Minions. Lots of minions.
Take those reasonable, "die like pigs" enemies. Maybe even something a bit weaker than those. Then send them at the PC in waves and large numbers. Lots of weak enemies makes for an encounter that a melee-focused group like yours probably won't be able to take out in one or two rounds, but they'll probably still feel like they're accomplishing something as they take out one or two minions with every hit.
...And even if the weaker enemies can't generally hit their AC, throw enough of them at them and the natural 20s will inevitably happen.
Terrain.
Im in agreement with Adamantine Dragon on this one. Have your enemies use the terrain for their advantage. Have terrain where they have to make acrobatics checks or fall prone/loose an action. Have the enemies on higher ground that is sloped. At 20 move speed it takes forever to climb a slope.
Also throw a ton of low level monsters that have the exact same stats as they do in the bestiary except that they have way more hit points than they should. Give your monsters the GM Toughness feat (AKA as many hit points as you want).
Adding in just one sorcerer with a high init and spells that hinder but dont out right kill your party (like slow, confuse, glitterdust, color spray or any of the other good status spells) to the mix can slow things down (especially slow since they can only attack once OR move).
Or you can take the dickish route and have them fight trolls or anything else with regeneration. Since they don't have an arcane caster then it is really hard to kill something that takes cold or acid damage to kill without someone with acid splash or ray of frost in the party.
I'm not sure that unbalanced parties are supposed to be punished. They picked the kind of characters they wanted to play, right? Sure, you want it to be challenging, but you also want to provide the sort of adventure they want to have, and clearly they want to beat things with sticks. I can sympathize, that's the sort of game I like to play. I wouldn't necesarily always tool the encounters to their strengths, but it isn't as though they're doing something wrong by choosing the classes they did. (I'm not too sure about the fighter shield bash dude, but it sounds like he's having fun!)
As has been stated, there are magical means for the party to compensate for poor saves. And hordes of pinatas for the party to beat on can still be dangerous if there are enough of them, and they are big enough.
DMs may not believe that it is there job to make it easy for the party, but it is also not there job to enforce upon their players their own ideas about what players should be. A DM can always kill a party, that's easy. The challenge is to create scenarios in which the players feel like the heroes they want to be.
I recommend giving the party an enemy that they will love to hate. The enemy will taunt them terribly in their first encounter as they foil his plans, and then escape easily because the party made no effort at mobility. Afterward the players will say to each other, "How can we defeat that bastard? We have to come up with new tactics."
For example, the enemy could be an evil witch searching for a powerful magic item rumored to be in a particular dungeon hidden in the mountains. He intimidated a bandit gang into serving him, and the party encounters the bandits and witch roughing up innocent villagers trying to find anyone who knows the location of the hidden dungeon. While the party defeats the bandits, the witch hexes a few of them in humiliating ways to give the bandits a chance. When that is not effective, he decides that his bandits are not worth saving, shouts out promises of revenge later, and flies away. The villagers and any surviving bandits can tell the party about the witch's goals.
With a party like this the key is never have fewere enemies in the fight then there are party members. With that many damage dealers you cant get out actioned too. You almost have to look at it in reverse. A single cleric with a bunch of beat sticks is an encounter a dm would put in front of a normal party. Have a diverse group of enemies 5 or more that do things like battlefield control and ranged attacks, along with a frontliner or two, have the utility/control guys support the front liner opponent(s).
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Daroob made some excellent points about challenging your players while still allowing them to have fun. With that in mind, here are a few hints on how to challenge your players without crushing them utterly, and on how to push them to expand their skill sets while still allowing them play the characters they want to.
1 - Include decent ranged weapons in their loot. Thrown weapons and composite bows tend to work well for two-handed fighters. What you're looking for is something about 1-2 "+1"s below the party's main weapons - right in that spot where it's not worth selling right away but still good enough to be useful. Make sure to include at least one encounter where the ranged weapons come up BEFORE the PC's get a chance to sell them.
