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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 4877291" data-attributes="member: 386">We played tonight.  It was a good game, interesting, but a little frustrating near the end.The game started off with the PCs rescuing a couple of Kenku (Jenku and Sisku?) from the ettercap's lair.  They were slaves who escaped the demonic gnolls deeper in the "sunken city" and had roosted in the wall of a large chasm.  There were 12 of them in total and they invited the PCs back to their roost to share some grubs.  (They are raising a purple worm larvae they found and plan to feast on it once it reaches the limit of their ability to contain it.)The PCs got a chance to rest before heading back up to the surface.  Jenku asked to go along with them, to see the outside world.  Aiden and Kieva went to pay a tab at another bar, taking Jenku with them, while the rest of the PCs headed to the Nentir Inn... where Kelson and what was left of the River Rats were waiting for them.Kelson told Hekubus he needed to pay a fine for leaving the River Rats.  Kelson figured his "invisible sword" would do fine.  Hekubus told him he would see him dead before he paid him a cent.  Roll for initiative.Hekubus took a pounding and the rabble Kelson brought along with him slowed down the PCs a bit.  The now-healed Grug and Fargarson Vilebrew, along with expert crossbowman Otto gave Hekubus a hard time, dropping him.  (Grug, being the bartender, had a couple booze-related powers: he could toss a keg of ale, dealing damage in an area and "soaking the target in booze".  That gave them fire vulnerability; Grug also could take a swig of some vile brew and light it, breathing a gout of flame.)Hekubus was brought back up on his feet by a magical word from Shamon and they beat down on Kelson and his lackies, winning the fight.  Shamon asked Kelson why they should let him live; he told them that Markelhay was in his pocket and he'd come after the PCs if they killed him.  Plus, he had the body of Hrogar and the PCs would never recover it if they killed him.  So they let him go.  But not before Hekubus chopped off Kelson's hand in retribution, telling him he'd cut the other one off if he ever crossed paths with Hekubus again.Kelson went back to his tavern and sent the PCs a note telling them where Hrogar's body was - sold to Orest Naerumar, the tiefling who's been buying all the corpses his men have been digging up.Shamon quickly whipped up a disguise, making himself look like an acolyte of Orcus and went to talk to Naerumar.  His disguise worked but Naerumar was suspicious: "Who are you?  I've never seen you before."  Shamon fast-talked him and Naerumar led him into a secret cellar where he kept the bodies before selling them to the death cultists.  Naerumar asked for double for the corpse of Hrogar, since it was so fresh.  Shamon refused, saying it had been cursed by a Paladin (Hekubus had cast Gentle Repose on it) and told Naerumar that he had screwed up.  So badly, in fact, that he should give him the dwarf for free.  Naerumar bargained him down to 50gp, which Shamon reluctantly paid.When Shamon didn't buy the other corpses, saying he'd be back for them later, Naerumar became very suspicious.  After Shamon left he closed up shop and went to talk to Kelson.The PCs knew something was going on but not what.  They did some investigative work: Aiden and Kieva went to the Lucky Gnome Taphouse and tried to listen in on things (they had not fought the River Rats), hearing nothing - but they did follow Kelson to Moonstone Keep.  Aiden attempted to climb the outer wall to try to listen in on any conversation Kelson was having, but he failed to climb the smooth, dwarven- and eladrin-built wall.Umar spoke with the guards near the Wizard's Gate, just beside Orest Naerumar's place; he found out that one of the guards had relatives in Winterhaven and would visit them every month, and he had just left.Sharok turned into a mangy, flea-bitten dog and kept watch on Orest's place.Hekubus and Shamon went to speak with the Raven Roost bandits (gnomes, elves, dark ones, worshippers of the Raven Queen) to ask if they had seen any cultist activity.  They had; they spotted a group of them coming down the King's Road from the north, camping in the Moon Hills, and were planning on spying on them to see what they were up to.Something was going on but the PCs didn't know how it all fit together.  Kieva decided to confront Kelson, posing as an agent of Orcus.  