Its all about action economy.
Enemies that can move quickly and stay out of reach will get more spells off. Difficult terrain eill slow things down. Having extra minions arrive a little bit late to the fight. Darkness spells and invisibility spells can help a ton. Using aoe damage on the PCs can help stutter them for a moment (it is a great bang for buck heal opportunity) getting the jump on the pcs helps, they may need a round to buff. Running fights eat a lot of actions. Having sparsely spaced ranged enemies attacking from a distance can take a while (bows have huge range).
Spells like web, slow, spike stones,... traps that are deadly enough that they need to be avoided... npcs that actually need to be saved and aren't just background noise. Ticking clock mechanics like rising water that causes difficult terrain... this sort of thing can pull aeay your skill guy to fix the problem, and gives them a place to do something cool.
Enemies that trip or grapple or disarm. Enemies that have strong defenses (like a bunch of npc monks with deflect arrows and crane wing) enemies that summon and heal like evil clerics.
So, i keep running into the issue that both heroes and bad guys tend to die really quickly. Like a round or two at most. is there a good way to extend the combat so that monsters can get off a spell or two, buffing monsters in my games never work because by the 2nd buff spell they are dead. I've tried throwing lots of guys at them but then the players either get overwhelmed or just aoe them all.
First, when appropriate have monsters buff before the combat starts. Often parties are noisy brash things, they usually give lots of warning to the monsters in the next room if there are several fights in sequence.
Also, dont give up on numbers, just dont spread them too think. You dont want mooks, you want like 4 or 5 somewhat powerful enemies.
I've thought about doubling health and healing effects.
is there a good rule of thumb?
Be careful about doing this for just monsters. Remeber that both sides are playing rocket tag, if you just buff the bad guys the heroes will start going down in droves.
I suggest using terrain, mobility, battlefiled control and good teamwork amongs your bad guys to increase the duration of encounters.
If the party cant get off its most potent attack all the time, then they wont insta drop your bad guys.
For instance, an area of difficult terrain could make it harder for the heavy armor fighter to get there, creating a gap (potentially) between the party is say the more mobile druid gets past it easily.
Another example is to have one very tough hard to hit opponent (like the crane wing monk) blocking the way to a ranged attacker or spellcaster, to increase the amount of time it takes the party to take down their foes.
A simple crowd control spell or debuff spell can also work to hamper the party for a round or two.
Just in general, whatever the 'best' attack method is in your party, make that harder to do and your encounters should at least get a little longer.
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Sometimes the players just get luck and you have to accept that. I like to open up fights with medium level enemies (easy but not too easy). Once a few have been wiped out then the boss comes out with a lieutenant or two.
I am a big fan of having opponents run away when the battle is obviously lost. They go on to notify as many other allies as they can. This give the enemy time to prepare. It also gives an excuse when a big boss knows their tactics. Especially when they see a couple of the guys that ran away.
Don't be afraid to have powerful enemies attempt to flee and then pop up in a later fight with a little more power. The players hate that and they will seek to put and end to that guy first the next time they see him.
I ran into this exact problem, and have tried lots of stuff to deal with it.
To solve the problem, you first must analyse it. I advice fixing broken scenarios on a case-by-case basis.
Is your party just 1-shotting things with raw damage or is there a combo that they´ve mastered?
Most mid-high level teams with smart spellcasters can pull off reliable 1 round kills on solo opponents. See if they dont change their strategy by giving them something else to do in the battle, like holding back a Horde while other players take on the miniboss, or perhaps only the arcane mage can accomplish the arcane challenge before the party is killed by a deadly trap.
I might also advise you to rarely allow your team the luxury of pacing themselves during a major plotline, make sure that if they rest for 8 hours after every battle, something happens elsewhere in the world that they they might have wanted to be part of. Long drawn out days of encounters will make even high level sorcerers run dry.
If all else fails, put a "knife" (or dagon bite) in their back once in a while and drop them to 5% hp at the start of a fight, self preservation tendencies will do the rest and make the mage rethink his future battle tactics. Just dont do it often!
If your team is 1-rounding all your BBEG´s with weapon attacks (not counting lucky crits and triple twenties), then you KNOW that your NPC's have too few HP and/or need better start-of-fight positioning.
The good solutions to this problem involve methods for your opponent to counter or protect himself from flanking attacks and/or ranged attacks. A good set of moderately dangerous minions will help with flanking and a bit of terrain will prevent ranged-instagib. Detection effects should be a rather common threat against invisible players (My rouge and his ring could solo my entire story if not for the amount of see-invisibility and detect magic i've put in his path, and he can still solo 75% of it anyway).
Barring everything else, there is a set of modifications I often grant my NPC´s in certain scenario's.
When I want a character to be deadly, I make him in excess of 4 CR higher than recommended. My party has proven capable of taking on such foes, but not often, and never after a full day of fighting. I dont throw down such foes lightly though, they are often optional challenges, temporary brawls or foreshadowing future events.
Remember that like players, smart NPC's have contingency plans too, including permamencied or contingencied spells .
When I want the players to fight a proper "BOSS", the type you fight for 30 minutes in a J-RPG game, I allow myself to MAX and/or Double his HP stat, and often give him a set of save bonuses.
