|
I would really appreciate your help planning a One-Shot adventure.
(I'm not a native English speaker)
I'll be narrating a Pathfinder 2e adventure for the first time, but my group of young adult parents don't have a lot of time, and we've just booked a last-minute opportunity.
My initial idea is that Baba Yaga, a witch and oracle from the Northern Wastes, summoned adventurers to deal with a White Dragon.
- We've been playing RPG, mainly Dnd, for at least 20 years! But we never faced a dragon! I don't even know how to explain it, but our adventures were always about facing goblins, orcs and ogres. -
I need ideas for our One-Shot, to make our first dragon hunt epic!
1. Why does Baba Yaga want this White Dragon killed?
2. What will challenge even the white dragon's lair?
3. And how is this lair? What are the main dangers besides the dragon? And what is the personality of this dragon?
4. What is the dragon's treasure?
5. What is the Plot Twist of this adventure??
If you can help this poor GM out of time, I'll be very grateful!
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'll be direct - if this is your first Pathfinder 2e adventure, I don't recommend a dragon as your first introduction to the game, for yourself or your players. A combat with a dragon has plenty of moving parts and tactical, crunchy bits that could completely devastate a group unfamiliar with the system or overwhelm a GM who hasn't run a PF2 encounter before. As a parent, myself, with limited free time - I understand! I would absolutely steer you towards a Pathfinder Society Quest or Bounty... or even a one-shot adventure like Sundered Waves.
Before I launch into answering your questions, let me just further elaborate. Even the weakest base white dragon (a level 6 opponent) is going to be able to fly 80 feet with a single action, forcing the PCs to come up with a way to handle that (likely around levels 4 or 5, depending on how much of a challenge you want your group to face). From there, it has a bevvy of abilities to allow it to devastate PCs who aren't moving around the battlefield tactically - stopping within range of the dragon can allow it to knock everyone prone before following up with a devastating draconic frenzy that can drop even the most prepared fighter in a single round of actions. Not to mention its slowing reaction. It's a real battle that is going to test the abilities of your players to understand the system, not just basic battle strategy.
And a cherry on top is that if this is your group's first time playing, you're absolutely going to have to start at higher levels and learn characters without the benefit of growing alongside them. This is something I see as tripping up plenty of players, especially when coming from other systems where higher level characters feel much like lower-levels ones, just with more "oomph." The difference between level 1 and level 4 is quite a large degree of complexity, depending on the character class and feat choices.
Alright, my warning out of the way, it would be incredibly rude of me to reply in such a way without trying to answer your questions.
1. Baba Yaga is very much established in Golarion lore and she really wouldn't worry about a minor dragon. However, she has multiple planes and worlds and realms to worry about, she can't attend to every little thing. Perhaps one of her daughters or children have fled from her grasp and has gone to take shelter with the dragon (there's your twist, the dragon is protecting the witch-to-be from the Witch Queen).
2. White dragons are famously lairing in cold, arctic environs. I would focus on environmental hazards, ice walls, shifting ice pack, and snowstorms impeding the PCs. I wouldn't use many other combat encounters, as the PCs should be ready to pour everything into that dragon fight (and I don't want to tip the hand about the dragon being the "protector" in this case - an evil protector, but one nonetheless). Maybe include a way for PCs to get their hands on items that inflict fire damage to take advantage of the white dragon's fire weakness.
3. A classic frozen cave is easy enough, but you need to provide the PCs with advantages to work with in a fight like this. Giving them cover in the form of walls of frozen victims, ledges that allow them to hide in nooks and crannies overlooking the "main stage," while also challenging them with slippery ice they must balance across. The dragon feels it is the biggest and most mighty in the land, as many dragons do. Having the witch come to him for assistance only further strokes its ego as the most powerful.
4. White dragons are historically the dumbest of the chromatic dragons, and favor practical treasure. Likely trade goods stolen from caravans or wealth from nearby villages. It should have been a known local menace for the witch to come to him for aid. Heck, toss in a vehicle like a covered wagon for the PCs to leap into for cover. Sure, it may get destroyed in a blast of cold breath, but it could save their life at the cost of some valuables.
