| Pooh |
I was in a similiar situation. First time DMing with a party of 6. I tried throwing hordes at them, they slaughtered them. I tried throwing villans too big for them and they just killed them. They were having a great time but i felt I wasn't challenging them enough. (note: later they told me they felt plenty challenged, I just didn't see it)
Finally, I came across was way to make them sweat a bit. Lots of little encounters. The bad guys (in this case mostly goblins) have learned they can't stand up to all this firepower so they harrass, harrass then harrass some more. By the end of the night the PCs and the players are tired and know they've worked for everything they got. The magic users are out of spells, the cleric out of channeling, the fighters are down hp. Great fun is had by all. (Also note: a couple of other threads have noted they don't like to kill the PCs, having little encounters allows you to scale your combats and wear them down while avoiding party fatalities.
Another thing is don't just use generic monsters, use the the templates and make a few "special". That helps unsettle the party a bit.
One more thing, I'm still trying to learn is how to run several "bad guy" magic users at once. The party has more than 1 magic user, why not the bad guys. I can run 1 just fine but 2 or 3 is tough for me.
Pooh