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Partial floor session last night, heading into the upper catacombs. Party entered via the well rather than external crater.
Bone golems: the party was a lot more concerned about these guys than they really needed to be. I think it was basically 3 rounds of attacks with no way to bypass the DR available. Would have been 2 rounds if they could bypass. I may have landed 2 hits.
Mummified Morrigna: I ran this wrong and assumed the wrappings were semi-autonomous re: grapple. Not sure why I had that confused, exactly, but I definitely ran it as though the wrappings could grapple without taking away from the monster's actions. The vital strike archer (ranger/warpriest) was not thrilled with the Deflect Arrows. It was a strugglebus combat because my error in running, but it certainly felt satisfying to not have a single-target encounter get completely obliterated for once.
Dread Wraiths: Players successfully sensed motive on the bluff/riddle bit, just attacked. These are really one-dimensional, boring monsters and the lack of Ghost Touch weapons in the party so far has been a major problem.
Trapped door: I forgot about this because of where the trap is mentioned (J6, not J7) and the fact that there's a typo referring to the trap as leading to K7. It's a pretty significant trap. I told my players about it afterward and they squirmed a bit at the thought of it.
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Short session last week to finish off Upper Catacombs.
Pallid Sunrise: Didn't survive a round. Archers and low AC, I tells ya! I got a breath weapon off and then it died.
Tycha + Fleshhunters: Really would have liked even a modicum of equipment on the Fleshhunters to give them survivability. Not asking for much here, just like...studded leather. Not even masterwork. I didn't add it, but I strongly considered it. Tycha's tactics make sense for an assassin, but do not make sense given his lack of preparation to use them. Decent enough stealth was helping, but the lack of Invisibility and/or Silence was what got him. He was easily noticed because he couldn't close in on any PCs without getting pinged by Echolocation. The Fleshhunters all fell relatively easy, having only succeeded in damaging animal companions, while Tycha took a couple extra attacks due to his high AC and HP.
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Started Catacombs on Friday. Some short notes:
General exploration notes: I'm running on Roll20 and this map is being handled via the Reveal tool. I'm going to dynamic lighting with book 5 (didn't have a subscription when I built the floor). The aura functionality for Daylight is really, really helping with monster trigger conditions. Yes, practically every monster is able to see the light because of its enormous radius, which means literally just walking out of the first room is enough for the simulacrum to see the party and engage in conversation.
Gallowdead: Remarkably difficult opponent for PCs who decide to underestimate the entry. They scoped out things well in advance, knew there was an enemy waiting due to the whispers, but still decided they'd wing it without buffs. Nearly killed the paladin/swash because he didn't smite. Were it not for the obol providing negative energy resistance, he would have died.
Simulacrum: The Finger DC is quite high. The rebuilt Jando PC who went up to 25 pt buy and added Warpriest levels as gestalt had less than a 50% chance of success against it. He nat 1'd and got obliterated. RIP in pepperonis. Looking to replace as of the crusader wrap-up. This will be that player's 3rd character. That was the only turn that the snow puddle got.
Shining Child: I was really worried about this one. Somehow, only 1 animal companion had issues with the blindness save. It was Jando's companion, so we're probably ok there.
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Just wanted to pop in and give a big thanks to Serisan. As a GM running this AP about a half-book behind you, your session-by-session write-ups have been a huge help.
Knowing what your party found fun/easy/hard is helping me prep better.
Here's to you!
Glad to hear that it's been helpful! That's always been the hope with my posts and I did similar things with Hell's Rebels when I ran that.
For a brief update, I've been working with the player as far as a replacement character and the obvious choice from my end was to have it enter as part of the RP scene at the end, having the character be one of the Watcher-Lord's advisors. My guidance to the player was that his new gestalt character must have levels in fighter, rogue, or a non-druid/shaman divine caster. The resulting concept that I've seen so far is Cleric 14 // Fighter 6/Mortal Usher 8 as the player has been really hoping to play with the new prestige class.
