I'd like to know how people have fixed the Slaying Stone premise hole: You have to go find a stone in a town overrun with orcs, goblins and a dragon, but:
What answers can I give my players if/when they point out the obvious fact that the stone is mostly useless, and the best thing to do is leaving it alone?
The fact that it can kill any one single person without exception (from my understanding by reading a little about the adventure), the best way to prove that this stone has significance is give them a vision that the target of the stone (the count, duke or whatever) has both reasons he cannot leave the area, but also is destined to have a great importance to the world at large. And if the Stone of Slaying is found and used against him, it would stop him from fulfilling that destiny.
This way, just ignoring the stone would have world reaching consequences and can incentive them into taking the contract and finding and destroying the stone.
One solution is to have an enemy – the biggest, baddest, evilest guy – who can only be slain by whittling him down/taking out his protections, and then using the Stone of Slaying on him.
Makes for a pretty epic quest to get the stone, get to the boss, and use it when the time is right.
A pretty obvious candidate for this, depending on the players’ level, would be the Tarrasque. Traditionally, the Tarrasque is ridiculously difficult to actually kill; originally, no actual way to kill it was offered. AD&D suggested that wish might work; 3.5 made that official, but that could easily be undone.
Elsewise, just any cosmic evil. Your setting’s Ganon.
It could also be one of the means of killing anyone permanently -- that is, he can't be resurrected, contacted via spells or such. In a high magic world where resurrections can be easily arranged, this could be one way to remove a paranoid villain with several backup plans.
In the synopsis a sentence reads: "A vicious group or orc mercenaries also searches the town for the slaying stone." By default, the orcs are searching for it to give to their patron Dreus Matrand, an arcane scholar. She plans to study the slaying stone, along with other similar items, in order to recreate them.
Read the section on Plot Themes and Hooks and if needed adapt some of the ideas there to fit your player characters better. The threat of leaving a once great city, including any arcane secrets and magic weaponry, in the hands of goblins and orcish mercenaries might also be an incentive not to ignore the situation.
Take a look through the Factions and NPCs section to familiarize yourself with the motivations and backgrounds of the characters you'll be playing. They're more than just stat blocks and an encounter setup. If you know why the NPCs do what they do you're more prepared for unexpected twists from the players.