2 - Take the excellent advice given above about terrain and apply it to monsters that they have already defeated previously. Nothing spurs a party to adapt faster than taking three times as long to defeat an enemy they had previously stopped being scared of.
3 - Foreshadow the difficult fights. At this point they should be at least vaguely aware of the fact that some encounters are way more difficult for them. So give them warning that the next villain is a flying spellcaster, and hopefully they'll take steps to be ready. (Addendum - while I was typing this, Mathmuse gave an excellent example of how to do exactly this.)
4 - Don't beat them at their own game. What you want is for them to broaden their horizons, not continue to further specialize. That means that when they DO corner something in a flat-out brawl, they should be able to win spectacularly and have fun because of it.
Seems like I read a thread about Tucker's Kobolds a few weeks back. :)
But I guess I'm curious what you're trying to accomplish. Are you looking for ways to challenge them? I'd guess not because you already listed a few of them on your own. Are you looking for a way to make engaging them with their strengths fun for both you and them?
With a party like this the key is never have fewere enemies in the fight then there are party members. With that many damage dealers you cant get out actioned too. You almost have to look at it in reverse. A single cleric with a bunch of beat sticks is an encounter a dm would put in front of a normal party. Have a diverse group of enemies 5 or more that do things like battlefield control and ranged attacks, along with a frontliner or two, have the utility/control guys support the front liner opponent(s).
I do want to say that I'm not trying to punish them. If I wanted to punish them I'd just crap on them with deeper slumber from a flying sorcerer.
This reversal is what I was hinting at that I'm not comfortable with. The fun thing for most people is overcoming the dumb enemy.
6 ogres rush you. You take the high ground, split them with battlefield control, shoot arrows, take half of them when they come into range and the other half later. Dah dah dah. It is fun to be on the dishing side of that but it sucks to be on the receiving.
Bob and Tom, you are both trapped for 1d4 rounds. Sam and Matt, as you charge up the hill, take 12 damage from arrows. Next round, Sam and Matt, make saves against grease. Whoops, looks like Matt is the only one to make it to the enemy. Matt, take 12 more from arrows and 10 from swords. Your down?
The enemy holds up your body as a human shield and hostage.
This sort of thing could happen really easy to a group of people that move 60' on a full run.
The point is to make sure they still have a target but have others making sure the target isnt easy to bring down. Always have a few brutes the hitters can focus on and they will have fun, but if you want to make sure they dont go down like a sack of potatoes they need support and they need to be numerous.
I think the point is that you cant challenge them without beating them up a little. The important thing is to find a balance. You shouldnt ALWAYS exploit weaknesses or use enemies that have an advantage, but if you ignore that, then you have just made these characters dramatically more powerful then they already are, because they are min/maxed without a min so to speak. They need to be made aware of their disadvantages and go from there. Sometimes that will mean encounters will be less then pleasant, but that is really hte only way to keep them from being cakewalks.
Kill a few of them or all of them and let them make a better party.
The game i play in had a magus, a paladin, a fighter, a melee druid and a ranged inquisitor. Do you know what happened when things starting getting serious (9th level)? TPK
The new party is much better.
seems to me a magus, a paladin, a fighter, a druid and an inquisitor IS a balanced party....You have a pretty solid mix of casting, skills, and combat there.
Not all archers, but you should definitely have archers in your attacking parties. You should also include the odd druid that will entangle the melees.
Druid archers!
LOL, I thought I had the only druid archer in the entire RPG universe...
seems to me a magus, a paladin, a fighter, a druid and an inquisitor IS a balanced party....You have a pretty solid mix of casting, skills, and combat there.
We had no meaningful spellcasting (remember the magus' spellcasting mainly adds to his combat ability, the druid had better things to do and the inquisitor.... well the inquisitor player doesn't know a lot of things so instead he was just full attacking), we defeated a sorcerer lich only because we had the paladin and the number of previous encounters was cut in half becuase of an out of game reason, and when we were finally against foes who had a wizard with them we lost big time simply becuase we didn't have a wizard of our own and the enemy wizard was going circles around us.
