Our campaign started in January 2009 and ended in July 2012, after 54 sessions of play. It was played under 3.5 rules. There were a total of 7 players that played throughout the campaign, although average attendance per session was between 5 and 6. We played all twelve modules of the Age of Worms adventure path, and in addition played through the Istivin mini adventure path and Death of Lashimire (Dungeon #116), right before The Spire of Long Shadows.
We had six or seven characters that had permanent deaths, i.e. where they had to roll a new character. All but three of them happened in the Whispering Cairn and the players just started similar characters. Two happened during Three Faces of Evil when the player that was playing the aasimar paladin changed to a halfling rogue/swashbuckler and another player changed to beguiler (I forgot what he played before). Finally the last one happened during the Spire of Long Shadows where the player changed from playing a barbarian to playing a fighter/paladin/kensai. This death was particularly unlucky as the barbarian failed his saving throw on a prismatic spray cast by Mak'ar, Harbinger of Worms, and was transported to the Positive Energy Plane where he died. As true resurrection was beyond their means at the time, he had to roll a new character.
There were dozens of other deaths from which characters were raised, resurrected or (in the last two adventures) true resurrected.
The toughest encounters, in my opinion, were:
- Most of the encounters in the Spire of Long Shadows, particularly the fallen angels. That adventure was by far the toughest one in the campaign.
- Dragotha: Took two full sessions to complete, although the ending was very anticlimatic as the Radiant Servant of Pelor destroyed Dragotha (yes, I allowed all splat books and I do regret it). Having said that, without that ending it could have been a TPK.
- Whispering Cairn air warriors (forgot name): Extremely tough low level encounter. Two characters survived that encounter and it was close to a TPK.
- Three Faces of Evil against the temple of Hextor. The party actually escaped on their first attempt, leaving behind the corpse of one of their allies (who later rolled the beguiler).
- All Broodfiend encounters, at least until the party fighters started using Sheltered Vitality. A lot of money was spent on true resurrections as a result of these.
- Of course, Kyuss, although probably not as tough as the previous ones, even with Divine Rank 1 since the party didn't successfully fight despair (they did destroy the unlife vortex though).
The party at the end was composed of the following PCs:
Human Psion (Nomad) 22
Human Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor/Paragnostic Apostle 22
Human Fighter/Paladin/Kensai/Exotic Weapon Master 22
Halfling Rogue/Swashbuckler 21
Halfling Wizard/Archmage 21
Grey Elf Beguiler 21
Goliath Fighter/Exotic Weapon Master 20
All but the goliath fighter attended the final battle. There was also one Solar Ranger 4 gated in by the cleric, and another solar gated in by the wizard during the fight.
On Kyuss' side, there was Lashonna, 6 Blessed Angels, and 10 Broodfiends (these came in three waves throughout the fight).
Kyuss only received damage from one hit from the sphere of annihilation (he then cast gate on it and it was destroyed), several hits from the solar ranger that was aided by the Instill ability of the Kensai and thus hitting every time, a few hits from the Kensai before he figured out that it was more efficient to use Instill, and finally a retributive strike from the staff of the magi that belonged to the wizard, which is what ended up killing him before he could Time Stop and Harm himself to full hit points for the second time.
The Broodfiends and Blessed Angels were for the most part eliminated by the Beguiler's dominate monster and eventually the cleric using turn anathema to get rid of several of them. All spellcasters and the psion used greater dispell magic liberally, and the wizard actually used reaving dispel very successfully on Kyuss who then had to rebuff using time stop. The rogue and kensai mostly fought Kyuss' minions. It was overall a pretty well fought encounter.
It was a great campaign and a lot of fun. Now we get to decide who DMs the next one as I need a break!
