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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 9587103" data-attributes="member: 54629">One thing I will say is that, especially in the deeper levels, it felt like some of the big scary monsters were just chucked into random corners with no real build-up to them.Take the 20th floor (the Runestone Caverns) for example. The main baddie on this floor is the lich, Ezzat. He's got a lair in a stalagmite, and there's a quest the PCs can pick up from the genies on a higher floor to steal the lich's phylactery. He wants to replace Halaster, and so Halaster wants to get rid of him. The players are likely going to confront Ezzat with some purpose. Incidentally, my group found Ezzat too tough, and they never found the secret room where he hides his phylactery, so they weren't able to complete that quest.But then, during a later session when I only had two players, they randomly stumbled into the duergar mummy lord's area down in the corner of the map. Yeah, the mummy lord gets to count that area as its lair, but even so, it's separated from its eight mummy minions by a fair distance. One random mummy lord was no match for two high-level PCs, and its lowly mummy minions took too long to come to its rescue. That particular encounter felt kind of anti-climactic - like it was more of a random encounter with a monster that ought to have been the central figure on a floor of its own.There are a few other instances like that - whether its a behir there or a beholder here or a dragon over yonder.I think if I were to run this again, I'd put more effort into ensuring that these encounters with classic high-level D&D monsters don't come off feeling like random encounters.</blockquote>

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