(PF) Opening Arena Fight... help!

[Septokthesheep]

So, I'm starting a new campaign for my group this coming Sunday (my first time behind the screen - we're a new group). It's Roman-flavoured, and they've been put to work in the gladiatorial arena (just for a little while) after being arrested. While I have my plans to open the game up significantly after this, I want to put them through a little arena fight first.

The problem is that I don't know what to put them up against. Their APL is 3 (4 players, all level 3) and, though I want to challenge them to force them to work together and to help build a team dynamic, I don't want things to be too hard. I was thinking about doing a flooded arena, then decided it's not really fitting, as they wouldn't put new gladiators against anything that expensive. The logical choice seems to be to put them against another gladiator team, but it somehow doesn't seem right. I want it to be memorable, but fitting the setting.

Any thoughts?

[zilonox]

Maybe something like an elephant. It's CR7, but you could tone it down - maybe the tusks are broken and it has a wounded leg (reducing it's HP and ability to hit/damage with gore/trample) from previous fights it's been in. Since this is the first fight for the group, something huge like this would be threatening/exciting to them, and if wounded, would be useless in other arena fights so the arena masters would not be concerned if it dies. And if it seems the fight is too easy for the party, you could have it trained for war and have it's handler start giving it commands from the sidelines so it fights more intelligently to ratchet the challenge back up a bit.

There are a host of other natural animals you could use as well that would emulate a tradition gladiatorial fight that wouldn't cost the arena owners too much if the party wins (unlike the really exotic beasts).