I’m a big fan of hot drinks during the holidays. Hot toddies and mulled wine are both good, but my favorite is mulled apple cider with bourbon.
I use a couple cinnamon sticks, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg, thrown in a pot with about a 1/2 gallon of cider and heated without boiling for about an hour. Served in a mug with 1-2 oz of bourbon or other whiskey and garnished with apple and/or orange slices, plus half a cinnamon stick if you’re feeling fancy!
Nappetizer
What’s going to go over best is definitely going to depend on what your players like. If they get into your narrations, then 1 will work great. I’d avoid 2 and 3 just because they may just feel bad in practice, again depending on your group. I think 5 is my favorite, it can give the other players the chance to really hang it up if they’re into that!
Wow that does sound like a challenge to balance for! Here’s a few things to keep in mind.
A larger group of players is usually going to need more enemies for any given combat to be challenging. If you’re using a prewritten adventure or an encounter builder of some sort, consider bumping up the number of monsters a little.
Consider alternate objectives/fail states. This can take some creativity to pull off, but introducing something like hostages in danger, or a thief trying to carry away some of the party’s loot during combat can make things much more interesting. This can be especially effective with paladins, when what their oath says they should do conflicts with the tactically correct move.
When they can, enemies will want to create advantage before the fight even starts. Letting the players into sticky webs, slippery floors, or a prepared portcullis can restrict their movement and create openings to attack. They might also try to break or disarm weapons or shields when they see the paladins are hard to hit head on.
It’s good for the players to feel powerful! Most encounters should be challenging, and the players should occasionally be pushed to their limits in a boss fight, but a few cakewalk encounters are good to have too. They’re especially good when they’re similar to a fight the players had a lot of trouble with 3 or 4 levels ago to highlight just how strong the characters have become.
It’s 2 total terms. There’s no “resetting the clock” in that rule. Any attempt to remain in power for a third term would be blatantly unconstitutional.
That said, there’s a real concern that he’s likely to try anyway, and a non-zero chance that he’d succeed if he manages to fill enough of the government and military with people more loyal to him than to the constitution.