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Neko_Ali:
Well, I ran my Halloween Special tonight and it was glorious and well loved by the party. A hunter reported being attacked by a ghost in the woods nearby and the local baron asked them to investigate and put a stop to this. Loading up on ghost hunting gear (cold iron weapons, bags of salt, vials of holy water) they set off. Finding the abandoned campsite, the bedded down for the night. One the first watch, the dragonborn ranger drifted off as the Alarm spell set up rings out. The ranger started to walk off towards the south, acting strangely. They restrain her and ghostly smoke starts to pour out of her, forming up into a translucent blue woman with no legs and no mouth. She points southward and looks at the group pleadingly before fading away.

Travelling south, the group comes across a small, run down but still occupied house, deep in the woods, dozens of miles from the nearest town. Half the party scouts forward quietly... until the barbarian who can't see in the dark stumbles on a pile of clay tiles in the yard that was being used to patch the roof. From inside the house an old man appears. Spotting the Barbarian and Bard while the elf Ranger hides they get invited inside. This old hermit, Alec Tanner, kindly offers them tea and tells them a tale of how the ghost woman would lure people to their doom, drawing them to a graveyard further south of his house. But his house is protected thanks to warding stones he's set out.

Thanking him and  taking their leave, the two return to the group. After  a little discussion they decide to head south at near midnight. They pass through the ruins of an old and long abandoned town, nothing but foundations and overgrowth left. Coming on a large cemetery that held the remains of generations of townsfolk. In the center of the cemetery is a small structure, and within it they see a flicker of blue light. Coming closer they find it not to be a mausoleum as they suspected at first, but a gazebo. A gazebo made of the bones of dozens of people and creatures. Inside, the flicker of blue. Approaching closer, they attack the gazebo but miss! It responds by shooting razor sharp bone shards in all directions as it's arms start to unfold, claws outstretched.....

The fight begins in earnest! Spells fly and blades sing as they strike against the unholy abomination. It screams out and dozens of zombies start to rise from nearby graves, shambling towards the group. The warforged fighter gets grabbed and stuffed inside the gazebo, bars of bone slamming shut as it pierces him again and again with sharp spurs of bone. The party hacks from without and within as most try to back away from the animated bonezebo to escape the ring of zombies. As it looks like they are going to be overwhelmed, several party members in the single digit hit points and moments from being swarmed and torn apart by the zombies the bard strikes a final blow, causing the monstrosity to shake apart and the zombies drop in place, like puppets with their strings cut.

Gathering their breath the party examines the remains of the bonezebo, finding the capstone skull still pulsing with necromantic energy. Inside they find and destroy the animating crystal, the work of a necromancer. With the destruction of the crystal, the ghostly woman re-appears, along with two others that are just faces, similarly without mouths. The woman points towards the north, back to the hermit's house. Suspecting he may be the necromancer they return in the early, pre dawn hours. They kick over one of the warding stones protecting the house from spirits and a dozen ghosts rush in. The party follows, but too late. When they find the hermit her is held by the ghosts, burning alive with their cold fire until nothing is left by a charred body.

Searching his house, they find a secret door leading to a hidden basement. Inside, they find a shrine to the god of undeath, Vecna. Mounted above the shrine and the shrunken heads of twelve women, their mouths sewn shut. The party takes the heads outside to cremate them as the heads burn, the women are released. Their long silence undone, they thank the party as they disappear, until finally the full ghostly form is the last to go. As she ascends into the dawning sky with the smoke, a single raven feather floats down, as the Raven Queen whisks them away to their proper home in the afterlife.

Searching the home the party discover the necromancer's spellbook and journal. He was far older than he seemed, over a thousand years old. Every century or so he would use his magic to charm some poor girl in a village or city, whisking her away and marrying her, only to later kill her in a ritual so that he could absorb her life, extending his own. He spoke of being annoyed by their screams, so he would sew the women's mouths shut before the ritual. A dozen times he has done this, and he wrote of needing to find a new wife soon. He also wrote that though he lived far away from other people, sometimes the ghosts would draw the curious here, but he would send them to the old graveyard where his creation would kill them, giving him more material to work with.

And so it went, the heroes heading off, after allowing the Brides of the Necromancer their revenge, knowing evil has been destroyed, and their spirits freed. I found it an interesting and fun twist of the idea of a ghost of a jilted lover, and my party had fun. My custom made monster worked out really well and I was pleased that it was able to provide a serious and credible threat to the party. Though I think I should have increased the damage it does when it grabs someone and stuffs them inside. That just came off as weaker than it's normal bashing attacks. And besides that, I've wanted for literally decades to throw a gazebo monster at a party. And it so happens that I had a Halloween decoration that was a gazebo made of skulls and bones...

