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Dear Players,

At last you got to kill the Lamia Matriarch and finish the adventure.
As expected the fight did not proceed as planned.

Game:
The plan was to have Marcus run away after resisting a Charm monster, Xanesha to pick up her spear and start poking at Marcus if he did not.
Because Adam came up with some good role-playing, the party got an extra three rounds of prep, which Xanesha could not use to buff herself up. Xanesha would also have made use of her illusion spells and I had a silent image in mind of a gate to the Abyss and a Glabrezu about to step into the room as one of the party member decided to come back in.

The use of only one Charm monster was correct in the sense that once she realised the party was prepared for that, the tactical choice of using Deep slumber was sound, too bad she did not know about the party having elves and half-elves. The party would have been more useful to her charmed than dead, so Deep slumber followed by waking up the PCs one by one and using Charm monster at a DC 21, after the expiration of the Protection from evil, was what Xanesha had in mind.

Missing thrice in a row on extremely poor rolls cost her one kill, the Paladin should have gone down. Next she would have stepped to the window to skewer the Wizard that was giving those annoying +20 to hit. True, I forgot to use the special ability of the spear, but it was going to be only about spreading some -2 to hit around, so nothing really game-breaking.
Again, had she had not been disturbed by Marcus' glibness her AC would have reached 31 and she would have had an extra attack at +20 from Haste.

Once surrounded and after suffering a critical hit, she did not have enough HPs to risk five AoOs on her casting (again her AC was "low" at 26), so dropping the Paladin was the goal. Oddly enough she had the spells to escape, such as Invisibility and Dimension door but not even a single potion of CLW on hand, so the escape, reload and fight again strategy was unavailable.
Her spell resistance did wonders though!

Adam is now happy, somebody (Alex), had some crappier rolls than Marcus. The pesky SR 18 was impassable to the Sorcerer.

Reach for large weapons:
Link to Pathfinder RPG Reference Document
Xanesha was not "typical" in the sense that she was large with a natural reach of only 5ft (same as that large Undead Dire Bat you fought at Foxglove Manor), hence she had only a 10ft reach with her long spear.
The rule says that the natural reach is doubled as in Most reach weapons double the wielder's natural reach... when using a reach weapon.
Thus, a large long spear or medium longspear will not affect the reach of Elswyn should he fall in love with Xanesha's spear. Elswyn's natural reach is 5ft, so he gets 10ft as with his current spear.
The WIS drain effect was a Lamia Matriarch drain effect, the Impaler of Thorns allowed her to channel one point of drain through it. So unless Elswyn becomes a Vampire, this weapon ability will see little use.

EDIT
A medium PC cannot use a large two-handed weapon.
At best a medium PC can use a large one-handed weapon as a "medium equivalent" two handed weapon.
So, Elswyn needs to drop the spear, be the recipient of an enlarge person spell and only pick the spear up while large to use it. This would become a possible but complex and time consuming combat set-up.

As for the size penalty:
Inappropriately Sized Weapons: A creature can't make optimum use of a weapon that isn't properly sized for it. A cumulative –2 penalty applies on attack rolls for each size category of difference between the size of its intended wielder and the size of its actual wielder. If the creature isn't proficient with the weapon, a –4 nonproficiency penalty also applies.
Elswyn can therefore use the Impaler of Thorns but at a -2 to hit.

Timing:
We ran the one mega encounter spot on time as it finished at ten o'clock.

Next adventure:
"The Hook Mountain Massacre" by Nicholas Logue.
Next week the party will be travelling to Turtleback Ferry, a small town close to Fort Rannick, the fort that has not sent any report for quite a while.
The laws of random encounters dictate that whatever the choice of route (walking, horsies or river barge) there shall be one - and one only - random encounter before starting the adventure proper. See the "Order of the Stick" for an expose of this rule.

The party will have a week off, to stay in Sandpoint or Magnimar (the city is one day of travel away from Sandpoint) to spend their cash and letters of credit on wine, prostitutes and magical items of many sorts.
Some information gathering under a Diplomacy skill check and other Knowledge (local) check could provide more background and avoid simply bumbling into the bad guys once the party has arrived.

As mentioned before "The Hook Mountain Massacre" is for LV7, but after having run RotRL in Pathfinder RPG for close to a year now, the PCs are tougher than their 3.5 counterparts. True, the casters still have access to the same spell levels, but overall, feats and special class abilities make a PC stronger.
Thus I believe there should be no problem with the party starting just below the power curve. You now have slightly more wealth per head than your level allows for, again this should compensate for the LV7 requirement.

I may need to add some side encounters to the adventure to bring in more XP to adjust to a six member party. I did so for the first adventure ("Burnt Offerings"), but decided to merely add to the number of monsters for the second one, making "The Skinsaw Murders" quicker to play through.
The gaming rate should reach 2.5 to 3 adventures a year if we keep to a more or less weekly session as we have done so far. Therefore you should be talking to Karzoug at LV12 by January 2012. Levelling up should slow down a bit around "Fortress of the Stone Giants" and "Sins of the Saviours".

I shall post the event later today on this website.

There will be a Meetup.com event but only to attract one more player, so you will not need to drop an RSVP there.

I am no longer looking aggressively for an additional player, so the opening is only there for someone who is looking for a game.

Laurent,