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Well as it happened we all talked it over after the latest TPK and we decided on a new campaign with clearly defined goals and the like. I want to thank everyone for the great advice though, I really appreciate it.

Scavion, I agree with you about the loot. I'd been giving them less loot than normal for their level since they had two crafters and I'd expected them to make their own gear, but when they wound up crafting nothing except adding enhancement bonuses I overcorrected and gave them too much loot. I think the wand was good but I agree the rest was a mistake. I will say that the crafting players built their characters to be crafters even before the campaign began; they didn't pick up those feats later. On the note of five character changes, I think I may have miscommunicated. One player left entirely. One player joined. One player swapped his character. That should be the sum total of character shifitng; you are right about not being attached to a certain extent. The player who swapped has a reputation in our group for having no attachment to his characters.

Nyerkh, you were right about different expectations. They really liked the exploration and history/mystery aspects, as well as interacting with NPCs. They DID like combat, at least that's what they told me. I believe them because they were actually working together and working smart in the final dungeon; even taking a full day to prepare themselves (though in the end some unlucky die rolls and one hasty mistake did them in). A few players mentioned afterwards that they felt the party dynamic (in game, not between the actual players) was a bit toxic, so perhaps it's for the best that we're changing stories. We talked about expectations for the new campaign. It's a lower level and slower xp progression with a small town guard. Everyone is on the same page and this time the characters actually all get along.

Wish me luck.

I'm not confident that this is all on the players. It's homebrew, and encounter design is an art.

From in this thread:

12 dretches = 12 CR2 = 6 cr4 = 3 cr 6 ~ cr 9. Ok, well and good. But 12 dretches = 12 stinking clouds... Even if the PC's are optimized to make the DC 13 on anything but a 1, you can expect 1/2 the PC's to be nauseated as of rd 1... I don't know the party APL when they had this encounter, but...

A magma dragon with a minimum hoard of 125000 gp (wand of restoration = 26000 gp minimum, Greater strand of beads 98600 gp), even at a dragon's triple treasure, that's a CR18'ish hoard... Again, I don't know the party APL (but it is apparently currently 10).

It occurs to me that there might be a reason they are overfocusing on #'s optimization as opposed to diversity...

Not to mention, you say they do their scouting, research, and prep but they keep getting blindsided... They may not be dumb - they know the DM has infinite options to surprise them with, and they can't prepare for all of them...So they are loading up their core competencies and hoping for the best.

Great points, so I'll try to clarify some of this. Also, in case you missed it, I have run other published campaigns with this group, such as Emerald Spire and Mummy's Mask, and the problems don't change any. Instead of complaining about my homebrew world, they just complain that Pathfinder adventure writers write unbalanced books.

Anyway, you're right about the dretches, but they ran away during the second round of combat (and actually managed to get enough distance to truly flee) so I don't know what would have happened if they stayed to fight. They were level 9 at the time.

Due to the way they've gone about exploring (and the fact that most of the game is in wilderness without enemies to loot) they were a bit behind in terms of loot. By a couple levels actually. I therefore made an ad hoc adjustment to the treasure for that one encounter to bring them in line with what they should have already had. Moreover, they knew about the magma dragon from day one and after a few in game months of recon they knew they would need to be around 9th level or so to be able to really challenge it.

I would agree with your statement that they are afraid of the infinite options that may attack them, but they've only been blindsided once or twice. They are perfectly aware of what creature types exist, and the encounters where they truly complain the most about difficulty are actually the encounters where they knew what they were getting into ahead of time (e.g. the oni, the magma dragon "it can fly and only the gunslinger and wizard have ranged", etc).

Expecting every player to be prepared for every type of enemy at every moment is quite frankly, unreasonable. You are more likely to lose players if you try to force the issue.

That said... if the group repeatedly encounters enemies with the same weaknesses and strengths and doesn’t prepare for them, then their fate is on them, not you... even the most focused and specialized group should be keen enough to pick up on a trend and prepare to counter it... on the other hand if you are throwing enemies with a varried array of strengths and weaknesses at them at every turn... then you may need to tone things back... if one encounter acid is your best friend, but the next it is useless and cold is your only hope, followed immediately by magic immunity... there is no hope that your players will prepare for everything. Let them specialize, and stick to a fairly predictable setup... allow them to learn that they need x and y at all times instead of expecting them to bring everything and the kitchen sink...

