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Well I must say the last 2 sessions have been pretty exciting. The party is in book 2 and battled the Vanth earlier ( sebti had to use 3 breath of lifes!), and last night it was Bheg, who I used as a regular ghast alchemist.
It was a battle for the ages folks. We had a coup de grace attempt vs the party tank ( Nat 20 on the save!), people struggling with paralysis ( basically 2-4 people were always paralyzed) and a grim tone as the battle tetered on tpk, and yet they survived. Thanks to the writers!
As a question, it seems from this point on it has 5-6 really nasty fights. Anyone elses party struggling? Anyone breezing through? I was fairly strict with character creation, was anyone else?
My 5-player party just started book 2 on Saturday.
Only 1 of them contracted mummy-rot at the auction, but they made a deal with the church of pharasma to help with the Panic in exchange for removing the curse.
I gave them 25-pt buy, and so far there have been a few close calls, with some PCs dropping negative here and there.
I did somewhat softball the Aghash in book-1 in so much as the curses only remained as long as the Aghash lived. This way they party was able to get to the basement and meet the scorched hand on that same day.
I'd say this AP has been moderately challenging so far, but I know in part-3 of book2 things start to get real.
There is a 'chronicles podcast' that reviewed book1, and they should be coming out with a review of book-2 soon. I was lucky enough to watch their party fight near the end of book2 on twitch-tv and it looks like a real bloodbath.If you hunt around this sub-forum you may see links to the podcast from user:steelwind.
I am interested to hear more as your party progresses, good luck!
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My party of 4 characters with a 35ish pb stat array have had a problem or two (see obituaries thread), but as far as outright difficult fights, the random encounters have been the toughest. Three esoboks pretty well had their way with the party, and the Deathweb random is a tried and true PC annihilator (another guy lost some folks to it too). The grand entrance to Book 2 was also an amazingly difficult fight. Traps in Book 1 at the party's lunch. We're looking to start part 3 of Book 2 in a few weeks, so hopefully Nebta and Co will prove a bit tougher of a fight than the 2 round goons in the Silver Chains (might have to add some additions to keep it interesting :P).
All in all, though, my group loves this AP, and although I've been chided for poor tactics by some (the aghash that gives everybody problems was 2 rounded by my guys with no successful curses...) its margin of difficulty has been pretty good to keep my party of high powered PC's and their above average system mastery players happy.
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I wiped most of the party in book 1 .. Sarcophagus was a killer even when they disabled the trap. The traps in the book are very good, Currently running with the replacement party but as I have 6 players I am changing the creatures somewhat.
I play with rolled stats (4d6 drop lowest) 6 players and I am still killing off characters.
On the Temple in the first book and I foresee more deaths in the future.
But on the plus side the players have told me they are loving it, best AP they have played apparently.
Regards
Sic
so far my party has not had a death yet, 1/3 of the way into book 4. And I even added in extra monsters. But we have 30 point buy, stat dropping allowed and any core race and any above 10 points up to 20 is allowed, except constructs but you sac 1 buy for every 2 above 10.
As far as traps go, I did not expect my players to be good at looking for them. So if players did not look for traps I rolled for them, but I rolled for the whole group who was in the room, so if one spotted it, they all did. If they already looked for traps, I still rolled for them to give them one last chance to automatically spot it. So far the party has never been hit by a trap, but some have come close.
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We are on the verge of Part 3 of Empty Graves and my players have said this is the best adventure they have played in for some years. They are committed to the story line and their characters. They love the mystery of the story line, the diverse NPC's and the unique feel that the writers have created.
It has been challenging for them, a very close TPK when they were at Windward Wends Oil Company and faced The Fading members, Bheg and the parties paladin was on the roof fighting Velriana in her revenant form. Needless to say a 5th level paladin has a hard time solo against a CR6 creature, especially when the dice are in the favor of the GM. Four other NPCs, no melee characters and things went bad quickly. I used Quasin who had established a relationship with the paladin early on to heal him and it balanced the scales.