Challenging the well rounded party...

[Solomon]

Greetings all.

I come before you today with a inquiry that may be somewhat difficult to answer.

I am a new Dm running my first homebrewed adventure. I have a party of five (all played by experienced players, all.of them having been dms themselves at one point or another.). When the dust of character creation cleared, I found myself with one of the most well rounded parties I have ever seen.

Our composition is as follows:

Half-o4c barbarian

Gnoll fighter (two-weapon spec)

Human gunslinger (two weapon spec)

Halfing druid with roc companion

Human witch

All of them are level six.

Admittedly, I have no experience crafting encounters and I do not truly understand how to properly calculate the CR of any given encounter, much less build one.

Additionally, I have imposed on myself a limitation. Due to a their nearly exclusive use as enemies during our last several campaigns, I have stated that I will not use undead, demons or devils in this campaign.I would generally i would prefer to steer clear of evil outsiders overall.

Instead, I was going to focus on abberations as a source 9 monstrous goodness. I really need help figuring out how to build encounters that would solidly challenge this party without steamrolling over them.

Thank you in advance for any advice i receive.

[Master of the Dark Triad]

Make them fight some synthesist summoners.

[fine_young_misanthrope]

Mind control effects! You want you some abberations, throw some love toward aboleths. Hit the Fighter and the Barb with some dominate monster and watch the others run!

If you have a broken party (by the rules) then turn those rules aback on them! Have them fight mirror versions of themselves. Heck just copy their character sheets and then have those things fight them.

[Mathius]

The GM's guide to creating challenging encounters is exactly what you are looking for.

Your party is a bit weak on healing I would guess so be prepared for them to have several wands of healing.

When I design an adventure I always have a timer in it. The victum is sacrificed at midnight or ritual to release the outer horror is will be finished in two days. If they are leave a dungeon undone, either have it super fortified or empty when they come back. Cultist will make great mooks in your game and if they have 1 level of a casting class or UMD they can get a spell off during the combat. DR will slow down the TWF for a while. Make mooks who can hit hard to wear down the barb and sometimes you can use the calm emotions spell. Deflect arrows and many different wind spells can help with the gunslinger. Iron will and its follow up feat can help with the slumber hex. Remember that summons have a 1 round not a full round casting time. Add in fliers to discourage solo flights.

My druid did some calculations and realized that the entire party was below the light load of a flying form if he had a heavy lift belt and mule back cords. The party had a stage coach built at double cost with a bar on top for the druid to grab and this is how they invented the plane. Earthglide on the earth elemental is a almost broken. It ruled that while earthgliding the druid can not attack materials that the can not glide through so that wood paneling can keep him out. He can still determine the shape of the room and combined with his crazy perception determine what is in them. His perception is around 40 so even a -20 allows him to listen in on things.

Remember the rule of cool, many things work once but if repeated use of the tactic will ruin the game then ask the player to stop so the game can be fun for all. Do not try and use in game counters unless you and your players like countering the counter to the counter of the counter.

Have early encounters ring alarms or run off and let the boss know so they can set up an ambush or start casting prep spells. There is very little that is more terrifying then having the caster who just got 10 buffs up port into the room with some heavies. Heck even haste + Prayer + bless + dim door with 5 melee brutes into an unfinished encounter to the PCs using the slow wand method of healing can be a shock. It is even better if the the 3 brutes had a potion or two to drink or an ability they can activate a head of time.

Smart PCs will leave and come back after the min/level spells have worn off. If they do the BBEG should know to run and hide until tomorrow. This where PC use of tracking of divination can be fun.

Have BBEG surrender and stay that way even to point of a trail. If he has friends in high places he might get off or a short sentence. If the PCs are vigilantes in a lawful area he may even get them in trouble.

[Ascalaphus]

Depending on the witch's spell/patron selection, they might have a tough time dealing with conditions and afflictions (poisons, diseases, curses). Not impossible, but a harder time than a group with a cleric would have.

Witches are generally pretty good at managing single boss monsters, but lack the wide-area cleansing fires of a wizard. Bad guys with cannon fodder to keep the witch/BBEG more than Slumber range apart might make things challenging.

Also consider creatures immune to critical hits and mind control (from time to time). Oozes are quite nasty; you don't really want to stick your natural weapons in there, they ignore mind control and precision damage. If you're not on a deadline, you can often engineer some solution though, because oozes are often not that fast, and they're dumb enough that you can lure them into a trap.

As for calculating CR: there's a table in the book listing how much XP a CR [APL]+Y encounter is worth. For example, if you want to build a hard encounter for your APL 6/7 party (+2), you get a budget of X XP. Select monsters worth a totak X XP, and you're set.

As a hint: don't put everything into one single monster, because the players will have much more actions per round than the single boss. But don't spread it too thin either; monsters with CR more than 2-3 below the PC level aren't useful anymore. An encounter with 50%-150% as many critters as the PCs' party size is probably best.