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So, the rest of Gallowspire:
Jandaroka: Due to the active Daylight spell the party uses for their lack of darkvision, Jandaroka was well aware of the PCs. In case you were curious, Roll20 does a great job of showing just how far the light extends. In the picture, the PC has a yellow aura reflecting the bright and dim light radii. I was still using the Reveal tool instead of dynamic lighting here, but the main thing is that, from the intersection, it extends very far into Jandaroka's room. Keep that in mind when determining when the party draws her attention.
I let the PCs roll perception to hear her order the devils to go investigate, which allowed for the possibility of a surprise round when they used Greater Teleport to move the short distance to the PCs. This left Jandaroka alone to use her Summon Monster spells, drop a Stinking Cloud, etc. from a significant distance. This was the most effective that I've ever had an enemy conjurer be in my history as a GM. The time and distance made a significant difference in this combat. Ultimately, they ended up wiping up her summons and rushing up on her, as one would typically expect. They did not find her phylactery.
Elementals: My PCs are particularly bad at dealing with elementals given the removal of one of the damage dealers in the prior session (RIP rebuilt Jando). I ended up handwaiving this encounter after 3 rounds because it was just going to be a slog.
Bloody Bones: This encounter gave the PCs some challenges due to the relatively powerful attack routines. The PCs tended not to stand near mirrors, so the swift action Dim Door was not usable. The monsters had to rely on standard action casting and then being near enemies who could smash them. Mass Inflict Moderate was a nice damaging touch for the animal companions and Dondun to suffer while also healing the Bloody Bones.
Krobdak: Boy, where they surprised when it Plane Shifted away. Like other critters, it saw the light and moved toward it. I gave the PCs the opportunity to sense motive as things were said, so they played toward the diplomatic aspect. THey never identified the marut. It was a lot funnier later.
Amaretos: Because the PCs had not rested and were down a damage dealer, I removed one of the necrosages. Honestly, this was as much for my sanity as anything else as the necrosages are really, REALLY bland opponents. They all had plenty of time to prepare as the PCs brute forced the ring puzzle due to not being able to make the linguistics check (for reference, the only party member with Linguistics trained was the Courtly Hunter's animal companion, who also has one of the highest int mods in the party due to familiar scaling).
Amaretos got his Black Tentacles out, but the necrosages were cut off from him via Wall of Fire. They began casing Protection from Energy to deal with that, as well as Wind Wall to deal with the party archer, but by then Amaretos was absolutely obliterated by the paladin/swashbuckler. 2 crit full attack will do that. I just called the combat at that point. The necrosages were an easy mop up. Amaretos never got the chance to full attack. In retrospect, I had failed to use the time that the PCs were at the door to buff him, but he had attempted to use the Bracelet of Friends while that was going on. I would recommend replacing 1 casting of both Web and Scorching Ray with Bladed Dash to make this encounter a bit more dynamic.
Lich's End: This went about as by-the-book as it possibly could have. My players successfully did all the modifiers via story events, which results in 3 helpful, 4 friendly, and 1 indifferent among the honor guard. The PCs then successfully hit the Diplomacy check on Ulthun. The replacement PC replaced one of the honor guard for the sake of being close enough to accidentally get pulled in by Arazni's teleporting.
We intro'd into book 5 to allow for character introduction time, but I'll basically say that the players are quite varied on engagement. There's a lot of proper nouns being thrown around, which was really rough for my wife, who is not particularly familiar with the setting.
I was so bummed that Arazni just got blown up and written out of the campaign! She was one of the coolest parts of this adventure, she set it apart from older tar baphon stuff.
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I have plans to really twist the knife on that moment in the last two books like how everyone in the Arcadian city still recognizing her as a hero god and singing her exploits. That on top of tying her in and referencing her a lot earlier should hopefully even make the anti undead paladin in the party mourn her.
