I have a big fight to run coming up in a few hours, and I'd like player death to be on the table, but perhaps not a tpk unless they play really stupid. Now the bbeg the players are fighting is already a character level ahead of them, has a familiar which can become a swarm and an animal companion due to multiclassing (swarm monger druid/cavalier). She even has some additional powers, and plenty of poison to boot, which ends up making her actual challenge rating somewhat nebulous. I kind of want to give her some additional minions, but the party was cut down to three players because of mothers day stuff.
Can I give her some low CR minions (party is level 2), or should I not do that? This is my first campaign that's run on a consistent schedule so I would say I'm a pretty new DM.
I'd suggest you postpone the encounter for when you get your full party into swing, personally. PC deaths during big battles can cause some inter-player tension that shouldn't be present during future sessions. Also, it's a holiday; let the players enjoy the holiday, and when the holiday is over, proceed to the battle as projected here.
Of course, if the other players don't really care, then just run it.
Having minions is normally nice encounter design, but being low level like this makes it very difficult to implement them. Plus, they're dealing with Swarms, Poison, and an Animal Companion; the party will be plenty challenged with that alone, since they're only level 2 and may not have the tools to deal with Swarms; Poison can be difficult if it has a high enough DC, and the Animal Companion at 2nd level is equivalent to a 3rd level PC in terms of effectiveness.
Also, nice play on words with the thread title...
Note that the animal companion and the familiar do not count as separate minions for encounter CR; they are class features and hence folded into the BBEG's CR for class levels already. (They do count as extra scariness for the party, which makes them think player death is on the table, which is more important than whether it actually is.) I would feel free to throw in a few CR-less-than-1 minions to up the ante a bit w/o risking overwhelming the party.
Are you using regular poison as per the Core Rulebook, or the nastier stuff in Pathfinder Unchained?
Minions are a great, often necessary, tool to balance action economy. A single enemy is at a huge disadvantage against a handful of PCs. Even a very toughest boss can be out of action even before its first round if each PC happened to be able to act before it. And a boss that survives such an onslaught is likely to kill a PC with a single attack routine.
But, you don't have an action economy imbalance. There are three PCs, a boss enemy and two minions in the form of a combat-worthy familiar and an animal companion. Even if the party has additional support in the form of animal companions themselves, you're still looking at a balanced encounter, action economy-wise.
However, you might have prepared a too hard fight, as Darksol points out. Swarms can be notoriously tricky to bring down, especially if your players are inexperienced and/or aren't expecting to face one.
Oh uh, good to know! I thought I might have it wrong but I didn't look it up.
the poisons are greensting scorpion poison (familiar), giant spider poison (animal companion) and drow poison by the way.
So the party is aware that this will be a challenging fight. I hinted at it being a potential TPK when I asked the players if they wanted to continue playing today despite the drop outs.
The setting is a Colosseum, so they have plenty of time to gather intel and items in preparation before the gladiator match, and even converse with the bbeg in a non-combat situation. They also have an opt out if they need it, where they can concede the match, but it will kind of make them social pariahs and I don't see them using it unless they absolutely have to. (that might seem like a big drop in stakes, but I'm using the milestone method of leveling up, and this would effectively drop their "exp" to zero)
I would not add more minions with the swarm and the AC its already sort of three on three and a swarm could be really really nasty for a poorly prepared party.
Also character death is really difficult to deal with at level 2, I tend to want players to be attached to their characters and if they're dying this early in the campaign that might damage the chances of that happening. But thats just me, you do you. I would stick to not adding more minions for this encounter though, sounds tough as is.