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I'm considering changing a few things to bump the difficulty up a bit.
Justice Ironbriar seems like a pushover with split cleric and rogue levels and minimal flank buddies.
I'm thinking about switching his levels to inquisitor and giving him some extra cultists.
For Xanesha, the anniversary edition seems a little weak, though obviously the old version was a TPK machine. What would be some fitting mooks to add to soak some pc actions?
Maybe just some charmed npcs?
I'm thinking of a level 5 wizard and a level 4 cleric + skinsaw cultists with ironbriar.
maybe a level 5 witch and a leve 4 fighter with xanesha?
I find you have to play Xanesha smart. Shove PCs who can't fly off the tower, target one with poor saves using the petrification ability of her mask, try to trick them with her fiend illusion at the start of the battle into wasting a useful ability, such as a paladin's smite evil (an illusory Vrock Demon is a very scary threat, and is close enough in terms of CR to being a difficult, but not-unbeatable scary threat that any player who knows the bestiaries likely won't have suspicions aroused by a monster that they know is too difficult for them to fight).
As for Ironbriar, Inquisitor could work, but I find it's best to just not have any of the cultists in the mill attack the until PCs reach Ironbriar, and then have cultists come upstairs at regular intervals (i.e. three are defeated, three more come up) so that he always has people to flank with, while avoiding making the PCs fight every resident of the mill at once.
In my personal campaign, I left Xanesha relatively unchanged and just played her intelligently and she worked fine. Circumstance required me to add a Wizard 5 (Lyrie) and Rogue 3/Monk 2 (Tsuto) to the encounter with Ironbriar, both of those NPCs boosted up one level from their initial appearances, but that was partly because my party had Ameiko, played by a very experienced player, with them during most of their time in Magnimar, and the NPCs needed a bit of extra muscle to deal with that addition to the party.
Sadly Lyrie and Tsuto are quite dead in my game, they captured Tsuto in the glassworks, but Ironbriar had him let out and he got killed helping Nualia in Thistletop.
In my game I made Ironbriar the father of Tsuto since the module doesn't say who Lonjitu was cuckolded by and it made a nice tie in.
I like the idea with the cultists, I'll just have those as my "extra" cultists in the fight, so I won't need to add any more.
Maybe I'll only add a little to Xanesha, I still kind of like the idea of a charmed npc to give the paladin in the party someone they can save.
But you're right, I forgot about the mask and that's kind of a big deal.
Oh and thanks!
I'll agree that Ironbriar was a complete feeb in my campaign -- even with flanking foes, we had both a paladin and a barbarian, and the Skinsaw cultists and Ironbriar as-written were simply no match for two frontline fighters. I am going to politely disagree with Gluttony and suggest buffing him at least a couple of levels if you want him to be anything more than an unmemorable speed bump.
Of course, I did follow the AP and let the PCs kill all the cultists before they got upstairs, so Gluttony has better 'real world' experience than I.
Xanesha's got the only kill of my campaign so far. Just play her smart and she'll kill at least one person. In my campaign, Xanesha was all set for a TPK (two-shot the barbarian before anyone could move, then was going to take out the paladin), but a massive fumble did her in. In my opinion, her fumble was the *only* reason my party survived. And they haven't had any significant troubles with anything else in books 1-2-3.
Don't mess with Xanesha. Play her as written and she may well kill your entire party. Mirror Image + full-round power attacks = Dead frontline fighters in the first 2-3 rounds, and the spellcasters will have to flee.
For her tactics, she was invisible off to the side so Detect Magic didn't ping on her (cone shape, thank you very much), she did the demon illusion Gluttony suggested, then she slipped up behind the barbarian and got in a full-round attack, then won initiative and did it again. Utterly deadly, and he's the guy who had 50 h.p. at 3rd level.
Of course, I only have 4 players; your mileage may vary if you have more.
I finished up my conversions, I'll let you guys know how it goes. Made Ironbriar level 8 inquisitor with the infiltrator archetype.
