I'm part way through the menagerie section, and it has already been quite rough on the PCs (Party of 5, did not scale the encounters, but mostly players new to pathfinder). I'm just going to list some stuff that happened as reminders or to spark some ideas.
The PCs managed to tie up the cockatrice with rope and some good grapple checks. I let this end the encounter without having to get it down to 0 hp.
The owlbear downed 2 PCs in one shot each with crits, and rusty downed 1 with a crit. Even without a crit they do about 1/2 a PCs HP. This used up all of the healing they had.
The PCs ended up luring Rusty into closet and locking him in by throwing most the metal gear (daggers, caltrops, etc) they had on the ground to create a trail. Since the PCS never hit him, I had Rusty only use antenna attacks until he ran out of stuff to rust.
I let the PCs sneak up and lock the door on the concession stand to avoid fighting the hyenas.
I completely forgot hero points exist, and never explained them to the group, until I remembered when one of them hit dying 3. Those rerolls probably would have been helpful for these hard fights!
