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Hey all, might be a question I will get flamed for but willing to ask it anyway... Are there any really interesting ways to kill/challenge the party? Bear in mind that I am not trying to outright kill them, (thats easy if I want to be a jerk being the GM I can simply say rocks fall no save you all die, but thats boring and stupid, and would probobly kill any dynamic of the group.) I have heard from friends about monsters, dungeons,traps and other things that were used that were up to -4 APL and still either made a TPK or almost TPK and the party had a great time with it... just wondering about how I can improve on upping the challenge in my campaign without just saying rocks fall you die.
I am a fan of games where players and GM create the story together, so if anyone has any advice on that as well please let me know.
Thanks again!
Ruuak
"Interesting ways" for me are when the opponents are often more than bags of HP for the party to overpower.
This starts with your level of storytelling and ends with your knowledge of monster abilities.
For example:
"You see three Hobgoblins approaching. Roll initiative!"
versus
"You see three heavily muscled, military looking humanoids who remind you of goblins if not for the fact that they tower over you in size and your trained eyes can not other than to remark that they seem extremely disciplined."
The mix traps, hidden foes, bad terrain into it and even a bunch of Kobolds can be interesting and very challenging.
Ok thanks MicMan, I can definetly start here, I recently started adding voices for NPCs and monsters if they speak the language and so forth which has been really helping, thanks again!
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While PF isn't necessarily the best system for this approach, adding some alternative objectives in the encounters can add a lot to the game.
It could be:
- Disabling the magical pillars providing a protective field around the spellcasting boss.
- Usable enviroment in all forms an shapes. It might just restrict movement, but it might also provide opportunities for throwing enemies into pits.
- The need to protect certain NPCs present might require a change of tactics.
- The need for holding of a seemingly endless swarm of enenies, while A) the party mage attunes to this or that item, or B) the party rogue get the door open for the group to proceed.
- Escape senarious, where winning is something else than just killing all the monster. Althernatively for the dungeon-style encounter, having a room being flooded, thus making crossing the room more important than killing the present enemies.
- Flying enemies that suddenly makes held actions necessary.
In my opinion, it adds a lot of enjoyment to the game, if the encounters are created so I don't get the feeling of just having to full-attack every single round yet another time. Most of the time, in PF, the best approach is to make whatever attack routine, you have specialized in.
If you, as a GM, can create alternatives to this, I believe to outcome is pleased and well-entertained players, even though you run the risk of making an encounter too easy or too difficult at times.
Ok Herald I like your ideas and I thank you for your response especially the one about flooding the room and the ideas that spawned in my head, thank you very much!
Ruuak
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Difficult terrain always makes things interesting, especially when different levels (height) come into play. A few memorable encounters from our group's past come to mind:
-Fighting along a narrow cliff edge during a storm. (Don't forget the weather!)
-A battle with giants on a giant-sized staircase, with the giants on the high ground.
-A chase scene plus battle along the rooftops of a city, also making use of the alleys and even a sewer entrance from the street below.
It's also a nice change of pace to back the PCs into a corner from time to time without an easy exit.
-A snow cave
-A giant's aquarium. It's always easier to climb in a pool than to climb out.
-A one-way portal of some kind
Or, have the conditions of the battlefield neutralize one or two of the player's favorite fighting styles:
-A gas leak: even a spark from two swords hitting just right could set it off.
-Have the players walk across eggs, trying not to unleash what's inside.
-A clever opponent who positions himself behind a pool of quicksand to intercept a charging opponent.
Just a few ideas.
You would be amazed how much one casting of Silent Image can mess with a party.
If you are using humanoid foes, I'd suggest thinking through some of their strategies. You can even get ideas from the players, in this regard. Intelligent foes can think strategically, and that can make them far, far more challenging than their abilities might suggest.
For instance, a healer with invisibility cast on them can be devastating. Healing doesn't break invisibility since it's not an attack, and foes that just don't seem to die can throw the party for a loop.
In fact, they may never even know there was a healer at all, and once the PCs have mostly defeated all the baddies, the healer can creep off to alert reinforcements further in the dungeon...
There are a lot of strategies like this, which I find a lot of DMs don't seem to use. Putting archers at long range behind cover, having the wizard flying, giving the BBEG a dozen low-level casters with wands of fireball...
Locate the party's weaknesses. Every character has a soft spot. Every supposedly over-powered build has a weakness. Vary encounters. Vary locations and circumstances. You can have them fight nothing but orc barbarians for a level, and they won't get bored (as fast) if each fight has another element. I'm fond of burning buildings and sinking ships.
