26
\$\begingroup\$

I've recently picked up Storm King's Thunder after my homebrew game came to a halt. Main reason for this is that I bought Volo's Guide to Monsters, Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

My players really want to try out the new classes and races, but I've ran out of ideas to continue in the homebrew game, so I picked up a published adventure. On the back I noticed that the book should be used with the PHB, DMG and MM. I imagine this refers to requirements for GM'ing, but it made me wonder if there were any other restrictions.

So far I could only find that it's recommended to have at least one character with the ability to understand Giant in the "How to run the game" section in the book when you run Storm King's Thunder.

Are there any restrictions or other things I should keep in mind when I allow my players to play classes and races from other official source books in published adventures? (e.g. certain race traits that affect parts of the story or powerful new classes)

Improve this question
\$\endgroup\$
0

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
46
\$\begingroup\$

Sure, you're the DM

The books listed on the back are the books you will absolutely need, because Storm King's Thunder references monsters and rules found in those three books.

Other than that, you're perfectly capable of changing things and using more books to run the campaign. In theory, all races (except for some in Volo's) and all classes should be on a roughly equal powerlevel, so that shouldn't really matter for Storm King's Thunder. You might want to be careful with allowing races with flight, though, as they can be a lot stronger, especially at the early levels when enemies have no way of dealing with a flying opponent.

The only real thing you might have to worry about is flavour. Some books deal with settings other than Toril. Finding a Warforged (Eberron) or a Loxadon (Ravnica) in the Sword Coast would be kind of odd, because they're not from that planet. Does this really matter? That is ultimately up to you and your players.

The listing of the DMG, PHB, and MM is to identify the minimum necessary material to run the adventure, since the adventure will refer to already published items, characters, NPC's, and monsters contained in one of those three books. In other words: Dear DM, without these three books you'll be missing some necessary information/material to run the adventure.

Improve this answer
\$\endgroup\$
2
  • 16
    \$\begingroup\$ I might add that flight-capable races might merit extra thought, as they can potentially throw a wrench into the adventure's flow. \$\endgroup\$
    – ThanosMaravel
    Feb 7, 2019 at 16:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ I agree with @ThanosMaravel regarding flying races. I recently started a campaign with some low level players, one being an Aarakocra and it changed the dynamics a bit (when she remembered she could fly). All enemies needed slings or bows and traps/ambushes/the way forward are easier to detect \$\endgroup\$
    – Steve
    Mar 24, 2019 at 23:29

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .