Tommorrow must burn, Finale - Elite-Laslunn for 5 players

[Meckerdrache]

Hey,

my 5 Players entered the quarry from book 3 last weekend. With good planning and a good group constellation (Rogue, defensive fighter, battle oracle, barbarian and a divine sorcerer)they did very well in the battles so far. In fact, there was no real nail-biter since book 2. Because there are 5 players i added more enemies and some elite-templates here and there.
I am hesitant to give a level +2 enemy the elite template, but i want to make this finale especially hard to overcome. A dead PC is okay, but i try to avoid a tpk.
What do you think? Is a Elite-Laslunn https://2e.aonprd.com/NPCs.aspx?ID=1560&Elite=true and the Velstrac https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=851 too dangerous for a 5 player party at Level 11?

[Fumarole]

I would like to know how this battle goes for you, since I have five players currently in Cypress Point. I would most likely add another opponent rather than use the elite template, but that's just me.

[EdwinM]

For my 5-people party, I'm just changing the fiend from a level 12 to a level 13 one (ice devil).

[xcmt]

It'd probably be fine, going by XP budgets, and if any enemy deserves a level+3 combat in the first half of the AP it's got to be Laslunn. That said, I tend to follow the recommendation to add enemies rather than buff them to accommodate larger party sizes.

When I (just recently) ran this for my group of six I added a Sacristan and also Barushak (he escaped the tower encounter), and I don't think it was especially difficult for my PCs. Though I did make Barushak waste most of his actions seeking the invisible rogue rather than dump spells into the healer cluster.

[BeardedTree]

The Laslunn fight didn't honestly go well for my group. There were 6 players so I threw in a slaver demon and Barushak was there since he got away earlier in the book. But with the rough terrain and the barbarian being dropped in the first round (I say dropped but he went unconscious from a card out of the critical deck, I honestly can't remember if it was a failure or hit against him). The ranger took out Barushak in a couple rounds but otherwise the slaver demon kept the druid and alchemist busy. Don't forget, if your players don't have silver weapons or can deal good damage that velstrac won't stay down. Idon't even think Laslunn didn't took damage in that fight. My players only survived because the Alchemist threw his only silver dagger at the velstrac (although later it was found out that he should have missed because he forgot to add the penalties for range increments but that was days later) and it was late in the evening and I felt bad for them. I thought for sure they'd go after Laslunn first but they felt the velstrac was a bigger and more immediate threat.

[Meckerdrache]

The fight is over.
I didn´t use the elite-template, because our Battle Oracle wasn´t there.
And i am glad that i didn´t try that.
The battle was brutal. The group cornered Laslunn, but this was to her advantage, because she was hard to flank this way, while the velstrac could freely attack our martials from behind. Both enemies were critting several times per round. Manoeuvring after the initial charge wasn´t a good idea: Both enemies have AoO and using Step isn´t possible in the water/difficult terrain.
The group was confident after the fight against Vaklish, the rakshasa, but now they were growing desperate. Our rogue and our barbarian went down. Healing by our sorcerer got them back up twice, both got to(die-hard)wounded:4.
Laslunn killed our barbarian with a twin-shot shortly before she herself got cut down. This was our first death in this campaign.
Without much hope the group turned to the Velstrac. Luckily, our rogue and fighter both have silver weapons and so the fight was won after 6 rounds.

I should mention that our barbarian and fighter rolled really bad this day and i rolled high (the fighter only hit twice - the player was not amused..).

But even without the luck factor, this enemies are very dangerous, even for their level range. A hard hitting, regenerating velstrac with healing spells and a debuffing aura and a hard to hit archer with very high DPR with feats to be even deadlier in close combat.

[Fumarole]

Today is the day my five-player party will reach the quarry. I am adding Barushak to the finale since he escaped Kintargo. This makes the encounter budget 200, an extreme encounter, matching the four-player default. The champion does both good and silver damage, so that's a huge plus for them. Here's hoping the party isn't annihilated.