Hello all!
For the past year and a half, I've been playing in a weekly Pathfinder game with a fantastic GM. He hasn't GM'd much before, but his worldbuilding and description is brilliant, and we have a great story going on. Several of us are also experienced roleplayers, which helps. We started at level 1 and we've now just hit level 10, leveling about every 3/4 sessions.
Now, however, we've got a problem. He's a great GM, but we think he finds it hard to understand how to devise challenging combat encounters for the party at this level, and to figure out a reasonable CL (which I found hard as well when I GM'd Pathfinder).
Since you guys are uniformly wonderful and wise, I have permission from him to ask you for ideas to rock the casbah for our encounters, and to give us a hard time! He'll be reading the thread, and possibly commenting, so any advice you can give - behind spoiler tags please - would be massively helpful.
Useful information
- We tend to only have one combat encounter a session. When we have more than one, they're almost never the same game day. This makes it hard to balance, and means we're more comfortable blowing all our limited-use stuff. The party has an airship base, and tends to operate from there, so there's very little dungeon-crawling attrition.
- Party access to flight is currently just the wizard, though everyone has some way to negate falling (repeat, airship).
- The party is:
-- Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 6 / Oracle (Lame, Flame) 1 / Rage Prophet 3, with spell sunder and rage-cycling, though not massively optimised for attacking.
-- Ranger (Wild Stalker) 10, who is a DPS machine, and easily does more than 100hp damage in two rounds.
-- Bard 10, who mostly buffs the hell out of everyone and casts enchantments.
-- Cleric 1 / Inquisitor 9, who buffs himself and others with spells, and messes up the enemy with judgements.
-- Wizard (Conjurer) 10, who buffs and summons, for the most part.
- House rule is that all PCs *and* all monsters have max HP.
If you need any additional information, ask away! Help us Pathfinder forums, you're our only hope! Be cruel to us and destroy us with nasty horrible evil encounters. We want to fight them!!
And remember, actual encounter suggestions in spoiler tags!
General suggestions: Enemies that have nifty special abilities that might screw with the players are always better than just bumping numbers up to make things more challenging (unless the enemies are legitimately to weak to even be a threat). Even enemies with special tactics can make things more interesting, like enemies that use hit and run tactics and the like.
Wraiths. EVERYONE is scared of Wraiths. Wraiths can make the most powerful Barbarian and most fearless Ranger fall to their knees and beg not to be Con/Str/Level drained any more. Hell, get creative and make Wraiths that drain Int/Cha/Wis so your Bard/Cleriquisitor/Wizard can cry too.
Just for the cool factor: JuJu. Zombie. Monks. Nothing like seeing the look on your player's faces when the zombie suddenly moves 60 feet per round and can get off 4-5 attacks at Full BaB when he stands still, or can stun people for a round (or at higher levels do stuff like permanently blind and deafen them).
Traps and Haunts. Not everything dangerous has to be something you can chop, torch, or bite. Some traps and Haunts are creative and amusingly deadly, use them.
Well the 1 encounter per day issue can be looked at as a strange hampering effect, or as a freeing feeling that since you know there is never a need for players to hold back resources the GM can freely choose to throw out the standand assumptions inherent in the CR table.
I'd begin at CR 13 and work up from there
Froghemoth CR13
Based on your house rule this baddie will have 240 hit points and enough offense to make the party hesitate for a second.
Now this alone would qualify as an "epic" encounter, but that is based on the concept that a party of 4or5 adventures is encountering it and also expecting to have multiple extra fights (and be slightly limited in total hps)
Since this is not the case, it is time to add some excitement to the encounter. Find something that would apply to the theme and campaign world to add to this beast in a way that will make the encounter just a bit more terrifying.
- An advanced Intellect devourer is piloting the Froghemoth from inside, and covertly using its spell like abilities (invisibility, globe of invulrnability, Inflict light wounds at will healing it 3d8+6 per round) to support the monster. Bonus points if it gets class levels in necromancer or evil cleric
- Level up a Druid to level 10-11, have it hide out of site (Tree shape or something) and once round 2 begins, have Summon Nature's Ally pets start appearing every round
- 4 rounds after the fight begins have a second Froghemoth show up (young template) either a "baby" or a mated pair
- Last but not least have a Fire Giant (195hps in its own right) Riding the Froghemoth
Regardless what you go with, I'd suggest encounters that evolve into something that wasn't expected when the encounter began. Let them jump to a natural conclusion based on what was presented, then flip that conclusion on it's head.
