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not to resurrect an old post, but I ran this adventure over a multi week event.
6 players - ninja, magus, sorc, druid, inquisitor, fighter in full plate, and a druid.
each player was either 5th or 6th level
one of the first random encounters on the water, not even in the city yet, was a Dire Crocodile - CR 9 - which basically TPK'd the party.
first round, heaved himself up on the boat.
round two, bit the gnome sorc in half - 3d6+13, and tail slapped the boat 4d8+6 - which capsized it
the rest of the rounds had the party either sinking or getting deathrolled.
I'm a little confused and concerned that this creature would be listed as a random encounter, it makes me think that the environment was either over looked or was not fully taken into account.
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13 encounters before including any random encounters, this will be a long run. A few notes and questions from prepping it:
omg stacking fear auras...
Whisperscale Chiefs Attack bonuses: Looks like they gave the morningstars the multiattack -2 and the TWF -2. Normally he should be using normal TWF for the morningstars and the multiattack reduction for the bite, although that makes him slightly more effective.
Contact poison used as an injury poison, does it still have a one round onset time? Assuming no. Link to Poison Blog for brushing up on poisons.
Travel to the golden city seems fast, 7hrs at 30ft. Will need to factor in the tracking penalty for moving at full speed. Won't need survival checks to avoid getting lost since they are following the Razmirians.
I'm also looking for ideas for items in the Price of Gold trap. I'm thinking to mix in half useful items to help with condition removal and the coming fights, half random loot.
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Otherwise, it went well. Party of 5: 6 Barbarian, 6 Paladin, 6 Ranger, 4 Kyra, 4 Amiri. So they had the firepower to blow through the random encounters they did not avoid. Used the elemental, snakes, and ghost as the lake random encounters, it made the barbarian who took the ghost rager power feel good. They found the graves and the ranger decided to place the holy symbol of Erastil above them as he played the Mask or the Living God and was having second thoughts about this Razmir fellow, wanted to ensure these graves were concentrated to a Real god.
Found the overland travel rules for trackless wilderness and trails instead of roads and applied the x2 travel modifier for trackless wilderness and then gave them the option to move at half or full speed for tracking, and the option to move at half or full speed for stealth. They took the penalty on tracking to move at full speed and are not being sneaky, so they are moving across the island at a brisk 1 mile per hour and gained some extra ground by forced marching.
They found the battle site at noon on day 2, fight ensued and due to lucky rolls only the barbarian and the animal companion were poisoned. The barbarian made his save and the animal companion almost died before getting lucky on saves. And this is were we hit the 4 hour mark after a slow start.
Next week we roll for one random encounter as they climb the mountain to Xin-Grafar (do they encounter Terror Trolls!?) and then into the city.
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Had to make a quick decision on if the gold had a magic aura, decided it didn't. In hind sight I think it might be best to give the molten lava a dim aura (the stuff that was created less than 10x1d6 minutes ago).
Trap-finding found the summoning trap in the intersections so that saved some time and gave a nice RP and atmosphere development as I got to describe a ruined tavern/barracks/warehouse every time they went around an intersection.
Forgot to think the darkness rules all the way through during the demon assassin encounter. Had to make a quick decision on if the molten lava was ambient light (if the darkness spell made things completely dark or just brought it down to dim light). Took the nice path and said it gave off normal ambient light, if I ran it again I would would say it was a normal light source and suppressed by the darkness spell.
Double reach weapons on ogres who trip chargers are hard on reckless barbarians. Fudged a crit so that I wouldn't kill the barbarian, even fudging only raging vitality kept him alive.
They refused to approach the giant pile of loot. Thought it was a trap. Shame, I put a wand of fire resist in there.
They almost used smart tactics to shoot the caryatid columns to death from range, but the barbarian couldn't resist charging in.
Now they are setting up camp to regain some spells before taking the inner ring. Ranger aced the survival checks and the made the int check at the gate, so they are very confident in their time remaining.
So now I get to roll 23hr (I searched and as far as I can tell divine characters can only get new spells once every 24 hours? even though arcane casters only need 8 hours of rest?) of random encounters and come up with skill check methods for them to avoid these wandering monsters. Then the fight the dragon, I think it might kill the barbarian if he drops tactics again.
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Playing in the weekly game store time slot with drop-ins, so Osprey organized three pathfinders to teleport in as reinforcements and the group jumped from 4 to 7.
The party wanted to scout the third ring before resting for a night, so they fought the dragon a little low on resources. The dragon held the bridge and opened with a breath weapon the scout in the surprise round - cast shield as the rest of the party moves forward from were they were hiding - and then breath weapon again as everyone arrives, this made the group feel like they had to close and they ended up charging done the bridge. It was a great fight, the dragon was taking a character out of the fight every round. I didn't have to make a decision on awesome blow because the characters that the dragon thought were a threat were not in a position to be knocked into the molten gold.
They had no disable device, so the rope was cut and the razmir was gone by the time they hacked through the door. The Naga fight wasn't to threatening as most of it's spells were hitting single targets but it was a great encounter for learning, learning about fall damage, learning about climb DCs, learning about miss chance, learning how blind a group is without knowledge skills, learning how magical defenses can make it hard to kill a caster, how it is a standard action to wake a sleeping ally, how it is a full round action to force feed a potion to an unconscious ally, how you are in trouble if you can't find an invisible enemy at level 6.
The razmirs were as ineffective as expected and made the group feel better after two long fights.
Iramine was a great archetypal wizard fight. Web shut down the party in part to bad saves, the ice storm was some nice guaranteed damage, and it was really fun as a GM to get the fireball web combo of. But after all the bad saves the group put her down with double criticals. If you run this make some kind of reminder to roll spell failure from armor, it was such a rare mechanic that I kept forgetting.
We were short on time in this last session (7 players) that the naga respawn and random encounters on the return trip were hand waved.