Gyrre:
I don't suppose you've shared the Bonzebo's statblock anywhere?

Neko_Ali:
Here it is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rriFoY4GDW3zZoyp1u3ARX5Zor55b5Xt/view?usp=sharing

I made the page using this resource: http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/ and roughly based it around mimics, the House Hunter monster and skeletons.

To go over it again I'd probably reduce the slam damage to 2d6 and increase the piercing damage of a creature trapped inside to 2d6. While playing it I realize it actually made little sense for the monster to use it's Grab and Stuff attack when it could just do way more damage with four slams. Ironically two of the players were trying to get inside the creature before willingly before it got one with a grab and stuff. Also, not reflected in the stat block but I decided spur of the moment last night that the creature was immune to being flanked. My group loves to use and abuse the flanking rules, but that made no sense in this case because it had arms coming out of all sides and could 'see' all around it with it's blindsight (soul vision).

My party that night was 5 level 3 characters. Fighter, Barbarian, Melee Ranger, Archer Ranger and Bard. I also threw them up against about 20 Shambling Zombies... Like regular zombies but with a move of 15' and 12 HP instead of 22. They were summoned up from the graveyard as a bonus action by the Bonezebo and once it was destroyed they collapsed, like puppets with cut strings.

Gyrre:
A list of suggested restrictions to pick and choose from to help keep the insanity cap in place while allowing spells like Enlarge Reduce to stack on the same creature:

* Require multiple spell casters to stack the spell. Pretty much the only one that's mandatory.
* Require the spell to be cast at higher levels per level of stacking. Each casting would be done at double the previous casting’s spell level. Level 2 slot for the 1st casting, level 4 slot for the 2nd, and capped at a level 8 slot for the 3rd. This helps prevent abusing the stacking.
* Require harder to aquire additional material components. Maybe rare earth metals, meteoritic dust, or specific monster parts. For example, the Enlarge Reduce spell might require the pituitary gland of a lycanthrope or a Spriggan.
* Require an intelligence check to cast the stacked spells. They’re messing with someone else’s spell afterall.
* Disadvantage (or some sort of penalty) on concentration checks for the spellcaster(s) Complex/unstable magic is hard to maintain. I'd even go further and suggest that wild magic users would automatically surge if failing this check or the previously suggested Int check.

*
if my DM allows this, I can make Po a kaiju (43'4"). He already looks like one.

hedgie:
Ninety percent of last night's game ended up being the fight that we were starting at the end of the previous session, but this time with the gunslinger and rogue flying down from the top, and our archer stranded outside[1], as we get attacked by four barbed devils.  As per usual, my initiative as the second-strongest healer is middling at best, and our strongest healer is dead last.  Immediately after entering the room we're all[2] assaulted by magic, forcing a pair of will saves which my pet imp and I easily make, but the rogue predictably fails leaving her useless for the first round.  I felt quite sanguine about our prospects, since even without the NPCs or pets, we had a 2:1 numerical advantage[3].  That first round, the gunslinger knocked one of the flying devils out of the air with some sort of trick shot to the wing, and the skeleton pet, the summoner NPC's eidolon and the dwarf all engaged the foes on the ground in a rather painful fashion, as they impaled anything engaging them in melee.  It is also discovered by a couple of party members that a fifth devil, the one we're supposed to try and get information from was sneaking up behind the gunslinger in his perch under an invisibility spell.  Once she's pointed out, I shout for him to come to me as I prepare a bullet with her name on it[5] and the tank/healy cleric steps up beside me so I can safely hide behind her tower shield as the devil being attacked by the eidelon advances on us. 

Now, due to the vast amounts of booze, some of the details are a little bit fuzzy as to in what order the ensuing events occured, but I shall endeavour to do my best.  Overall, things are going reasonably well in terms of control over the fight, as two of the devils are getting punished, and the one approaching me suddenly "decided" that it was time for a nap.  The only snags were that the evil cleric NPC is getting hit by invisidevil's scythe, our gunslinger gets held on his way to me, and has failed to break out of it for a few consecutive rounds, and both other people with pets are burning some serious magic/abilities to keep said pets from taking a dirt nap.[6] 

Of course, all good things must come to an end.  As the NPC cleric flies away, depriving invisidevil of an immediate target, flying enough to try to "talk" to the held gunslinger and demand his head if he dies, it all starts going sideways.