5. So we talked about the twist, but we don't want to involve the witch in the fight and further complicate things for the PCs (and make their lives more miserable). She should be trying to enact a ritual with the help of the dragon to hide herself from Baba Yaga (pretty much impossible for the young spellcaster to do against the immortal Witch Queen, but points for trying). The PCs are not the heroes for "rescuing" her, though they could get some minor accolades from the nearby villages for their work in putting down a local threat. All they've done is further the strange goals of Baba Yaga.
EDIT: For the record, if you do this, I recommend having the PCs come in two levels under whichever dragon you choose. This puts it at a Moderate encounter, but it will likely be challenging enough for a group of players new to Pathfinder 2e. The urge to have the PCs three levels under the dragon will be there - I can see you saying, "Well, a Severe encounter feels more appropriate for a dragon encounter!" but I would strongly recommend against it. You'll end up with plenty of wasted turns with misses while the dragon lands crit after crit on the lower-level party. My suggestion - keep this at level 4 (or even 5 for a new group) against a level 6 Young White Dragon. If the group likes it (big if here, because this is a harsh way to try the system), you can spin it into a mini-campaign quite easily.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
My suggestion is to run this: The Whitefang Wyrm.
Judging by your first post, that might be exactly what you're looking for.
Also, consider the beginner box. It's meant for teaching the rules to both DMs and players, and cumulates in a dragon fight.
To hunt a white dragon in one shot... Well, a young white dragon has 115 hp and weakness 5 to fire. A giant instinct barbarian with a +2 greater striking flaming shock great pick will deal 108.5 average damage on a crit. The persistent damage will almost certainly finish it off afterwards. With PF2 damage being so dice dependent, you won't get much better odds than. If closing the distance is a problem (it shouldn't be if the barbarian has at least training in stealth to get close) you can use a Sniper gunslinger. You'll need some buffs to your static mod, but with elemental ammunition the thing certainly isn't escaping. With Vital Shot you're pretty close to 50% odds of an initial one shot, and with two sources of persistent damage (one of which triggers weakness) you probably won't need a second bullet. Use Terrain Stalker to get into range with zero percent chance of failure. Probably more reliable than the giant instinct barbarian, honestly.
So yeah. Build a level 11 of 12 sniper. 13 if you want to be safe and get that legendary weapon specialization buff. And you have hunted a white dragon in one shot! There might be a way to get allies to buff the sniper to deliver that blow at a lower level.
I'll be direct - if this is your first Pathfinder 2e adventure, I don't recommend a dragon as your first introduction to the game, for yourself or your players. A combat with a dragon has plenty of moving parts and tactical, crunchy bits that could completely devastate a group unfamiliar with the system or overwhelm a GM who hasn't run a PF2 encounter before.
A young linnorm. Specifically a young ice lonnorm (which is the same CR 7 creature, it just has ice element flavoring on it).
Linnorms are ""dragons"". Big, scaley, often the bane of a random village. They are based more off of snakey dragon tales, rather than the typical winged ones. Functionally, they are not tied up the same "true dragon" package in DnD games that causes some of the problems mentioned above.
They usually don't have any notable spells. Adult ones usually just some quality of life spells- true seeing and freedom of movement. Certainly nothing they could just dump into the middle of a fight to ruin everything.
The young linnorm doesn't even have a breath weapon. And it has one of those nice general weaknesses- cold iron. The most troublesome thing at this stage is likely their poison, and you can prepare for that.
Functionally, this can still work well for the suggested scenario. It is an icy, dragon-ish creature. And these things are well known problems that everyone knows they have to deal with NOW before it gets bigger. It probably onlt takes a half year for it to go from eating livestock to being a CR 17 threat.
Linnorms' are also solitary by nature. Their parents likely never even met each other, since they go salmon style. So no fear of an angry mama retaliating. Nope, this is just a singular threat you can- and should take care of now.
And you can also adjust the pacing pretty well depending on whether you want things to last longer or to finish up the session. These things have regeneration, and the game notes that this is the most vulnerable time in their lives. So it is completely valid to have the linnorm to run away to eat livestock another day. Or you can have it charge 'bravely' into the barbarian ready to crit when it has had enough.