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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5534376" data-attributes="member: 94022">Well, this is a bit hard to say honestly.  I understand not making it much harder at the end considering that the party will have already gone through two encounters without a rest (meaning they may be down to just at-wills and dailies).  The problem though, as pointed out, is that the minions are not likely to trouble the party all that much between the sorceror and the invoker, meaning that the first two encounters may not really be all that much of a challenge for the party and that when they come to the final encounter, they can really unload (on a relatively easy encounter). The problem of course is that if you take away the minions and replace them with standards (or even just add a couple of standards) you run the risk of the PCs being stuck an at-will fest by the last part of the encounter.  What might work better is to simply leave your list of enemies more or less undefined (i.e. "You see more lurking behind the ballistae") and just use that as an excuse to add more waves should your party start to breeze through the encounter. You also need to consider your encounter areas.  From a quick description, it sounds as though the fight at least starts within the palace.  How then were the traps on the floor able to be set without being previously detected and/or set off?  Certainly this is an answerable question, but be ready to have an answer at hand, otherwise it seems fishy. All in all though, I like the idea as presented in general.  I just think you need to be ready to improvise your monster numbers on the fly as minions tend to not really be equal to 1/4 of a creature in terms of difficulty.  I particularly like the idea of chasing down the villain since it gives the party a choice.  They might be gassed after the second encounter but realize that if they stop to rest, they'll lose the mage and the king.  At that point they have to make the tough decision "Do we follow, or do we rest and try to find him later?" I would certainly be prepared for the party choosing the latter option.  Perhaps if they go this route, they then engage a skill challenge to track the mage to the boat that is prepared to take them away.  Of course, even if they are succesful in catching up to the mage, they find him at the boat where he has more reinforcements, meaning the encounter is now much harder than if they had simply followed him earlier and caught him before he got to the boat and his allies.  If they fail the skill challenge, then the mage gets away with the king.   The only question I have at this point is "Why doesn't the mage just kill the king?"  What are his plans for the king?  Obviously he wants to remove the king from the throne but is not the easiest method to simply off the king?  Especially when he knows he's being followed?  I would have an answer for this ready as well.  In fact, the answer should probably be something that foreshadows the paragon tier.  A message from a new BBEG stating he needs to King alive in order to prepare him as a proper sacrifice, etc.  At any rate, you want something that definitely invokes a feeling of "Crud, we've only just begun to scratch the surface."  Sort of like the line at the end of "the Two Towers":  "The battle of Helm's Deep is over, but the battle for Middle Earth has just begun." BTW, I love the use of the party's previously defeated enemies in the encounter.  Its a great way to show how far the PCs have come over the course of the campaign.  In fact, I think it would be good to have the mage and the tiefling reveal appropriate looks of horror/shock at just how powerful the PCs are, sort of a "What have I gotten myself into?" moment.</blockquote>

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