Book 2 last map ( advices are welcome )

[HumbleGamer]

Hi everybody,

We are halfway on the last map of this second book, but something unexpected happened...

So, the adventurers are now within the celestial Menagerie and came to know that Mistress Dusklight is waiting for them at the end of the "gauntlet" she specifically arranged for the adventurers ( to play/slow or else deal with them ).

The adventurers are angry at the Catfolk lady since she is guilty of sending her men to threaten the adventurer's circus ( as well as killing some animals and beating up people ), and the fact she is playing with them is anything but increasing their anger.

Well, they decided to set the entire gauntlet on fire, forcing the catlady out in order to destroy her.

Since they first yelled "COME OUT YOU *****, OR WE'LL SET YOUR ****** HOME ON FIRE!", I managed to get the 2 bruisers, which was at the circus entrance ( since they managed to pass through them because of a successful coerce ), to them threatening not to do anything stupid.

We stopped the game there since it was past midnight, but I wonder how to deal with this on the next session.

If all the enemies of the map came out in the same time it would be TK.
I know this might be selfish as well as careless, but I can understand some of their characters being that emotional.

So, what would you do in a similar situation?
If you need more information I'd gladly give you them.

ps: also, I wonder if there's some way to remove the S ( secret door marks ) from the map ( I couldn't remove anything but grid and anything else meant for the DM, but the S from the secret rooms are still there. Book 1 also had the same issue )

[McaPhoo]

Well, this sounds like arson, and it would endanger some innocent lives within the Celestial Menagerie. So perhaps you could have the constables come along and tell the party that they'd almost certainly go to prison for that.

If that seems too punishing of your players' RP choices, then you can instead create an escape tunnel or something for Dusklight and others to take while the place burns. That way, the party could defeat a few enemies by letting them burn, but a few or most could get away. Then your party would have to keep chasing Dusklight and company down later in the story, and you'd have total freedom to decide how that would happen.

[HumbleGamer]

McaPhoo wrote:

Well, this sounds like arson, and it would endanger some innocent lives within the Celestial Menagerie. So perhaps you could have the constables come along and tell the party that they'd almost certainly go to prison for that.

Yeah, but unfortunately part of them is ready to take the risk.

As for endanger innocent lives, they already know ( because of the rat and the satyr ) that Dusklight asked her artists to wait in the backstage, so they won't be in danger whatever happen to the gauntlet.

McaPhoo wrote:

If that seems too punishing of your players' RP choices, then you can instead create an escape tunnel or something for Dusklight and others to take while the place burns. That way, the party could defeat a few enemies by letting them burn, but a few or most could get away. Then your party would have to keep chasing Dusklight and company down later in the story, and you'd have total freedom to decide how that would happen.

That seems very reasonable.

I admit I were a little annoyed if they would skip the gauntlet, but on the other hand it's their right to act what they want ( eventually, dealing with any consequence ).

To justify Andera not being able to send some constables with them, I told that the most of them is now securing the city in order not to let anybody from the celestial menagerie escape, but I imagine that given an arson things might be quite different and some routes might be not under surveillance.

[Silent Cal]

Arson is, I feel, a bigger deal than what you might currently think it might be for the city. Fire can really spread and if a place the size of the Celestial Menagerie caught on fire, that could potentially burn down a major part of the city. That alongside the fact they would be burning alive a bunch of circus people, I don't even think that the constables would even consider allowing the party to go through with it, even to the point of violence. The amount of risk that they are threatening is way too great for any city guard to stand idly by.

[Zapp]

I guess you need to realize Adventure Paths are designed as roller-coasters.

As you rightly identify, if two or more encounters' worth of enemies attack the heroes at the same time you have a TPK on your hands.

It's like with players wanting to spend a few hours carving out holes in walls to bypass content.

These players are missing the point.

If your group wants freedom they need to play a sandbox-style adventure, which Paizo AP's don't deliver without extensive work from the GM. And the rules system itself isn't well suited to "oops here comes another batch of monsters right in the middle of our existing fight". The margin of error is just not great enough. Fights need to be preplanned by the GM.

And that's a lot of work. Work you don't want to do, which is why you purchase ready-made material.

So I'd say: either accept the limitations of APs and enjoy the ride, or accept that the AP format isn't for you. Which in this case translates to: if you insist on trying to short-circuit the carefully constructed path laid out for you, we'll be wrapping up this campaign and you will have to find something else to do.

Cheers