Cleric and Bard are very versatile classes, but aren't gonig to outshine a fighter in direct combat without buffs, most of wich they can use on the figther or tiger for better effects.
Most classes have different spotlights, in social encounters the bard is king; buffers don't shine in combat, but are incredibly useful; etc.
Unless you post more details I don't see how else can we help you.
Humbly,
Yawar
Incorporeal enemies are generally a nightmare for martial characters. However, incorporeal enemies are susceptible to magic attacks (which your Druid seems to cover).
Heavy amounts of Damage Reduction also are not a warrior's friend.
And both the Fighter and Tiger should have horrible Will saves.
An Incorporeal Undead with Energy Resistance 10+ would deal with your Druid if he focuses on ice - your Cleric would be much-more useful at that point because of Channel. Making it fly would further take it out of Melee range. Spell Resistance would also make it nearly-immune to the Druid, while the Cleric's Channel and vs. Undead abilities would help.
You could even have the Undead attempt to use an ability which takes control of the Fighter and/or Tiger - never doubt the power of an Enchantment-school spell against a warrior.
Throw SEVERAL of these guys at the party, and you'll all-but force the two munchkins to have to have the assistance of the party.
The other option is run much fewer encounters. If half the party rips through combats while the other two feel useless, just don't have too many.
Basically, design the sessions around the strengths of the weakest players, and design the encounters around the weaknesses of the strongest players, as it were.
Can you provide a little more numbers? Like Level, AC, etc. pp.?
I second this, also, as my answers are based only on speculation and generalizations of 7th level Characters (the minimum level for a Druid to cast Ice Storm).
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Curse of the Crimson Throne in general seemed kinda...wimpy when I read through it. One of the easier APs just from what I browsed of the first two books. Maybe ramp up the difficulty just a smidge. Giving all the monsters max HP and the Advanced Simple Template will make everything just a bit tougher without making either the Druid or Fighter feel like they're being singled out or punished for building well.
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As for the Druid: That's the way of the caster, they can do that. Do some regular checking in on him, ask him what spells he prepared every now and then (just to make sure he does prepare spells and not just casting random as he pleases).
A good rule of thumb for prepared casters: have them write their spells down on an index card for your reference.
i wouldn't use lone powerful foes, which favors the tiger and fighter, i would use multiple slightly smaller foes, to give the bard and cleric something to help with
first, i would give the bard a magic adaptable composite shortbow with something like the ability to produce energy arrows and a magic cestus, because they need help
second, i would give the cleric access to a weapon favored by their god, unless the proficiency sucks, where i would give them a magic longspear and cestus instead
so the fighter doesn't feel so left out, i would give him something that doesn't boost melee damage and doesn't boost armor class. adaptable magic composite shortbow that matches the bards
so the druid feels like he is getting something, how about a cloak or resistance for his tiger and a suit of wild carbon full plate for the druid. because Graphite isn't technically metal
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It's hardly a surprise that a challenge like a burning house didn't pose a problem for a mid level full caster. Sounds like a problem with the adventure design. Create Water makes 2 gallons of water/level and that's a cantrip.
If the Cleric and Bard aren't contributing, it's because they don't know tactics or they built their characters wrong. Point them to some optimization guides and help them rebuild their characters. Then, you have everyone on roughly the same footing and can scale up your encounters.
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In summation with a few of my own ideas:
Flying enemies- the fighter is less valuable against these.
Use enemies with touch attacks- lots of classes like sorc and oracle and various monsters get these. The fighters ac may be high but it won't or shouldn't be high versus touch.
Use multiple enemies: single enemies vs a party is generally not a good idea. In this way, more enemies means more opportunities for everyone-gm and player.
Target all 3 saves- fighters suck at reflex and will saves. If you keep focusing on his ac and fort expect him to always shine and always dominate and don't ever complain. If you have enemies use terrible remorse, hold person, murderous command, suggestion, fireball, create pit, etc on him, he'll be a lot less of a problem than he was before. Same applies to the animal.
