I'm currently running a Golarion based campaign for a group of 5 (wizard, sorcerer, cleric, barbarian, fighter). Pretty much CRB only as this was the first time in PF for all of us. Also, while I did GM some games ages ago, it was 1E AD&D and therefore anything I knew is pretty much outdated at this point.
I'm having problems creating properly challenging encounters for my group. What I mean is that when I start to put together an encounter, I pull some creatures out of the Bestiary, looking for a creature or group of creatures to match the CR vs. APL, and try to work with that. My BBEG encounters have been more gimicky, trying to avoid a simple "stand up and beat him down" fight.
I know the nature of some of my problems:
- I have a plot laid out (trying to be careful not to run things on rails) and really want to the players to make it through all of it. Problem is, I think I'd rather see the characters live to see it through, to the point of possibly erring too far on the side of caution.
- I made a big in-game mistake in an early adventure and didn't explain the "gimmick" on a BBEG encounter, which resulted in a TPK. I unwound the encounter, handed them the explanation, and we went through it "properly". This has caused me to back off if anything seems like it even remotely might be too much for them, to the point that I think I'm eliminating the chance for them to figure out how to circumvent threats.
- Lacking any PF experience of my own, I find it hard sometimes to judge the toughness of an encounter appropriately.
- The wizard has less than half the hp of any other character, even the sorcerer (who took toughness and has a high CON). I've tried to work around this by avoiding too many area effect abilities and so on.
- I haven't set up encounters with good tactical effect, though I'm improving on this. Still, it's been an annoying learning process.
All of that said, I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback on how y'all approach setting up encounter challenges. I'm looking more for philosophy or technique as opposed to numbers, which is partly why I haven't mentioned the levels of the characters for example. For example, I've seen it suggested to use larger numbers of weaker opponents as opposed to smaller numbers of strong opponents. Use range and terrain to good effect. Alarms and so on.
But is there any other guidance to be had?