This might hurt a bit.
CR 13:
4 Vrocks see the airship from a mile away. If the airship has lanterns or other light sources, this can be at night. Each attempts to summon an additional vrock. The 4 combined have about an 82% chance to get at least 1 and 42% chance of getting at least 2 summoned vrocks. The vrocks teleport to within 200' of the ship and check it out. They want to get a feel for the PCs ranged combat and flying ability. In these first visits, the vrocks use their telekinesis to try to throw characters overboard.
The vrocks have high intelligence, telepathy, and spellcraft +14. If any of the vrocks see PCs cast short-duration magics, especially Fly, Summoning flying monsters, or upper-tier rounds per level buffs like Haste, the vrocks teleport away and return in 5 minutes. They do this up to 6 times.
Once the vrocks decide to get serious (after about 1/2 hour of harassing the airship), they cast their several buffs, teleport near the ship, and try to get off a dance of ruin. 3-4 vrocks participate in the dance while the rest stand guard.
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I don't have a stat block, but I do have a tip based on something you've said:
The fact that you've got everyone at max HP is going to make all your combats take longer, especially at high levels.
You're better off going with PFS-style hit points for PCs, taking max HP at first level, then half-rounded-up HP every level thereafter.
Re the HP: I understand. I suspect it was to minimise PC death at lower levels, but it is harsh on evokers (who don't need harshness) and overly kind to the barbarian.
To be fair, we mangle through an enemy's HP remarkably quickly.
Oh, also. I haven't been reading the spoilers, obviously (thank you all for posting them), but if those willing to suggest encounters wouldn't mind including a line or two on the best way to run the monster/s, I know our GM would find it massively helpful.
Thanks all!
Basic tips:
Drop the one encounter a day thing, this is huuge, especially for casters but also for Barbarians with rage rounds and exhaustion.
Drop the full HP thing, it needlessly prolongs combat which is a bad thing because you want to prolong combat with intresting things. If you feel the variability of a high HP class/monster can be too crippling then let the Barb roll 1d6+6 instead of 1d12 per level. Let the other people reroll a "1".
Monsters have a movement rate for a reason. Don't let combat degrade into a simple who strikes whom, rinse and repeat in initiative order. Use a battlemat and draw the scene or use minis if you want. This adds a lot to the game IF you remember that this is only a tool to visiualize and should not be a straightjacket ("no you can't swing from the chandelier because I can't draw that on the battlemat"). Also use the terrain rules. Not every encounter must be in a swamp but some may be. Finally use unusual terrain features sometimes like traps, shifting areas of null magic, unnatural cold or similar hazards.
More opponents are almost always better than a single big opponent because of the action economy. If you must have a single opponent you should adjust the CR of this opponent down by 2 unless the opponent has means to stay out of the reach of most of the PCs attacks or is in a terrain that massively favors him.
Don't count opponents that need to roll more than a 18 to hit their targets as these are usually baggage and must be deployed in great numbers (which can be a nice tactic sometimes but tends to make combat chaotic so avoid doing that too often).
Prepare a tactic especially for more complicated monsters (aka casters). If you have no idea what half of the monsters abilities do you will find it very hard to play the monster as it's CR suggests.
With that in minds I guess it should be easy to challenge any group.
The single fight per day thing definitely makes things easier.
One session I played in had many encounters.
At level 3 in a party of 3 we fought 12 Troglodytes, 4 monitor lizards, a Large insect, a level 5 Witch, and 48 Mites* in one day! Every single one of us was almost dead! Certainly a challenge.
A way to discourage resting after every fight is to have some time pressure. Not every problem needs time pressure, but occasionally it is a good idea.
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You've stopped the bandits on this side of the city, but it was a two pronged attack! If you don't protect the city now, even more damage (both material and collateral) will be caused.
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The vampire coven is slain, but the head vampire is going to escape if we don't chase him down! If he survives he could raise a new army of undead and come back and cause havoc again.
