I have been using the past few sessions to run through the subsystems in the GMG with my group. They are currently Level 2, five players. We have had an Influence negotiation with a group of kobolds that had some of the party held hostage (went great), a simultaneous Research and Infiltration taking place over the course of several days (also went great) and a Run Away Chase through a faction headquarters in Kaer Maga that went ... well. The players loved it, I walked away from it feeling it could have been better. We just completed a boss battle against a Hazard and the end result of that is now the party is in an airship plummeting towards the Varisian mountains (Between Kaer Maga and Riddleport).
I am designing the airship encounter as a Beat The Clock chase and I have what I think will be a very tense and exciting encounter ...
HOWEVER -- There are two obstacles in the chase where if the party gets 6 successes they can short cut around the following obstacle. (For every obstacle they succeed at, the airship's descent is slowed and less damage accrued should it slam into the mountains).
MY QUESTION IS -- if you have run a lot of chases in PF2, how may times have you seen PCs critically succeed when the DC is set as Easy or Very Easy for a certain skill? I know part of this has to do with how well optimized a PC is, but assume the PC is at least semi-optimized for that skill roll.
Any experiences you can share would be great, there are only two obstacles that have the higher number of successes required/short cut, but this could mean the difference between PCs getting hurt (badly) on one side and a TPK on the other.
Thanks for reading