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Me (Weapon Inventor, Heavy Crossbow with d12 damage die. Construct Companion at lv1, Kickback Strike at 2, Ratfolk Familiar to assist reloading.)
Inventor 2: Same feat selection, also a weapon inventor, ran melee instead with a Halberd.
Fighter (Glass cannon Power Attack Build, was running -1 Dex and Con due to build flavor reasons. Could do big damage but spent a lot of combats on the ground.)
Warpriest Cleric (Big Magic Weapon combat buffer, utilized warhammer and shield/shield cantrip)
Cloistered Cleric (Healbot)
Witch (Big Winter Witch flavoring, eventually grabbed Medic archetype at level 2 iirc)
Fights were conducted with either additional goons to make up for the 6-player adjustment, or the Elite Template applied to solitary goons. The GM admitted that after part 1, he had adjusted the Elite Template to add additional HP above normal in place of adding the the enemy's AC, since we had some serious troubles hitting Elite Hallod.
We ran 9 fights in total, skipping most of the filler/fluff fights.
-Caustic Wolf Intro (More wolves, maybe Elite on Caustic Wolf)
-Goblin Chase (Skill Challenge)
-Galvanic Serpent (Elite)
-Hallod (Elite)
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-Hole Menagerie Fight (3 orc caretakers, Stone Horse (probably elite), 3 Ice Rats)
-Orc Alchemist Lab (3 orc alchemists)
-Blood Ooze Fight (Sculptor, 2 blood oozes)
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-Spite's Cradle Orcs (Gar and Graytusk with modified Elite template, roughly 12-14 CR1 orcs over the course of several rounds, don't try this at home, that many Ferocity procs is a pain)
-Basement Lab (2 Cinder Rats, 3 Alchemical Drudges r2, Modified Elite Amalgam r3)
-Vilree (Vilree, Behemoth, Dire Bat to make adjustment)
Thoughts from the run:
My construct companion was a much more aggressive combatant than the other Inventor's. Due to lack of healing options, it often was broken in combats after a few rounds, but still did its job well. The other Inventor's companion only was broken once by comparison (He ran it as a minesweeper in the Hallod fight, ate 2 spears). That said, I did discover two very important concerns that leads me to believe that Construct Companions need their death and dying rules revised.
First instance was in the Hole Menagerie Fight. Construct Companion went down to Ice Rats. Like any reasonable character, I tried to strike down the ice rats with my crossbow, and was successful. HOWEVER, these Ice Rats explode on death on adjacent targets, which unfortunately included my Construct. Due to failing its Reflex Save, the companion was destroyed through no fault of my own, from a whopping 2 cold damage. No more companion for the dungeon.
Second instance was Basement Lab. In this fight, my companion hit 0 due to persistent damage. This put me in a very tight spot. As the companion was still on fire, if left unchecked, it would be destroyed again at the end of its next turn, turning the companion into a liability. If I wanted to use it again in what remained of the dungeon, it would take assistance from the rest of the party to burn their actions to try and re-check to put out the fire, as if it returned to my turn and it was still on fire, it'd be done.
Honestly, these encounters make me concerned for Construct Inventors. Losing a companion due to accidentally getting its inert body caught in an AoE, an unknown effect going off, or even something as small as 1 point of Persistent damage feels absurd. Personally, if sticking with the Broken condition is to be a major part of the Construct Companion's identity, I recommend the fix of treating Construct Companions as other objects and shields are treated by giving them an effective negative HP pool, and treating their 0 HP point as a "broken threshold". Negative HP pool could be equal to half or 25% of their total HP, or something similar.
Aside from that, there weren't many unique takeaways. As a sniper build, this pretty much ran as expected, but kickback strike did feel a bit restricted in the more dungeon-y environments. Attack rolls were very feast-or-famine. I'd definitely appreciate an option to reduce a weapon's Reload by 1, but idk if this would be something needed at level 1 to make Inventors work. I did have a fun interaction in the Vilree fight where I decided to deploy at the front of the party adjacent to my companion, and used the Companion to provoke the Behemoth's AoO followed by using Kickback Strike to escape. Effective turn 1 face-tanking from a Ranged Character, something not a whole lot of other classes can really attest to.
Also, Megaton Strike at 4 feels incredibly late now that I realize Power Attack is available to Fighters at 1. Its just worse Power Attack at level 1 with the option to be used at Ranged; don't see why its locked out till 4 as-is. Might feel better as a level 2 feat.
Overall it was a good time; might make a writeup of the condensed module for others interested in running it in a convention setting in the future. This condensed version basically hit all the important setpieces in around 16 hours, which is pretty good time for a pf2 module.
** spoiler omitted **
Thoughts from the run:
My construct companion was a much more aggressive combatant than the other Inventor's. Due to lack of healing options, it often was broken in combats after a few rounds, but still did its job well. The other Inventor's companion only was broken once by comparison (He ran it as a minesweeper in...
My thoughts, have the construct companions be able to acquire the dying condition, but don't have it automatically increase or decrease its state via recovery checks, the dying level would only increase when it takes damage. When it reaches dying 4 the construct companion is destroyed.
Have them acquire the wounded trait if repaired in combat. If wounded and re-acquire the dying trait, they become destroyed. The wounded trait can be removed from the companion by utilizing a repair action taking at least 10 minutes that restores some of its hit points.
Any effect that causes a non-construct creature to gain the dying or wounded condition would not effect a construct unless it mentions including constructs such as above.
Persistent damage would still be dangerous to construct companions, especially if it might potentially not end persistent damage on its own when broken, like most targeted items get.
However, damaged companions wouldn't be a big an urgent concern in a battle compared to a living companion, but that seems ok, since living companions have the capability of potentially making recovery checks.
Thanks for the report Falgaia. The comments you make about the Construct being destroyed by AoE/persistent damage do seem to be useful data points.