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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andvari" data-source="post: 8845586" data-attributes="member: 7036523">While traveling through the woods and hills in search of the kobold lair, my group had a random encounter with a drider sent by the BBEG to assassinate them. Two party members immediately tried to flee as I described the drider as it ambushed them and cast a fireball that enveloped the whole party. Fortunately, they reconsidered and returned to assist the paladin and ranger against the monster.The drider was more dangerous than I anticipated due to the druid and rogue wasting turns running away and then having to run back, combined with the druid being too scared to attack it with her animal companion and the rogue being too scared to run into melee for sneak attacks. 1d6 shortbow damage against a 95 HP creature just isn't that useful. And the druid's panther could have been doing 2d6+4 points of damage, +1d4 if flanking, per attack.In our previous session, the party split up as a horde of kobolds attacked the nomad camp they were visting, which resulted in the party's barbarian getting killed. Perhaps that combined with my description of the drider and its initial attack of a powerful spell and hit with its composite bow had turned them cowardly. After all, they had to watch the nomads as they burned their lost ones on funeral pyres, their barbarian friend amongst them. And they don't quite trust the paladin who turned up to join them there, despite him having been sent by one of their benefactors, the bishop of the Temple of Tyr in the city the party is working for.Fortunately, the dwarf ranger succeeded his Will save against the drider's suggestion spell so he could keep shooting it within its globe of darkness (in Pathfinder 2E, Darkvision sees in darkness unless the spell is heightened). Had he failed the save, he would have been going through all of the party's inventory one item at a time to ensure nothing was missing, while the drider from the relative safety of the darkness globe attempted to murder his friends. The drider eventually got quite low on HP, turned invisible and fled, hoping for another chance to lay the party low. But the druid's panther sniffed out its general location, allowing the druid to get a lucky ray of frost critical hit and killing the monster before it could get away.As the party got closer to the kobold lair, they and a patrol of 15 kobolds noticed each other from a distance of 220 ft. The dwarf ranger immediately shot a kobold crossbowman through the eye. The kobold rushed to get within range, but soon started barking amongst themselves in panic as a wyvern cast its shadow across the battlefield. The wyvern, having taking an interest in the party, attack them as the kobolds turned tails and fled.The druid immediately yelled to flee, but fortunately stayed to fight. The wyvern was a similar threat level to the drider, but less intelligent about picking its targets. It swooped down to grab players one by one, stinging them with its tail and dropping them from height. The druid was able to keep them alive easily enough, and eventually the party chased off a greatly wounded wyvern.Looking forward to the next session. The kobold lair is the first real dungeon setting they'll be in since they explored a small catacomb area at level 2, and I'll get to use my troll minis there. The only party level+2 monsters there will be two wyverns who lair there. But one is already nearly dead from the previous encounter and will back away until forced to fight, and the fresh one won't be as dangerous as it can't leverage its flight ability and attacks within the cave. So hopefully the next few sessions will reset their confidence level a bit so that running away isn't the go to tactic for the druid and rogue. Perhaps they will grow to trust the paladin as well as he continues to prove his valor.</blockquote>

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