The AP doesn’t elaborate on it, but Lost Omens Gods & Magic (and James Jacobs) have confirmed that her plan to nuke herself out of connection with her phylactery worked, making her a full-fledged deity now.
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The simulacrum of Tar-Baphon was nicknamed Tar-Buffoon by my players.
We had a conversation about this a few months back. Here's my comments on it.
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We had a conversation about this a few months back. Here's my comments on it.
interesting... hadn't thought about where Ulthun has to go... hmm... might do something interesting...
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So something one of my players brought up was that the marut inevitable (whose name I'm currently blanking on) shouldn't have been able to plane shift away due to the witchgates. I swept it under the rug by saying that it only really mattered for teleportation into Virlych, but after looking over how the witchgates worked (as a variant of teleport trap), they were actually right. Plane shift is a teleportation spell, so it should have been disrupted by the witchgates. Unless there's some weird thing relating to the witchgates and interplanar teleportation the inevitable shouldn't have been able to get away.
I find myself rewriting the whole module. It just does not work for me as written. I have three goals:
(1) Give Arazni a plan a bit more gratifying than "I will get myself killed, leaving you in the lurch."
(2) Get rid of module 5. It just does not work for me in terms of pacing and emphasis--it is too much of a break from "We are desperately fighting to save Lastwall from the Tyrant."
(3) Make the graveknights actually matter. As it stands they are just random monsters--they have these great backstories but the PCs will never know! Very likely they'll just beat all of them without having any idea who they are.
The graveknights are a huge problem for Arazni. If they are ever in earshot, they can tell her to surrender and come home and I think she has to do it; and she can't fight them. Therefore, it's entirely logical for her to ask the PCs to get rid of them.
To make this more interesting, let's have them actually looking for her! (Rather than randomly spread around Gallowspire. For people who repeatedly claim to be able to smell Arazni, they sure are clueless about her not being there.) I think a couple will patrol the teleport traps, in case she mistakenly teleports within Virlych, and a couple will lay an ambush at Gallowspire because they figure she will come there eventually.
I can repurpose the teleport blocker scenarios in Carrion Crown 6 for this purpose.
I think Arazni's purpose in this section, besides getting rid of annoying graveknights, is to search Gallowspire for clues as to how to get rid of the Tyrant. So she needs the teleport blocks down; when they are, and graveknights are gone, she'll teleport in and do her research.
I haven't worked out her exact conclusions yet. My player says, the PCs end up *inside the Tyrant's phylactery* fighting to keep him from coming back. If I can figure that out, I'll definitely go with it.
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I find myself rewriting the whole module. It just does not work for me as written. I have three goals:
(1) Give Arazni a plan a bit more gratifying than "I will get myself killed, leaving you in the lurch."
(2) Get rid of module 5. It just does not work for me in terms of pacing and emphasis--it is too much of a break from "We are desperately fighting to save Lastwall from the Tyrant."
(3) Make the graveknights actually matter. As it stands they are just random monsters--they have these great backstories but the PCs will never know! Very likely they'll just beat all of them without having any idea who they are.
The graveknights are a huge problem for Arazni. If they are ever in earshot, they can tell her to surrender and come home and I think she has to do it; and she can't fight them. Therefore, it's entirely logical for her to ask the PCs to get rid of them.
To make this more interesting, let's have them actually looking for her! (Rather than randomly spread around Gallowspire. For people who repeatedly claim to be able to smell Arazni, they sure are clueless about her not being there.) I think a couple will patrol the teleport traps, in case she mistakenly teleports within Virlych, and a couple will lay an ambush at Gallowspire because they figure she will come there eventually.
I can repurpose the teleport blocker scenarios in Carrion Crown 6 for this purpose.I think Arazni's purpose in this section, besides getting rid of annoying graveknights, is to search Gallowspire for clues as to how to get rid of the Tyrant. So she needs the teleport blocks down; when they are, and graveknights are gone, she'll teleport in and do her research.
