Challenges


Advice


So I'm having trouble challenging my party. 3 members, dwarf fighter, human paladin, and a ranger/wizard/arcane archer, all level 10. So far, they just sort of blast through everything I throw at them. I could use some advice on trying to slow them down. Also we've been talking of adding a fourth member, any suggestions would be great.

Liberty's Edge

Golems might be a fun battle. Their immunity to magic and high DR will give everyone a challenge. They aren't evil, so the paladin won't be able to ignore their DR. Of course, if they've all got adamantine weapons already...

incorporeal creatures maybe. Weapon bond doesn't include ghost touch. As a side notes, this has always seemed weird to me. A paladin's got to be able to lay the smack down on those incorporeal baddies.

That party is certainly going to lay out some massive damage.

The Tarrasque maybe? AM BARBARIAN?


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A tarrasque... A solid suggestion. As with the golems. Thanks. A barbarian would bump up our group's already high damage output.

As for other party members, I was thinking a beefy rogue or cleric. I do not however have a good idea as to what kind of build either class could effectively offer my "wrecking crew".

The campaign is set with divine magic being the widest used and accepted form of magic. The arcane being more frowned upon (especially by the paladin), and less common. So wizards, sorcerers, and bards are few and far between, not absent though. Same with monks. Societies are pretty racially divided as well.

I want to try and get away from the 'lord of the rings' party dynamic as well. So other races in the party could spice things up.


Try some types of dragons. Make them ancient so they get really good spells to use. Another really good idea is to do something by the means of this:

You send them out to sea to do a mission(any kind really, just choose something simple). Then get a Sea Serpent to curl around the ship multiple times so it's not impossible to hit. Maybe get the serpent to swallow someone whole, just saying it's hard, I've had to fight one.

Just try some hard creatures, big ones will do and if you want to make them stronger, use the different templates in the bestiary. Good luck:)


TheRobFather wrote:
So I'm having trouble challenging my party. 3 members, dwarf fighter, human paladin, and a ranger/wizard/arcane archer, all level 10. So far, they just sort of blast through everything I throw at them. I could use some advice on trying to slow them down. Also we've been talking of adding a fourth member, any suggestions would be great.

Really long hit and run combats where they are up against the clock.


P.s. @TheRobFather DON'T, I repeat DON'T do Lord of the Rings!!!! I swear it's too confusing to do this. I am doing a Lord of the Rings Campaign with a undead Matador! It's very confusing. I didn't see Lord of the Rings so I didn't know what I was getting into when I put on one of the 9 Rings of Men and apparently I'm doing well for my master who I don't even know! So don't do it, ok...


It's funny you mention a mission at sea, I actually have an aquatic adventure in the works for my players, part above and part below.

For some reason I found it rather difficult to find decent enemies for an underwater portion of the campaign. I settled on some high level aboleths.

Our dwarf will not appreciate a ship ride, hell, he once fought off a bunch of worgs so he didn't have to cross a rope bridge.

I get the whole avoid LOTR aspect. I didn't plan for it, it just kind of happened. My buddy playing the dwarf fighter even named his character Gimli. Wtf.


hey on my boat there are dwarves too. Except mine are made of stone, and they steer the ship. WTF as well...


2 of the 3 are melee oriented. Might I suggest that instead of trying different encounters, try increasing the difficulty through adverse terrain or unorthodox attack methods. Add traps to encounter areas or put the players into choke points and ambush spots. Or turn them against one another. A few examples:

Casters or Archers firing at the players from arrow slits while some bruisers engage and distract. IIRC, arrow slits give bonuses on reflex saves and give all creatures using them evasion, in addition to blocking line of effect if they crouch/cover after firing. Not to mention the Arcane Archer only has so many ways to deal with those things. I think like 2 seeking arrows and a phase arrow?

If that doesn't work, put them in a dungeon just loaded with traps. I had a reverse gravity spike pit trap in a game I ran, which was remarkably hard to detect and would probably catch the players off guard. "You see a a large vertical shaft in the roof." "I move forward and look up" Suddenly, gravity. Follow that up with an enemy ambush?

Use some form of command spell or monster with compulsion to get the warrior to grapple the arcane archer, potentially removing them both from the fight.


Will-O-The Wisps?

Grand Lodge

Without more information it is almost impossible to offer any real advice.

What have you tossed at them? How have they handled it? What are their common tactics?

It seems their weakness is spell casting. No true caster in the group.

What exactly do you mean by "challenge?" Do you want to deal more damage to them, or slow them down in traps or what?

Just off the top of my head I would say Haunts would just about destroy the group. The paladin is the only one the even has a prayer of doing anything to a haunt. Then he will need that same power to heal the haunt's attacks.

Hit the party with spells that make movement difficult or obscures vision. Just about any flying creature should be able to rip them apart. Same for underwater encounters. They likely do not have the spells needed to do well underwater.

Need to do more damage to the party and want to use humans? No problem have a cleric with a wand of True Strike spam True Strike on a fighter or rogue and you should hit every single time doing massive damage.

Use Ultimate Combat and make a fighter that specializes in Net and Trident. Once an opponent is entangled and tripped with the net he is done for.

Traps are an easy way to whittle them down. They can't disable magic traps at all so must just suffer through the damage. WIth limited healing this leads to a crisis pretty soon.

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