Before going to Gen-Con, I did this scenario with my home group to get the scenario prepped and maps drawn for the interior of the Sphinx. It was here I got my GM pp, Gen-Con would only be for table credits (and kick-downs... of course).
I did this one 2 times on the 1st day (Thursday) on the 2nd and 3rd slots in the PFS hall (my 1st session was GMing "In Wrath's Shadow"). I also did this scenario Friday 2nd slot and finally on the last day (Sunday).
The epic battle at the end with the evil wizard, quasit and bowman(/men) and the multiple levels was handled/approached differently in all 5 runs. But I get ahead of myself... ...from the beginning...
One of the groups had a situation where the party was trying to set up an ambush and the guards came out, nobody heard each other except the Churgeon Internal Alchemist, who threw a bomb at the guards in the surprise round to start an interesting 1st encounter out in the desert heat. The other four parties all came into bowfire from the ambushing guards waiting inside the Sphinx, though two parties gleaned good info examining the statues outside.
Most of the parties donned all the amulets (to avoid the statue room encounter), though some suspicious members in a couple groups would not don them (setting off those statue creatures). None of the parties left any amulets on any cultists nor from the peg by the door.
Two parties disabled the explosive hall trap with rogue ability and two parties completely bypassed it by not trying (or being able to) read anything to set it off. At least 5 characters total, gleaned a profane bonus (or befuddlement). 4 of those by reading Abyssal and one with a really good Linguistics check.
Statue room was relatively combat free, but also where most parties missed some gold for the scenario (in the corner). Any party that examined the curtain was able to glean useful information, even if they didn't make the actual check involved.
One party had Teenoch appear after succeeding the secret door trap. All parties either used information gleaned before and in the sphinx and/or good rogue checks to get to the secret door.
Only one party did a good sneak-up on the guards for a good surprise round. All parties took penalties to shoot through the bars instead of trying to open the door while the guards where reacting to their appearance.
I only ran the optional encounter with my home group due to time contraints at the con (except for my last day, I had 6 or 7 people at my table for the runs at Gen-Con). Though at least one group needed to do the search the rooms for the faction pp.
3 parties had Teenoch appear right before the alarmed passageway. However, the other two parties were able to get a "heads up" on the guards, though only one of them succeeded on the sneak up.
And now to the final encounter...
For the most part I religiously follow the game plan for the evil wizard tactics, except one time I had him do something different instead of summoning the 3rd set, though I had him resume the summoning after.
Incidentily, the final battle with the last group on the last day of gen-con seemed most epic. It went for 17 rounds! That was an awesome ending (to be fair it was my only non-full table, too).
I had a lot of fun running this. I thought it might get a bit stale running the same thing so many times, but when you aim to have fun and have all kinds of different Pathfinders doing things, it stays interesting! Especially when you can tell they're having fun. Isn't that what it's all about?
