I decided to add one last blogrimage post as an epilogue to yesterday's near-TPK (Total Party Kill) session. (Sorry, but it contains minor spoilers for anyone who hasn't played the Pathfinder Beginner Box adventures.) We had stopped play at a really good point to step back and think about what had happened, and figured out a way to roleplay our way out of the situation rather than undo it as if it hadn't happened.
When we stopped play, all but one of the party was down and unconscious. Two were stable and one was still dying, having just been hit. Arwin, the party's elf rogue, was still unscathed at the far end of the room, from where she'd been shooting crossbow bolts, and it was her turn in the round. So when we picked up play today, she ran away.
Arwin and Grald, the dwarf prospector the party had managed to rescue, left the rest of the party and the prospector's injured brother in the mine and headed back to Sandpoint for help. They went straight to Nosrac the dwarf fighter's relatives, who then accompanied them to request help from Sheriff Belor Hemlock. Hemlock wasn't really inclined to help them, but Shalelu the elf huntress was there, and she recognized Arwin as one of the party who'd handled the recent situation with Zordion in the cemetery and had fought against Black Fang. This made the sheriff a little more receptive, and Arwin's diplomacy, along with the dwarves offer of gold, won him over to the point where he was a least willing to send a city guard with a group of recruits along to help with the rescue.
(That's right. I sent in a bunch of red shirts.)
Arwin, the guard, and six dwarf warrior recruits headed back to the mine, with Nosrac's relatives and Grald in tow. The guard had a nifty plan to have the recruits try to sneak up on the earth elemental in the dark, but they bumbled their advance and were quickly noticed. Nonetheless, they managed to flank the elemental from all sides and weaken it, then Arwin's arrow dealt the final deathblow and the battle was quickly over. The injured were carried back to town, and all were saved.
Unlike the PC party, the band of NPC city defenders (whose stats I took right from the NPC Codex section of the PRD) was pretty evenly matched with the elemental. This turned out to be more about roleplaying than fighting, which was good, especially since my daughter had missed last weekend's session due to babysitting and my wife had played Arwin along with Nosrac. So in addition to finishing what was almost a TPK encounter, Arwin earned extra experience points for her non-combat encounters, and now everyone is happy again.
So now our PCs have all leveled up, and we've got the happy ending I was hoping for the blogrimage, so now I feel much better about putting this all to rest. So, until next year, so long, blogrimage readers!