I haven't worked out her exact conclusions yet. My player says, the PCs end up *inside the Tyrant's phylactery* fighting to keep him from coming back. If I can figure that out, I'll definitely go with it.
1] I've got a really good [in my mind] angle planned for her... I concur, she's underused.
2] I am keeping the theme of BORNE but dramatically reworking it. I can easily see keeping the PCs in the area... escaping the chaos to say... Ustalav where they have to battle an awakening vampire lieutenant of Tar Baphon, or them leading the remnants of the knights through the mountains... lots of fun opportunities for a smooth homebrew set of adventures.3] I'm introducing the Council Libertine at the start of Book 3... they are looking for A... why wouldn't they be close to where she is in Book 2?
As for your final thoughts... well... I have some ideas about that as well which will likely get introduced in my reworked start of Book 6.
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So concerning both the overland portions of traveling through Virlych and Gallowgarden, there's really nothing more than the lightning elementals in the former and almost nothing in the latter that dissuades the party from not just flying over the jungle to find the pit.
This is a design flaw I've found common in encounter design in book 4 of several APs. Most parties have access to either fly, overland flight, or wind walk by 11th level. The jungle on the Midnight Isles in WotR comes to mind, vrocks or no vrocks
--Vrocktober
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So concerning both the overland portions of traveling through Virlych and Gallowgarden, there's really nothing more than the lightning elementals in the former and almost nothing in the latter that dissuades the party from not just flying over the jungle to find the pit.
--Vrocktober
Nevermind, I found the passage saying the canopy is so thick it obscures the pit requiring the PCs to explore the area. I might have to draw it up in a series of hexes to explore Kingmaker style. Maybe take the old map of Adorak from Carrion Crown and add random bits of jungle terrain over top in a staggered fashion to make an area map. If they try using flight magic it'll just reduce their resources.
--Vrocky Horror
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So concerning both the overland portions of traveling through Virlych and Gallowgarden, there's really nothing more than the lightning elementals in the former and almost nothing in the latter that dissuades the party from not just flying over the jungle to find the pit.
This is a design flaw I've found common in encounter design in book 4 of several APs. Most parties have access to either fly, overland flight, or wind walk by 11th level. The jungle on the Midnight Isles in WotR comes to mind, vrocks or no vrocks
--Vrocktober
Virlych is also the death mountains of doom. There could be crazy weather dissuading flyers.
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Tycha + Fleshhunters: Really would have liked even a modicum of equipment on the Fleshhunters to give them survivability. Not asking for much here, just like...studded leather. Not even masterwork. I didn't add it, but I strongly considered it. Tycha's tactics make sense for an assassin, but do not make sense given his lack of preparation to use them. Decent enough stealth was helping, but the lack of Invisibility and/or Silence was what got him. He was easily noticed because he couldn't close in on any PCs without getting pinged by Echolocation. The Fleshhunters all fell relatively easy, having only succeeded in damaging animal companions, while Tycha took a couple extra attacks due to his high AC and HP.
As my PCs are Mythic tier 2 I added another level of Assassin to Tycha to give him Hide in Plain Sight, allowing him to work on that death attack. As for the Flesh Hunters, I swapped out 2 Alchemist fires for 2 tanglefoot bags. I managed to drink see invisibility, shield, displacement, and true strike extracts before breaking stealth for all but one. I managed to set the phoenix sorcerer and paladin on fire, and entangled the warpriest until he cast freedom of movement with a fervor. I got the vital strike, death attack, smite good off on the paladin, but he saved vs the attack and poison. Unfortunately, even with max hp he did not survive long after the paladin's critical smite attack with the falcata, doing over 100 points of damage, as well as a critical from the Steelhound graveslinger, both x4.