I agree, but when your party says that a creature with lightning immunity (a group of 12 dretches by the by) feels like a personal attack on the character because his best spell is elec based, my view is that the issue isn't that they aren't prepared for every type of enemy. It's that they aren't prepared for any type of enemy that isn't a point and shoot problem like a goblin or gnoll. So far they've mostly faced demons, daemons, and magical beasts, with a couple other creature types thrown in from time to time. Oh, also a couple of dragons, one random, two sought out. The random one they curb stomped. The other two almost killed them.

Haven't they even heard of the Big Six? They have no stat boosting items? No cloaks of protection?

If they refuse to learn, you should start a new campaign using inherent bonuses, so no need to spend money on boring but necessary pluses. That would also take care of the Cloak of Resistance issue.

Funny you should mention that - they have. It's one of the few wondrous items they actually save up for, Artofregicide was right about that aspect of minmaxing, though with how much they get beat up I'm not sure they really qualify as minmaxers.

I didn't think about the inherent bonuses idea, but now that you mention I think that's what I'm going to do if there's a TPK again. I do like the story of this campaign, and I know the party does too, but I've given them so many MacGuffins that I think starting fresh with a much lower level (again) and the inherent bonus system might be a good idea.

My biggest worry about starting low level is actually the party. They complain all the time about how low level play is no fun because everything can kill you and you have no options. I'm inclined to agree, but I also don't get myself killed at level 8 fighting a CR 8 monster.

Thanks for all the advice guys, I think I'm going to have to agree with the tough love approach. Just to clear the air on player experience, this is not a new party. They have all played multiple campaigns, two starting at level 1, one starting at level 11, and this one. Absolutely none are new to this system though some have a year or two more experience than others. This has in fact been a recurring problem that has somehow become worse with this campaign. Two campaigns ago we played Mummy's Mask (though a very stupid TPK involving intentionally setting off a trap at the end of book 2 ended that) and they made good use of everything they could find, even if they weren't the most imaginative group I've ever had, which did come back to bite them once or twice.

I thought they would be more creative in this campaign because two players leaned into crafting magic and one crafts mundane weapons, but they've somehow become LESS interested in using unusual gear.

TL;DR the party isn't new to the game and has gone from appreciating wands and consumables to ignoring most forms of gear.

Sorry to be back here griping so soon after my last query, but I think this issue might be relevant to more people than just me so maybe it can help other GMs with similar issues. I'm going to run down what I think my players are doing wrong and give some examples of how I've tried to help. Then you guys can tell me where I went right, where I went wrong, and what has worked for y'all in the past.

I'm running a kingdom building and exploration campaign in a homebrew world with a party of five. They recently hit level ten (they started at fifth) and it's been a rough ride. Party composition has changed around some since one player changed his character, one player left, and another player is joining next session, but it looks roughly like this: wizard, ranged martial, occultist/fighter multiclass, disciple of the pike cavalier, melee martial. Ranged martial was a thrower, now a gunslinger. Melee martial was a brawler, he left and the player joining is a melee focused warpriest.

I am really loathe to say someone is playing wrong or GMing wrong because we all have our styles and wants but I think I can safely say their playing wrong. Every player has nearly died many times, everyone has died at least once, and a few players have died more than once. There has been one TPK and one effective TPK though technically a few were still alive; they were just permanently out of commission. During the two TPK events, the party had, coincidentally, met with a powerful entity. The first was a patron demigod and the second was a fae lord. In both cases, they were able to bargain for their resurrection/healing for some price. In the other deaths they bought scrolls or paid for casting of spells. I've also been generous on a couple occasions behind the screen and fudged some otherwise lethal rolls against party members. Perhaps that was too generous of me, IDK.

With all this death and danger, I'd thought they might realize that they aren't diversifying their options. They spend all the money they get on four things: better weapons, better armor, scrolls (for the wizard to copy and that's it), and crafting (wizard crafts wondrous items and armor and weapons, occultist crafts healing potions). They aren't interested in anything that isn't those four things.

For example, they were fighting oni last time, and I knew no one had fire or acid attacks (occultist doesn't have evocation and wizard is from the metal school) so I stuck in a wand of acid arrow with 14 charges halfway through the adventure so they could finish off the rest without using their torches (which I had to remind them they had since no one could think of how to deal fire damage). Another example comes from fighting a magma dragon. In the hoard they found, among other things a wand of restoration and a strand of prayer beads (greater version, and they know what it does). They decided no one needed the prayer beads and since no one in the party had the spell on their list, they decided to toss out the wand. One of the players mentioned that the warpriest joining next week could use it. The wizard mentioned that the party didn't know she was joining so it didn't matter. I mentioned that they have two allied NPCs who can use the wand and would be more than happy to use it on them when they are at home base so they don't have to keep paying for that spell. They decided to sell the wand anyway. They wound up being unable to sell the beads because the town doesn't have the money to buy that, but they still view it as "useless to us."

