Ok, silly thread title out of the way.
Next bit, serious advice requests.
Ok, so, I have a group of players, all level 10 (5 characters, 1 Half-Dragon/Hobgoblin Magus, 1 Winged Human Psionic Gunfighter, 1 Serpentfolk Sorcerer, 1 Spriggan lorewarden/manuever master, and 1 Gippli Cleric).
They are travelling north through woodlands in unexplored areas, and they are near a city they had no information on (they had two chances to ask around about what was north of them, and never bothered asking anyone in either of the two towns they visited and knew about). So they're about to run into a town of very isolationist weres. Were wolves, Were Bears, Were Wolves, Were Bats.
They ran into a patrol (everyone rolled horribly on their perception rolls, all 5, and they only needed a 20 to spot them, and several had +17, to let you know how bad the rolls were). 4 Were wolves, 4 Dire Wolves, and 10 Wolves. The wolves got in a surprise round attack on the three walking (the halfdragon, serpentfolk, and gippli). The 3 who got attacked all took off up in the air (casting defensively or using wings), but got chewed up pretty good due to the ambush (I rolled a lot of 19's and 20's to actually hit them, plus one guy got tripped by a wolf).
Once in the air, the wolves scattered back into the brush (although one fireball managed to hit one who was using a cross-bow and singed him dead). But they howled really loud, and the city sent out a flying patrol (dire-bats with riders and werebats). I expected the characters to retreat to figure out what was going on, but instead they're standing their ground and waiting for the weres to come attack.
So... now I need to actually kit out a flying patrol. I'm thinking 2-3 bat swarms, 3 dire bats with riders (goblin were-rat riders) and 3 werebats (goblin werebats). I'm thinking the were-rats are cavaliers with lances (say 5 levels of Cavalier each), and the were-bats are two sorcerer's and an inquisitor?
That should put the flying patrol at CR 5 for the Were-Rats (Cavalier includes the mount, so the direbat mounts shouldn't add to the CR at that level). 5 (Class Level) - 1 (NPC gear) + 1 (Lycanthrope).
The Were-bats I'm also thinking of giving 5 levels, which again should put them all at CR 5.
That's six CR 5's, which should be CR 10. Then add in 3 bat swarms just for fun and giggles, plus to add in that there's 5 characters.
I'm thinking of having the sorcerer's start fireballing the PCs at max range, given they are all bunched up in mid air. The were's are flying with 30 feet between each of them, until they close to charging distance.
So, sound like a decent plan on the classes/tactics? And the wolves are still in the woods to clean up anyone that falls, or the one guy who can't fly if they can find him (he's got a +25 stealth check, so it's pretty hard to find him except by scent). That's not a fast process, but they're working on it.