A little backstory: I'm in a campaign with some friends that only play 5e, but I've been trying to get them to branch out into Pathfinder 2e as that's my preferred system (I like the extra crunch). I started by running them through the beginner box game and by the end my GM mentioned that he would be interested in owning the pocket editions for P2e's core books, so I got them for him as a Christmas present and was thrilled when he said that he'd run a few one-shots as a kind of test to see if he and the rest of the group would like to play it in a more long-term game.

The first 2 one-shots were a little bumpy since one player was building his characters thinking the classes were direct conversions from 5e and refused any advice outside of "is this a legal character sheet," and the GM was trying to convert some 5e Adventure League quests to the new system but hadn't entirely figured out how to balance the encounters properly.

This leads us to our party for the 3rd one-shot: •Me - an elven Magus (think spellsword for those of you who don't know what that is)

•A wild shape Druid with a fondness for bears

•An Alchemist Barbarian that went full Jekyll and Hyde And flavored it so that his alchemical concoctions were cookies

•And a Bard that was basically our hype-man/motivational speaker

So the premise of this quest was that some locals had gone missing along with their livestock, and we were sent to investigate. We manage to find a trail that leads us to a farm we think they'll return to and set a trap for whatever is taking these people. After several hours in game, we hear a noise coming from outside to find a Lizardfolk raiding party come back to claim the remaining cattle. We all proceed to run outside to engage them and manage to beat them pretty soundly to the point where they flee. After which, the GM states "I am no longer concerned that the next fight might be too hard for you."

So after the fight, we heal up a little then proceed to make our way towards where the lizardfolk fled off to and manage to find their base camp. We agree to try and stealth our way through the camp to find out what we can, so we do a little sneaking until we get to some cages holding people prisoner where I fail a stealth roll and one of the guards hears me. I have enough time to go running back to the cliff we climbed up and succeed another stealth roll to hang off the edge so that I'm not noticed. The guard starts to walk past where we're hiding when the Alche-barian pulls himself up and sneaks up behind the guard to try and take him out only to roll minimum damage and leave him alive long enough to sound the alarm. Roll for initiative.

We all roll high on initiative so we manage to pull ourselves up and get in position before the swarm of lizardfolk can overrun us. Me and the Druid are desperately trying to break the cages open so that we can free the prisoners while Alche-barian and Bard are holding off the few warriors that were able to get to us. This lasts for about 2 rounds when suddenly squad of lizardfolk arrive that seems to be made up of the tribe's chieftain, the tribe's Shaman, and their honor guard. The crowd parts to let them through. The chieftain stares us down and slams his bident against his shield challenging us to trial by combat. Naturally, we accept the challenge and square off.

Big mistake. Druid shifts into a bear, Alche-barian goes full on hulk mode, and they both rush the chieftain. Meanwhile Bard is doing his bard thing to help the party and I'm trying to follow rule number 1 of TTRPG combat: always prioritize the enemies wearing a dress. Aka, take out the enemy casters 1st. Me and Bard are doing alright with our jobs, but the other 2... oof. We didn't know it at the start of the combat, but the chieftain was a CR 5 while the party was level 3. On his own that wouldn't have been too big of a deal, but we also had a CR 3 Shaman, and about four CR 1 guards to deal with as well. The guards all having poisoned weapons as well.

Thanks to all this plus some good rolls on the GM's part both of them go down within a couple rounds. I manage to finish off the caster in this time, but Bard is forced to swap to healer mode just to keep us going. Druid and Alche-barian are able to keep getting back up just to get in the chieftain's way before getting knocked back down like it's some kind of Rocky movie. All the while I'm trying to deal with the guards. Eventually it gets to a point where the only healing we have left are life saving cookies that Alche-barian made and I'm forced to leave one guard alive to go deal with the chieftain.

So here we are swinging away at the chieftain while Bard keeps force feeding cookies to Druid and making sure to maintain eye contact with the chieftain just to drive home the point that he can't kill anyone until we eventually run out of cookies. Alche-barian goes down first, followed by Druid, then I go down thanks to the one guard I left alive and his poison, and Bard goes down last. With each death, the player of the newly deceased character adding their voice to the chant of "T! P! K! T! P! K!"

After the fact the DM realized that fight might have been a bit much for us, but we certainly could have still won if we had just been a little smarter with our target priorities and not spread the damage so much. We even managed to get the chieftain's health down to single digits.

All in all, it was still a blast and we all agreed that the image of Bard repeatedly force feeding cookies of life to an unconscious grizzly bear while the chieftain just got more and more frustrated that he wouldn't stay down was the highlight of the game and it will more than likely grow to be a meme in the group.

My only regret is that the DM wasn't a fan of running the system, so I'm stuck being the GM if we ever want to play it again, but oh well. That's life sometimes.

(Edited for formatting and spelling errors)