So my problem is that they want to go out and adventure and come back and craft up new items for themselves, but no one is using the stuff they get that's useful and no one is actually crafting useful items anyway. They all hoard money until they have enough to buy the next +1 enhancement for their gear or they HAVE to pay for healing or spellcasting. How do I show them that they need to have a diverse set of gear? One of my favorite features of Pathfinder is that even the most inflexible build can become somewhat adaptable with some magic gear. Oils of alignment, potions of invisibility, wands with useful spells, rings with niche but super beneficial powers, these things give the party the power to face anything because someone always has something useful on hand. I can't figure out how to get the party to understand that the reason their coming closer to dying more and more is because they haven't diversified their gear since they started the campaign.

Or maybe this is all in my head. The encounters look fairly balanced on paper from what I can tell. No one has complained that fights are unbalanced. Suggestions anyone?

Languages: telepathy 100 ft.

Would it also make sense for it to be able to speak Aklo or is that just too weird?

Adaptive Mutation (Su): every round as a swift action, a Lamb of Niggurath may select mutations worth up to 1d4+4 points from the table below:

- +20ft base speed 1pt
- Climb 20ft 1pt
- Fly 60ft (clumsy) 4pts
- increase one size category* 1pt
- increase natural reach by 5ft* 1pt
- +2 Str* 1pt
- +2 Dex* 1pt
- add one slam attack* (base damage 1d3) 1pts
- add one bite attack* (base damage 1d6) 2pts
- increase base damage of one type of natural attack by one step* 1pt/attack affected
-Split (see ability below) 3pts

*this ability can be chosen multiple times, even on the same turn.
A typical Lamb of Niggurath may have a maximum of 25 points worth of mutations at one time. If a Lamb of Niggurath would choose a mutation that would put it over this limit, the newest mutation replaces another of equal or greater value of the Lamb of Niggurath's choice.

I absolutely love this ability. I would only suggest a change that the number of points is less variable; I think 1d3+5 would work well. Also, how long do the changes last?

Horrific Appearance (Su):

Creatures that succumb to a Lamb of Niggurath's horrific appearance take 1 Wisdom bleed for 2d4+4 rounds.

I'm not sure bleed is the right term, I think damage is what goes here. I'm wondering if it would be more beneficial for the lamb (given that most of its power comes from spending points to increase its strength) to let the lamb choose one of the three mental scores to damage. It would choose the score when the initial saving throw is failed.

*edited for code

46: Around the World in 8 Rooms

A local manor house of an eccentric wizard has had some strange noises coming from it the past few days and no one who goes to check in has returned. The party is hired on to go figure out what on earth is happening. From the outside looking in, the building is fairly normal, but once inside the entrance hall the door shuts and won't open. Each door off the main hall opens into somewhere else, showcasing biomes from all over the planet (and maybe even other planets and planes). To find the creator and maybe save those who are still alive, the PCs will need to enter each "room" to seek out any clues or magic trinkets that can be used to set things right; assuming they can even find what artifact is doing this to the house.

Not really formatted correctly, and I know there's probably stuff I forgot to put in, but here's what I wound up with. Thoughts?

Drogadón CR 9 CN medium aberration
aura: psychidelic presence (30 ft.)
senses: darkvision 60 ft.
hp 105 (14d8+42)
speed 40 ft., fly 15 ft. (poor)
Fort 8 Ref 7 Will 12 | BAB 10 | AC 24 (+2 Dex, +1 Dodge, +11 Natural armor)
resistances: acid 5, sonic 5 | immunities: fear effects, polymorph | fast healing 5 | DR 5/lawful
attacks: bite +16 (1d6+5 plus 1d4 Int damage), 2 hooves +13 (1d6+5)
Str 21 Dex 15 Con 15 Int 9 Wis 17 Cha 22
Feats: Weapon Focus (bite), Great Fortitude, Toughness, Multiattack, Power Attack, Ability Focus (psychidelic presence), Dodge
Skills: Fly +11, Climb +10, Intimidate +20, Preception +20, Swim +12
SQ: psychidelic presence, aberrant repairs, amorphous
Psychidelic Presence: Drogadóns appear so fundamentally weird that they harm the minds of those who behold them. Any creature that begins its turn within 30 ft. of the drogadón that can see it must make a DC 25 Will save or take 1d3 Wis damage. A creature that saves against the aura is immune to that drogadón's psychidelic presence for 24 hours. The saving throw is Charisma based.
Aberrant Repairs: When a drogadón would take damage from a critical hit, the extra damage is negated and its body splits open to reveal a dark void. Random legs, heads, and other body parts emerge and spin about in a sort of horrific assembly line to construct a new drogadón. The new one has one fifth the hp of the original drogadón, and lacks the psychidelic presenc eand aberrant repairs abilities but is in all other respects a drogadón. This new creature starts on its own initiative in a space chosen by the parent drogadón. If no adjacent square is available, it flies itslesf to the nearest available one; this movement does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

Yeah, I'm wondering if immunity to critical hits might go as well. I would envision such a creature likely just developing whatever lost item was needed and moving it to the "right" place. And it doesn't seem to have an anatomy that really allows criticals to work. Maybe immunity to coup de grace as well?