This is my devilish "BOSS" template that I very sparsely use:
Cr +2.
All of the creatures abilities and statistics save for the following:
HP: Set all of the creature's HP die rolls to maximum and double the total result after adding all modifiers.
Saves: The creature gains a +3 Bonus on all saves, once per day after failing a saving throw the creature may re-roll the save die with a +10 bonus, this consumes a Hero point, if the creature does not possess any Hero points it cannot make this re-roll.
Maximised AND doubled HP seems excessive for just a +2 CR modifier, but keep in mind that the template does nothing to increase damage, so it serves dutifully in making a moderately challenging foe into a lasting memorable one. If the players land an effect thatwould instakill an enemy anyway then I sometimes wave away the massive wad of remaining HP, just for sake of realism and to reward good play. I am however careful to NEVER apply it to an enemy who is already strong enough to cause wads of damage, it is not fun to face a foe who can two-shot the main tank, wade through all the damage and restraining effects thrown at him, and brutalize anyone who isn't fast enough to escape.
(Extra note on the template: My players like to cause damage and fight big extended fights with worthy foes, they like to survive the battle, and they like to have accomplished something worthwhile in the process. In this gaming group an Evil Winged Knight with 400hp at level 12 isn't an unbeatable monster, its a Boss worthy of their attention.)
Because i'm in a contemplative wordy mood here's an important example of why I changed my DM style recently and made the "BOSS" template.
"Its the final section of Chapter 2 for my story, the Heroes have put an end to various foes who made themselves known in the prologue and Chapter 1. Lots of stuff happened behind the scenes and the entire high-diplomacy arc went untouched (not to say that there was no roleplay, the players just weren't the sort to mingle with nobility.).
Now, as the Chapter draws to a close and a Miniboss (who through the players perception and reaction became the main enemy force) has ascended to MEGABOSS status.
A destructive skirmish war between the players(& CO) and the elemental driven boss rages and in the midst of it plot hooks regarding chapter 3 are being revealed, including a hard hitting to-be reoccurring boss.
Said boss was meant to be difficult, so for a team of very deadly level 11 characters I make a CR 15 High-AC, High-Damage fighter who proceeds to 1-hit the team tank and then be 1-hit combo'd by the Sorcerer and Rouge and the fight was over in barely two rounds, the Boss's gargantuan CR 14 mount had hardly even emerged from the ground before it was over!
The players killed the boss, the Boss did lots of damage and was impressive, his mount looked snazzy, but still the fight felt hollow and uninspiring in the end. And unbeknownst to the players, said Boss will return to fight another day, even for me its a dreary prospect.
So what will I change for the next fight?
A: He'll get the BOSS template, along with a reduction in class levels and damage potential.
B: The mount will feature some kind of concealment and save bonus for the rider, which makes the players hit the mount some rather than ignore it.
C: With his damage potential reduced, the Boss will hopefully not kill the tank in 1 hit."
More numbers of foes is a decent way to extend a fight. Having them come in waves, rather than all present right at the start, helps prevent all of them from being easy bait for a big area of effect spell and means the sheer amount of turns and actions they get won't be overwhelming at the start.
Having a "villain team" of 2-4 guys about on par with a PC each is also good. Trying to have a singular boss is very hard to pull off well, it's such a thin line between "too powerful, party gets massacred" and "not quite strong enough to make up for the party getting 4x as many turns as him." When those fights do work out, sheer dumb luck has as much to do with it as anything.
I occasionally throw some decoy-monsters at my PC's. Even if the party consists of 4 level 8 characters, a fight with 5 CR 1 monsters can still cost them ressources. Normally, the party wizard opens the battle with either some boosted area-damage, or with a nice strong boost like haste. Then the bard buffs, and the Summoner summons, and then the magus moves in and starts killing... and it turns out that the average opponent has an AC og 12 and 5 hp.
Even if this only happens rarely, it still means that they either: a) waste valuable ressources on absolutely nothing... and is thus weaker for the actual challenges ahead. Or b) holds back untill they've measured the opponents, which can mean that when they meet the Big Baddie, they'll only realize he's a real danger after he's had time to take some actions.
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One trick I have deals with using miniatures and map for combat. If the players come upon a location (perhaps a room or small home) and they suspect that there might be an enemy or even a BBEG I like to start setting up the room while they discuss. At some point I nonchalantly put in a very menacing figure along with any other figures that go in that location.
Each game usually has one guy who knows all the monsters and he casually suggests some defense related to the monster while making no obvious note of the mini I put out.
Finally, when a PC actually looks in the door I will remove the menacing figure entirely or replace it with the actual baddie.
I do that trick as well.
Only in roleplay.
The players enter a scorched field, atop stands a band of victorious knights with their leader, Kestros of the holy light.
One player, a Cavalier, steps forth and issues a verbal challenge, Kestros is not interested in bloodying himself, but one of his decorated knight followers takes the challenge and they duel, te cavalier proc's his last challenge on the perceived brave and capable foe, only to find that none of the brutally slain victim's ornate weapons and armor were magical at all!! An angry Paladin just became that much more willing to fight, and the Cavalier lost his last daily challenge, forcing a Hero point to recharge it.