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LOL, I thought I had the only druid archer in the entire RPG universe...Not all archers, but you should definitely have archers in your attacking parties. You should also include the odd druid that will entangle the melees.
Druid archers!
Druids actually make good archers, especially as NPCs. Give them a horse animal companion, and have them self buff prior to combat with aspect of the falcon and cat's grace. A level 3 elf druid can pull off point-blank shot and rapid shot, and can ride his animal companion at 50 ft. without taking mounted archery penalties. One of those is CR 2, and if you throw in some mooks to block for him you can make a CR 3 or CR 4 encounter that shows them one of their weaknesses without necessarily being deadly (as once his allies are defeated the druid just curses you and rides away).
I see some offering advice using terrain against this party. Also consider using terrain that favors the party for encounters where there are archers, spell caster and flying creature.
The balance issue is that you feel limited by feeding the party fight that they will tear apart in fear that if you use any other encounter it will TPK them.
seems to me a magus, a paladin, a fighter, a druid and an inquisitor IS a balanced party....You have a pretty solid mix of casting, skills, and combat there.We had no meaningful spellcasting (remember the magus' spellcasting mainly adds to his combat ability, the druid had better things to do and the inquisitor.... well the inquisitor player doesn't know a lot of things so instead he was just full attacking), we defeated a sorcerer lich only because we had the paladin and the number of previous encounters was cut in half becuase of an out of game reason, and when we were finally against foes who had a wizard with them we lost big time simply becuase we didn't have a wizard of our own and the enemy wizard was going circles around us.
Buffs and attack spells are meaningful spell casting. If an encounter can ONLY be dealt with specifically by having a 'god' style wizard in the party something is wrong with the encounter. And if the druid and inquisitor werent using their spells that has nothing to do with party balance that is player competance, I find it hard to believe that was solved with new characters.
There's nothin inherently unbalanced about the party class makeupp, but how the individual characters were built could contribute to potential balance issues.
Crush them like bugs.
Buffs and attack spells are meaningful spell casting. If an encounter can ONLY be dealt with specifically by having a 'god' style wizard in the party something is wrong with the encounter. And if the druid and inquisitor werent using their spells that has nothing to do with party balance that is player competance, I find it hard to believe that was solved with new characters.seems to me a magus, a paladin, a fighter, a druid and an inquisitor IS a balanced party....You have a pretty solid mix of casting, skills, and combat there.We had no meaningful spellcasting (remember the magus' spellcasting mainly adds to his combat ability, the druid had better things to do and the inquisitor.... well the inquisitor player doesn't know a lot of things so instead he was just full attacking), we defeated a sorcerer lich only because we had the paladin and the number of previous encounters was cut in half becuase of an out of game reason, and when we were finally against foes who had a wizard with them we lost big time simply becuase we didn't have a wizard of our own and the enemy wizard was going circles around us.
In order not to derail the thread any further
What buffs? From the magus? The little buffs that the magus gets are mostly self buffs that simply allow him to be able to stand in melee?
When you have a "god" wizard supporting the enemies you need a "god" wizard yourself or you just leave yourself at the mercy the enemy wizard.
I give you the inquisitor, but the druid was doing the best he could, he was contributing much more as a beast with 3-5 attacks and smite than he would be helping with some spellcasting, sure he casted when it was absolutely neccesary but there are so much a low level druid can cast inside the confines of a city.
What about using proactive enemies? Instead of the enemy waiting for them, maybe the enemy brings the battle to them but fully prepped.
What about having more weaker creatures but have them use better tactics? Aid Another kicks butt with large quantities of kobolds.
What about non-combat encounters too? Traps may not stop them but they can slow them down. Combine the traps with creatures and you could have more interesting encounters.
What about using the terrain more? An encounter with lizardfolk is alright, but what about having to deal with the water too? Throw in some other creatures, like crocodiles and leeches, and now the encounter is much more challenging.