Would an aura of some kind make sense?

Current thoughts are CR 9 aberration with:
-crit immunity
-regenerate lost limbs/head as move action (thus curing it of any ability damage it may have taken from the loss)
-bite and slam attacks
-primary threat coming from supernatural abilites that damage Wis or Int

So I am doing some homebrew writing in a land with a lot of weird stuff, right? I come across an absolute gem of a weird video and decided I'd make a monster out of it.

Here's the goal:
-CR 9
-aberration/fey/magical beast (not sure which yet)
-In some way resembles the absolute madness embodied in the video above.

So my wonderful brainstormers, anyone want to help with ideas for abilities/type/spells/feats?

Estoc critical builds are a lot of fun I find (mostly because I like the image), but in my opinion, if you've got no proficiency requirements to worry about, go with a psychic caster (occultist might be easiest since it only requires good Int), and then grab a tower shield and falcata and grab as many critical feats as you can. Improved Critical is great because you'll have a 17-20/x3 crit and then you can stack on Bleeding Critical to have great damage over time; then just grab whatever suits your playstyle. Take evocation, conjuration, abjuration, or transmutation implements to buff yourself and you can be a one-man magical tank. Bonus points for prestige-ing into an esoteric knight later.

The fact he won against some tough monsters also makes me wonder how if he doesn't have his mount. A cavalier is lethal with a mount but one without while a solid martial class he's not a killing machine. You have said he's killed several monster with little or no help from the party. That alone makes me wonder about those fights. A CR fight is based on a party of four. You have three and the cavalier seems to do all the heavy lifting and killing. The fact he is barely hurt also makes me question his equipment magical or otherwise.

Against spellcasters he should be hurting more or getting stopped completely.

As for damage output, several lucky crits with a +2 or +3 bec-de-corbin and a judicious use of challenges. Low damage because those same fights had monsters with unlucky low rolls. I think I gave a slightly off impression, there have been fights where it wasn't just him, but there have been enough that it's notable. He may have also built his character wrong and was giving higher numbers than he should have had, but I didn't want to double check a 13th level character.

You're totally right about him being bad against spells, and I started to use caster more often.

Either way, the campaign ended. I found a natural stopping point for the story and we've started again with a new campaign, a larger group, and lower levels. I've also made sure to check that the characters are built correctly and I've been very careful about double checking gear.
Unfortunately, even though he's now a wizard (and easy to kill), he feels he's carrying combat because of high damage spells. I think this is a player problem and I'll have to find some way to talk to him about it. At least it's simpler to deal with a cocky wizard than a cocky cavalier. I hope.

He's what alignment? What order? One or both of them might have made a difference. Some orders won't let you attack without provacation.

CG, Order of the Land. He is the lord of a very small village area and his character concept is "hero of the people" type with a strong emphasis on "I'm going to do everything to protect my people and I don't trust anyone else to do so."

He hasn't really been THAT far out of alignment. Just pushy sometimes.

It's really entertaining to see everyone jump onto the only side of the argument presented... I would want to see actual sessions, and what both player A the other 'socially focused' players are actually doing and capable of doing, before I trash player A. He may very well have a point.

There's a lot of armchair psychology going on here about "fear" and safe spaces... From people who don't have enough information to reasonably make such a "diagnosis".

Player A is a cavalier who dumped all his and time into obtaining strong weapons and armor. The "social players" are an alchemist (saboteur archetype) who is pretty good at field control though not so much with single target damage and a slayer who could have been optimized a bit better but is still putting out a respectable amount of damage with sneak attack and a magic sword.

Example of where cavalier shines: They had to fight a froghemoth and leng spider (they'd made enemies with the spider and the froghemoth was part of a random event). Alchemist kept distance and was pretty good at debuffing and splashing both enemies even when the two monsters pincered them. Slayer had a pretty low AC (21 iirc) and got hit a lot, went down in round 3 or 4, but took a did a decent amount of damage first (1/3 or 1/2 of leng spider's hp). Cavalier, on foot since his horse had been stolen, basically soloed the froghemoth and did about 1/3 of the total damage to the spider. He lost maybe half his health.

