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The attack rolls stated do not appear to take bull's strength or power attack into account. If either were included, his damage bonuses should be much higher than +8, since that is what he gets from his Strength modifier alone.

You could argue that his stated 26 Strength is after having cast bull's strength, but I don't believe that is the case. My reason for this is that Malfeshnekor is a greater barghest with the Advanced template, which grants a +4 increase to all abilities. Your run-of-the-mill greater barghest has a Strength score of 23; adding the Advanced template should make it 27, which is pretty close to Malfeshnekor's 26.

Of course, Malfeshnekor is a unique barghest in most respects, meaning the writers have probably taken liberties with his stats, and you should feel somewhat free to do so as well.

To summarise, his attacks -- after including both power attack and bull's strength -- should be as follows:
bite +16 (2d6+16), 2 claws +16 (1d6+16)

Attack bonus breakdown: +10 (base attack), +10 (Strength), -3 (power attack), -1 (size)
Damage bonus breakdown: +10 (Strength), +6 (power attack)

Note: It seems like the size penalty to attacks rolls might be missing from Malfeshnekor's stats as written.

EDITED NOTE: I just discovered that Malfeshnekor in the anniversary edition of RotR is just a greater barghest, not Advanced or "elite". The one I used for my campaign is the same one that you've found on d20pfsrd.com, which I believe is a freely converted version of the original D&D edition of RotR. I didn't start using the anniversary edition before somewhat later in the campaign.

Adventure: Hook Mountain Massacre
Catalyst: The Graul Family all at once

Name of PC: Aphram Guardson; Race/Class/Level: Half-Drow Magus 7
Name of PC: Iacobus; Race/Class/Level: Varisian Cleric of Calistria 7
Name of PC: Maximus; Race/Class/Level: Half-Ogre Barbarian 7

The party had reached the Graul Homestead and quickly grew annoyed with the place. First off was a game of hit-and-run with Crowfood in the cornfields; second were the traps set at every entrance to the house, which blocked their attempt to follow Crowfood's retreat inside. Thirdly, once they decided to check the barn instead (at Kibb's incessant suggestions), they were by a huge ogre spider that managed to deliver his venom to the party magus.

At that point, he'd had enough, and threw three fireballs into the main house to end it all. Unfortunately, Mammy Graul had dimension door while Crowfood, Lucky, and Maulgro had windows to climb out of. Hucker came burning out through the kitchen some minutes later.

The battle that ensued was pretty devastating to the party, especially since they spent a lot of their resources on the encounters leading up to this one. Aphram, as the arsonist in this tale, became the main target of Mammy's rage; at first, she threw suffocation at him from above, but when it became clear that that was not going to take him down quickly enough, she supplied him with blood boil, bestow curse, and vampiric touch as well. Aphram did not last much longer, and soon hung dead and upside-down in the air by the mercy of his fly spell.

On the ground, Crowfood appeared from behind the porch some rounds later than Mammy, and charged the largest and tastiest target available. This would be Iacobus, the full-plated cleric. Crowfood's charge gave him sneak attack, while his ogre hook scored a critical hit, for a total of 87 damage. Too much. Much too much. Iacobus went out like a light, and the last thing he saw was his kidney and entrails clinging to Crowfood's ogre hook.

As Lucky and Maulgro appeared from the other side of the house, Mammy kept control of the battlefield by the use of black tentacles and solid fog. Along the way, I decided to give them the help of a half-naked Vale Temros (he picked up Aphram's katana), who somehow had reclaimed his strength as the battle seemed to go bad.

To summarize, the party barely won through in the end, with only the fighter and the wizard still standing. Hucker was the one to bring down Maximus, while Vale managed to take down Hucker. All in all, I may have made the Grauls too powerful, but it was the decision to draw the entire family out together that truly tipped the scales against the party.

First PC deaths in our campaign, and first time for me as a DM.

Adventure: Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Near consistent rolls below 5, ghouls, goblin ghasts, and an untimely skaveling.

Name of PC: Levron; Race/Class/Level: Varisian Wizard 5
Name of PC: Jaali Sho; Race/Class/Level: Chelaxian Summoner 1/Enlightened Paladin of Iomedae 4
Name of PC: Thorrogg; Race/Class/Level: Dwarven Barbarian 5

Story: After exploring much of Foxglove Manor, the party reaches Iesha Foxglove's revenant, identifying her as such. There is some murmuring about what to do with her, but the decision to see what she is up to is made by the party cleric as he removes the mirror from in front of Iesha. She races downstairs, screaming for vengeance upon Aldern, and the party follows on her heels. Jaali (the party paladin) is intent on not letting her out of his sight, and as they make their way below to the Misgivings dungeons, they continue to follow her as close as they can despite being harried by ghouls from every corner.

Soon they see Iesha jumping 50 ft into the lower level of The Vent chamber, and a couple rounds later hear her pounding upon the metal door leading to Aldern. At this point, the party decides to make a stand against the ghouls surrounding them, making the sound tactical choice to stop in the three-way intersection between three larger chambers.

After a few rounds of battle, Levron (wizard safely hanging back) starts to hear the sound of large flapping wings behind him. The player looks over his options, realises that the way ahead is too tight with occupied squares and combat to get through, and submits to the idea that this is his character's final moments (Xan-style).

