Session 9 of the Deadmen campaign is history; only one more to go.

The session felt like a success, but I found that it was necessary to build totally broken encounters with totally not-fair elements to challenge the party of 15th level characters. Every encounter was complicated, and every time there was at least one scary moment that the PCs recovered from . . . so, all in all, it was a very good day.

There were three primary encounters in the session (about 5 hours of play time). The first encounter was the result of a (plot device) ritual that Polumess, the big bad Fomorian Sorceress, managed to pull off to try to delay the party and extract revenge for the party having just killed her mother. She drew on her special connection to the Swamp of Madness to lock the party in an ever-repeating dream of their exploration of the Mushroom Maze. It was a sort of Groundhog Day-style repeat, with all of the players except one primed to act as if they had no recollection of playing through the maze. The party was fighting the minotaur defenders of the maze, and because it was a dream designed to kill them off, the minotaurs they defeated kept re-appearing after they died. The Paladin, whose player eventually figured out that something fishy was going on had to complete a modified skill challenge to wake the other party members from their dream. In the end, they managed to extricate themselves from the dream, but it was a long, hairy battle with an unending supply of minotaurs.

The second encounter was with an army of ghouls. This was the most "fair" encounter in the whole session. The PCs needed to fight their way past a small army of ghouls who were feeding on some dead giants, in order to reach the teleportation circle that was still in a dead lich's ruined tower. The "unfair" part of this encounter was the respawning minions.

The third encounter was with three elite opponents created based on undead former PCs. These were characters that had been retired by players who got bored and moved on to new characters. This encounter had no respawning opponents, so it was a much more fair fight than the others, but there was a wrinkle. The PCs have been traveling for many sessions with a friendly minion, and these three elites were there to kill that minion at all costs. For the first time since they started traveling with the NPC, they were in an encounter with adversaries who were going out of their way to take out the minion. (I adapted this friendly minion a bit, allowing her the usual three death saves, so any hit that landed would take her out, but she wouldn't necessarily die right away). She was knocked down a couple of times, but the party managed to keep her from dying through some terrific tactics and use of powers -- it was wild and wooly for a while, mostly because the undead former PCs were so implacable in their efforts to take her out, but in the end, of course, the PCs took them out and saved the day. Some well used bard daily powers made it almost impossible for the bad guys to take out the minion, no matter how many times the undead guys tried to take her down.

This was one of my favorite sessions in this whole 10-session minicampaign. I have the usual list of things that I wish I'd done differently, but overall I think the encounters were the right sort of challenges, and each one posed an interesting new challenge for the party.

Now, to plan for the finale.