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Dear players,

The spiders of Leng.

As you may have noticed, last time I should have opened with a diplomacy round instead of an ambush. When preparing for the game yesterday, I read a paragraph about that that did not appear in the original version of the adventure.
I have tried to adapt things, but I am aware that it may have sounded a bit off-key. Well... GMs always try to act like cats and aim to end-up back on their fours when falling.

In the original adventure, there was no way the PCs could have found any clue as to what the Leng device was. I guess the guys at Paizo have tried to crowbar a few clues about it in the anniversary edition.

Karzoug is dead!

All those years to find Karzoug and smoke him with a disintegrate or equivalent and what an anti-climax!

Well, anti-climax according to Marcus that is. Marcus has all but uttered: "K's dead baby. K's dead" as Butch would have said about Zed in "Pulp Fiction".

Technically Marcus did kill Karzoug, well "a" Karzoug or something looking like him anyway, with his Dominant weapon. I sincerely hope that my die-rolling will improve soon because that "2" made the Big Guy look as ridiculous as that Blue Dragon, Ghlorofaex did a couple of session ago.

Giants, big Giants and bigger Giants.

So far, so good for the party, one Giant down, many more to go. As I have indicated during the session, this is going to be a succession of "all out" battles all the time, so you will need to do some hit-and-run operations or risk being rolled-back, even rolled-over, by waves upon waves of enemies.

It is all about timing, and right now the timing is playing for the other side: They are massed being that door, with an assembled force of a very serious CR. Think of the three remaining Cloud Giants as "fodder", one Rune Giant as the mindless brute behind the door, all these sitting between you and another statue/projected image of Karzoug. The size of the Giants will not break line-of-sight for you, or the Karzoug statue, as one can easily look through the arch of the Giants' legs.
All the Giants have reach, the bigger they are the longer the reach.

Tactically, if you always engage full-on in any encounter, you can expect a respite of three to four rounds before the next one. If you take the safe option, as you did at the beginning of this fight, the opponents will always play for time for a round or two in order to wait for reinforcements.

To be fair, I do not see any optimal way to get around that. The final dungeon is meant to be epic and represents the end of the campaign. We shall most probably see some dead PCs (later resurrected I assume) or some calculated retreats. I will try to call for some level checks for the PCs to assess the difficulty of the encounter. As a rule of thumb, if a named NPC shows-up before the end of the current wave of combat: Flee!

Note that there is only one entrance to the complex, if one is caught behind enemy lines, that PC is likely toast. So avoid splitting the party by trying for a fancy flanking position. That "+2 to hit and sneak" combination could cost a lot more than it brings.

Oh well, we shall see.

Laurent,