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The magic holding up the magic floating island is degrading, and will collapse within a week. It would take a full month to explore the entire island for treasure, so grab what you can while you can.
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*We misread the statblock for the Mites and though they were tiny, not small. Therefore a few well placed Burning Hands was more effective than the rules intended.
Do the casters only have strictly combat related spells? Situations that call for group stealth or diplomacy can tax them on magic also.
Our bard and wizard are both good for utility spells, and even the barbarian can pull a few low-level utilities in an emergency (ghost sound, mage hand, unseen servant and dancing lights are amusing).
For stealth we send the ranger; everyone else falls down on it. Sometimes literally, particularly for the inquisitor (dwarf, plate armour, no ranks in Stealth). He, however, manages to handle diplomacy along with the bard.
Will be passing all this along; thanks for everything so far. :)
You have a very powerful party, on top of that max HP, 1 battle per day AND a Conjurer? You aren't going to find any challenges at your party level.
I would start designing CR14 encounters. Probably more like CR16 with a Conjurer in the party.
I like the whole calling me uniformly wonderful and wise but that makes me think also that you have never seen me post
But on your subject I think your GM would have a great time providing a rival group to your own as recurring bad guys/girls or just even as a one-upping bunch of adventurers who play the belloq to your group's indiana jones:
For example, a sneaky hard-to-hit rogue or an arrow-snatching monk who stalks the ranger. A sorceress who is neck and neck in ability with the wizard, a cold-wielding barbarian or winter witch who foils the barbarian, an oracle who has the number of your group's cleric and well, an even bardier bard to compete in rockstar status with your group's bard.
Some of you may have seen this before.
Try building encounters like this.
High level combat is NOT like low level combat. It is a tactical game of dropping nukes and bio-weapons on your enemies while shielding yourself with your star-wars program and hazmat teams. A high level encounter where enemies are using their full resources is a terrifying ordeal. A 20th level party vs a Solar for example is akin to the freakin' Ragnarok on the scale of extreme terror that it would incite in normal humans, as on this scale you are literally hurling meteors at people, calling upon earth shattering storms, and cracking the land and sundering buildings, while the legions of heaven and hell descend or crawl up from their realms to join the battle.
For example...
CR 20 encounter = 307,200 XP
Succubus x 4 (CR 7) = 12,800 XP
Shadow Demon x 4 (CR 7) = 12,800 XP
Nabasu x 6 (CR 8) = 28,800 XP
Glabrezu x 2 (CR 13) = 51,200 XP
Marilith x 1 (CR 17) = 102,400 XP
Vrock x 15 (CR 9) = 96,000 XP
Dretch x 5 (CR 2) = 3,000 XP
This is a demon horde led by a Marilith, who commands their fiendish legions. The entire horde can greater teleport at will, and works together. Most of them can summon more demons as spell-like abilities. Here is a quick rundown of the types of things these demons might do.
Marilith uses telekinesis at range to hurl objects or even other demons at the party, or uses it to grapple an enemy magician. If she sees an opening, she will get in and attack an opponent with her tail and constrict them. Anyone who is constricted must make a DC 25 fortitude save or fall unconscious for 1d8 rounds. At this point she moves on to the next foe, as one of the succubi coup de grace the unconscious character with a caster level 12 vampiric touch, likely killing the victim and buffing the succubus to hell and back with temporary HP. Blade barrier controls the battlefield and makes moving around a pain for those without teleportation.
The Nebasu wander around spamming enervation at targets, especially those in heavy armor, inflicting 1d4 negative levels with each ray that hits, no save. There are 6 of them, so that's a potential for 6-24 negative levels. Every negative level inflicts a -1 penalty to all saving throws. When they are out of rays, they will spam telekinesis to hurl objects at the party, or force DC 19 will saves or be hurled about like a rag doll.
The shadow demons seep through the floor and attack anyone who is on land using their blind-fight feat to ignore the miss %, and since they have cover you can't make AoOs against them, and retaliating against them is something of a pain, since you can't ready a full-attack against them. Your best bet is to take to the air. Each shadow demon of course attempts to summon another shadow demon with a 50% success rate, so 4 demons becomes 6 more than likely. They too can also stand back and spam telekinesis.
