I have been running a game for a few months now. I started the campaign on the Pathfinder Beginner box, after giving some of the encounters some of my own personal touch. In the beginner box, some may remember a particular character called "King Fatmouth". After the party defeated his servants he ran away. I decided to make him a reaccuring villain, sending, or attacking the players as an act of rvenge for killing his precious subjects, and going off with the dragon toy. The party was feeling a bit frustrated by him as he managed to evade them 3 times or so(i had him simply run away, as his minions kept the party pretty busy. a little later the party was again assaulted by him, along with a dozen or so goblins he had recruited, these were your basic, run of the mill goblins, the party consisted of a multi-classing sorceror-rogue, that wore armour, and had a solid AC of 19 while wearing her armour, a 23 after she cast "Mage Armour". A paladin with an ac of 21 base or so, a rogue with an AC of 19, a rogue with an AC of 19, and a monk with an AC of 17. the paladin did total 1d8+5 with his longsword, and with these goblin's hit points of 7, he still was rolling a 1 for maybe, half his damage rolls. The monk was sticking to his flurry of blows, and hitting decently, but rolling either the total of 5, or six damage(he dealt 1d6+4 with his fists) more than half the time, meanwhile the goblins almost always, at least 7 out of ten times were rolling 19 or higher, causing an incredible amount of critical hits. I had decided that should the goblin host suffer half casualties, or start to drastically lose the combat they would have to roll over d%55 every turn, or lose their courage and flee, through the course of 10, maybe 15 turns, the goblins were still standing tall, and kicking the living ass out of the party with their total of +3 to hit(with a +1 grated by a thingamigic the goblinking had) And when it was over i looked at my players with shock, "WHAT THE F++&! this wasn't supposed to be that hard". Most of the players took it surprisingly well, except one of them that was immensly frustrated.
The funny thing is this has put up a kind of dread in my players now, they see every goblin, as a dangerous killing machine, and are almost afraid of every one of them. And to me as a dm, i like it when my players are paranoid, it gives me such great satisfaction to see the party getting nervous, especially when they have nothing to worry about.
The only annoyance is that i had prepared a good fair deal of story concerning the previous characters. Oh-well, at least we'll be able to laugh at this later..... (i say as i prepare them to go through even more goblins, and King Fatmouth's successor)
