Doh, I am late posting this.
So, with such a name as Fine Strands of Death, you would think that this encounter would really push the envelope on the survivability of the party. Not so. In fact, not only was this the easiest encounter in the season, it may have been one of the easiest encounters I have ever run. Of the ten creatures in it, nine were minions. Huh?
Despite that, I still had fun with it, and I think it is a good idea to put something like this out there, since the party is special, and needs to occasionally just wipe the floor with the baddies. The baddies, in this case, were three decrepit skeletons, six crawling gauntlets, and a crystal spider. Also, the spider had a crystalline web (trap), which lends itself to the name, as it is made of fine strands of glass. In fact, it was the most dangerous thing about this session.
The party quickly dispatched the minions, before the spider even got to attack. However, they all felt something was weird about the hole that the web covered, so they weren’t too surprised when the spider gathered together its radiant energy and blinded Barcan. Okay, Barcan was surprised.
I think that had I planned it a little better, I could have used the crystal spider to drop down on the other side of the party and use its Radiant Agony attack to push them into the web. But I followed the tactics, and this spider wasn’t particularly smart (its been a long time since anything living came here [wait, do they even have a reason to attack living creatures {what does it eat, anyways?}?]!).