Left the spells mostly the same.
Also added a wizard 6 with a lesser metamagic rod of selective spell.
He can only exclude 4 targets, buuuuuut cultists are jerks and he won't hit himself or ironbriar.
I'm going to keep the cleric I added for Xanesha, but I'm going to skip the illusion, my pc's won't buy it and it would be a wasted action.
So my group didn't get as far as expected, but got through the Sawmill.
Ended up knocking on the door, cultists in work clothes greeted them and asked what they wanted, explained they were investigating some murders, cultists asked them to wait out front and never came back. *getting robes and masks/ warning ironbriar*
After awhile party get suspicious, unlocks door after a few tries.
Find Golems straw bed, is confused but can't puzzle it out yet.
Goes upstairs, gets ambushed by hiding cultists, one almost pushes PC into sawblade but trips and falls in (RP fluff for dying to the AoO).
Next floor has a few more cultists, gets lucky with some flank, party takes about 60 damage split around party from these two floors, heals up and goes upstairs.
Party loses initiative, several cultists run out to surround party, Ironbriar Monologues for a sec about killing his son and fooling everyone for so long, maniacally laughs are had by all.
Wizard I added was invisible in the corner and pops off a couple selective fireballs using a lesser metamagic rod to pretty scary effect, ironbriar with conversion to inquisitor and an agile war razor wades in and tears things up with confusion from his mask, bane from inquisitor and judgement for + to hit and fast healing.
Party has one PC go to 5 hp at one point and the rest at half a lot before they win.
Seemed to work out pretty well!
Thanks for the help folks, will relay how Xanesha goes after game tommorrow.
Xanesha was not nearly as bad as everyone expected.
I had a level 6 cleric charmed with her. When the party got up to them the pair of them has prayer, bless up, xanesha had resist fire 10 and protection from fire on her because the party's tactics had gotten back to them via some mooks getting away early.
Lady X also had invis up and shield of faith, but I forgot about mirror image. She was sitting right by the entrance to the top of the tower.
The party walked right past her and were confused by a lone dwarf cleric with a glassy look in her eye, at least until the stabbing from behind started.
The party's cleric cast silence the first round, but the charmed cleric got off a spiritual weaopon first. She was then reduced to melee by the silence, because I forgot Channel Energy has no verbal component.
The party's Dragon Disciple smacked Xanesha with his spellstoring weapon, but the spell in it was fire and it did nada.
The bard rapid shotted, but unfortunately Xanesha has combat reflexes and it nearly cost him his life.
Long story short, the party nearly died to X, but only nearly, which is what I was going before. When she dropped below 20 she jumped off and triggered feather fall when she exited the silence. The cleric dropped silence, dimension doored him and the barbarian next to her and the Dragon disciple killed her with magic missile.
I didn't realize that the tower is 180 foot, and the range on MM atlevel 7 is 170 feet, but whatever, it was a cool end to the fight.
So, question: If she'd had Mirror Image up would it have been a TPK?
Sounds like it was pretty bad without it, and if Xanesha got a surprise round and then a full round, how was the cleric still standing?
Missplay on the DM's part. lol
I tried to use her petrification from her mask and it failed, and the fear proc on her weapon also failed to scare anyone.
Between the two it didn't work out well.
The PC cleric actually wasn't the one getting whacked as much as the bard, he ended up getting knocked to 6 the first round and tumbling away and spent the rest of the fight drinking potions so he wouldn't die.
X then starting wailing on the Sorceror, but she got knocked low enough to need to retreat not long after.
It wouldn't have been a TPK with the mirror image, I'd pre-rolled it before hand and she got minimum images, just forgot to utilize them. The bards shots would ahve stripped them as they were within 5 of her ac.
I shouldn't have bothered with the mask, my party has pretty good saves vs fort.
Oh well though, they had fun, and were excited to finally get an idea of what was going on in the campaign from the note from Lucrecia.