The devil hits us all with "horrid wilting", described in loving detail by the GM, and if the devil had "detect invisibility" or "true seeing", I would have had to contend with having a dying familiar who needed healing, and being both squishy and seriously hurt, myself.  The whole party has just taken some serious damage, moderated only by a relatively poor roll on the GM's part.  *Almost* everyone who can heal themselves does, and the rogue (who is rather squishy herself) starts floating over to myself and the cleric, who decides to buff herself so that she could actually hit the enemy.[7]  Due to their damage reduction, the barbed devils are taking a while to kill, especially since one ranged character is missing and the other is frozen in place in the air.  Compounding our woes, the next round, a "chain lightening" hits the group, which thankfully, the rogue and my pet manage to avoid entirely.  The necromancer of course, continues to spam a channel to heal herself (she's dhampir) and her pet, I have to drop what I'm doing to cast "heal" on the seriously wounded cleric (who really needs some better dice), and prepare heal the rogue the next round (triage and all), complicating my plans to bring this combat together.  Tired of her one-sided conversation with the gunslinger, the NPC cleric decides to hit the floating gunslinger with a dispel that knocked away the hold, but *also* the magic keeping him aloft, but thanks to the failsafe with that spell, he started drifting slowly to the ground. 

I patch up the rogue the next round, and both the dwarf and skeleton have finally dispatched their respective targets, while the eidelon finally succumbs to the fatal embrace of the barbed devil.  But, now, things are starting to come together as the gunslinger manages to take the special bullet out of my waiting hand.  He chambers a round, focused all his attacks into one nasty shot, which, due to the "named bullet" resulted in an x4 crit and doing what I believe is properly called "a metric fuckton of damage".  I put the other barbed devil to sleep, the summoner casts "haste" on the group, and we begin to focus on the primary target, who our necromancer weakens with a successful enervation.  The flying rogue starts to make her ascent, while those of us who are land-bound begin running up the "stairs" to the top of this tower to engage, while the skeleton starts dispatching the sleeping devils. 

At this point, we're officially in the mop-up stage.  Not only is our primary target weakened, and I ensure that she is blinded too.  Unfortunately, she gets off one final "fuck you" to the one  directly responsible for her sucking chest wound by imprisoning the gunslinger inside a force cage.  Although our goal was to get information from her regarding the McGuffin, she goes down furiously trying to fight.

Well, I suppose with *that* goal thwarted, we start looting, netting a scarab of protection, an icy burst mace, a rod of splendour, and a circlet with the soul of someone trapped inside.  The dwarf (of course), also discovers that the mattress to the bed large enough for Golarion's biggest orgy on record[8] is full of mixed coinage, estimated to value some 30k gp in total value.  He immediately starts making money angels in the pile, and we all discuss the logistics of hauling it out, ending with the conclusion that it is impossible to do so with our current means.  Sorting through the coins to only take the gold and platinum would also take a prohibitively long time.  The rogue starts stuffing her pockets, and the dwarf calls for me to put her to sleep.  I indulge him, primarily because my character has a strong dislike for thieves, but she's quickly nudged awake by the necromancer, who wants none of dealing with gold fever and goes back down to the still controlled big bad to have another conversation.  One other person follows her as the rest of us desperately attempt to quickly sort the coins.  The futility of this exercise is shown by how in an hour, we get a relative pittance.  Even with my pet's help, I'm only able to net about 300gp worth of money, which is more than the others were able to get.  We then retreat to the cave we were hiding in to identify items and plan our next step.


[1] A necessary contrivance to cater to their respective players' abilities to make it.  Since we have such a large group, we don't have to postpone sessions due to absences.

[2] well, aside from our token evil teammate, her pet, and the evil NPCs

[3] I think that the quantity of beer and soju[4] that we had been consuming as we ate dinner probably helped in regards to confidence

[4] Of which, we unfortunately either had too much, or not enough.  Still not sure which.

[5] Well, strictly speaking, and quite thankfully, an actual name isn't needed, one just has to remove all ambiguity as to who it is for.

[6] Although, I suppose that the skeleton is dirt sleep-walking already.

[7] Using a two-handed weapon with one hand is not generally recommended, even when one has the feats to do so, if one wants to hit their target.

[8] Or more likely, one big fucking dragon, considering that some scales were also found on the bed

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