By this time most of the normal ghouls are destroyed, but the party is cursed with terrible rolls on their saving throws. Only thanks to constant repositioning of paralysed fellows is the party able to keep their own from being hit with a coup de grace, and at one point all five members of the party is either stunned (from skaveling's shriek) or paralysed (by a DC 13). Due to tight corners, there is for the most part only one square from which to reach the ghouls, and they have a superior number of attacks.

On the other side of the battle, Levron survives longer than he ever dared imagine, thanks to the party eidolon climbing past him to defend against the emerging skaveling. The ravenous dire bat is squeezing and crawling incessantly through the tight cave to get to the party, and takes a bunch of damage from the eidolon and the wizard's flaming sphere, but ultimately the eidolon is paralysed and feasted upon. Of course, to the skaveling's rising frustration, the eidolon is simply desummoned as it dies. Levron yet again becomes the target of its anger, and is killed by an attack of opportunity critical hit bite as he attempts to flee. Somewhere within the next few rounds, the skaveling is destroyed after a brief tussle with Thorrogg.

Around this time, Iesha is defeated by the joint force of Aldern and his goblin ghasts, and the ghasts have been sent to deal with the party, while Aldern licks his wounds (on my roll to determine his remaining hp, he was left with 11). Two goblin ghasts climb up The Vent to flank the characters with most maneuverability, but both are one-hit-KO'd either by an earth breaker charge or a braced longspear.

Unfortunately, the remaining two goblin ghasts, coming one by one through The Grave, proved too much for the party. There are critical hits against the party every round, and in the last few rounds almost every single roll by a PC is below 5, but what's most damning is probably that all their resources are utterly spent. The first goblin eventually paralyses Jaali and attempts to coup de grace in the following round, but is downed by a lucky longspear hit from Thorrogg. The second goblin moves in to coup de grace, and Jaali rolls a natural 1 on his saving throw.

The final round starts with Thorrogg at 4 hp, and the goblin ghast at 9. Thorrogg drops the longspear, picks up his earth breaker, steps in to hit, and misses with a 3 on the die. I award him a hero point because it felt like one of those moments, and he burns it to reroll, but rolls yet another 3. The player resigns his sheet, and rightly so, as the goblin ghast full-attacks and sends Thorrogg a long way into the negatives. The party cleric, free from paralysis immediately after watching his fellows fall, casts Invisibility and flees.

Good stuff: Everyone had a lot of fun.

With six players, it took us two full sessions of about 6 hours.

In the first session, the group went through the room with all the debris, then passed the welcoming statue, fought some more sinspawn in the ancient prison, went on to finish Koruvus and discovered the levitation room.

In the second session, they backtracked and found the shrine to Lamashtu, then fought Erylium in the Cathedral of Wrath. This battle basically took the entire session, with the party flying in and out of the room due to fear and safety and so on. I actually ended the encounter a bit abruptly due to it growing very frustrating for all involved; Erylium can be kind of a drag if the players don't find a smart way to deal with her invisibility and flight.

Regarding preparation, I'm much the same as you. I take very much time rewriting a lot of the stuff in the AP to easier list the most obvious features of a room, instead of giving a long re-read description. I would advise you to save long descriptions and meticulous details for when players are extra interested about something, but it's probably different what works best for each group.

Alright, here goes! Sorry for the delay. These are the ones that I still feel make any sense.

I wrote up some diaries of hers and had tried to drop some pretty strong hints to what was her main issue with the world. That is, her celestial "taint" and how she has been treated because of it. While it never seemed likely to me that would be redeemed, I figured it was possible. For that to happen, she would in the least have to find a way to let go of her self-loathing.

Pretty early in the campaign, when PCs talked with experienced NPCs (like Shalelu) about life and death and such, I pitched the fact that Reincarnate might be the only raise spell available in Sandpoint. It's an interesting spell, so it became a regular talk around the table. Eventually, I figured a reincarnation for Nualia might be a good first step if she would ever be redeemed.

My group, however, did not come to the same conclusion. Which is perfectly understandable. She was batshit crazy and murderous, a chosen of the Demon Queen, allying with goblins and demons and plotting to release a horde of evil outsiders (and another evil outsider) upon Sandpoint, after harassing the place with goblins and murders in the glassworks. Her plans were wicked and unredeemable in their eyes.

They executed her and burned her on a pile at Thistletop. They also decided to not let the common people of Sandpoint know that Nualia was the one behind the festival raid, because they figured the town was better off not knowing, after reading Nualia's diaries. I think their choices made sense.

This group doesn't have a trap disarmer, does it? Don't just put single traps on the floor, integrate them into your encounters. Examples would be alarm, immobilizing and debuff traps. Monsters could engage once the trap is triggered. You could even do kobold style: Traps don't trigger automatically, but are triggered manually once the party is in the right position.

Traps sound like a great way to go, especially magical ones, with Slow and/or Stinking Cloud (a certain necromancer springs to mind). Our ranger has focused a bit on disable device, but no one has trapfinding. Apparently rogues are underpowered and trapfinding "not worth it."

How does the kobold style trigger that you mentioned work mechanically? What's required? I couldn't find anything about such traps. I'm not very experienced with creating traps though.

Thanks for good ideas so far!

I'm really interested to hear how your campaign has progressed since. Personally I definitely prefer sticking to a main story most of the way, but I think what your group is doing sounds like a lot of fun. Kind of admire the ability to improvise outside of the AP when it results in writing an entirely new story for both yourself and the players. Sounds exciting!