Advancing the Challenge!

[VoicesOfChaos]

Been playing D&D with my family since right as 3.0 first came out. Have since played 3.5, 4th, and NEXT. After hearing little tidbits about it from various acquaintances we have checked out Pathfinder, spent lots of money buying books, and we are loving it! We play more regularly then ever before and my dad is constantly saying he is having the most playing an RPG ever in the 30 or so years he has played.

Important to note, my group is filled with Min-Maxers! Actually I think the more widely-used term is "Power Gamers". Our play style is minimum role-playing and lots of rolling dice to kill stuff! As such they always try to find each little exploit to make their characters extremely powerful and often unbalanced broken!

So been running the Rise of the Runelords adventure path and again it is very well-written. When I DM I prefer to write the entire adventure myself and not rely on pre-written adventures but this one has been good SO FAR.

Burnt Offerings went well with a fair challenge. Plus because we were rushing to finish the chapter during one of the sessions they rushed into the Malfeshnekor fight with no preparation and almost no daily spells/abilities left. Plus I was really lucky with miss chance rolls that battle. Definitely the toughest battle!

Skinsaw Murders the challenge was starting to dwindle as they became increasingly over-powered. The Aldern fight was good because I had them fight the "Hunter" personality until it had 0 HP at which point he became the "Skinsaw Man" personality with fully restored HP and the Paladin used his last Smite Evil on the "Hunter" which 'fell off' when the personality changed. Plus they skipped the Skaveling fight so that appeared from behind during that battle and stunned 2 of the 6 party members. At the Seven's Mill I ensured they fought all 13 Cultists plus Ironbriar all in one battle but that was only a moderate challenge, fireballs cleared the minions really well.Even Xanesha was defeated really easily.

THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM STARTS! As We entered the Hook Montain Massacre they warned me that now since they are 8th levels their characters have really come together and will be super-powerful. Indeed true. Last time we played we made through all of the Graul Homestead. I don't think a sinlge battle made it through a full round of initiative. I was disgusted when I saw 5 Dogs with 1 CR each so I replaced them with Dire Wolves but that hardly mattered. The 1/2 CR Zombies were a bigger joke but I just left them in. Probably the biggest offense was Mammy Graul was killed before she even went by 2 or maybe if I remember right just 1 character (though he did have 2 criticals in that one turn). The party all has really high AC that is near impossible for my monsters to hit except with like a natural 18 or higher. Plus the party is capable of massive amounts of damage in a single turn! They all verbally complained that they did not have fun and it was way too easy.

So this is where I am stuck! As said I am more used to writing my own adventures or just doing a one-shot mod not a long adventure path. I feel like if I increase the monsters or just raise their stats too much I am taking away from the spirit of the adventure path. They worked hard on their characters to make them super powerful so if I just scale everything to me it feels like it cheepens all that work. Videogames that scale the enemies to your level do feel like a rip-off at times.

So what do you all of you suggest is the best way to increase the challenge without messing up the adventure path?

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Here is a slight overview of the party. Played by my brother, his wife, and our father. Everybody is playing 2 characters.

-Archer that has vital strike, manyshot, and a holy bow. So if he hits the same target with all of his attacks he seems to average around 30-50 damage that round.

-Summoner with an Eidolon. Probably the most broken character! 34 AC! 135 HP. Saves are 10/10/14 (only the Paladin is barely higher). 4 claw attacks. Around the same damage per round as the archer which is a lot!

-Blade-Master Rogue which does your typical heavy damage sneak attack.

-Witch that at the lower level would put everything to sleep and end the combat extremely fast! Even as we face more things immune to sleep she can still cast long-term misfortune/disadvantage. Also one of the last times we played casted a new spell (forgot the name, like Horrible Sorrow)that made the big boss spend their entire turn ether attacking themselves or doing absolutely nothing. This was a short small one-shot adventure I wrote to take a break between the adventure path and that spell was used on a CR 14 Ice Yai Oni which was killed super fast by the party of 6 8th level heroes without getting a single action off :(

-Paladin has 30 AC and saves are 14/11/11. With the Holy weapon and Smite Evil the damage VS an evil creature is again in the insanely high range.

-Wizard that has perfect fly, constantly improve invisible, and when he isn't dropping fireballs he built his character to specialize in making the Phantasmal Killer work.

Feel free to ask any more questions about how over-powered they are.

[Tangent101]

Small question: did you roll for ability stats or have them purchase stats... and how many points did they get? The AP assumes 15 point builds. If they have more points than that, then they'll have an easier time.

