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[Evilhalfling]

I tried to compress 3 tests and the fight with the guardian to a single session.
it lasted 5:30 -130 am.

In the Hall of mirrors they lost a character to the opening trap. They used the curtains draped over their heads, to cross the chamber. They all grouped up again before opening the 2nd curtain. The curtains got shredded in the first skeleton explosion. The funniest bit was when the ranger headbutted a teleport mirror. Thus provoking the OA, so he could return to the battle.

They hit the chamber of Blood next, and the dwarf failed a jump and spent several rounds in trying unsuccessfully to climb out onto the statue base. I changed out the carnage demons for Dretch (HR Brute 4). They were great with a special ability which stopped anyone next to them from concentrating enough to get their normal minor action. This prevented marking, paladin challenges and one PC from drawing weapons. I really enjoyed making a low whine when ever a PC was taking actions adjacent to one of them.

the Sure Climbing feat (climb at normal speed) made item retrieval easy once the demons were killed off.
hmm - maybe I hand waved too much at the end, ah well on to the next -

The Howling pillars featured more Dretch! this time as minions.
The pillars were mostly a minor problem, and actually helped set the rogue for flanking once. The party was very frightened of the BarLarga, an earlier one nearling having killed the rogue.
The pillars spat out a new minion dretch each round, and the ranger just shot most of them with the spitting cobra stance.

The Guardian:

The party figured out the pools, and everyone had poison resistance for the test. The traps were mostly ineffective, the crossbow turrets hit twice, the fear projectors once, the elemental vortex twice, and the skeletons twice. Mostly the party concentrated around the opening door. I decided that the skeletons could move 1 each round, but not more than 1 space from starting potions. otherwise they would have made one attack the entire battle. The party wasted a large number of attacks on them - eventually overcoming the threshold 7 times. when the dragon finally breathed on them, they were reduced to 0 Attack bonus and quit even trying to attack.

The Dragon got hit with walking wounded, which really limited its mobility, and it was only able to damage 2 party members seriously. The Doom Sphere was avoided carefully, and made only a single attack the entire battle. It was a huge tactical concern for both dragon and PCs. Both sides spent a lot of time trying to force others into bad positions. It was the centerpiece of the battle.

They had the dragon past bloodied after 10 rounds, but I felt the players would have felt robbed of the kill if it just vanished. So I extended the fight to 14 rounds, and they finally killed it, and took the head as a trophy.

2 problems with the ball: I moved it 12 each round instead of 24. Secondly it became very predictable, as the track divided evenly by 12. So it always stopped at the same place. Increasing the speed to 13 would have added more randomness - although realizing it was taking double moves each round might have made the speed so fast that this would matter less.

The party loved the adventure, even with the grind at the end.