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For the Amaretos encounter, I will be adding the Agile mythic simple template, swapping out hasted assault for ghost blade (for brilliant energy), as well as giving him bladed dash and bullet ward (as Gebbites are familiar with gunslingers from Alkenstar). Dual initiative and an extra 30 feet of movement will more than make up for Haste for a single round per arcane pool spent.
The real threat from the Necrosages besides some defensive spells like wind wall and protection from energy is their soul siphon revelation, a 30ft. ranged touch negative level for 5 minutes. You stack a few of them on one PC it's a potent debuff, especially if you stack with further energy drain slams.
--Vrocky Horror
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For the Amaretos encounter, I will be adding the Agile mythic simple template, swapping out hasted assault for ghost blade (for brilliant energy), as well as giving him bladed dash and bullet ward (as Gebbites are familiar with gunslingers from Alkenstar). Dual initiative and an extra 30 feet of movement will more than make up for Haste for a single round per arcane pool spent.
The real threat from the Necrosages besides some defensive spells like wind wall and protection from energy is their soul siphon revelation, a 30ft. ranged touch negative level for 5 minutes. You stack a few of them on one PC it's a potent debuff, especially if you stack with further energy drain slams.
--Vrocky Horror
yeah, we just finished Book 3 last night. I had to add a TON of encounters to the back end as my guys have some pretty strong characters. Going to have to boost almost everything going forward.
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I am going to start running this book in 2 weeks. Any tips, hints, gripes from those who have DM'd it would be appreciated.
I would definitely plan on adjusting exploration in the Gallowgarden. If you're in no hurry and you want to extend the timeline between Vigil's destruction and the when the knights of Ozem have enough time to muster and reach Renchurch, you might want to run Gallowgarden using the exploration rules from ultimate campaign.
Likewise, the DCs for negotiating with the Watcher Lord are laughably easy using the standard Diplomacy skill (18 or 28), even with the penalties from his honor guard. I used the social encounter rules frum ultimate intrigue. Let the PCs figure out to make any influence check on Ulthun, they need to A. improve the honor guard and his attitude (easy, esp if they complete the success condition with Krobdak) B. Learn who is friendly, indifferent, or unfriendly with a Discovery check (say DC 18, and they gain more information-influence skills-for every 2 they beat the DC), then make influence checks using those skills (easier DC) or diplomacy (harder DC). Once they convince enough of the honor guard they can C. attempt to make the 2 requests of Ulthun (1. Wait for Arazni to engage WT, 2. Withdraw from the field entirely). These should be between DC 30 or 40 to begin with and modified by how successful they are at influencer the honor guard.
Our paladin player made most of the diplomacy checks (DC 35) with the +5 bonus from the Durgao success condition with aid from the other 2 players present and good roles. It was a tense negotiation.
--Between a Vrock and a hard place
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Does anyone have an idea of what I can use on Foundry to represet the Hallowgarden? at this point it looks like we'll have to run it primarily through theare of the mind.
i looked on r/battlegrounds for like, overgrown ruins or jungle city
found something good, and just ran the encounters on the same map
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So by now, we all know that Arazni ascends to full god-hood after her big showdown with TB. I don’t own any 2E books, but did some google-ing, and I couldn’t find anything on this; is there any information on Arazni’s new divine realm?
She's just straight up ded in the AP. Doesn't have any effect on the storyline afterwards as written.
I suppose that as a lich she should reform around her hidden phylactery, so if a DM wants to go in that direction they certainly can.
In my game, I killed her off permanently, no ascension. Or as a helpful nosoi psychopomp said "Poof! Dead!"
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I am aware that she’s effectively out of the story in the AP, but by the lore of 2E, she has since arisen to a demigoddess. I was just wondering if there was any information on her divine realm?So by now, we all know that Arazni ascends to full god-hood after her big showdown with TB. I don’t own any 2E books, but did some google-ing, and I couldn’t find anything on this; is there any information on Arazni’s new divine realm?She's just straight up ded in the AP. Doesn't have any effect on the storyline afterwards as written.
