My players are just about to fight the BBEG in the black pool of the dark cathedral, and I expect it to be a good fight. My PCs are 6th level, and so far I have found that its not necessarily the enemies statistics that make an encounter challenging, but the situation in which the encounter occurs in. (In our case, it appears that the PCs are at their greatest disadvantage at range - melee is a cakewalk for them).
I have been reading the Hall of Harsh Reflections (HoHR) module, and while the encounters appear to be very complex to run, it appears to have lots of upside. I am thinking about going from 3FoE directly to HoHR; frankly, I think the PCs may bore of Blackwall Keep - I don't even know if I have the intestinal fortitude to run it. Why should I run it? In my opinion, there is little actual story development in Blackwall Keep (other than the slow-worm), and I can cut to the chase and have Algorthas send the PCs to find the mage in the Free City.
As it stands now, I will run Blackwall Keep, but I wanted to bounce this idea off of some of you and get some feedback.
There are a few key elements to Blackwall Keep that are important to the buildup of the story. First off, it's the group's first opportunity to encounter an actual Spawn of Kyuss. They also have the chance to find out a few snippets about the black dragon, who is one of Dragotha's servants. Then, of course, there's the issue of XP to consider. So, for the sake of the story, I'd suggest that if you don't want to do Blackwall Keep, you might want to come up with alternate ways of introducing the party to the Spawn of Kyuss and foreshadow the presence of the black dragon, whom the PCs will presumably have to face sometime in the future. Story elements aside, you don't want your party to be too low in level going into HoHR, or else they may wind up with their brains being served up to Zyrxog on a silver platter.
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the pc's learning about the black dragon's involvement has been the most satisfying development for me so far as the worm path goes, three sessions later(they finished blackwall in 2 sessions and I had to run some filler untill issue 127 comes out in my area) they are still looking over their shoulders waiting for the dragon's eventual arrival. Don't pass on blackwall, your players won't forget it!
Story elements aside, you don't want your party to be too low in level going into HoHR, or else they may wind up with their brains being served up to Zyrxog on a silver platter.
Yeah, I just got done reading HoHR, and your right, Zyrxog would make quick work of them as it stands now. Thanks for the input; I will definately run BK.