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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 1524923" data-attributes="member: 15043">Typing from workWell, it wasn't me intentionally trying to kill off PCs, it was more that they were facing the Countess in person, and she was going to be a very nasty matchup.  She had three molydeus demons (lightning bolt as 20th level sorcerer 1/day, in addition to vorpal greataxes... CR 17 each), a marilith, as well as herself:  15th level sorceress/10th level demonologist, with some extra abilities I threw in.  Basically a 25th level spellcaster. Yowza.  My intentions for the Countess to have her do the classic bad guy tactic of letting her pet demons whittle the party down, while she took measures to defend herself (incendiary cloud, the fire wall, insane spell protection bonuses).  Should the party survive, they would have been weakend and had to face her full bore (with meteor storm and all).So far the party hadn't faced an encounter where retreat might be a real necessity, and my plot intentions were to either A) nudge the party to do the unthinkable, and run, or B) Have the Countess, while the party was busy, activate the teleportation chamber and skeddadle to the Abyss.  My final goal was to have the last session be a showdown between the party (miffed that she had escaped them) and the Countess in Graz'zt's palace over the staff.  The players proved VERY resourceful, and a some miserable luck (from my perspective... good luck from the players <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) later I found my BBEG taken out two sessions ahead of schedule.  All this did was force me to be creative... which the players found amusing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The party did have some rolls go their way... most obviously the Countess rolling miserable on her fort save.As for campaigning around with noble titles... most of the PCs, save Siabrey (who was kinda forced by events), declined further titles.  And yes, they kept going... previous sessions had made all of them paranoid enough they didn't trust anyone to take that staff back to where it belonged other than themselves.  It proved interesting when an Empress, Baroness, Lord and a Knight (Orion's title after the Holstean debacle) started planehopping.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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