the module as I have DMed it.
Thanks _Nano, I think making them have encounters with monsters resistant to lightning attacks might be a good idea. It's not that I want to take away their new found toy, because I do agree with Metamongoose that they deserved acquiring it for their intelligent game play. I just didn't want to have their upcoming encounter with the white dragon become anti-climatic. They are a large party (6) and 18 lightning bolt attacks can do a lot of damage very quickly.
That's awesome, well done to your players. Can you toss them a really hard quest/encounter with a solid reward that will burn off most/all of their lightning bolts? Something they normally wouldn't be able to handle at their level. Then they'll get to feel really awesome and maybe have a godlike reputation in their local area.
/\ | | | Marshviper’s idea is really good too. Before making the lightning bolts nerfed so they won’t destroy everything in their path via resistances, I do think their creativity should be rewarded to I think the idea above is great. Maybe have a monster that pertains to the story or is linkable to the story get wrecked and that would give the players a good rep.
I think the best way this should be done is to have a group of orcs ally w another form of monster that acts as a new threat. Defeating that threat would give the players a good rep. I think this is good because Gorthok is immune to lightning, and cryovain is the final boss which I know you don’t want destroyed by lightning.
It has to be non magical lightning. It says so in the module.
It says that the lightning must come from a storm to activate the rod. However, they used the spell call lightning, which creates a storm cloud, and the storm cloud is what creates the lightning, so it does come from a storm meaning it works. I looked at the module and it never explicitly said the words “nonmagical”
That's the way I read it too, as long as the lightning came from a storm it worked. Here's the actual text from the module.
Once the altar bestows this benefit [Charm of the Storm], it can’t do so again until it recharges. The altar recharges when the lightning rod on the roof (see area T8) is struck by three bolts of lightning from a storm and channels that energy down into the altar. Lightning from other sources doesn’t count.
Since my party is doing Dragon Barrow next and likely Circle of Thunder right after that (where they meet up with Gorthok and the anchorites) I could arrange for them to come across a horde of orcs & ogres which have been ambushing travelers along the Triboar Trail....could be fun to just blow them all away :)
Charm of the storm is basically 3 scrolls of lightning bolt. It doesn't say a save dc but you could pick anything from 12 like the anchorites to suggest they use the altar, 13 like many uncommon magic items, 15 like a typical scroll/ wand of lightning bolts or choose something character specific like spell casting or 8+ proficiency which will be 10 for martials but higher for casters . You can also argue that call lightning as a single cloud is not a thunder storm but that wouldn't prevent them taking over an existing storm.
As for encounters:
One thing you can do is change the manticore quest at umbrage hall to be two manticores instead of 1 which is what it suggests to do for a follow up encounter there. As manticores are long ranged attackers and fliers, lightning bolt will be the best option for the party to reach them. You could run the encounters as follows:
One is still attacking the door, the other is keeping watch by flying circles around and approaches the party to warn them off when they approach. If the party can't convince them then they both take flight and attack the party. They attack from roughly 100 meters in the air and fight until they exhaust all of their spines or until they are at half health unless one of them is killed in which case the other fights to the death in rage. Firing a couple of lightning bolts at them will be the obvious solution.
Otherwise you can replicate a similar effect with Cryovain. If they hold onto them you can spend a few rounds with the dragon staying high up and dropping chunks of rock or using it's breath to create a similar scenario where they want to lightning bolt the dragon until it becomes injured enough to land.
As for other encounters I don't think it should be a good choice against the Talos followers because they have good reason to be resistant to it.
lightning bolt won't work against Gorthok the thunder boar and honestly I think it makes sense to give anchorites absorb elements that applies automatically to any use of lightning bolt gained from their alter because why would you use a gods magic against people blessed by that god.
Hello,
I just finished up Tower of Storms from Dragon of Icespire Peak and now all my PC's have the Charm of the Storm ability.
After they defeated Moesko and the harpies they had their druid use the Call Lightning spell from the rooftop. He then repeatedly struck the lightning rod with bolts of lightning which recharged the altar. This gave all the characters a chance to touch it and gain the Charm of the Storm. I allowed it because I figured it was technically lightning from a storm which is what the altar required.
What I'm trying to decide now is how to deal with my storm charmed party. Does the Charm of the Storm last forever until all 3 charges are used or does it (should it) disappear after a set time? I couldn't find anything that said how long it lasted. Any suggestions on what to do or am I now stuck with my supercharged PC's?
