My group finished Howl of the Carrion King last Saturday and I thought I'd give a recap of how it went.
The party includes:
Idal, human male cleric of Sarenrae
Soumerel, elf female wizard (evoker)
Reilla Silvermist, half-elf female ranger/rogue
Nicinianna, human female fighter (bellydancer, uses bladed scarf)
I liked how the campaign started. I changed Father Zostran to be a 6th level Expert with the Master Craftsman and Brew Potions feats. So, I decided he'd be a bit of a penny pincher and not be too happy to see full fledged spellcasters join the caravan. I also decided, since it states he was tending the male npc and not the female npc, that he'd be a bit of a sexist (which I thought amusing since 3/4 of party is female).
The fire was put out without a problem. And then we went on to the investigation. It was clear the rest of the npc's disliked and suspected Dashki but they saw no evidence that it was him and so they COMPLETELY ignore any possibility that it was him! Essentially they grilled everyone and when it came to Dashki the conversation went roughly "Dashki did you do it?" "No!" "Oh ok, see ya". Haha I had to have Dashki follow them around a bit and randomly tell them that he thought it was Pugwampis, which again they completely ignored.
Instead they were convinced that Father Zostran was behind it (because of the extra attitudes I gave him). When they reported what they knew (which wasn't really anything) to Lady Almah later that night, they never brought up anything about Dashki or Pugwampis, so I had no reason that she'd tell them to go out wandering the desert at night. I even had Lady Almah say "Did anyone else in the camp have any opinions of what may have happened?" and they all said "Nope", still convinced Father Zostran was behind it somehow.
So, Rombard dies off-stage that night. They rest and memorize mending spells and the next day they look through the burnt wagon and they mend all of the broken bottles to see if they all belonged to the dead man or if there was an out of place container (they were looking for evidence of someone tossing in a flask of alchemist's fire -- from Father Zostran). They didn't find that and so that ended the investigation, it was ruled an accident.
At this point I was worried because I didn't want them to get to the monastery without having encountered a pugwampi because they would not be prepared for it and may get themselves into trouble. Luckily they decided to rest the night again to reclaim spells before going to the monastery, so I decided that another pugwampi decided to raid the camp to steal another goat. The remaining goats get out again causing an alarm and the pc's are asked to go track it into the desert that night (of day 2).
They find the cactus patch and didn't have too much trouble with the pugwampi nor rescuing the goat (which the wizard hit with a sleep spell so that it wouldn't struggle and hurt itself). But they did now have experience with the unluck aura. And of course it was very amusing that they now discovered the pugwampi and realized Dashki was telling them the truth about it.
--Next, on to the Monastery