She claimed that things had gone wrong, something about a cursed body, and Kelson was going to take the blame for it.  Beaten down as he was, still clutching a bloody stump, Kelson was no match for her quick wit; he bought her story.He took her her back to the Lucky Gnome where they could talk in private.  He tried to pin all the blame on Hekubus, hoping to get the cult to fight for him.  Of course this didn't work.  Kieva tried to figure out where Markelhay stood in all this mess; Kelson said that Markelhay was in his pocket and he'd get the Lord Warden to take care of Hekubus for him.  She noticed (through a good Insight check) that he glanced at a painting on the wall when he said this.The two of them decided they needed to move against Hekubus; Kelson figured they should get Naerumar in on their plan.  Followed by Aiden, they passed by Sharok in dog-form and Umar, none of whom were spotted.  Sharok sent an animal messenger (he may have done this earlier, actually) to Hekubus and Shamon to tell them what was going on and call them to action.Kieva spoke with Naerumar through his warded door; he was very suspicious, seeing two new death cultists in town raised his suspicions.  Kieva responded that she had come to pick up the rest of the bodies.  This very reasonable response allayed his concerns and he opened the door.At which point Umar came barrelling into him, knocking him back into his shop.Kieva moved into the shop, keeping up her disguise, while Aiden and Umar moved in to fight Orest Naerumar.  He told his homonculi guardians to attack the intruders, while Kelson slipped in, running in fear from Hekubus, Shamon, and Sharok outside.The homonculi (4 stonefist defenders and 1 arbalester) attacked, focusing on Umar, and Kelson got a powerful blow in on him as well.  But by then the rest of the PCs had entered the shop.  Hekubus cowed Kelson into surrender, Naerumar and the homonculi were cast in a heap in the corner of the room, stunned, and soon his stonefist defenders had all been slain.  When Sharok bounded past him to cut off his escape, Naerumar surrendered to the PCs.The PCs spared his life, locking him up in his cellar, planning to use him when the real death cultists show up.They also got quite a bit of loot from his shop - 2000 gp, 500 gp in each reagent type, and 2000 gp worth of level 1-4 consumable magic items (scrolls, potions, etc.) and wondrous items.  I let the players choose which ones they want because I don't feel like taking the time to stat it all up!That was a cool session, lots of neat exploration and stuff.  The frustrating part was that last fight; by rights, a level 6 encounter for 6 PCs (Orest was a lvl 8 elite, Kelson with 1/4 of his HP only worth 100 XP or so) but the PCs just blew right through it.  Naerumar never really had a chance to do anything!I'm not sure why I was so frustrated; I guess I just wanted the NPCs to do better, which is a bad way to look at things.  Luckily I didn't make any stupid calls or anything like that.  I'm not sure what the issue is, I just don't know why that last fight was such a cakewalk.  I'm struggling with how to make this campaign interesting and challenging when it's not all in a dungeon (when extended rests are hard to come by), still maintain consistency and integrity in the campaign world, and challenge the PCs on a long-term, strategic level.That is, the PCs should be able to "nova" and blow out a challenging encounter, but I want them to be able to do that only through their own smart choices; being able to "nova" and turn challenging encounters into cakewalks shouldn't be the normal state of things.  But if I throw in 3+ encounters every day, that doesn't make any sense and means their choices don't matter.I could decide, "Oh, the cultists are coming that night," but eh, I had already decided that they weren't going to.  I would just be doing that to make things hard on them, and I don't want to do that; I just want to play the world.  (Designing the world to be hard and challenging on them, of course.)  If I'm just making things challenging on them no matter what, it means they can't make smart choices and reap the benefits of those choices.I think I might want to house rule that extended rests take a week.  Or maybe just slow down the rate at which healing surges are recovered.  Because even if they are able to "nova" with their dailies, if they are counting healing surges there's still some tension.</blockquote>

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