Check their sheets- Sometimes players cheat. Sometimes they make mistakes and miscalulate. The fighters ac should be unhittabke -and- he has a super high attack bonus -and- he deals super high damage. Usually there is a tradeoff in there, especially at the level we suspect (around 7). Is he using a tower shield? Combat experise? Fighting defensively? Did he upgrade his gear properly? Did he pay the right amounts? Stats calculated correctly? It all matters.
Know those spells- keep up with your casters. Start now because it can get really crazy later and you want to develop a system while you can. The index card idea is good.
Immersive encounters- sorry, but a burning building shouldn't be much of a challenge for 7th level characters necessarily. Depends on preparation. I nearly tpk'd my group of 4-6th levels through smoke, suffocation and heat damage in conjunction with the actual fire. No one effect would ever cause a problem but all together it created an important timer with limited visibility, falling debree, innocents needing to be saved, avoiding being trampled, and so on. Sure, sleet storm would probably have solved that whole mess. But the point is that combat and non-combat encounters should be like that in general, multilayered so that there often isn't a single, simple solution. When there is one (cough-sleet storm-cough) and the players have it, yay. But in general they won't. If encounters are involving enough, the fighters hit and ac nor the animal companion will steal the show. Everyone will have to participate.
Maybe the bard has to make several different perform checks and even use a couple he doesn't have trained. The dc's are just difficult enough that he can pass them all but has to roll well to do so. However, failure sets him back so it really is just a matter of time. As the bard males his checks, the fighter and animal have to keep goblins or whatever at bay. If too many get through, the bard can't perform at all and fails the encounter.
An evil necromancer cleric threatens the group and his army of minions are ready to kill. He has a henchman who has the death domain (just like him) and heals from negative energy. But spam negative channels, healing one another while harming the PC's. The cleric is needed to vaporize the swath of undead so the fighter and animal can close in on the clerics. If the leader has a focus on great ac the fight could be a good one.
Not sure how closely you are sticking to the ap. But maybe these
Ideas will help reduce the problems you're facing.
Since you mentioned CoCT and from your post sounds like you're at Escape from Old Korvosa.
-Depending on how your party has acted in previous adventures the villain may have a good sense of the PCs strengths and weaknesses. Meaning a few encounters with the Red Mantis that know what they're up against allow you to tailor a few 'mean' encounters.
-The Emperor is pretty easy to deal with though the Rod of Wonder can make for a memorable encounter. the gnome barbarian I remember can be pretty deadly if the dice are hot.
-The rakshasas on the other hand need bump up. Max HP is a must. Defensive buffs like Displacement and Stoneskin are handy. Again the raks should have a home field advantage and some of their minions are pretty deadly (the flying fungal skeletons in the pit I remember being nasty).
-As a 3.5 adventure everything needs to be bumped up a bit for Pathfinder characters which have more resources/power. A good rule of thumb might be to add to 2HD to opponents and up the CR of encounters principally by adding monsters. A lot of beasties in my campaigns have siblings as a result.
-Re the druid with ice storm prepared twice. Assuming the player didn't just pull a fast one, wouldn't worry about it. It happens especially with spell casters and the player should get some measure of satisfaction of having the right spell for the job.
As for challenging them... I would definitely give the enemies max HP and go from there. I do recommend bumping up in steps... because if you go too far too soon you will just get a TPK.
Triple check character math. Pathfinder is a game that is VERY easy to make a mistake that can be game breaking.
My best advice is to NEVER try and get around pc choices. By and large you can't make a unhittable character without being seriously short in other areas. This is why doing tons of damage AND being unhittable sets off so many alarm bells.Check the math!!
If the mobs wail away at the fighter and can't hit him..have them ignore him,knock him into pits or whatever is handy.
I just think bypassing player strong points in order to "Get Them" should be discouraged.
Now since it's bothering other players IF the math turns out to be right"Don't think it will based on what I have seen in games" then you can simply ask the player to change some things about the character.
Before I was that drastic however I would simply make sure the math is right and add fun encounters for the other guys. Might be its only a issue because you have been running more encounters that stress that players specialty instead of the others?
