So, I’ve been running the PF2E beginner box, which is like a tutorial adventure, for a group of 5 people (we play as long as at least 3 show up). The players had the option of playing any of the pregen “iconic” characters for Pathfinder. So far, we’ve had a fighter, witch, monk, swashbuckler, and summoner. Of those, only the witch has any sort of healing, and the witch player couldn’t make our session last night.
The players went into this room that is meant to be like an optional miniboss (but there isn’t really a way for them to have known that). The miniboss is this fire elemental rat that is supposed to teach you how “persistent damage” works. It’s a very tough fight, and the elemental has a lot of defensive options like a cloud of smoke around it. Eventually the rat killed two party members (the swashbuckler and the monk), and one more (the fighter) went unconscious but didn’t die. The last player (summoner) got chipped down to like 3 HP but was able to drag the fighter out of the fight to safety.
I think it was a good learning opportunity for the players that you need to be tactical and work together in PF2e, since they basically just all tried to attack the rat in melee. It also shows the value of having support characters in the party.
Going forward we are going to complete the beginner box, the two players who lost their PCs are going to play new pregens (bard and investigator). I’m hoping the players don’t get too disillusioned with PF2e because it is very difficult at times.
I’d love to hear other Pathfinder GMs’ thoughts. I’m still new, so it’s possible I was doing something wrong, but I think I ran that fight the way it’s meant to be run.
This wasn’t pathfinder, but I think it translates over to any fantasy game. The party was made up of an alchemist, a ranger, and two psions (magic-users). So I prepared a small roadside encounter of 3 bandits. They were escorting an old elderly knight to town.
The players had made their characters in such a a way that they had no usable skills so I had to pull a deus ex machina and have the old rescue rescue their asses. They were getting slaughtered. I think my story stresses the importance of having players communicate during the character creation process to make characters that make up a well-rounded party.
I also learned that what I thought was an easy encounter should’ve been dialed back even further.
Interesting story. Without knowing anything about the system you were playing, it definitely sounds like the players’ mistake was not understanding the effectiveness of the characters/party they had developed.
I would recommend the “Danger Room” as a way of mitigating that sort of thing. Basically you create a mock encounter for the players to test the party in some consequence-free combat, and let them tweak their character creation after that simulation.
I haven’t used this technique personally yet, (since this Colville video came out after my last campaign ended), but I fully intend to when we start our next campaign.