My Kingmaker campaign is off the rails a bit at the end of VV [Spoilers]

[SunJester68]

I would like advice on best next steps for my campaign. I have a group of 7 players but one is on hiatus, so 6 characters in the party. Through use of some of their abilities they cut all of the middle out of VV and basically went directly to Varnhold and then to Vordacai's lair. When they entered the lair they were 8th level. I have been using the conversion for a party of 6 for the adventures, but even with this adjustment and the party being at least one level too low, they destroyed everything in the lair up until the encounter with Vordacai and his graveknight companion (from the 6 player conversion.)

The encounter with Vordacai would have been as easy for them as the rest of the module except I reworked Vordacai's spell list and he gained access to wind wall. Wind wall is the only thing that I could find that would protect him from dropping in one or two rounds to the bolt ace of the party who deals between 100 and 180 points per round in damage.

Vordacai had been scrying on the party as they made their way through his lair so instead of being arrogant, he knew he was at risk of true death to this group. He took a very defensive stance and by the end of the combat had dominated the barcher in the group and paralyzed everyone but the conjurer. The conjurer managed to dimension door out of the lair taking the bolt ace with him.

Vordacai realized that if the group came back with the fore knowledge of his defenses, he might lose, so he offered a truce. He would return the party members to the conjurer if they would leave the area of Varnhold to him. The conjurer has accepted on behalf of their kingdom.

Now the advice. I haven't yet purchased or read the 4th adventure in the series. Does this outcome for VV mean that my adventure path is so far off the rails that my party won't be able to continue in the next adventure?

Also, my group is finding the encounters so easy at this point, that I wonder if that is just going to continue in the next adventure. Their typical approach is for the hunter to send his large cat companion in to tank with its AC of 32 to 36 depending on buffing and then the bolt ace kills everything. The barcher does a little bit of damage and buffs the party. The conjurer adds to the tanking typically with a hound archon and buffs with haste. The occultist is mostly a utility character, but will occasionally close and do some power attacking. He is just at risk from the enemy since his AC is so much lower than the cat's. The ninja is basically ineffective. For those of you that have played / run the modules 4, 5, and 6 of the adventure path, some insight on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Lord Foul II]

Well, one thing I’ve done that helps with letting the players feel badass but not invincible is that if the bosses have monster HD I replace them with class levels, but leave the mooks alone for the most part

But with a party that large action economy gets to be an issue

You can counter this issue by 1) having them prep the area where applicable wth things liketraps and terrain that keeps them from having the most advantageous positioning possible, when there are spellcasters, allow them to pre-buff if the party doesn’t use stealth

2) increase the number of foes, and increase their variety, including some that have attacks or defenses that aren’t just regular attacks vs AC, things with miss chances and fear auras and touch attacks and stealth, you don’t have to have fights where the PCs are actually likely to loose, so long as they feel challenged, throw some quicklings at them, maybe something with the Terror +0 template, or the fey touched +0 template or the fey creature +1 to +2 template wherever it makes sense.

[Spatula]

That part of the map doesn't really enter the plot again, so leaving it to Vordakai is not a big deal. Books 4 & 5 take place to the west, and 6 is random spots around the kingdom / a different plane.

Having 6 PCs is always going to be a bit of a problem, and it sounds like you have a couple of min-maxers in there on top of that. You can give everything max hit points, I normally do that with "named" opponents anyway, but it doesn't seem like that would make a significant difference. Especially heading into Blood for Blood, which has some seriously weak opposition for the levels it's aimed at.

Anyway, that's more of a classic D&D problem, especially in 3e/Pathfinder, when you have a character or two that are super-optimized and everyone else who isn't. And there aren't any one-size-fits-all solutions. I think the best thing you can do is talk with the group as a whole about maybe toning down the hunter's pet and the bolt ace, whatever that is, in service to everyone's enjoyment (including yours!).

[Warped Savant]

Let Vordakai have the land! That will be amazing.
And, if you wanted him to come up again later, you can have a bloom in a later book appear in his land. Then you have a few options... maybe he doesn't care about it so allows it to fester, maybe he's indifferent and therefore wants to strike a deal to allow the PCs to operate in his land, maybe he's lost people to it and comes to the PCs for help.

There are so many other role-playing opportunities due to having a lich living next door too... because, don't forget, he's getting his full power back and therefore is levelling at least as quickly as the PCs.

[pennywit]

This isn't too far off the rails. I'd have Vordakai keep his word ... for now. But he should slowly awake to full lichdom, and your players shoudl feel distinctly uncomfortable as Varnhold becomes a necropolis, the Nomen Centaurs become zombies enslaved to his will, and the ancient lich sets his eyes on Restov. A lot can happen offscreen before Vordakai decides it is time to take over the players' kingdom ...