The succubi screech about the battlefield charm-bombing enemies and taking pot-shots at downed foes with vampiric touch when they're down. Of course, they all attempt to summon Babau demons with a 50% chance, so that adds another 2 acid-coated demons into the mix as cannon fodder. They also will not hesitate to dominate animal companions, mounts, and similar creatures. They're not difficult to kill, but they will generally spread out and distract the party, and can turn ethereal at-will, allowing them very good tactics. If desired, they can fly around and drop nets on the party to entangle them, as they can comfortably carry plenty of them and still greater teleport around the field.
The vrocks all begin a dance of ruin, spreading out into groups of 4 vrocks for maximum effectiveness. Every 3rd round, each group unleashes a 20d6 blast of lightning in a 100 ft. radius, which all of the demons are immune to. So if you don't break up or crowd control the vrocks, you will be eating up to 4 instances of 20d6 electricity damage, which is an average of 280 damage anywhere the radius's overlap. Alternatively, they can keep flying around the party screeching hellishly, forcing DC 21 saves vs stun for 1 round. Becoming stunned can easily mean death in this battle, and you can get hit by up to 15 of these at once, making saving a harry business. That's not counting the auto-damaging spores they can shake every 3 rounds.
The Glabrezu play hell with the party's counters. They possess at-will mirror image, making taking them out difficult, and they can function as spotters for the team, utilizing their constant true-seeing ability. Each can cast power word stun to screw over any foe with 150 HP or less. All can cast reverse gravity and dispel magic, and won't hesitate to shut down the magic items of the party, since a CL 16 dispel magic can shut down the vast majority of magic items easily. Finally they can drop unholy blight every round without fail, dealing 8d8 damage to all good creatures in an area and forcing saves vs nausea. If pushed into combat, they have a 15 ft. reach and decent natural attacks.
Dretch simply skulk about the battlefield dropping stinking clouds into the fray. All the demons are immune to the cloud, but it forces a 5% chance per round to become nauseated for 1d4 rounds, potentially causing some PCs to lose several rounds worth of actions. They also use it because the 20% concealment it provides to people inside the cloud completely negates sneak attack, and thus ruins any chance a rogue has to sneak attack their bosses. With five of them, they should also be able to summon an additional dretch, allowing up to 5-6 stinking clouds throughout the battle.
All of the above is assuming, of course, that none of them are using any of their treasures themselves (such as the marilith using any superior weapons, or clad in armor, or any of them wearing rings or cloaks or anything cool like that, which may indeed be part of their treasure and thus added to their statblock by the GM).
And remember. If there's only 1 encounter per day, feel free to rev it up because the PCs don't have to worry about later encounters. So a difficult or even Epic encounter may be in order.
CR 20 might be a bit high for 5 level 10 PCs. What are the PCs packing in terms of saves, AC, and to-hit (ballpark figures)?
CR 20 might be a bit high for 5 level 10 PCs. What are the PCs packing in terms of saves, AC, and to-hit (ballpark figures)?
Well I just grabbed it from another thread. You don't have to make it a CR 20 encounter, just take some notes from it. The CR 20 encounter is appropriate for a 20th level party or as an epic battle for a 17th level party. The same concept is applicable through all levels of play however. You have a mixed group, themed appropriately to the situation, who work in tandem to create an interesting encounter.
Honestly, certain monsters in the bestiary are pretty much made to pwn parties like it was their job (oh wait...). Goblins are notoriously bad at low levels because of their goofy-high Stealth modifiers (in a dark environment, forest, or location where they can readily gain concealment they do hit and run with their little 1d4 shortbows like champs). Around the CR 4 level, Tigers are a death sentence for most PCs.
Others here have put up great advice. Mix your groups up. Add more low level monsters who can contribute in different ways (even 1st level mooks with alchemical weapons or nets can make an easy battle a challenge). Using monsters in their appropriate environments and remembering things like concealment, cover, terrain, and so forth are all expected things that play huge parts in battles but can be easily ignored or forgotten.
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Might I suggest Tucker's Kobolds?
If Tucker's Kobolds is "turning the volume up to 11", then this encounter is turning the volume up to 8." It's easy, it's believable, and it's plausible.
