Pathfinder 2E - I feel at peace | Page 3

Out of curiosity I calculated the combat times for my last five sessions. My average combat time is about 31 minutes, median is 24 minutes, and the maximum was 86 minutes (the pugwampi nest). Here is the list of combats if anyone is interested:

Howl of the Carrion King Session 2:
• Stumbling on a trio of bloodseekers encountered while scouting – 13 minutes
• Fighting a 10 pugwampi, including their king, in the rafters of a chapel – 1 hour 26 minutes
• Fighting three pugwampi “chefs” in a glass filled kitchen along with four baboons that heard the sound of nearby fighting and joined in to reinforce the pugwampi – 46 minutes

Howl of the Carrion King Session 3:
• Ambushed by a giant solifugid – 24 minutes
• Examining a laboratory and being ambushed by four oozes – 25 minutes

Racing to Ruin Session 14 (This session was set as an old school dungeon crawl and it uses a quicker pacing)
• Being examined by four pygmy crocodiles while poling a boat (combat avoided) – 7 minutes
• Fighting through a trapped guard post manned by two xulgaths, who were reinforced by two mud vipers (from a trap that dropped them), and then four more xulgaths from a nearby room – 22 minutes
• Getting stuck in the web of a giant spider who ambushed the party – 10 minutes
• Spotting a zombie working a pump system and attacking it only to be swarmed by the centipedes that were living under its skin – 16 minutes
• Narrowly avoiding being ambushed by a troop of xulgath along with their leader – 16 minutes
• Being lunged at by a frilled lizard that was chained to a wall and couldn’t quite reach the PCs since they were pressed up against the other wall (combat bypassed) – 2 minutes
• Poling a boat and being ambushed by a naga boss – 40 minutes
• Surprising a boss demonologist who after several rounds of fighting the players, joined forces with them to take on the big boss: a spawn of yog-sothoth – 1 hour and 20 minutes

Racing to Ruin Session 15
• Ambushed by ruffians in the night – 32 minutes

This was an interesting session. We started where we left off exploring the monastery. There was a fight with a giant solifugid that was pretty fun and then the players entered the crypts. I went with just using the crypts presented in the book, mostly due to lack of time, and that was a mistake: the players seemed all amped for a dungeon crawl and a boss fight (typical crypt stuff) but since they entered in the alchemical laboratory they fought the ‘boss’ immediately and the dungeon crawl was mostly a loot run. If I were to run it again I would defiantly expand it into a proper dungeon with a couple of traps and a solid boss right by the secret exit.

The monastery cleared, we had a bunch of role-play as everyone moved the base into the monastery. The first custom dream sequence was up next and (again due to lack of time) it was just a three obstacle chase: get into the enemy camp, find the general, assassinate him. It went well enough: except that the characters couldn’t get past the first obstacle! They eventually just attacked the guards and slipped past in the confusion. The rest went better, though I really liked some of the creative solutions that they came up with, so I maybe lowered the DCs a little too much to reward the creativity. Once they woke up they heard the Howl of the Carrion King go out and questioned the gnoll expert about it. So far so good.

Here is where it gets weird. The next day they are given their assignments: they are to scout out the town and start softening the gnolls up for the coming fight. They choose to take the high risk high reward tactic of pretending to be merchants and head to the battle market. This is despite them having horrible success with the same tactic in the dream. But then they start using things that they thought up in the dream to better prepare for their attempt! I didn’t intend or anticipate this.

My current plan is to run the whole thing as an infiltration, with them starting with three edge points from the steps they have already taken. Hopefully, it will all go well. It will certainly be a different experience as I don’t think I have run a non-cyberpunk infiltration game? (if you are looking for a fantastic heist example though: RPPR’s lunar bank robbery episodes of their Know Evil Eclipse Phase campaign are top notch). It may be interrupted by the next dream sequence (which I have already mapped out and probably will not provide any inadvertent foreshadowing) but that will provide a good change of pace for the session (it should be mostly combat this time while combat is a failure state of the infiltration).

Serpents Skull

This was an interesting session in that it was mostly wrap up of the Kalabuto arc. We also had a new player which was kind of good timing as they are leaving Kalabuto and starting the next leg of the journey but mostly bad timing because they didn’t have much to do for the first part of the session and the session pacing was horribly off compared to what it normally is. It was still an okay session and I hope they come back (and I can figure out how to pace the upcoming games).

Then we had a boat ride to the Lake of Vanished Armies that was way too railroady for me. I tried to spice it up with forewarning of upcoming events (Mzali Rangers in the area, talk of the lake monster, etc.) and a mystery encounter leading to a treasure map and a sea hag boss. But the mystery encounter was sort of a miss and we had to end the session before going after the treasure.

The big challenge for future games is going to be running the boat trip up to Taizon. I generally don’t run railroad style games, but the boat ride is sort of like a literal railroad and I don’t know how to offer characters meaningful choices when they are stuck on the boat moving along a set path. I might look up a couple of mystery games set on riverboats or railroads and see what they do. But I remember listening to the The Five Toned Goddess for Eclipse Phase, and while interesting, something like that is completely unsuitable for my Serpent Skull game. So lots of GMing challenges coming up in this game.

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