PF2e 02 - Grasping Grove 2

In the two weeks between our sessions, I was mulling over the design of my forest “dungeon” and I came to a conclusion: I needed to switch two of the rooms the players haven’t visited.

The map is broken into two paths, and… y’know what, it’s easier to just post it.


The two rooms in question both “dark” ones, where the light was dimmed due to heavy canopy. The eastern path, originally, had Yellow Creeper Thralls as an encounter, while the top western path one was a Vine Leshy + vines, but only if they aggravated the Leshy, that was disguised as a vine in the draping vine filled room.

This would normally be fine, but the room on the Eastern Path directly before the Thrall encounter was some boars affected by the Creeper Vines. This was the teaser for the thralls, so that’s fine. Shows how dangerous vines are in the place, especially the drab green dry ones. The downside is that, I realized, that there was no “teaching” room on the Western path. If the party doubled back, they’d know next to nothing about the final two encounters, the main ones of the Dungeon.

So I moved the trio of Thralls to the Western path, to act like an introduction over there, and I put the Leshy encounter on the Eastern path, which was supposed to play off the paranoia of the vines.

And it worked. The Leshy was disguised as a vine. Among all the bright green vines, they found one that moved. The Magus took a potshot at it with his sling. Crit. Killed the Leshy.

The most northern chamber was an encounter with a Yellow Musk Brute, which knocked out the Magus with a crit (ok funny story, it double crit. First turn it had it moved, moved, and attacked with a crit, 19 on the die. Then a player was asking about a spell and reactions and such and didn’t understand the trigger “When the target in range Strides”, and wanted to use it, so I let them, and the Magus didn’t get attacked first turn. So it got attacked on the second turn with a crit, 20 on the die.). The Leaf Leshy Druid of the group was able to cast Heal on them to bring them back up, and also saw something in the treeline that looked metallic.

After defeating the brute they looked over the metal thing and found a metal humanoid leg, made of common, repurposed metals. The Thaumaturge put it in its bag, and I told them that it felt uncomfortable to hold it.

They moved south, and saw the Yellow Musk Creeper, their target, and took care of it, and it’s respawning Thralls (minion rule edition, 2, at the start of every Round) and made short work of it. Once the creeper died, all the thralls died. This then allowed me to clear out the dark room in the upper Western side of the map as a “see, doing this in this order made this path different” type thing. A shallow change, but it felt better to me than the original layout.

They then encountered the Dragon Bees, which frightened one player, and absolutely delighted another. They wanted to actually have these little dragons that are the size of a deck of playing cards. They met some NPCs, had a nice chat, and went to the last room in the dungeon, the south west one. This was a skill challenge to avoid a bunch of Shrieker mushrooms, which they mostly navigated, but one tripped one at the last second and uh… it knocked the Druid out since they only had 2 HP entering the room.

Anyways, a healing potion later, and mission done, they had a chat with the escorting party back to town, and turned in their nectar to the head Alchemist who posted the mission. The party found out that the potions they got came from the guild as sort of a “welcome to the gig” type thing, and was informed that the nectar was used to make those healing potions. They had collected extra Nectar using Draw Moisture, or Draw water or whatever, it felt clever enough that I gave it a bonus to a nature check to draw it out. They got 3 more vials of nectar, and were given 3 more potions for them.

Then they got to the lottery back at the guild. They each got a random item from my rolltable which of course, leads to funny results. The Magus pulled a +1 Potency rune. The Druid received access to the library’s spell area to learn a rare/uncommon spell of level 1. And the Thaumaturge pulled…. the Pyrite Rat, a small statue that can turn into a Giant Rat.

Whoops.

Doubly funny because the Magus is a Ratfolk.

The party then scattered a bit to do some stuff about town. The Leshy went to the library, the Magus was listening for rumors among the travelling merchants, and found out that the grasslands to the east are changing weirdly, and some villages are mysteriously being attacked, with all the metal tools, weapons, and like, metal roofing was getting taken along with some people.

The Thaumaturge spent some time at the Court of Mercy, which is the coliseum where people can request trial by combat, where the terms of the combat are set by the judge for their case. They took in a horseback bow and arrow joust (blunted arrows, they were acquitted) and a boxing match (the accused was on charges of assaulting someone, they were found Guilty).

So now, i need to come up with a new adventure for next week. The party is 60% of the way to a new level, so they’re still level 1. I asked them to tell me if there’s anything they want to do or look at or whatever, so I’ll see if I get any direction. Otherwise, maybe they’ll just go clear out something in the sewers.