Yes, really. The bulk of complaints on this forum can be solved by better efforts from the GM.
Every adventure has its highs and lows that need adjustments from the GM. If people did more work and less whining, the gaming world would be a better place.
"Single boss encounters should not happen in Pathfinder. Either put some minions in-between the PC's and the boss or obstacles which emulate the blocking factor minions would have."
Right. Any GM worth their salt knows this. Why is it a problem? It's impossible for every single adventure to be written to perfection to match every possible combination of PCs available.
In fairness to this encounter, Lounim is not a boss. While it's disappointing for the party one-round sweeps him considering the potential and complexity of his stat block and the encounter, he's not supposed to be more than a standard encounter. Berkanin and the Rider are the bosses of this adventure and they're both nicely designed with minions and maneuverability to keep them relevant.
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For the record: Yes, solo casters can be a problem tactically in Pathfinder, depending on your party. No adventure writer is perfect, and my biggest strength and biggest weakness is that I'm most interested in cool characters, locations, and roleplaying potential, and sometimes lose sight of hardcore tactics issues. (And as folks have said, there's such an awesome classic trope of the "party vs. single villain" encounter in fantasy that I sometimes feel weird adding lackeys just for the sake of tactics.)
So if you think your party might cakewalk through the single-caster fights, add some minions or additional prep (starting combat invisible, etc.). If not, don't. Either way, it's not worth anybody getting riled up. :)
Thanks for the feedback, and hope that folks are generally enjoying exploring Kaer Maga!
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I dunno, I think its also cool scene when a villain is throwing his flunkies at heroes who take them down easily and then focus on villain.
<_< Or maybe I just have bad tastes ^_^;
Oh, totally! It can be very cool, I just don't like the idea that it *always* has to be that way. :P
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In my take on the Luonim fight, I had the lurkers in light from one room over move in with him. He thought they were angels, they wanted to gauge how easy it would be to murder him to fuel their escape back to their home plane. They kept him alive a bit longer due to splitting up actions, and helped the players feel like badasses when all went down pretty quickly anyway.
This is a fantastic idea, especially since the sun room is so small, even for 3 small creatures.
It works out pretty well considering they can fly if the centrifuge is spinning and they're fey which is Luonim's bloodline. A daylight SLA on the control mechanism renders the lurkers invisible and allows them to teleport back to the sun room is necessary. Against my party (a slayer about to take shadowdancer and a fetchling wind oracle) the lurkers will have no love for them.
--Third Vrock from the Sun
My players subdued him pretty easily when I ran this encounter a couple months ago. The funny thing was they had him tied up and had the Caulborn consume his memories of the past week, so he forgot he was insane, haha.