If you can, tell us more about the party and your players' typical tactics.
My favorite is to bend the fourth wall and actually throw a puzzle in front of the players (not the characters.) It's an easy way to break up a group of optimized characters, because it doesn't matter how well the character is built, if the player can't solve the puzzle, they're hosed.
For instance, I was DM'ing a mini-campaign that was modeled after a Zelda game (temples filled with a mix of puzzles and deadly monsters; with a magic item/spell they acquired midway through that would allow them to finish the temple and level up.)
On one session, they entered a series of ruins that held a crazed wizard that laid traps and puzzles everywhere. When the group entered one room, I pulled back a curtain which had been hiding seven paper cutouts hanging from a string and paperclip. Each cutout was six connected squares, sort of like tetris pieces. I then said,
"An inscription glimmers in the air before you in shimmering green letters:
Seven shapes float before you
But three of them are lies
And even the barest touch of the
three lethally electrifies
The four you need each make a cube
when folded in just the right way
Choose those four carefully my friends
if in the mortal realm you wish to stay"
... the idea being that they have to pluck shapes hanging from the ceiling and try to bend them into a cube. Four of them work; three of them do not. You can choose the amount/style of damage (or, heck, make it actually lethal.)
Another puzzle had them choosing from a set of ropes. Each rope looped around a bit, but both ends were taped to a piece of paper. They had to choose the ropes that, when they pulled on the ends, would result in a knot (some, when pulled, would simply result in a straight taut rope.
Anyway, if you're looking for something that's possibly lethal, this is a great way to do it, and the players will even love you for it. You've got complete control over the difficulty and penalties for failure, so you can easily dip it into lethal territory.
Tucker's Kobolds.
Baring that, Pugwumpis. Mix them in hidden with some gnolls with PC levels and watch the players cry. Make the learn to hate these things. Anybody who has gone through
I suddenly remeber my own party of level 3 or 4 characters. We were nearly killed by a challenge ratting 1 or 2 swarm because swarm. No one could hurt it because we had no splash weapons and it did damage and poison because it was a spider swarm. Sometimes a monster for which the party has no weapon and or defense can be enough.
Crushed under a massive boulder wearing a ring of regeneration and a ring of sustenance.
Having a medium or large creature wearing small sized magic armor walk into an anti-magic field.
There are many, many ways to "challenge" a party. Here's a short list:
1. Tactics. Frankly this is probably the least utilized technique in the games I've seen. Neither the GM nor the players usually bother to actually work out effective tactics. Just a bit of tactical forethought can make a seemingly easy encounter into a potential TPK. e.g. Tucker's kobolds.
2. Traps. Not your garden variety pit trap or even your diabolical hallway of razor-sharp pendulums. Instead traps can be multi-layered affairs that can drive a party insane. I like to take the old Joker's style of traps where just when the party thinks they've solved a really nasty trap, they suddenly realize that they have instead triggered a far more deadly one.
3. Curse/gaeas. This is really something you should reserve for experienced mature players because nobody likes having their character compelled into doing something. But giving the party the goal of stopping one of their own member from doing something evil can really challenge minmaxed parties who view every situation as something that can be resolved by killing everything in sight.
4. Rescue the hostage. Time limit, or some other restriction that forces the party make difficult choices under heavy stress.
5. Harassment. This is another seriously under-utilized approach to dealing with parties. Wear them down with attacks which bleed their most powerful spells dry then send the real BBEG after them.
I find that hazards are an oft underutilized but very power tool to turn your garden variety dungeon crawl into more memorable and dangerous encounters. You can use simple ones like difficult terrain or a slippery floor, or go advanced with narrow ledges and fights over ravines. Like someone said above, don't forget about weather! Rain and winds can really make archery more difficult, while fog can make a fight that much more scary. I've actually had PCs survive a tornado at one point while dealing with kobolds. Flooding, windstorms, and blizzards are scary too. In fact, temperature effects can mess with those that aren't prepared.
Honestly, read and use a lot of what is mentioned in Chapter 13 of the Core Rule Book. It'll breathe more life into your encounters, make them more memorable and interesting, and really get your players to play smarter and more careful.
