Bigazur's page

That is a good question, that could be answered on character creation, why are they going to adventure? why are they looking for ? why they build and staty as a group ? all answers are leads to use.

If your players, like some I have, are just creating PCs as a bunch of well organized numbers, they have no reason to do anything, so they will play the game and wait for you to create something, give them a direction and a loot potential (to move numbers).

You may have two way to handle that, either you talk to them and ask for their players motivations, and answer to it.
eg. we want to fight monsters and loot magical stuff. We want to fight a mighty battle agains evil...

They might say, we don't know you are the GM it's up to you to create a scenario we can play.

So you are know free to use anything to create motivation, and motivation for someone who doesn't know what he wants is constraint.

- They got poisonned, with no idea about why or when, and have a limited time to find a way to survive. They might found out that a cure can be found somewhere in the wild.
- They got arrested wandering around doing nothing and carrying weapons and have a chance to show their bravoure...in the wild.
- They got stolen something, by someone or some group, and the search lead them to the wild...
- A merchant is ploting to claim the property of some areas uncontrolled in the wilderness and he need some hands to clean some areas, and bring colons to live in little village. Each community created with an alliegeance to the merchant is worth a good amount of gold. Of course the merchant will betray them as they are expendables...

If you are ready to play with their emotions (be careful) you can use a situation that is a consequence of inaction.
- A little girl/boy is crying over a dead body in the street of a city. If they react, they discover that the body is a parent, working in the wild to farm some ressources for the nobles, and is part of the poorest people of the city, chased by the guards and invisible to the nobles. They cannot fight all nobles and all guards. But they can help in the wild.

If they do not react, the girl/boy is snatched by a Guard and hang on a lamp post, so fast that they cannot do anything against at that point. They can learn the same information after (from the Guard maybe)

Erpa I agree with you, playing with the environment is the best way to challenge PCs without rolling any dice.

As PF can be played with squares you can create path, block easy charge or Line of sights, requires the PCs to works as a team to bypass field elements.

A CR + a field element is a way to avoid having to upgrade your NPC too much.

... so I feel like if I can make challenging encounters it will help drive interest for other players, but I don't want the rest of the party being outshined and I don't want a TPK by increasing the difficulty. ..

Hi Nigel,

Having an optimized character is never a problem for a GM, it always a problem for the other players having less optimized character.
Unless playing two different games, the purpose of RPG is in most of the case to create a homogeneous team that fit together, combining different skills and being able to challenge greater threats that couldn't bear each individuals.

Having One only optimized character is unbalancing your group, if the group is ok with it, create the challenge according to the level of the group. Of course the level is raised by the optimized character.
If the group is not ok, make them create characters they agree with.

If the team agrees to have one character with a greater responsibility than you could challenge his tactics, offer him choices, attacking to one shot or defending his mates, multiply the enemies, some long distance threat combined with low harassing melee attacking the weakest. No one will stand fighting in front of him if every one knows he is that dangerous.

You may challenge him with a really strong enemy he can only take down using the talent of others, having to spend some research to discover the weak point, having a character doing a bait etc.

Your only limit is your imagination.