A few things:
1) I'm running a public, casual campaign at my FLGS. I've kept it very open with players coming in and out of the group at various times. As a result as I started the last chapter, I have some very experienced players and some fresh-faced noobs. I've done my best to warn the new players that joining a campaign at this level might be difficult and frustrating and they seem to be mostly okay with the challenges, and the experienced players are good about helping the new ones. I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do to give the experienced players a challenge without totally killing the newbies. The PCs are actually two levels lower than the module assumes and I still have to add monsters and put the advanced template on them to make them more than a speed bump to the experienced players.
2) All through the Hungry Mountains, the party was taking full rests after every encounter and the wizard was using private sanctum to hide from random encounters (which I just looked up and found out it's not as good as he made it sound -- I thought he was using magnificent mansion!) Now that they're at Renchurch I'm worried that they'll keep doing this and the adventure will lose all sense of urgency and trivialize the fact that they're in the lair of the enemy they've been fighting this whole time. How do I add a sense of urgency and danger without taxing the party so much they feel like they need to rest all the time? I'd rather NOT add a bunch of random encounters to prevent them from resting. Random encounters make the game take longer and we go pretty slow as it is (we get 2-3 hours a session and each part of an adventure path can take up to 3 months).
3) The party has no cleric or really good divine caster. I allowed them to take along one of the Knights of Ozem from an earlier encounter in the Hungry Mountains, but I'm worried it's not going to be enough to deal with all the persistent haunts, which can only be "killed" by positive. I'm honestly more worried about the haunts being too difficult and/or too tedious to deal with than I am about the lack of healing. This party is pretty tough even without a cleric. But the lack of positive energy is going to make these obstacles difficult to deal with. Any thoughts?
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Once they arrived at Renchurch, I had several NPCs/enemies drop hints that Kendra (who was substituting for Galdana in my camapaign) was almost ready and that they needed a bit more time.
They cleared the grounds, the whole upper level, and a tiny bit down below before getting in a tough spot and having to retreat. They Rope Tricked inside the athach's now-empty house. While they were sleeping and keeping guard, I played out a scene where some key players stepped outside Renchurch to discuss the last details of the plot. Adivion, The Grey Friar, Lucimar, and Nalthazaar, though they didn't get close enough to actually see any of them. They did overhear a bit about their plans to escort Kendra once she was ready, and that Adivion would be waiting for their arrival atop Gallowspire. They then heard the massive beating of wings come down for a moment before Adivion left.
Basically, it served to tell them that:
A.) Because they rested, they now missed Adivion (which they would've anyway... but now I had a real consequence to show why he's not in Renchurch.)
B.) They realized how close the ritual was to being completed, and that they couldn't afford to take anymore rests after that.\
Hope that helps!
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Same advice, plop in a timetable to encourage them to push themselves. If they delay, the ritual goes off ahead of schedule and the bad guys continue to grow in strength while they waste time. We used Kendra as the same bait, which was good because they wouldn't have cared about any crummy NPC from the city.
1) My favorite way of addressing party disparity is to split tough encounters into a couple big tough enemies and 4-6 mook enemies. The AP calls for a fight with three vampires? The party fights two vampires an five nerfed spawn instead. The big scary vampires engage your powerful, minimaxed PCs and their minions swarm around your noobs.
2) Timetables a good answer to the 15 minute work day. I usually tell my players that they have a certain number of days to stop the BBEG of the present book, then for every day past that the CR of the end boss goes up by 1.
To hurry them along I have them make will saves a couple of times per day since they're getting scryed on. That always makes 'em pick up their feet.
3) The key to a party gap is preparation, preparation, preparation. If you know what situations you're going into you can cover your gaps with scrolls, wands, holy water, etc. Once they know they're going to Renchurch give them ample opportunities to research it and realize it's heavily haunted. Or have one of the palatine eye NPCs mention something like "Oh, you're going to Renchurch? Be sure you buy a wand of Disrupt Undead!"
I'm responding lat,e but:
1) Any party that camps near Renchurch after making their initial incursion should be getting a visit from Lucimar, with a roll on the random encounter table to determine Lucimar's posse at the time.
Trying to rest while Lucimar's at large should be an extraordinarily bad idea.
2) The Gray Friar should reassign some slots to planar ally spells and start pulling in help, if he's got advance notice that the PCs are in the area causing trouble.