CapnZapp
Legend
A brief summary of our first session of the Extinction Curse Adventure Path.
Five players:
The circus performance was a critical success, mostly (if not wholly) due to the random event: the tent collapsed, which limited Anticipation to 10. Not only did this lower their target number from a very difficult 15 Excitement to a much more reasonable 10 Excitement, it also saved their bacon on multiple occasions, since the Anticipation could not rise. This increased their Circus Prestige from 1 to 5.
The adventuring was... less successful.
The first real encounter was with the pods in the Ringmaster's wagon. And they got wiped out. Yes, after two rounds three out of five heroes were unconscious on the ground and the hazard hadn't taken a single point of damage! That's Pathfinder 2 for you!
Five heroes vs a single Hazard 3 - a guaranteed TPK were it not for the way the combat could be "blocked".
(The pods rolled well on Initiative, and scored three hits out of its five. All three struck heroes became confused, and randomly attacked each other. I suggested to the two unharmed heroes they block the entrance with the fallen-off door, and thus break off the combat.)
They never really recovered after that. They used up whatever healing they had left, including me having the Professor give them their show bonus in Healing Potions (twelve in total).
Then they managed to placate Bardoph with a lucky Animal Handling roll, before he could maul them. They went to investigate snakes in the woods, and managed to kill two vipers and one giant viper, but not before the fighter got poisoned and was a single "death save" (a much better term than "recovery check from dying") from death.
At that time, they were thoroughly beat, and retreated to recuperate for a few hours. (Thanks to Medicine, you almost never need days in PF2 to gain back your hit points, "only" hours).
But of course this adventure isn't some static dungeon where you can just walk back to Starter Town and the dungeon just sits their until you return...
Sensing that they weren't ready after the first hour for the show down with Nemma, I had to improvise - I had her proceed with her original plan: killing off people. So I randomly rolled two NPCs, and rolled a random die to indicate the "severity" of the attack. For the first, the Cook, I said she was beset upon by rats, but managed to fend them off without too much trouble - perhaps she poured out boiling hot soup over her attackers. For the second, however, I rolled 8 on a d8. The NPC was Axel, so I narrated how he was found dead and bloated from snake poison, just like Thunder Stendahl. He never did get to perform after all (they selected him but could not get him to overcome his stage fright)...
At this point, they told all the NPCs to gather in a single location, circling the wagons as it were. After one more hour of healing up (everyone is at full health, except the ranger at ~half), I decided Nemma had had enough. Singling out individual targets was no longer possible, so it was time to make her frontal assault.
And with that, the session ended.
Five players:
- Croezan, human male fighter (clown)
- Leena, half-orc female barbarian (animal wrangler)
- Mork, gnome male wizard
- Kurat, goblin male ranger (living bouncy-ball)
- Brynhilde, half-elf female cleric (wasp tamer)
The circus performance was a critical success, mostly (if not wholly) due to the random event: the tent collapsed, which limited Anticipation to 10. Not only did this lower their target number from a very difficult 15 Excitement to a much more reasonable 10 Excitement, it also saved their bacon on multiple occasions, since the Anticipation could not rise. This increased their Circus Prestige from 1 to 5.
The adventuring was... less successful.
The first real encounter was with the pods in the Ringmaster's wagon. And they got wiped out. Yes, after two rounds three out of five heroes were unconscious on the ground and the hazard hadn't taken a single point of damage! That's Pathfinder 2 for you!
Five heroes vs a single Hazard 3 - a guaranteed TPK were it not for the way the combat could be "blocked".(The pods rolled well on Initiative, and scored three hits out of its five. All three struck heroes became confused, and randomly attacked each other. I suggested to the two unharmed heroes they block the entrance with the fallen-off door, and thus break off the combat.)
They never really recovered after that. They used up whatever healing they had left, including me having the Professor give them their show bonus in Healing Potions (twelve in total).
Then they managed to placate Bardoph with a lucky Animal Handling roll, before he could maul them. They went to investigate snakes in the woods, and managed to kill two vipers and one giant viper, but not before the fighter got poisoned and was a single "death save" (a much better term than "recovery check from dying") from death.
At that time, they were thoroughly beat, and retreated to recuperate for a few hours. (Thanks to Medicine, you almost never need days in PF2 to gain back your hit points, "only" hours).
But of course this adventure isn't some static dungeon where you can just walk back to Starter Town and the dungeon just sits their until you return...
Sensing that they weren't ready after the first hour for the show down with Nemma, I had to improvise - I had her proceed with her original plan: killing off people. So I randomly rolled two NPCs, and rolled a random die to indicate the "severity" of the attack. For the first, the Cook, I said she was beset upon by rats, but managed to fend them off without too much trouble - perhaps she poured out boiling hot soup over her attackers. For the second, however, I rolled 8 on a d8. The NPC was Axel, so I narrated how he was found dead and bloated from snake poison, just like Thunder Stendahl. He never did get to perform after all (they selected him but could not get him to overcome his stage fright)...
At this point, they told all the NPCs to gather in a single location, circling the wagons as it were. After one more hour of healing up (everyone is at full health, except the ranger at ~half), I decided Nemma had had enough. Singling out individual targets was no longer possible, so it was time to make her frontal assault.
And with that, the session ended.