I'd suggest using the Advanced Template. It increases the CR by one and increases monster or encounter statistics by +4 per stat.

The other thing I'd suggest is giving every monster maximum hit points. Everything is built on "average" hit points which can be less-than-ideal. (Also, don't forget to use tactics. Have monsters attack a PC's weapons with Sunder. Have them trip them. Have the monsters fight dirty.)

Edit: Also... Vital Strike AND ManyShot? They don't stack. If he uses Vital Strike then you double the dice for damage for one single shot and then add bonuses (without doubling them).

[VoicesOfChaos]

They used 21 points.

Maximum hit point is a great idea, I totally forgot about that. Yeah I will check out the Advance template. I feel the biggest problem is just being able to hit.

Being new-ish to Pathfinder there are a lot of little details of rules I am unfamiliar with how they differ from other editions. After looking up several FAQs online I clear see that Vital Strike does not stack and that he has been doing it wrong all this time. Thank you for pointing this out.

But I take it the Eidolon really is that broken?

Thank you again for your help! :)

[Deadmoon]

The eidolon seems OP with AC and HP for level 8.
Is he using synthesist?
Is that buffed AC?
How many times did you let him take Improved Natural Armor evolution?
Are you letting him wear armor?
Are you letting him use point buy on the eidolon?

[VoicesOfChaos]

Gah I feel like such a bad DM right now, too many new cool things in Pathfinder I haven't read up on yet. By the way we played last night, I used max HP for all monsters and made some Elite. This time they said it was the most fun they ever played!

I just texted him all those questions and these are his replies, hope it makes sense. "Yes synthesist. Took improve na once. Took evolution improve na once. Yes I'm wearing armor. You don't use a point buy for the eidolon, its stats are given."

[Joshua Goudreau]

I've been gaming for a very long time and the simplest advice I can give is to simply reiterate the advice already mentioned. Give adversaries max HP, throw on the advanced template when you want to bump up a boss, and use the most advantageous tactics for any given scene. Those are the simplest, most straightforward, things you can do to give a challenge to powerful characters without redesigning the encounter or accidentally overpowering the party.

I use max HP for all "boss" encounters to ensure they don't drop in a single round to some lucky hits. Too often I have had a big bad go down after a couple lucky hits and end up with a forgettable encounter.

The other thing you can do, which also has already been suggested, is ensure you are comfortable and familiar with the rules. I'm certainly not trying to imply your players are cheating but I know that misunderstandings of the rules will slip in and can skew character power dramatically sometimes.

Any particulars on class/race/whatever features or rules can be found here: www.d20pfsrd.com

[Thanis Kartaleon]

Wow, I'm having this EXACT same issue. My PCs are level 7, almost level 8, and just entered the Graul farm. They took down Rukus and his dogs (I remade him as an advanced huntmaster cavalier) in two rounds, and Crowfood in one.

I made a huge mistake with the party's setup at the beginning - 20 point buy, 6 PCs, two with Leadership, extra traits, Background feats, etc., etc. and now it's coming around to haunt me.

Even if I apply the Advanced template it doesn't do enough.

I'll try using max HP. I'm also going to be throwing in extra baddies from unexpected locations and play up terrain and weather elements. One of my players is giving up Leadership to help.

[Joshua Goudreau]

I found Leadership to be unbalancing in 3.5 so I sill have it ruled out now. A bunch of mooks blows action economy out of the water and action economy is a major resource, which is way increasing the number of baddies arrayed against a group can up the challenge. However, if you are using XP it can cause the party to advance faster than expected which leads to the same problem later on down the road.

[Mudfoot]

If they're operating at above their level, slow down the xp until it seems to be balanced. For a start, there are 6 of them so they'll be effectively a level ahead just through sheer numbers. They should be getting in each others' way, especially when the summoner gets going; enforce that.

What's a blade-master rogue? I'm guessing this is a 3PP thing, suggesting that there are various other non-core imports that may not be balanced. It would help to have more details.

Re the wizard: invisible isn't invisible. It's just +20 or +40 stealth, and I imagine the wizard doesn't have many skill points in stealth. And neither is it silent. And the duration's pretty short. And flying isn't silent.

Most of their foes will be intelligent. Play them as such.

Action economy will tilt things in the PCs' favour unless you add numbers to the opposition. Don't make it obvious what's a mook and what isn't, if it shouldn't be. If the wizard can waste his one or two PKs on something unimportant, he's happy (because it worked) and you're happy (because it's still a fight).