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Dear Players,

A game session that started in a standard manner against the remnants of a wave of gribblies, followed by another short encounter of other relatively low-level opponents (compared to the party's level). Of course the last twenty minutes have left us with a proper cliffhanger. As briefly mentioned after the game, this is going to be a key battle, with an encounter level - I still shall use the EL denomination even though in Pathfinder RPG only "CR" is used all the time - about five above the party Equivalent Character Level. Hence, a "tough one".

Old battles.

The party has faced such encounters before, at all levels. The original fight with Nualia, the last BBEG of Burnt Offerings was pretty tough. I think the first encounter with Xanesha from The Skinsaw Murders was the most "very challenging" so far, because of the terrain (a tall tower with broken stairs) and the amount, and type, of spells abilities the monster had.

Current encounter.

Shemhazian Demons have gained an increase of 2 to their CR compared to their Third Edition version as listed in the adventure bestiary section. I shall play them as such because I believe that LV12 PCs in the new system are tougher than their counterparts from Third Edition/3.5. The Shemhazian could technically try to summon one of his own own at 30% chance of doing so, I will have him try to summon 1D4 Vrocks at the given 60% chance. This could spice-up the fight even more without making it impossible.

Note that you are all aware of what Shemhazians can do. They can as expected use true seeing at will and use invisibility on themselves. Have you noted the gaze attack? You better take that into account. Check on the rules for fighting monsters with a gaze attack.
And that Rend... have you seen that Rend?
The bite is nice too, I just love the STR drain even on a save. There might be some buff spells against that.

High Lady Athroxis should of course not be dismissed as secondary even if her CR is below that of the Shemhazian. She is the spell-engine of the fight, hopefully she will see a couple of Vrocks appearing soon enough.

As for your current tactic and latest action, as the GM I shall allow myself a bit of meta-gaming and tell you that giving Bester the cape of the mountebank to teleport between High Lady Athroxis and the Shemhazian was not the best idea ever, especially since poor Bester is within reach of the gargantuan monster!

Potential TPK.

Again, as mentioned after the game, this is a big one and one combat where the opposition is honour bound to follow you, should you decide to flee. Once the alarm was rung, at the very first fight in the Halls of Wrath with that variant Iron Golem archer, High Lady Athroxis has been using clairaudience/clairvoyance on the party. I have checked and she can do that without calling for a saving throw or a perception check from you. Basically, as I said during the game, she has been expecting the fight and relishes pitting her skills against yours. If you somehow manage to get back to the teleportation circle with a living Bester (the only wrathful PC in the party), and stay close enough for you to be without touching distance of him, to try to escape, the opposition will follow. This could develop as a strategy if for some reasons you believed that wide and open spaces run against your tactical combat abilities. However, doing so will cost you roughly one round of positioning, initiative delaying, etc. so as to be together on the teleportation circle for Bester to activate it.

If the sh*t hits the fan, I advise you split the party: Some of you carry on with the fight or gull the opposition into following them. These PCs are doomed to die. While the rest of the party can hide somewhere in Runeforge long enough to cast plane shift. Doing so would keep the campaign continuity alive and avoid having an entirely brand new party being rolled-up for the last adventure. This hypothetical brand new party would need runeforged weapons in any case to make Spires of Xin-Shalast more playable, thus would most probably need to come back to Runeforge.

Obvious observation:
The party is not properly buffed-up. Even if it is going to eat into your round/level spell durations, you need to cast far more abjuration spells and other buffing spells before you even think of getting into initiative. Do not even laugh at a bless spell, as you know in D&D "A +1 bonus is...a +1 bonus is... a +1 bonus!".
Check the stacking rules, but you have enough spell-casting classes on-board to mix your morale, deflection, sacred, profane , and whatnot bonuses.
At this level, you can safely expect energy drain effects, death effects, and other "save-or-die-or-at-least-be-seriously-inconvenienced" - effects.

Anyway, you are not dead yet as the combat has yet to begin.

Edit: The game page has been updated. I have also added a few more instances of the RotRL event on the calendar for you to sign in.

Laurent,