There's a chance that our regular Tuesday night game won't be running this week, since one of the players may be flying out of town to visit a sibling. I mentioned that if that happens, I'd be happy to run a Pathfinder (core only, to really exemplify the system) one-shot to give people a chance to try the new game out. So far, I've got three people definitely interested in it, and a fourth that will join us if she doesn't end up flying out with the other player.
My question now is... where to start? So far, all I really know for sure about the game is that one of the players will be running an elven paladin. She's played a couple of one-shots of various systems before (one or two Iron Heroes, one D&D, and that's about it, I think). Level is looking to be either 8 or 12, and I'm leaning toward 12 just so that I can throw some tougher beasties at them.
What's a good setup for running a one-shot? I'm thinking something like this:
1. Opening sequence/introduction to adventure.
2. Quick, simple random encounter while traveling to destination. (EL 10)
3. Two encounters related to the quest at hand. (EL 12 and EL 11)
4. Final showdown with BBEG. (EL 14)
Since we'll have a pally, I'm planning on making the BBEG a crag linnorm (bestiary preview, CE dragon, CR 14). Ideally, I'd like to highlight each of the characters' race and class choice, but since I don't know what those are yet, it's tough to plan ahead. As far as the encounters go, though, little else jumped out at me from the bestiary previews, since I don't want every baddy to be an evil outsider. I'll probably pull some monsters from Legacy of the Dragons and some of my other monster books; the players have only run into things from the Monster Manuals, so that oughta spice things up.
Any thoughts?


