So the wife and I are co-GMing the Hell's Vengeance Adventure Path. She's much better at the RPing and social interactions so she is handling that, while my combat tactics are much more of a challenge for our players. The result has been quite enjoyable for our group. But we have had a...umm..."situation" develop during our latest session in which we were closing out the Hellfire Compact adventure.
Our party consisted of a Swashbuckler, a Sorcerer, a Druid with cat pet, and a Lawful Evil "Tyrant" Antipaladin. They had a great time playing at hired thugs and rampaged through most of the adventure. The final assault on the Court of Spears was a hard fight for them, with the confrontation with the Dryad being very touch and go. But they made it through and the final confrontation with the Angel Knight started.
They had been anticipating this and as expected it came down to a "mutual smiting" duel between the Antipaladin and the Angel Knight with the rest of the party trying to (and eventually succeeding in)taking down the badly wounded Hound Archon who had retreated to the shrine. It was an epic fight with the higher damage output of the halberd wielding Antipaladin being kept up with by the self-healing Paladin. In fact at the climax of the duel the evil Druid stepped in and dropped a couple of heals on the Antipaladin before being driven off by a hard hit from the Angel Knight. Yes, bad form, but they are an evil party after all! Both duelist were down to low single digits in hit points when the Angel Knight landed and critical hit on the Antipaladin! The near max damage critical hit plunged the badly injured evil combatant down to almost negative 30 and she dropped stone dead!
The Angel Knight popped her last Lay On Hands and used her second Smight Evil on the Swashbuckler. Although they had taken down the Hound Archon the rest of the party were all badly hurt and pretty much out of resources. So they cut and ran. Being faster than the victorious Angel Knight, they got clear of the treehouse complex and (to quote the Sorcerer) "didn't stop running until they got back to Longacre!"
It's not supposed to end that way, right? ;-)
In any event, the players (including the dead Antipaladin) still had a blast. The epic nature of the final fight made up for the character death in their eyes. But the wife and I are brainstorming as to how to proceed now. The rebellion has been shattered by the player's efforts, but the Angel Knight is still at large.
So how would you handle this defeat as a GM? How should Archbaron Fex receive news of their failure? Surely the Angel Knight will return to seek retribution at some point. We plan on playing the rest of Adventure Path, so how should this effect future events?
On a happy note the slain Antipaladin will be back. In our game the players executed both of the twins in the town square. (by burning them at the stake...yikes!) So we altered the story in having the rebellion send their mother two resurrection scrolls instead of the stated one. After the botched resurrection attempt and the death of the priestess, the remaining scroll fell into the hands of the party. So we have already decided that somehow the party will find a Cleric of high enough level to cast the spell...at a price of course.
Anyway, thanks for your input and thoughts on how to turn failure into a growing experience. I also hope this post does not enter into "TL;DR" territory! ;-)
