My current party of adventurers going through the AoW, are going to have their first encounter with the Spawns of Kyuss at the end of EaBK. Because the party consists of 6 level 6 players at the moment I'm looking to boost the encounter with the spawn somewhat. First off I arranged for 4 Spawns of Kyuss to be downstairs, all 5HD and having the evolved undead template from Libris Mortis which besides the standard bonusses gives them Haste for 5 rounds once a day. Now I'm contemplating to further up the difficulty by either giving them a Death Throes ability:
When killed, a Spawn of Kyuss explodes in a shower of worms and rotting flesh that exposes everything within 5 feet to Kyuss' Gift (disease) and covers them with 1d4-1 Kyuss worms (Reflex DC 15 half). The last save is HD based.
or give them the Vampire-like Fast Healing quality to keep healing (even when its hitpoints are reduced to beyond -10) until destroyed either by fire, remove curse or remove disease to remove either the worms or the necromatic powers feeding the worms and the corpse.
Which would you prefer? I'm currently leaning towards the Death Throes, just because the visual will freak my players out. If anyone else has any good advice or stories to what they did or would do in this situation I'm all ears (or eyes if you will).
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Supe up the sons of kyuss for this encounter, you set the precedence of all future encounters with the critters.
Rather than suping up the spawn, you may find that having 5 or 6 of them is enough; I had seven spawn and that was too many. My party of five PCs were 7th level by they time they reached the end encounter and seven fear effects to save against assured everyone but the paladin failed. Lure the PCs away from the stairs with noises and then have the spawns near the stair pop out to block their exit. I would have had a TPK on my hands if the I hadn't "curved some dice rolls"; I realized too late that I had too many spawns to overcome considering the odds of PCs making seven Will saves aren't as good as I had thought. Fear affected, kyuss worms crawling over the PCs...spawn are ugly enough as is, especially en masse.
If you need a premise for all the spawns in the cellar, run *Peter Fuesz's soldier side story* to get the numbers up. A lot of us have used this to spectacular results; I played this on Halloween last year and the players still talk about it being the best gaming session ever. I had two "sick" soldiers go down to the basement to start so there were three spawns to begins with so Duncan, Walton, Yerell, Hammond, and Santos ("where is he from?!") had their hands full. Hammond escaped, otherwise everyone both enjoyed seeing their "soldiers" attacking their PCs and hating them at the same time. Good stuff.
You may want to save your "suped" sons of Kyuss for Spire of Longshadows considering the taint of the area is enough to make them uber-spawn.
Good luck.
*Link to Soldier Story embedded in text.
The spawn of kyuss are really mostly there to give the party the creeps, not to seriously challenge them. This is their first encounter with them. Have one use a touch attack to drop a worm on someone, and watch everyone squirm. The rest of the encounter can be a pushover, but I guarantee the guy who's got the worm in him will crap bricks. (If you want to be mean, do the touch attack to drop a worm through the breath holes of the visor of a character wearing plate armor. The worm drops into the gorget and starts burrowing into the neck. It's a full round action to remove your helmet so you can stab or pluck the worm, and by that time it's burrowing, ever closer to the brain. My campaign log details what happened when I did this to my party's paladin.)
Do a search on these boards for "blackwall" to find some great ideas to give the adventure some extra punch. I used Peter Fuesz' idea last session (you'll find it in "How I changed the Blackwall Keep adventure") and had the players play four Blackwall Keep soldiers who are overtaken by a Kyuss spawn. It was absolutely great.
I also posted some of my own changes to the story (mostly to make things more logical) in a thread called "Maximizing the 'Encounter at Blackwall Keep' experience". You might want to check out that one too.
Speaking for myself, the ideas on this board combined with my own have really helped me to make this genuinely good adventure into an excellent one. So I'd recommend reading around.
Thanks for the tips everyone. I'll probably use the PC's as soldiers sidestory to both add to the number of Kyuss Spawn and add to the overall story.
I have to agree with Rexx, the fear saves alone are enough to throw any group into disarray. My party is dealing with this portion of EaBK right now, and I don't recall seeing them quite so frantic. Half the party failed their will saves in the first encounter with just one of these creatures, not to mention the other three in the cellar they have yet to challenge. They are now leaning heavily on the party cleric, who up until now has been an NPC. With last weeks semi-disaster they asked to be able to run her as a second character. (I think the players failed thier will saves.)
Yes do be careful and not add to many. I have 6 players and these guys gave them a challenge. The fear effect made half the group run and the worms put the rest of the group in such a dire straights that the encounter went pretty much as I expected. Ever since they have been paranoid about running into spawn of Kyuss. So far fear effects have been the party's achilles heal and these guys throw them around nicely. ;)