A ravine + a cliff can make this encounter especially deadly, if the players cannot advance on the humanoids, and if lighting conditions make it difficult to target so many small humanoids in the rocks (using cover, possibly). I did this to players using a slender stone bridge, and having hobgoblins attack at twilight, when the hobgoblins were in the shadow of the mountain, and the players were vulnerable to falling. The players had to think tactically and work at a disadvantage.
If you can put the fear into your players with simple, unclassed goblins, you can do anything.
(Follow link to see how Tucker's Kobolds inspired me, and how it all went down in actual play.)
If you can put the fear into your players with simple, unclassed goblins, you can do anything.
(Follow link to see how Tucker's Kobolds inspired me, and how it all went down in actual play.)
There's also this I wrote for Ravingdork. I should probably go back to focusing on helping people build encounters, characters, and writing tutorials rather than "discussing" stuff about the game with other posters. The former definitely leaves me feeling happier and more fulfilled. :)
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If I might suggest a Devil based encounter similar to Ashiels Demon Horde
this one weighing in at CR 15 and designed to take the fight to the airship, and maybe even steal it.
1 Heresy Devil (Book of the Damned 1) (CR 12) 19,200 Xp
4 Erinyes (CR 8) 16,800 Xp
1 Barbed Devil (CR 11) 12,800 Xp
All the Devils open combat by spamming summons as a screen to the others, the Heresy Devil doubles summon chances for close allies, making it a sure thing that 8 Barbed Devils get dropped on the deck to mix it up with the party. In addition, The Heresy devil himself can possibly bring in a couple bone devils.
If they arrive, the bone devils arrive they can use at-will dim anchor and wall of ice to carve up the battlefield and separate allies. All the devils teleport at will, so they can escape with little trouble. They can remain invisible when doing so, or just wade into melee to assist the troops, using quickened invisibility for surprise attacks.
The Heresy Devil himself hangs back and uses his spell like abilities to make the parties life hell, leading with summons and then using telekinesis to steal weapons or hurl characters around, or off the railing.
The Barbed devil must teleport in, or be carried by the Erinyes onto the deck, but he uses the support of the summons to single out non-flying foes to impale and then toss them over the side. Even if falling damage does not hurt, they're effectively out of the fight unless they can teleport or the wizard hits them with a fly spell. With a bit of luck, or a moment with the Boss, he could bring in a second of is ilk.
Erinyes can shoot powerful ranged attacks, span Unholy Blight at will, or use ropes to entangle. The ropes could help drag people off the deck, but i forget the exact mechanic for that. Anyway, they act as superb harassment, staying out of reach of the deck and focusing down archers or the wizard if they cause trouble.
End game goal is that the party might lose control of the battle and be kicked out of their base. This doesn't even take into account the devil's gear allotment, which is considerable (and triple on the Erinyes).
Great post Brambleman. ^-^
Thank you, Ashiel
Also, I just noticed I said Erinyes summon barbed devils, I meant Bearded. My bad.
Here's a non-fiendish CR 13 encounter
Lamia Matriarch, Treant, Air Elemental (Greater), 2 Dire Tigers
For some reason the PCs have earned the enmity of a Lamia Matriarch. First she uses alter self and guile or invisibility and stealth to spy on the PCs to get a sense of their abilities, if possible. If her intelligence-gathering is successful, she spends some of her double treasure on items to
protect against the PCs abilities, such as fire protection or Protection from Good potions to hedge out summoned creatures.
Using charm monster and lies, the Lamia convinces a treant and his forest-defending pals that the PCs are a dire threat to the local woodlands. The treant uses treespeech to locate the PCs, and then animates two companion trees. The Lamia buffs herself with mirror image and divine favor. Then the Lamia buffs her team with haste, invisibility, and mage armor before they move in to attack.
The air elemental comes straight down from the sky on top of the least-armored PCs. Hopefully there's a cliff or river to dump these PCs in. The invisible Lamia casts an illusion of a wall of thorns in an attempt to temporarily isolate two PCs from the others. The treants gang up on one of these PCs and the dire tigers attack the other. The treants focus on sunder. After that the Lamia might either cast Suggestion ("Drop your weapons and flee.") on an apparently non-magic using PC, or else move into flanking position to melee.