I suppose that as a lich she should reform around her hidden phylactery, so if a DM wants to go in that direction they certainly can.
In my game, I killed her off permanently, no ascension. Or as a helpful nosoi psychopomp said "Poof! Dead!"
Nope.
She's got a write-up in Book 2, but it's made clear that she doesn't have a "divine realm"
If she's got one in 2E, well, that's outside the scope of Tyrant's Grasp.
As far as I know she may not have carved out a domain for herself yet. As a Neutral Evil deity and an undead, its possible she's currently chilling in Abbadon, though equally likely that she's steering as far from Urgathoa as possible. I know Aroden's domain hasn't been reclaimed yet, though a number of parties have their eye on it including Milani who, while she's CG and has a domain in Elysium, apparently summers in Axis. Maybe Arazni will make a play for that, or maybe that's the last thing she wants.
I have a feeling we'll find out pretty soon, since...
So, starting this module this week and just planning ahead...
The module says of area H6: "The pit has openings into the two levels below the Great Seal, Tyrant’s Wrath (area I) and the Upper Crypts (area J)", but it doesn't explicitly state where in area I it opens into.
Area J1 says "The massive hole in the wall leads to the pit (area H6)" but there's no equivalent comment for any of the rooms in area I. I'm assuming I1 as the most logical spot?
My party has accepted Arazni's mission to go to Gallowspire and close the witchgates. The problem I have is that for lengthy overland travel they've decided to use the Wind Walk spell. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but it will allow them to bypass all the cool encounters on the way, particularly the dragon, which I'm really looking forward to throwing at them.
So, I'm going to have to come up with some monsters that aerially attack them in gaseous form, forcing them to travel by foot. Alternatively, I can have the Wind Walk spell become unreliable in the same way Teleport spells are around the Witchgates. Either way, there need to be serious consequences to travelling that way.
Any thoughts?
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My party has accepted Arazni's mission to go to Gallowspire and close the witchgates. The problem I have is that for lengthy overland travel they've decided to use the Wind Walk spell. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but it will allow them to bypass all the cool encounters on the way, particularly the dragon, which I'm really looking forward to throwing at them.
So, I'm going to have to come up with some monsters that aerially attack them in gaseous form, forcing them to travel by foot. Alternatively, I can have the Wind Walk spell become unreliable in the same way Teleport spells are around the Witchgates. Either way, there need to be serious consequences to travelling that way.
Any thoughts?
Sure. The Witchgates keep that from working.
Boom. Done.
Just starting this book.
How do the PCs *not* detect that Arazni is lying to them in the initial meeting? She only has Bluff +12.
Arazni says, "I am the one person on two continents who possesses both the power to destroy Tar-Baphon and a burning desire to do so."
But Arazni knows that she can't actually destroy him...and that's not even her actual plan.
Thanks,
Allen
Well, no. Her plan IS to destroy him, just not in the way she's saying. If the PCs get off a successful sense motive, I'd say something like "she's telling the truth but she's definitely holding something back".
That's if your PCs dare to use sense motive against a legendary, demi-god lich who could destroy them all without breaking a sweat. Mine didn't.
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Another question:
How are the PCs expected to get from Naderi's Bastion to Castle Fanum?
That's a bit of a journey.
I didn't see anything in the text about that.
Or how did your PCs make the journey?
Thanks,
Allen
They walked. It takes awhile.
Castle Fanum's mundane warehouse was really important helping them get to Gallowspire.
I set up like... 2-3 "random encounters" each between the Bastion, the Castle, and "The House of the Servant of the Master", which was Gildais' manor, inside an abandoned Whispering Way-populated town right above the valley of Gallowspire, [which served as a resting place for the PCs (as well as other things...)]
I just used some of the encounters from the book as the basis for these.