If it runs on charges, I would assume that they last until the charges are expended. You may just chalk it up to one of those things where the players outsmarted the adventure and got a nice little temporary bonus for their trouble.
Yeah it’s charge based. If players start exploiting it perhaps chuck enemies at the players who can deal with lightning attacks. Like maybe have anchorites of Talos have resistance to lightning damage, and have them bless their comrades with lightning resist. (Only do the bless comrade option if they really...really exploit it.) You could also have blight enemies, in situations where it makes sense and is balanced, be replaced by a singular shambling mound.
Feel free to ask me any other questions about the module as I have DMed it.
Thanks _Nano, I think making them have encounters with monsters resistant to lightning attacks might be a good idea. It's not that I want to take away their new found toy, because I do agree with Metamongoose that they deserved acquiring it for their intelligent game play. I just didn't want to have their upcoming encounter with the white dragon become anti-climatic. They are a large party (6) and 18 lightning bolt attacks can do a lot of damage very quickly.
That's awesome, well done to your players. Can you toss them a really hard quest/encounter with a solid reward that will burn off most/all of their lightning bolts? Something they normally wouldn't be able to handle at their level. Then they'll get to feel really awesome and maybe have a godlike reputation in their local area.
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Marshviper’s idea is really good too. Before making the lightning bolts nerfed so they won’t destroy everything in their path via resistances, I do think their creativity should be rewarded to I think the idea above is great. Maybe have a monster that pertains to the story or is linkable to the story get wrecked and that would give the players a good rep.
I think the best way this should be done is to have a group of orcs ally w another form of monster that acts as a new threat. Defeating that threat would give the players a good rep. I think this is good because Gorthok is immune to lightning, and cryovain is the final boss which I know you don’t want destroyed by lightning.
It has to be non magical lightning. It says so in the module.
DM: Dragon of Icespire Peak PbP
It says that the lightning must come from a storm to activate the rod. However, they used the spell call lightning, which creates a storm cloud, and the storm cloud is what creates the lightning, so it does come from a storm meaning it works. I looked at the module and it never explicitly said the words “nonmagical”
That's the way I read it too, as long as the lightning came from a storm it worked. Here's the actual text from the module.
Once the altar bestows this benefit [Charm of the Storm], it can’t do so again until it recharges. The altar recharges when the lightning rod on the roof (see area T8) is struck by three bolts of lightning from a storm and channels that energy down into the altar. Lightning from other sources doesn’t count.
Since my party is doing Dragon Barrow next and likely Circle of Thunder right after that (where they meet up with Gorthok and the anchorites) I could arrange for them to come across a horde of orcs & ogres which have been ambushing travelers along the Triboar Trail....could be fun to just blow them all away :)
Thanks again for the suggestions!
Can you quote that, or maybe point out where in the module you see that? I'm curious.
Thanks!
Charm of the storm is basically 3 scrolls of lightning bolt. It doesn't say a save dc but you could pick anything from 12 like the anchorites to suggest they use the altar, 13 like many uncommon magic items, 15 like a typical scroll/ wand of lightning bolts or choose something character specific like spell casting or 8+ proficiency which will be 10 for martials but higher for casters . You can also argue that call lightning as a single cloud is not a thunder storm but that wouldn't prevent them taking over an existing storm.
As for encounters:
One thing you can do is change the manticore quest at umbrage hall to be two manticores instead of 1 which is what it suggests to do for a follow up encounter there. As manticores are long ranged attackers and fliers, lightning bolt will be the best option for the party to reach them. You could run the encounters as follows:
One is still attacking the door, the other is keeping watch by flying circles around and approaches the party to warn them off when they approach. If the party can't convince them then they both take flight and attack the party. They attack from roughly 100 meters in the air and fight until they exhaust all of their spines or until they are at half health unless one of them is killed in which case the other fights to the death in rage. Firing a couple of lightning bolts at them will be the obvious solution.
Otherwise you can replicate a similar effect with Cryovain. If they hold onto them you can spend a few rounds with the dragon staying high up and dropping chunks of rock or using it's breath to create a similar scenario where they want to lightning bolt the dragon until it becomes injured enough to land.
As for other encounters I don't think it should be a good choice against the Talos followers because they have good reason to be resistant to it.
lightning bolt won't work against Gorthok the thunder boar and honestly I think it makes sense to give anchorites absorb elements that applies automatically to any use of lightning bolt gained from their alter because why would you use a gods magic against people blessed by that god.
You're replying to a post that's 3 years old, so they might not answer. Also, the module text is in the post directly before yours.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm