Adjusting The Beinner's box

[Zoken44]

my group who I just introduced to PF2e, is running short on time before we have to take an extended break. We took two sessions to complete the first floor of the Troubles Under Otari map. and that is with skipping the undead encounter (they saw the barricade and noped right on past it)

I need to abridge down to one 2 hour session. I've just messaged them all to level up, and I figure we'll proceed straight to the dragon encounter, since they have put together that the Kobolds are serving a dragon.

I have the remaster stats for the dragon. any other adjustments y'all recommend? they did get the +1 short sword, I think my swashbuckler has it.

I have:
Swashbuckler
Champion
Alchemist
Wizard
Ranger w/ bear animal companion
Fighter

I've adjusted other encounters up (adding rats and kobold warriors to equal the party size) and they've done pretty well, only one of them fell once, and between the alchemist, and medicine checks they are doing fine.

[Dr. Frank Funkelstein]

Adjusting a single enemy encounter is difficult, and dragons are overstatted and quite dangerous already.
I would not apply the elite template, but either give it minions - like the Kobold king (who is a caster) +1, or adjust its HP generously, like +100%.

The fight is kind of optional in the module - if the kobolds no longer organize the fish, the dragon will probably leave etc, but if you want to have it as an end fight it should stay dangerous.

[Errenor]

It's very dangerous as it is. I'd leave it alone. For a 4 character group it could kill someone or even cause a TPK. For 6 characters I suppose it would be just fine. They are new players. And it wouldn't be an issue at all if the fight would be on the easy side.
Also it may be a bit over-statted already, as I vaguely remember. Maybe wrongly though.

[Zoken44]

It went well, we did manage to drop one, but luckily our alchemist, with the emergency level up they did before the fight took battle medicine and picked him up with 4 HP.

I used the stats from the remaster, which are slightly lower than the original, but yeah they found it hard to hit. luckily our fighter did some NICE chunk damage given that his hit was turned into a crit because I hadn't realized they had flanked it.

Thank you all for the advice. I'm considering GMing for them going forward, they are level two now so I need to decide which AP to take them on. and as always, I always throw in Tamerly is a retired PFS member, and gives them Wayfinders (as a possible hook into any AP explaining how they got there from Otari)