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I once ran a slightly modified version of an idea I found in an old issue of Dungeon magazine. The PC's all had ties to an urban city, and felt a certain degree of responsibility for protecting it. An unfriendly mage, who I was building up to be a nemesis for the PC's dropped a Joker/Riddler style scenario in their laps, in the form of a series of delayed blast optimized fireballs, trapped in amber gemstones, scattered around the city and set to explode at a specific time (say three hours from now). There were a series of clues that hinted at where each explosive device was.
I then reached beneath the table, pulled out a digital alarm clock, switched the alarm switch on, and said, "When this alarm goes off, the explosives go off. Now, Go!" They had to tell me what their characters were doing, solve the riddles, and retrieve the devices, all in three hours "real time" instead of game time. This made for a VERY interesting session, as it basically eliminated all the hemming and hawing and min/max strategizing that normally happens, as each player takes 20 minutes deciding which weapon to use, etc. In fact, the players actively avoided combat, because it's such a time sink. They also avoided splitting the party up, which would have slowed them down as well. I more or less ignored travel time, figuring the city was small enough, they could get where they needed to go pretty quickly, and that travel time would be simulated by the additional time it took to describe their deeds in words, rather than simply doing them.
The locations of the explosives varied greatly, requiring different tactics. One was in an area of high civilian concentration. One was at the bottom of a dam (on the water-filled side, of course) whose detonation would have flooded the city. One was at the top of a tall sculpture, requiring a series of successful climb checks to retrieve. You get the idea.
They also had to figure out what the heck to do with all these explosives, since the party's spell casters were not high enough level to dispel them.
The best part was, the whole scenario was really a diversion, to distract the PC's while the mage busted one of his henchmen (who the PC's had captured) out of prison. They figured this out near the end, and showed up just in time to see the escape vehicle (a stagecoach) pull away from the prison with the henchman at the reins. The whole scenario ended with a wild-west-style stagecoach chase through crowded city streets.
Basically, it was a blast! Don't remember the name of the Dungeon article, unfortunately.
This probably won't take out the entire party, but a way to take out one character is to have an assassination attempt on him/her. Then have signs posted around town with the characters likeness (based on how the character describes him/herself), but with a different name. Keep it as general as possible (roughly this height, weight, hair color, race, equipment, etc...).
Case of mistaken identity for the assassins.
Possibly a warning: This individual is a conman, and will readily pretend to be someone else.
You can expand it to the others by claiming that this individual often works with new teams, and they're welcome to be taken in for a reward (dead or alive).
All you have to do then is design several characters who may be competing or working with each other to take out the party. Works best in a large city the players have never been to.
If you really want to make it interesting, you could have your players roll up new characters around the same level, and their first task is to take out a group of wanted criminals (i.e. their old characters).
I once ran a slightly modified version of an idea I found in an old issue of Dungeon magazine. The PC's all had ties to an urban city, and felt a certain degree of responsibility for protecting it. An unfriendly mage, who I was building up to be a nemesis for the PC's dropped a Joker/Riddler style scenario in their laps, in the form of a series of delayed blast optimized fireballs, trapped in amber gemstones, scattered around the city and set to explode at a specific time (say three hours from now). There were a series of clues that hinted at where each explosive device was.
I then reached beneath the table, pulled out a digital alarm clock, switched the alarm switch on, and said, "When this alarm goes off, the explosives go off. Now, Go!" They had to tell me what their characters were doing, solve the riddles, and retrieve the devices, all in three hours "real time" instead of game time. This made for a VERY interesting session, as it basically eliminated all the hemming and hawing and min/max strategizing that normally happens, as each player takes 20 minutes deciding which weapon to use, etc. In fact, the players actively avoided combat, because it's such a time sink. They also avoided splitting the party up, which would have slowed them down as well. I more or less ignored travel time, figuring the city was small enough, they could get where they needed to go pretty quickly, and that travel time would be simulated by the additional time it took to describe their deeds in words, rather than simply doing them.
The locations of the explosives varied greatly, requiring different tactics. One was in an area of high civilian concentration. One was at the bottom of a dam (on the water-filled side, of course) whose detonation would have flooded the city. One was at the top of a tall sculpture, requiring a series of successful climb checks to retrieve. You get the idea.
They also had to figure out what the heck to do with all these explosives, since the party's spell casters were not high enough level to...
Steel Horse, that is brilliant. I am totally stealing that.
@ Steel Horse
This sounds amazing! How did they deal with the explosives?
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This sounds amazing! How did they deal with the explosives?
