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I'm planning to add an encounter to Curse of the Crimson Throne in chapter 1. The city is in chaos and some hellknights are working to restore order - but being a little too extreme about it. Some people are caught stealing and the hellknights are getting ready to do some killing justice.
The party will run across this, but the hellknights will be too powerful for them to take. A vigilante in the city will appear, release some of the thieves, decry the tyranny of the hellknights, and run off. Two of the three hellknights try to chase him down and run off, leaving one remaining to give some deadly justice to a final thief. This will be who the party needs to contend with.
I want to make it clear that this does not have to be a combat encounter, and it might be bad for the PCs if it resorts to that. There are 5 PCs, all level 2.
I'm new to 2e, especially with encounter building. What is a good fight to give them? I thought about potentially having a minor devil in the mix to help the hellknight so it's not just a Hellknight Armiger vs the party. I'm open for suggestions here, and please point out any issues you see.
So this is a homebrew conversion of the 1e AP to 2e rules and characters, yes?
In PF2, fighting is hard to disengage from. So if they are going to lose the fight if it starts, don't let it start.
I can show you the guidelines for making a challenging encounter that the PCs can win. I can show you how to make a too-challenging encounter that the PCs will lose. Both of those are easy.
Making an encounter that the PCs can run from is a lot harder. I would make this a Victory Point skill challenge. You can use 'attack bonus' as a skill in this case. As well as 'armor bonus' - which is AC -10.
From that, it is up to you to decide what is the goal of the encounter, and what methods and skills the PCs can use to achieve that goal.
Yes, it's a 2e conversion. I was thinking of making it a tough encounter for the party if they decide to fight, but they could go about it different ways.
Rile up the onlookers enough to make a mob that scares off the remaining hellknight (could have consequences later).
Talk the hellknight into a lighter sentence or to let them take the prisoner to the guard.
Not care and just let it happen.
But if they fight the hellknight, I want it to leave them the impression that hellknights are tough. Taking on a squad in the future would be a death sentence, at least for a while.
I'm not familiar enough with the monsters or adjusting them to feel confident making my own, and it seems tough to find good substitutes. It looks like there are only two types of hellknight enemy that come premade.
Rile up the onlookers enough to make a mob that scares off the remaining hellknight (could have consequences later).
Talk the hellknight into a lighter sentence or to let them take the prisoner to the guard.
Yeah, this definitely looks like a skill based encounter. Either a plain Victory Point system, or the Influence encounter type (which uses Victory Points under the hood).
But if they fight the hellknight, I want it to leave them the impression that hellknights are tough. Taking on a squad in the future would be a death sentence, at least for a while.
I'm not familiar enough with the monsters or adjusting them to feel confident making my own, and it seems tough to find good substitutes. It looks like there are only two types of hellknight enemy that come premade.
A 'tough but manageable' fight. That I can help with.
Just the Hellknight would be more challenging, but is still possible. The Hellknight with minor Demon assistant is more flexible and reliable.
Basically what you are looking at is a player level +2 Hellknight and a minion. Looking at the Building Encounters tables, you are wanting a Severe encounter
Be sure to read the descriptions of those labels.
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss.
Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses.
A severe encounter has an allotment of 120 XP with a 30 xp bonus for a 5th player. A level +2 Hellknight would take up 80 points of that, leaving 40 points for the Demon. Which means a level +0 Demon is just right. But that also leaves 30 xp left over. It would be better to add a third 30 or 40 XP enemy rather than bump up the level of the existing enemies. And if you are going to bump up the level of existing enemies, do it to the lower one.
For a 5 character level 2 party, that means:
a level 4 Hellknight and a level 2 Demon and a level 1 Demon is great.
a level 4 Hellknight and a level 3 Demon is probably fine.
Going beyond level +2 is very dangerous. Note in the Building Encounters table that the level +3 enemy has that word Extreme in it again.
level +3 enemies do enough damage in one round worth of actions to take a party character from full health to dying. And they do it very reliably. They hit on a 4 and crit on a 14. Approximately. If they are boss-type enemies (they have debuff always-on auras, or AoE attacks, or reactions that trigger constantly) then it is even worse.
Level +3 enemies are PK threats and often TPK threats. The math of the game simply breaks down at that level difference.
So ... To address the problem of not having an appropriate level 4 Hellknight or appropriate Demon ally.
This is where the Building Creatures come in to play.
If the creature is close, you can use the Weak or Elite adjustments can help. They give approximately a 1 level adjustment down or up respectively. The effect breaks down quite a bit if you try to use it repeatedly though.
But what you can do is use the Building Creatures tables to create a custom enemy from scratch. These are the same tables and guidelines that the game developers use to create the creatures in the bestiaries - so this isn't even homebrew.
Another thing you can do if you have a potential creature that you want to use is to look up their ranking on the tables. Then move from the creature's current level to the desired level and keeping the same ranking on the table. That will give you the new value.
For example, there is a Hellknight Armiger at level 4 - which actually is exactly what you are needing; a level 4 Hellknight. However, for example's sake, let's look at the Hellknight Paravicar at level 11.
The level 11 Hellknight Paravicar has an AC of 30. On the Building Creatures AC table at level 11 that shows up on the Moderate rank of AC. Moving up to the level 4 row of the table, Moderate AC is 20. So your level 4 Hellknight Paravicar would have an AC of 20.
Level 11 Hellknight Paravicar has 145 HP. That is Low rating for level 11. So Low rating of level 4 is between 42 and 46 HP. Pick something - say, 44 HP.
Then continue that process for all of the other numerical values that you need.
Now, if you compare the level 4 Paravicar to the level 4 Hellknight Armiger, you might note that its AC and HP are quite different. The Armiger has AC 22 and 75 HP. The difference is because the Armiger is a martial type and the Paravicar is a spellcaster.