I’ve been running Tomb for a two player party, and we’re about 3 sessions into the hex crawl.

The party consists of a level 4 Bladesong Wizard, level 4 Vengeance Paladin, Hew Hackinstone, and Taban (gladiator stat block).

The main encounter in question saw a girallon playing with the Paladin like a toy, the wizard doing some illusions and performance to calm the girallon, and the NPCs hiding. The wizard walked out of hiding which set off the girallon, slamming the Paladin on the ground and starting initiative. Taban got in an attack and did massive damage, Hew dealt a bit of damage, the Paladin attacked about 6 times with Polearm and Sentinel, the Wizard wasted a bladesong and the girallon was dead before he could engage.

Discussing the session, the wizard player said he felt that encounter wasn’t engaging and he was bummed because it was over before he really got started. Talking about other sessions, he said he feels like a lot of the time it’s just me doing everything then they get to pop on quick and I keep playing other monsters/characters. Other encounters include the 4 of them vs 4 swarms of centipedes, 4 of them vs 9 giant frogs, and 4 of them vs 4 grungs and a grung elite. I try to breeze through NPC vs monster combat as quickly as possible to get back to them ASAP, but it still seems to drag a bit.

They both sort of questioned Hew and Taban’s involvement and necessity. The newbie (Paladin) wasn’t sure how to handle NPCs — whether he should care and build relationships or just ignore them treating them as story devices, and the veteran Wizard player said it felt like the NPCs were doing more of the work and the two of them were doing clean up.

I figured I’d turn to reddit for advice on how to streamline combat and make it more engaging for a small party, especially in something so unique as the hex crawl