u/ReluctantPirateGames

I'm prepping for an introductory adventure right now, hoping that the table will enjoy the game enough to extend it to a full campaign.

Looking at the material I have prepped, the basic flow of this adventure will be:

• An ambush on the road to kick off session 1 (easy combat)
• Some story beats and a "secure a barricade" montage
• Another fight at said barricade (standard combat)
• Some story beats and a tricky negotiation
• A final fight to quash the threat (hard combat)

All in all, it's possible for them to earn as few as 3 victories from this and as many as 8. I am also not sure exactly how many recoveries they'll have remaining after the last fight, which raises the question - do I force them to take a respite at the end? Like, if they have 6 victories and are riding high on their masterful play, shouldn't I give them an opportunity to push on? To enter another fight with 6 victories and feel super powerful?

How would you handle this? Should I plan some kind of additional fight that they can take on before being forced by the narrative to take a break? Or is it reasonable to just declare "you've defeated the threat, the town thanks you and invites you to rest and recuperate, free of charge, at the inn."

So I'm putting together a character for an upcoming campaign and I'm really interested in being a Green Elementalist, particularly for the animal forms. But I think we'll be spending a decent amount of time at Level 1 so I thought "oh, I'll just take the Animal Form complication, give myself a single form, and then have that power bloom more fully at later levels."

The issue I see is that the moment I get my 2nd level feature this complication will become... pointless? My plan had been to choose a rat as my animal form, but that can be fully replicated at level 2, nullifying the benefit and leaving me with only the drawback from the complication.

Any thoughts or advice about this? Am I missing some unique advantage I'll have by accessing a rat form in two different ways?