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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8691186" data-attributes="member: 75787">Oh, I remember this pair from The Show Must Go On. We were quite beaten up when our party met them and our GM was clearly concerned for us. Definitely one of the nastier fights in the adventure path. Definitely has a TPK potential. I'll note some of the mitigating factors that we employed, and specifically how our GM helped usWe had more than just reports. Maybe we had explored options, but we definitely knew there was something nasty around. We nearly decided to call it a day and rest overnight and come back the following day, but we pressed on. Our GM did stress that something nasty was out there -- that may have been him warning about a clearly dangerous enemyThis is a good opportunity to help the players learn how to handle encounters. In PF2 it feels like a good way to approach every encounter is as if you were playing a sandbox OSR game; first work out how dangerous the enemy is. As a GM, one suggestion is you prompt the players to make monster knowledge checks. If they make a check at any level of success, they'll realize this is a dangerous fight.Another tactical suggestion to make to the party is NOT TO APPROACH AN UNKNOWN THREAT. It's like watching a person go down into a cellar in a horror film; it's just not good. I'd suggest saying things like "Are you sure you want to get close to these strange creatures?". It's a terrible idea to roll initiative when all the enemies are in striking range of one character. You might even tell the champion that their training says it's tactically unsoundThey're +12 vs the champions likely 19AC, doing ~10 points damage (since the worms are inhabiting a body, they can't use their stronger bite attack). So it should need 4 successful hits, with crits counting as 2. So I guess he lasted two rounds and was a tad unlucky. Also surprised the cleric didn't heal him.However he does do d6 damage to both opponents! Every time the dying condition is removed, each opponent takes a d6. We triggered this at least three times -- and 6d6 is not to be sneezed at at level 2!This is another point to stress to players. If they are out of Hero Points, describe them as feeling that any unlucky blow might kill them -- because it might! In this case, the champion would use it to survive, and additionally do d6 to each enemyAs a GM, if you see your players going into a Severe fight, and none of them have any hero points left, I'd straight out warn them OOC that they are risking a TPK.----------------Having said that, these monsters have one feature that you thankfully did not invoke -- their ability to cast harm as a 3rd level spell. That should really only be available to 5th level casters! Cast as a full round action, it will heal each of them 3d8 and harm all party members within 30' for 3d8. This is just way too powerful and I assume is an error. It should really be at level 2 for 2d8 and then just makes them very nasty.Our group came in pretty low on resources, but we did learn about them early on and hit them with some targeted attacks. Our GM used their harm as a one-action effect (attacking with melee twice) which was nasty enough. We survived by backing off so they had to waste actions closing and using ranged weapons and spells. That and the damage done to them by removing dying conditions was enough to win, but it could easily have been much nastier.The next time we fought them, we went in with extreme prejudice and burnt resources to kill them fast. They are really nasty.</blockquote>

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