Hey everyone!
After reading a lot of posts about good starter adventures for PF2e, I decided to give Fistful of Flowers a shot. My players and I were all completely new to PF2e, although we have plenty of experience with D&D. A fun little adventure about leshies felt like a great way both to showcase the system and to surprise a group of very elf-and-human-pilled players with something a bit different.
That said, I needed to stretch the adventure into two sessions. I probably could have picked up the sequel and connected them somehow, but I only found out it existed after we had already finished the story. My players love making colorful characters with strong backstories and they get very invested in roleplay, so it is not always easy to give them enough material to really dig into.
Long story short, here are some of the things I changed or added to expand the adventure and make it feel a bit richer. Maybe some of this will be useful to someone else.
The overall vibe. Since the adventure is all about leshies and nature, I leaned hard into plant- and flower-themed names. Every character, whether they were a leshy or a human, had a plant-related name. I did the same with the town, NPCs, the tavern, and even the animals. In each case, the name either reflected a plant-like trait or referenced a real plant directly.
The tone. The original adventure is already playful, but I decided to push the humor even further. I gave Glimmer more banter and teasing, turned the pixie vs. Popcorn dynamic into a full-on war—albeit a silly one—and added a few extra comedic NPCs. I basically wanted the fun tone to turn into full laughter and ridiculous situations.
Here is what I changed in more detail:
The starting point. I gave the home glade a name (Glade of Tangled Roots). I also introduced a few other glades that had lost residents too — Glade of Barking Wrong Tree with a strange tree at its center, Glade of the Round Bush, and so on. I added an elder character as well (Mossbrow, because he had a huge patch of moss growing on his head), and I created three missing leshies — Lavender, Thyme, and Little Clover —who were all personally tied to the PCs. That gave the party some immediate motivation. Naturally, Little Clover was the best one, and he ended up being the main clue-dispenser throughout the adventure.
At the bridge. I added more traces of the “war” between the leshies and the pixies: tiny wooden arrows and spears, flower petals scattered everywhere, and similar little details. I also made this location more important, since this was where Darius had abducted the three leshies earlier. There were tracks here, along with hardened wax on the ground. In my version, the leshies had no idea what wax even was, so that became part of the mystery. I also added a character named Common Burdock, who had supposedly “survived” an attack by Darius. His whole body was covered in wax and he acted like he was on the verge of death, but in reality he was being extremely dramatic and totally faking it.
New scene — an early obstacle. Since I wanted the adventure to fill two sessions, I added an early combat encounter. Darius had been in a hurry and used a mutagen while escaping. One of the vials fell and shattered, and the smell attracted a pair of foxes. They cut their paws on the broken glass, got agitated, and essentially went feral. The party could either fight them or try to restrain and heal them. My players managed to hold the animals still, pull the glass out of their paws, and patch them up. It was a small combat, but I think it was necessary — otherwise the first session would have been almost entirely investigation.
The camp. I pushed Glimmer and her relationship with Popcorn much harder. She constantly teased him, but secretly had a crush on him, so she kept trying to help the party in hopes of winning his heart. The player was very surprised at first, but then he really leaned into it, and it turned into a genuinely great dynamic. The party even convinced Glimmer to help them track Darius.
The deer scene. I cut it, because it felt out of place in the version I was running. In hindsight, I probably could have reused the deer for the obstacle scene, but that only occurred to me later.
New scene — the road. Glimmer led the party to the road into town. In my version, leshies barely interact with humanoids at all, so a town felt strange and almost alien to them. Because of that, I gave them a memorable way in: a wagon loaded with flowers. Those flowers were on their way to Lady Constance’s ball, although the PCs did not know that yet. The wagon was driven by a father (Florian) and daughter (Iris), and pulled by two horses named Thistle and Marigold. The wagon itself was basically a giant flowerbed. The party could sneak inside, where they met another new character: P.I.ony (yes, that was the joke). He was a smuggler bringing strange foul-smelling seeds into Petalbrook. He joked constantly and acted like he was absolutely, definitely not a spy. Fluff Fang ended up having some really fun interactions with him.
Petalbrook. Since the leshies had never been to a town before, finding Darius or even figuring out where to start felt like a real problem. So I added four NPCs: Olivier, a boy who knows basically everything about the town, and his dog Crunch, who loves chasing sticks and leshies apparently; Rosemary, an old herbalist who sold candle ingredients to Darius; Heather, a carpenter who had repaired Darius’s house after one too many crystal-related mishaps; and Lavrena, Darius’s neighbor, who constantly complained about the awful jasmine smell coming from his place. Florian and Iris stopped at an inn called Manure. On top of that, I had a backup plan: if the PCs got stuck, Lady Constance would arrive at the tavern to inspect the flowers and settle a few final matters with Darius. One way or another, the party was going to learn about him and follow the trail. In my actual game, the players immediately went to Rosemary, pretended to be ragged children, and got everything they needed out of her. Even so, I still introduced Lady Constance as an additional threat —something clearly bigger and more dangerous than Darius.
Crystals and Candlewax. I barely changed anything here. The original material was already clear enough for me to run as written. The only thing I added was that the Candle Homunculi were a little smarter and would jump into the wax cauldron themselves or shove each other into it.
This is actually where I ended the second session—and, effectively, the adventure—because the final Lady Constance section simply did not fit into the time we had. I thought a lot about ways to speed the players up, but in the end I decided that fighting other leshies would not fit the fun spirit of the adventure, and dealing with Darius as the main offender was enough.
That said, I made a note for myself that if the players ever wanted more, I already had the bones of a third session. I even had a few ideas for making that part much darker: dried leshy bodies used as table legs for aristocrats, mutilated leshy guards, and Lady Constance herself behaving almost like a madwoman once her authority started being openly challenged.
So yeah, that was my version of it. Hope some of this is useful to someone.
Thanks, and have great games!