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| Skull Gorge Bridge by jcbarquet on DeviantArt |
Skull Gorge Bridge
As the designers express on page 35, Skull Gorge Bridge is meant to be a really tough encounter. It’s not one the party is likely to win charging in head on (indeed, that’s a fast road to at least some party deaths, if not a full on TPK), and you should let them know that. Drawing out some guards / the dragon, sneaking in unnoticed, or destroying the bridge and fleeing give a better chance of success (and you should absolutely reward clever ideas!).
If you would like a better chance of a frontal assault succeeding, feel free to: 1. Have more than 4 players; 2. Allow the party to recruit allies, such as Old Warklegnaw, Jor, or the town guards / milita; 3. Remove some enemies; 4. Apply the “Weak” adjustment to the dragon (though 3 and 4 will lead to the scenario feeling less epic overall).
As far as the actual conversion goes, it's pretty simple! We've got some hobgoblin guards, a pair of hellhounds, and a Bladebearer commanding them, along with the Green Dragon Ozyrrandion. This is the party's first dragon! Make sure to play up the drama and terror of this fantastic creature - it can (and possibly will) slaughter them mercilessly in service of its masters. Try to engage the party in dialogue (even if only tauntingly), and reward players to play to the Dragon's "obsession with knowledge and self-discipline" (see their Archives of Nethys page for more). Ozyrrandion is an arrogant creature, and trying to distract them by appealing to their pride or thirst for knowledge can definitely work.
To actually destroy the bridge, the party will have to destroy a 10x10 section (each 5 ft. section has Hardness 14, HP 56, BT 28). This will be very difficult to do while a fight is raging. Specialized tools like a pickaxe might bypass the bridge's BT, alchemists should be allowed to make a crafting check to set off a bunch of bombs at once, and try to be generous with other creative solutions/spells as well (the page 33 sidebar gives some helpful advice here).
Encounters at Drellin's Ferry
However the party have dealt with Skull Gorge Bridge, and whether or not they made it all the way to Cinder Hill to see the true might of the Red Hand for themselves, the horde will make their presence known as the party figures out what to do next.
The first two encounters will likely happen no matter what the party do (if they are particularly efficient in getting the town to flee, they can even be nipping at their heels as they head north). The first, with warg/goblin outriders and hobgoblin reinforcements, likely won't be very difficult, but can provide a useful sense of urgency. Play the goblins tactically, keeping in mind their goal of causing as much mayhem as possible. If they realized they are overmatched, they will flee, split up, and try to cause havoc elsewhere. Use this encounter to raise the stakes for the PCs by threatening NPCs and locations that they care about. If you like, you can replace the hobgoblins here with a hobgoblin squadron, as this will make them a bigger direct threat, but it will mean they likely act as a distraction while the goblin warg riders go cause chaos rather than contributing themselves.
The second fight, with the Chimera, might prove genuinely difficult, especially if the party has 4 or fewer members. Feel free to use guards or NPCs to help make the fight easier, though if you do at least some of them will likely die (which is also helpful for showing how outmatched the townsfolk are overall). The Chimera's breath attack in particular can absolutely obliterate groups of standard guards (I prefer the Red Dragon Head for this). Like with the first fight, the goal here should be to show how dangerous the Red Hand is to the townsfolk rather than to threaten the PCs themselves.
Hopefully, the party will convince the townsfolk to flee, and these will be the only two encounters they face in Drellin's Ferry (if this takes a while, but they have successfully delayed the horde, feel free to repeat the first encounter or design similar encounters). As the module says, "Hopefully, your players are smart enough to figure out that there are some battles their characters can’t win" (p39). I'm not going to specifically convert the encounters listed under the heading "Massacre at Drellin's Ferry" (p39-41), because, well, they will either die or decide to retreat part way through, but we've used many of the listed stat blocks already, and I'll be converting a few of the others (Kulkor Zhul War Adepts and Doom Fist Monks) in one of the next few updates.
Next Steps
After the party have concluded their business at Drellin's Ferry, Red Hand of Doom has some really cool potential to basically act as a sandbox. You are absolutely welcome to play into that! There are tons of fun encounters at the start of Chapter 2, both Rhest and the Ghostlord are valid directions to go, and you or your players might come up with other sidequests based on player goals or just things you think are neat. One of the common criticisms I've seen of the adventure online is that the timeline is actually very forgiving. Keeping strict track of time / overland travel, combined with having other goals, quests, and complications as they move about Elsir Vale, can combine to combat that problem and create more of a time crunch. Of course, you might also decide to have the players use that time to use Pathfinder 2e's Downtime rules instead! Whatever you do, keep in mind that these decisions should be meaningful, and it should always feel like the Red Hand is nipping at their heels.
If you would like to give the players a little more direction, make sure to run the "Rumors of War" encounter on page 38, and have various important town folks suggest either going to Brindol to give an in person report or head straight to Rhest to begin dealing with the hobgoblin blockades there.
Finally, if you use fast advancement (which I highly recommend, unless you're adding a lot of your own sandbox content), the party should be Level 6 either after wrapping up in Drellin's Ferry or after a couple of encounters on the road. If not, make sure they are Level 6 by the time they reach Rhest.
Treasure
Now that part 1 is complete, I went back and updated the treasure in the chapter 1 document and RHoD Spreadsheets. For the most part, I tried to keep magic items similar to the module, and straight up replaced the treasure amounts to fit better with Pathfinder 2e. Fitting in enough stuff was a little difficult, as, other than Vraath Keep, there aren't that many places in Part 1 where treasure makes sense. I kept the treasure relatively generic as well (lots of +1 armor and striking weapons), other than the extremely powerful for this level Staff of Healing (greater), to ensure that it is useful to all potential parties.
For your own games, I highly recommend modifying treasure to fit your specific party. As the module says on page 7: “Red Hand of Doom includes an aggressive distribution of magic items… In this adventure, one of your PCs shouldn’t need to save to buy that +1 keen flaming greataxe — he should fine it in the cold, dead hands of a foe he just defeated in a hard-fought melee. You should definitely customize the treasure awarded in the adventure to give your PCs much of what they want (and need).”
For the purposes of this chapter: if you don't want to make the Bastard Sword in Vraath Keep a relic, feel free to slap a frost rune on there! If the party is lacking in healing, throw in more healing potions! If they don't have any utility casters, consider potions of invisibility or fly. If there's a specific item you think would be really cool for one character, absolutely have them find it. Once they get back to Drellin's Ferry, it can make a lot of sense to have Sertierren, Brother Derny, Avarthel the druid, or even Morlin the smith gift the party bespoke items that help fill in their weaknesses (especially if one character or another has built up a strong relationship with them, or hasn't gotten any particularly exciting treasure themselves).
Wrapping Up
There's one last bit of Chapter 1 left, and that's a settlement writeup of Drellin's Ferry. After that, we will get into minions & troops, overland travel, and the Elsir War.
See y'all next time!
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