To be honest, I'm having trouble remembering (this was about twelve years ago). It seems like they threw some of them deeper into the lake behind the dam, which caused some massive water plumes/waves, but didn't destroy the dam itself. At least one went off down a well, inside the city limits, but they minimized casualties/damage by clearing the area first. The well didn't fare so well, of course.
Steel Horse, You don't, by any chance, remember which issue of Dungeon this was in do you? I would be immeasurably grateful if you did.
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The assassination attempt idea is a great one. During our Kingmaker campaign, I pulled off the following. (No spoiler tag needed.)
I wanted to have an assassination attempt, but I had already built in a otherworld influence that seemed to take us in and out of a semi-dream, storybook world. So, I suddenly sent them into the future so that the assassination attempt had already occurred and succeeded. The queen was dead.
They played through a bit of story I had concocted and then got back to their own time with very specific memories of what each of them had been doing when they heard about the assassination. (I gave each character his memories on paper.)
Then as part of the running of their kingdom, I had each player create a randomized list of things they might be doing around the kingdom. As months went by, I would have them roll when there was a specific event and I needed to know their whereabouts. Sure enough, eventually the dice set up the exact (though somewhat vague) events that preceded the assassination.
One of the players suddenly yelled, "This is it! The assassination is happening now!" And everybody kicked into high gear to try and save the queen.
It was great fun.
You can challenge your party by giving them elements in their environment to overcome seemingly impossible challenges. I recently threw a CR+3 Glass Golem at the party, and they were getting beaten-up pretty well, until they were reminded I had mentioned a construction site where there was a wrecking ball that could be used. Give players tools, and then give them a big challenge.
Another one was a hobgoblin ambush while they were attempting to cross a deep chasm on a narrow stone bridge. The hobgoblins were smart enough to wait in the shadow of a mountain while the sun was going down. They were in darkness while the players were in the light, and vulnerable crossing the bridge. Here came the arrows. Mean? Possibly, but hobgoblins are mean like that.
I like that, Owly. I love playing smart enemies, especially when the players/characters start getting complacent.
Thank you very much for the ideas everyone, I really like the idea about the explosives as well as the actual riddle and using real time for some encounters. Lord Pendragon your ideas about the invisible healer as well as Tuckers Kolbolds will be sure to be in my next campaign.
For those of you who asked about party make up, let me give you a more specific run down of whats going on...
The players are made up of one semi experienced player and 2 relative new players but they have played in 3 campaigns but they consider themselves new (as do I)
The party is level 5 and made up of 2 elves and 1 half elf, one a rogue archer, another a paladin, and the half elf is a druid. The setting is cold mountains and they are in a completely dwarven area. They have been informed that one of the last great dwarven artisans final treasures may be below the mountains themselves. What they will find out next session is that his greatest treasure is his own forge buried deep under the mountains in an unknown location. His forge is one that could bring the whole area to life, as legend has it, this forge could bring metal and stone itself to life!
They will be hired by the clan of the artisan to find the forge and either remove it and bring it to them or to destroy it as the forge is far to dangerous in the wrong hands.
What they will find out as they continue is that while also having to deal with the dangers of whatever might be lurking beneath the mountains and various traps and other challenges (wanting to use golems and warforged and other contructs for his creations once they start getting close) his ex lover is still around (being dwarven and all living a long time) and will also be attempting to find the forge and use it for her own gain. She is a Dwarven Sorceress who will be focusing in conjuration and evocation magic with a love of ice magic (some necromancy as well). She wants to use the forge to finally bring to life some of her dearest creations and plunge the world into a frozen wasteland.
Hope this helps and gives better clarification on some things. Thanks again for the great advice thus far!
Animate Dead isn't just an out of combat spell. It's just a standard action to cast. Handing the lesser version to a 3rd level cleric along with a dagger made from black onyx (I have it a d4-1 damage) means that if he drops a PC he begins with a coup de grace and next round he's got a zombie. This also works on minions that were on his side.
No rest for the wicked.
Very nice, if this was a quest from Dragon Age then I am unaware of it, I had a whole list of campaign ideas I gave them that I made back in college and this was the one they chose, The Forgemaster is the name of the campaign, if it is a similar idea to dragon age I did not intend it to be, its a great game though! I will say that I came up with this idea before Dragon Age came out but whatever a lot of fantasy story lines are very similar so what are you gonna do :)
Thank you for the advice about Animate dead and the black onyx dagger, very nice!
Also Owly ty for reminding me about the simple but really mean things to do such as confining them to a tight space, and having ranged monsters/npcs that will help a lot!
Thank you once again for everyone helping on this thread!