They gave too big a boost to her ECL. I wanted her to have a certain degree of power as a bodyguard, but I didn't want her to fill the niche of some of the more powerful clerics. I agonized about this for a few minutes, then said "Screw it. She's an angel made flesh and she's an NPC; there's no reason in the world why she has to conform to normal half-celestial abilities." Thus, I removed some of the more powerful abilities and boosted her devoted defender level a bit. I'm happy with the result, and so is Velendo. I mean, his bodyguard is the divine being who taught mankind how to build an arch; how cool is that?
SPOILERS ON THE CAMPAIGN'S DIRECTION BELOW - WARNING!
I'm betting some of you think I'm a great big goober for killing off the campaign's ultimate bad guy; you're just too polite to say so. Well, there's a method to my madness.
The first reason is that
I wanted to really keep the PCs off balance. Kill off a good god, and everything thinks you're just a jerk - plus they feel helpless because they couldn't do anything to stop it. Kill off an evil god, though, and everyone wonders "Why? Is there something worse waiting in the wings? Is it part of some big conspiracy? How is this going to affect our enemies? How is this going to affect the entire world?" It gets them thinking at the same time it invests them in the campaign world, and that's a good thing.
The second reason is that
it shakes up the campaign's rules, and it allows me to make changes both temporary and permanent.
- Cities burning? Check.
- Horrible plague? Check.
- Loosed demons and elementals and prisoners? Check.
- Feeling of helplessness, of being part of something bigger than just themselves? Check.
- Nasty side effects for ancient people being kept alive by magic? Check.
- Restructuring of both mortal and divine politics? Check.
- Allows me to bring back any number of interesting demigods, such as Yuute, our friend from the temple of disease under Eversink? Check.
- Allows me to legitimately kill off a handful of NPCs? Check.
- Provides an explosion in doomsday cults? Check.
- Presents an excuse for further isolating the PCs in the underdark? Check.
- Provides changing and evolving goals for the villains? Check.
- Gives a rationale for eliminating some weak undead and strengthening the ones that survive, thus making future combats fun in a different way? Check.
It even gives me a reason to explain 3.5 spell changes, if I feel the need to.
Mostly, though,
it stops the game from getting boring. Look at Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. LOTS of people complain that it degenerates into a brutal meat-grinder in the Crater Ridge Mines, a nasty slog of boring death. For me, a lot of great big dungeons are like this: not enough variety of challenge, not enough change of pace. I put off running this adventure for a long time because I was afraid of it. I'm still terrified that it's going to get tedious, although I think I've now got enough worked out to avoid that.
Killing off Imbindarla changes the playing field in a way that nothing else I could think of would. I now have an excuse for restructuring the ghoulish tactics, just when the Defenders are feeling secure in their battle plans. More importantly, I'm building towards an epic conclusion with a couple of really hard choices, and I needed to raise the stakes! This did it for me. I've done something similar a few times in the past, such as when I had mongol orcs invade and wipe out half a continent (and then had Lord Ioun kill every single one of them with a magical disease, thus providing the current set-up with the Necromancer Kings and the Church of Aeos.) It worked pretty well.
But most importantly? It was really fun for me. I had figured out everyone's motivations and plans, and now I get to figure them out again in the new state-of-the-world. And that's fun!
