This is actually the second time I've ran it; the first time didn't go too well, heh. The second adventure, Faces of Evil, really doesn't care whether the players live or die, and I plan to tone down a few things there. Especially the Kenkus, oh god, the Kenkus... though that encounter essentially boiled down to NPCs with a necklaces of fireballs is rather unfair. First of all, it deprives the players of precious loot, and secondly it does a great deal of bang for the monsters buck, whereas it is a lot more situational in the hands of a player. That coupled with a pack of low level rogues with crossbows ended up with very few survivors. We kept going after that, and we ended shortly before the 'final confrontation' of adventure 2... but that was because one player decided to derail the campaign and well, anyway, that's a different story.
We haven't quite gotten to that point in the adventure yet, and it was going rather well up until session before last. I've been putting up an effort to have the adventure challenging, but not deadly (which it very dearly wants to be), and its a gestalt game with 5 players when everyone shows up, which always helps when it comes to surviving. But a few of the players got into their head that they were "behind in xp" and in a very power gamer-y fashion went out into the woods looking for trouble. I had informed them numerous times that the woods were dangerous, and that they shouldn't go out there unprepared, even seeded some conversations with people in town with stories of evil dragons and horrible undead that lurk the forests, and then also informed them out of character that I was just going to use a random generator for any encounter 'off the beaten path,' since I a) Didn't want to pre-generate encounters for every location they might visit in an area on the off-chance they decided to camp under the stars, and b) I don't really want to encourage 'banging helmets together' as it were, since it takes time away from the adventure and in this case, the other players. Anyway, they ended up facing off against a Very Young White Dragon as a pair of 2nd level characters (a Factotum/Wizard and a Dread Necro/Marshal Human Paragon) and after it nearly killed them both with its breath weapon in the first round (they both failed their saves and I rolled high, a 14 I think), they got lucky and managed to frighten it off with a cause fear. So I gave them partial xp for the encounter and let them limp home.
But that wasn't the end of it, because the next day (after buying healing at the local temple) they went and grabbed their fighter companion (A goliath Crusader/Something, maybe fighter for dungeoncrasher) who was still suffering from brutal ability damage from an encounter with a ghost and some poison. Practically dragging him from the hospital bed, they slapped him with a lesser restoration from the temple and demanded he come with them on another expedition into the woods. This one didn't go so well, as they stumbled upon a convocation of fiendish eagles (11 'regular' fiendish eagles, and one advanced one, their leader). I love my random generator, but it can be quite unforgiving. I'm working up a whole backstory behind why their was an evil cult of hell eagles out in the woods, but more to the point my players instantly recognized the unholy death that stood assembled before their weak, hapless sortie. The party was not making any kind of effort for stealth, and the eagle's eyes were keen, so that dropped any chance to run in the surprise round, so it came down to iniative. The two spellcasters rolled really high, and the crusader rolled something like a 2 (he had 4 dex damage left over still, I believe earlier one the wizard said something like 'but you don't use dex, so it'll be fine). Anyway, the two spellcasters ran, leaving the crusader to fend for himself. Some of the eagles took to the skies and tried to hunt the casters down, but the crusader decided to stay and fight, alone, against the remaining 8 eagles. He made a good show of it, but sadly didn't make it. The two spellcasters went to grab food after that, and left the two other players (A psion/swashbuckler and an Archivist/Warblade) to their own devices. So they decided to advance the story on their own! There was some encounter that for the life of me I can't remember, all I know is that the psion ran out of power points and the warblade lost half his life. And then they decided it was time, the party split, the warblade at half hits, and the psion out of juice, to challenge a Dire Ape. See, way back in the first session the crusader had scouted out Balabar Smenk's mansion based off a tip he had gotten from the townsfolk, and found it to be filled with a troop of ferocious Dire Apes. He immediatly ran, and warned the party, and they have been keeping their eye on Smenk ever since. However, now was the time for critical investigation! And they sauntered off, marched right into the mansion, walked up to a Dire Ape and wacked it hard with a greatsword. The psion survived.
Last session we didn't get much done. One of the key remaining players had work, so the group decided to figure out something else to do until he showed up, and we ended up making deadlands character, actually. We'll be running that in the off hours I guess, and should be fun; we have a mad scientist (I think that was what he ended up with), a Texas Ranger, and a kid that inherited twin magical artifact revolvers from his dead father (that are also cursed, I think I have them so they give bonuses to hit, but in times of need they always fire at less-lethal locations, like the feet or arms of the opponent). Anyway, should be fun. For the little bit that we were actually on track, the Crusader's player didn't show up, so I haven't gotten to see what he's making (he was talking about a Jottenbrut Dungeoncrasher fighter so he's probably going to be fine, lol.) The former Warblade made a Bear Totem Bear Totem Barbarian/Totemist (we ruled that you can choose to gain the CC totem options instead of the first level of the UA totem options). The group is resisting the inevitable bear puns. So we got through new character introductions, and the confrontation with Filge, the evil evil necromancer of adventure 1, which our Dread Necromancer tried to join up with, but the wizard of the party refused to give up the spellbook which he had stolen, and everyone else decided that they probably shouldn't be hanging out with villainously evil necromancer and fought him. They ended up disabling him with his own skeletons armed with crossbows from downstairs (pro-tip for the evil megalomaniacs of the world, if you happen to have a low fort save, and happen to have low strength, don't arm your easily turn-able undead minions with strength damage poisons, it wont end well) so next session we are gearing up for the interrogation of Filge, the restoration of the Land family bones, and the finale with the Wind Dukes, which hopefully goes better than the first time (which also ended with two PC deaths, heh).
TL;DR: Its going better than the last time I ran it, but my players are lemmings.