These days I add a "System Mastery Adjustment" of +1 to +2 when determining CR. I do this for my veteran parties; no, I do not award extra XP for this adjustment.
Starting with a high point buy sometimes causes these issues, there's not much you can do about that in play beyond beefing up monsters. The Advanced simple template is your friend! Again, don't award extra XP for that, until your party starts feeling proper challenges again. (I know this makes me a jerk, but it is for the greater good).
When running a 3.5 AP like Crimson Throne for Pathfinder PCs, I often let them trail the level of the AP by one or even two whole levels.
The best thing you can do is forget about CR, eyeball the character stats vs the monster stats, and spend some time thinking out encounters (as a kind of dress rehearsal) based on what you've already seen the players do. The more you do this -- even if the players break your expectations -- the more you will be able to anticipate their capabilities, and make certain that the monsters have a fighting chance.
I aim for the moment when at least one member of the party nearly dies, and I make peace with the fact that it may be slightly harder (character death) or slightly easier (run of the mill combat).
Read up a bit on the "phases" of Pathfinder/3.5. The game has massive changes as the players go up in level, and new GMs are not adequately warned by the rulebooks. Around 5th-7th level, you have to stop using the types of challenge that worked from 1st-5th (unless you want to showcase how the players are crushing old challenges). Timers, no-win situations and the occasionally wildly inappropriate CR should appear. Around 8th level, your challenges need to read as "X-Men" level comic book heroes. Ice-man will put out a burning building, you need another source of dramatic tension to make it work. Around 13th, you're crossing into Justice League territory. At 17th, you're talking about Superman challenges -- as a GM you should be creating impossible obstacles because a 17th level party will overcome the impossible.
If you fail to make the switch when one of these campaign/level changes occurs, it will deeply impact the role of challenges in your game.
I think the problem you should focus on is the other 2 players that feel left out. Start with a solid understanding of their issues--it could be a lot of different things:
Did they build buffing characters and the party doesn't need buffing?
Are they buffing, but they don't see that as contributing?
Are the other 2 players grandstanding and shutting them out (the classic "I go into the room..." "Me too! I'm there!" problem)?
Are all the encounters combat-based when they have social characters or skill monkeys?
Once you understand what their feelings are, you can adjust your game to solve that problem first. Some of that adjustment could help out the overpowered feeling, too.
Some common mistakes to check for on the fighter: armor applied to touch AC, armor bonuses stacking when they shouldn't, speed not being slowed from armor, adding more Dex bonus to AC that the armor allows, and not applying armor check penalties. If he uses a shield, make sure he's not keeping the shield AC bonus when he shield bashes and is not still adding the strength/Power Attack bonus for wielding a weapon two handed.
And if you need a way to shut down a fighter and animal companion, I have two words: Will Saves. Avoid fear effects if the fighter has bravery: Go for dazed, stunned, sleep effects, and confusion effects.
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First drop the bard an awesome magic whip so he doesn't feel sidelined. Like a +1 Dueling Spell-Storing whip, that will allow him to participate more in combat.
Then up the difficulty, as others have suggested, by giving everything the advanced template and extra hp.
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@Auren, the first thing you said made sense. Then you went all into 'it's a candy store so let's give away candy to everybody'. Were you even trying to address the issue at all at that point? Giving the bard more combat power is fine. Giving it to the cleric who doesn't need it is OK, too. Giving the druids pet more survivability in and out of combat so he doesn't feel left out and tossing in good armor for the casting druid seems unnecessary and now makes both more tedious PC's to deal with in any given circumstance. Tossing the fighter who clearly is not in need of anything, an item that enhances his out of combat versatility or in-combat flexibility sounds like you're going out of your way to making the problem worse.
How about the fighter gets nothing and the druid gets nothing. This way, when you attempt to close the gap by giving the cleric and bard something, the gap actually closes instead of widens or stays the same?
And handing out more powerful gear for a group that is dominating encounters is ultimately going to lead to more overall dominated encounters. Nobody will be challenged but everyone might get to participate in the free for all monster buffet.
Speaking of which, I wonder what Terrasque tastes like?