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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8395316" data-attributes="member: 6801252">So lets say the party is a party of 6 level 8s (which was my party when I ran this encounter, IIRC)A severe encounter of their level has an adjusted (for their size) budget of 180 exp, <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=362" target="_blank">Shadows</a> are level - 4 for them (level 4), so they're worth 10 exp each, not much at all, in theory you could throw 18 Shadows at them for a severe encounter, but obviously, AOE could make short work of them (although in this case the party was lured in and surrounded, so it would have been a little harder.)I wanted <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=363" target="_blank">Greater Shadows</a> in there too, to really help the feel of this being a nest of Shadows, so those are level 7, level -1 for our party, and therefore worth 30 exp each, IIRC I shelled out exp for three  Greater Shadows (90 exp) and then made the rest Shadows (90 exp) to hit the 180 total, I mightve slapped a few extra shadows on for good measure, since there's some wiggle room before the encounter passes into extreme territory and I figured AOE would level the playing field.The battlefield was this one I THINK, either that or I made another one and had this one saved for some other reason (attached to this post, if i did it right), credit to wherever I got it from, but I don't recall, it was a long time ago now. The encounter triggered when the players investigated the altar of the shrine with shadows appearing from all the corners of the room, surrounding the party, the greater shadows distributed to the corners, with shadows forming a ring around the party. The water and altar itself was difficult terrain, but it was mainly hard because the encircling made it hard to AOE them.In practice that many low end Shadows weren't individually threats, but the party took a lot of chip damage since they were each making 2 attacks, so you figure 10 of them are putting out 20 rolls, some are def landing hits and crits, and the enfeebled condition they can inflict is nasty. The greater shadows added a little more substance and were more dangerous since they weren't likely to drop as fast to AOE, and could take advantage of the chip damage with more solid hits to put the players into threatened territory. The encounter could even get worse due to steal shadow, and i'm sure at least one or two shadows were stolen from the aggregated enfeebled.It was a little harder than it should have been due to a missing player (it went up to extreme, though I may have yeeted the extra shadows i'd added above the original severe budget, I don't remember) but it was a lot of fun, very touch and go for the players, and it very much wasn't a solo encounter, I totally recommend the bottom of the well as a slottable encounter if your players can handle it.</blockquote>

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