Example of where the other two tried to shine but things went weird: Party encountered a copper dragon that was interested in an evil artifact they had just recovered. It wanted to take the artifact and seal it away; party also wanted to take the artifact and seal it but didn't trust the dragon. Social players tried to reason with the dragon and explain their motives. The dragon didn't appear receptive at first and the cavalier told the other two they'd have to fight their way out so he went to attack. Copper dragon got the higher initiative and took them out with hideous laughter immediately. Luckily the slayer got a good Diplo roll so they bargained and got out safely, though without the artifact.

Not the greatest examples but I hope that they kinda get across what I mean. I really am not saying that I think anyone is wrong here. I just want to know how to make the two groups see eye-to-eye and both have fun. After a session yesterday the slayer mentioned how she was feeling shunted by the cavalier's playstyle.

Part of the answer is encounter variety. Another part is party level and composition. The final part is player personality.

I'm guessing the party is low level and the fighter character shines whilst the others' haven't really come online. Most of the encounters are on featureless terrain and become straight melee battles. The social encounters don't have lasting repercussions when they turn into battles.

Actually they're around 13th at the moment. The warrior (cavalier) is simply designed around pumping out maximum damage and tanking everything while the rest of the party is built around an image and character concept, and they aren't nearly as strong because some of their abilities don't synergize, with anything come to think of it. In a certain sense I'd call that bad character design but they really love their characters so I don't really think I can fault them for it.

I'll try to change up more encounter types though, thanks!

I'm not sure how much info anyone will want so I'll give a bit of a preamble in case it helps any. Bear with me, I swear there's an actual problem I could use advice on.

So I'm running in a homebrew world (if that helps anyone find answers to my issue) but it's nothing drastically different from the main setting. I've run a few campaigns in it and I'm about to start up a new one with a party of three, possibly four if we find another player. This campaign is going to be mythic, and I'm looking forward to playing around with the wild adventures such power allows in a campaign.

The first player (I'll call him the warrior) has a very standard view of what a party needs and, as a result, tends to build tanks because none of my other players build characters with an AC higher than, say 25 at a high level. Personally, I don't like it when my players decide to ditch an interesting character idea to just fill in a check box, but I understand that that's my preference; I'm not upset by it. In addition to building tanks, he has a tendency to only play fighters or cavaliers and build characters putting out as much damage as possible (Power Attack, only 2h weapons, the standard stuff). As a result, he can, and often does, just wade right on up to big bad enemies and wail on them until they die. Not a problem really, I just need to provide encounters that offer some challenge or require creative approaches. Except....

The other two players in this campaign don't build powerful characters. They're not building weaklings by any stretch, they're just not nearly on the statistical level that the warrior is on. Let's call these other two the story players. The story players build characters with backstory and concept at the forefront. This typically results in characters that are decent at what they do, and won't set any records but won't be left behind. Except by the warrior when it comes to AC and sheer damage output. This playstyle is also fine, and I am not complaining about them either.

The issue is that the warrior has a tendency to remark (not infrequently) on how he has to carry the party a lot. He very seriously believes this and I can see why. He has a very dominant personality and tend to have the party deal with problems in a way that plays to his own strengths, even if the rest of the party wants to try another route (shooting a bandit captain in the head because he felt the story players weren't making any headway in their diplomacy). Not that he doesn't do social stuff, but if he is lacking a skill that he needs in a social situation, he'll just go with what he's good at and, to quote him "make things go my way." The end result is that when the party looks back on what they've done in the past session, it really does look like he carried the party, and he remarks about how he was right about what to do, though this is frequently because his intuitions are self-fulfilling prophecies.

This hasn't become a problem for the other players yet (so far as I know). No one has complained and there has been no conflict. He is fairly good about staying in character though sometimes it's hard to tell what is in character and what is him personally. However, it's beginning to wear on me a bit and I'm worried that his actions might make the other players feel bad about their playstyle (one player in particular has been playing for a little bit now but is still shy about asking for help). I'd like to give the story players the ability to go down a path without the warrior deciding that they have to do it in a way that he personally excels at. Maybe this is all in my head but I've been GMing for 8 or 9 years now with a few different groups and I don't think I'm imagining the issues this could cause down the line.

Does anyone have advice on how I can:
1) Help show the warrior that, no, he is not carrying the party and that characters don't have to be amazing in combat to be considered good;
2) Help ensure that the other characters have moments to shine?

Thanks for your help guys!