I set the AP in the middle of winter [there's a Golarion analogue to the Day of the Dead, but it is the last day of the year, and I figured Tar Baphon would find it fun to start his plot on that day... and the next day is the anniversary of the ascension of Aroden, so he launched his plan on New Year's Eve...], so they were always encountering weather hazards.
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Just starting this book.
How do the PCs *not* detect that Arazni is lying to them in the initial meeting? She only has Bluff +12.
Arazni says, "I am the one person on two continents who possesses both the power to destroy Tar-Baphon and a burning desire to do so."
But Arazni knows that she can't actually destroy him...and that's not even her actual plan.
Thanks,
Allen
They might find out that she's lying about that part, sure.
But that same successful check would tell them that she's not lying about going after Tar-Baphon, and that she's confident that her plan will work. It would also tell the PCs that she's not planning to betray them or wishes them ill.
My party is slowly working their way towards Gallowspire. I re-jigged the encounters on the way because I wanted to end last week's session on a literal cliffhanger.
The party was halfway up the cliff next to the waterfall when they all failed their Perception checks and didn't see THE DRAGON. The session ended when it attacked.
I suspect one or party members will die in the encounter. If so, I'll include enough diamond dust in its loot pile to pay for Raise Dead spell(s).
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My party is slowly working their way towards Gallowspire. I re-jigged the encounters on the way because I wanted to end last week's session on a literal cliffhanger.
The party was halfway up the cliff next to the waterfall when they all failed their Perception checks and didn't see THE DRAGON. The session ended when it attacked.
I suspect one or party members will die in the encounter. If so, I'll include enough diamond dust in its loot pile to pay for Raise Dead spell(s).
I spent an hour building out an excel sheet to model them crawling up the side of the mountain b/c I was CERTAIN that no one had fly.
And then the darn bloodrager busted out the GRIFFIN from Book 2!
So... of course I had the dragon come out at the worst possible time, blasting the griffin out of existence, with one of the PCs on top... in midflight. We had a lot of fun.
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The Umbral Dragon fight was lots of fun. Once it realised its negative energy breath weapon wasn't doing as much damage as it hoped, it switched to its Shadow Breath attack. Most of the party failed the save and were blinded for the first two rounds of the fight. Two rounds of that attack and three of the six party members were reduced to zero strength and were lying unconscious. The rogue was at 2 strength and effectively out of the fight, leaving the bard and strength-reduced fighter to carry on.
The spellcasters had spent their time while blinded summoning allies, so there was always something harrying the dragon, preventing its full attention being on the party.
The fighter was acting last and got a blow in doing something feeble like 10 hp damage. It was then a new round, the dragon's turn and the party was preparing for a TPK. Fortunately for them, it had taken a fair bit of damage by then and I read out the following from the module: "If reduced to fewer than 75 hit points, he uses shadow walk to flee."
Yes, the fighter's final 10hp blow had taken it over that threshold. If the dragon had acted for one more round, it would have been a TPK, but I played it by the module to spare the party.
One thing I had to do was include a scroll of restoration in the dragon's hoard. If I hadn't there would have been no way to restore the Str drain of the unconscious characters as the cleric was one of them.
My party is slowly working their way to Gallowspire.
Some fights were childishly easy: The Pallis Sunrise had a feeble AC of 20 and lasted about two rounds after the party used the Wand of Communal Protection from Energy (fire). The Tempest Guards were sitting ducks to area effect spells. Otto Canrivash was wiped out after someone used invisibilty purge early on. The various graveknights encountered haven't been much of a challenge either.
By contrast the dybbuk was problematic, and the Dreadwraiths could have easily been a TPK if I hadn't nerfed them a bit by making them play the fight a bit dumb. Their Con damage was downright nasty, and my party suck at fighting incorporeals.
Next week they'll encounter Tycha Ghuzmaar. He could be nasty if he can use his death attack in, but his stealth is such that he will probably be seen before he can get his three rounds of study in. I think I'll give him a potion of invisibility to give him a boost. If I don't, I think that fight will be too easy as well.