This does not work with Vanishing Trick. You would need Invisible Blade. Only the first attack would grant you the sneak attack.
Good catch. The original post had the Ninja at 11th level.
Poison.
The biggest obstacle you might face is escalation of wealth. If all of your monsters are equipped with items to offset the 'badassery' of your players, the end result will be the players having these items for themselves, or worse, selling them for some powerful piece of equipment (like a Metamagic Rod of Dazing Spell). In this regard, my advice would be to use primarily expendables to give your monsters their tricks, like potions, scrolls, and one-shot items like Beads of Force.
6 5th level Adepts is a nasty encounter. 6 Lightning bolts is extremely nasty.
6 5th level Adepts is a nasty encounter. 6 Lightning bolts is extremely nasty.
Depends on the level of the party to be sure, but you did remind me of one of the meaner tactics against spell casters. Have your caster go first and ready a fireball for when the PC starts to cast. Enjoy that concentration check.
|
I recommend underwater encounter (grumsy water) with a lot of Scrag's led by a shaman (Cleric) equiping some of them with silence spells cast on stones in their inventory.
Another challenge is to let them battle each other.
Split up the group by some sort of trap. Disguise one or two partymembers in illusions of the residens monsters of the dungeon. And disguise the same number of residens monsters with illusions of the missing members of the party.
Then let the monsters in player-diguise arrive 30 sek. before the player sin monster disguise... and sit back and enjoy the show.....
Another twist...
When the players arrive with their optimized characters, tell them to write the following tekst at the top of their sheet: "This was how I was in my youth"
Then let them ad venerable ability adjustment and some juicy disabilities. (Think Retirement Home....;)
Also lots of fun when the grumpy old blind paladin with a bit of dementia tells the lokale to prepare them to digg up the grave yard because he spottede evil there...
Khan
I actually ran a camapaign a lot like this. It was a grand arena campaign. A lot of the encounter where my character builds vs PC character build.
The encounters were always brutal, but true resurrection was free (should the audience approve of their performance).
The starting encounter was on a hill surrounded by lave with enough single rats to raise the party up to level two. Every round the lave would rise up until it reached the center platform. Which is were every rat would go as the lava rise. So if the party didn't kill the rats fast enough, they would have to survive attacks from all the rats they didn't kill. The rats didn't start off as hostile, but you do have to fight them or they will kill you.
A decent optimization 'trick' is to know how to buff your critters without inflating their CR too much.
One is sneaky application of templates, like the Advanced & Young together.
Another good approach is to add a level or two of classes or cherry pick classes to maximize synergy. A vampire fighter might be scary, a undine vampire oracle/antipaladin with osyluth guile is a nightmare! And remember, if you add PC classes to a monster without any class, you get to use the elite array : )
Teamwork feats like Outflank and the like can definitely help even the odds! Mooks with Broken Wing Gambit and Paired Opportunist works well at slightly higher levels
I may have missed it, but has anyone mentioned adding Mythic Tiers to the monsters? Or using the already existing mythic monsters?
NPCs with full WBL are great but if you let the PCs take it all then it will inflate their WBL to much. I would find some way to stay at WBL no matter what you throw at them.
I rarely give my own NPCs items that have "noticable" powers, but I do treat them "as if" they had better items (IE, better armor, better weapons, stat belts & headbands, etc.) and simply never put them in the given "loot". It's equivalent to just boosting them I guess.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Personally, the most challenging and enjoyable encounters I've ran are ones that have "puzzle combat" scenarios. I'll elaborate.
* Example: Main villain is being funneled energy from 12 acolytes around the room. While the energy is being channeled the boss has DR 30/-, regen 15, and can make ranged energy attacks similar to a lantern archon. Destroying the acolytes makes the villain vulnerable, which should be able to be deduced from your description of the situation.
That's a pretty simple situation where it's obvious that the players need to solve puzzle part A (destroying acolytes) before they can resolve fight B (boss). It's very important that the puzzle has hints before hand, is able to be learned mid-fight, or is very apparent in its resolution.
I have an abundant number of situations where you can add flavor like this. The only challenge is thinking outside of the rule books and creating effects that don't exist within pathfinder. It's not for everybody, but for the groups I've ran for, it challenged the optimized characters (and the un-optimized) to have to come up with new strategies. They usually felt elated at their success in such scenarios.
Two of my other personal (less complicated) favorites:
* Scenario 1 (ran by a friend of mine): the boss, vs a level 8 party, has DR 20/(truly greedy person). It was a pirate game and 5 of the 6 players had wound up being rather generous, while one of us was greedy the entire time. As it turns out, the greedy person was the only one who could damage the monster mastermind and take his place, so the entire party had to protect/help this one individual to ensure he could attack them every turn.
* Scenario 2: Three demons that had to be killed at exactly the same time (aka, on the same turn all had to be brought to negative their con), or else they would all receive a heal spell and be brought back to full health. The party had the opportunity to talk with a survivor who fought against the demons and described his regiment being slaughtered by them, so they had clues as to how to defeat them.
I have a huge array of these that I've run in other encounters. Ones where the party had to kill one of them to turn them into a ghost to fight an enemy, ones where the party was forced to possess tiny animals to go into a den and fight a wizards familiar, etc. Mostly what I'm suggesting is that adding raw numbers is probably my least favorite way of challenging powerful characters and that creating your own spells/effects/situations that are puzzling is a very rewarding way to offer a challenge.
Oh, I SOOOO want to try to recreate tuckers Kobolds. I feel like I will have succeeded as a GM when I can make my players fear a group of CR 1/3 monsters more than a Demon.I did this! Now my gaming group is scared of kobolds a whole campaign later. It's awesome.
Tuckers Kobolds are not CR 1/3 monsters. They have special abilities like "The DM forcing the PC to do one thing and one thing only" and "complete omniscience". It's also designed to be frustrating and thus NOT-fun.
In fact one poster said it succinctly when becoming aware the DM was running Tucker's kobolds on them "Tucker's kobolds!?! You're pulling F%$#@! Tucker's kobolds on us??? F%$@ you man!".
I think it depends on whether you play with open or closed information.
If you play with Open information, so they all know exactly what they are fighting and it's exact statistics, it becomes a LOT harder.
If you are playing with closed information, it becomes a LOT easier.
Simply put, they don't know how powerful or not powerful a creature is.
If you understand the rules easily enough, you can ramp up a creature on the fly. They seem to be simply eating through the HP and about to one round it...suddenly the HP has a large +HP to it that doubles or even triples the HP.
Damage not doing enough...suddenly they get a big +DAMAGE, either a solid number or additional dice...perhaps a modifier that when it loses so much HP...they suddenly get a bonus to HP...or maybe a reaction magic that adds damage, or even causes some sort of aura effect around them.
If they don't know what exactly the enemy is able to do...it is far easier to modify the encounter on the fly.
The same also goes if they are weaker then other groups, its far easier to modify an encounter to be easier (perhaps it's AC falters, or some other modifier occurs due to the situation) if you have closed rather than open information.
PS: The only problem with this approach are the whiners...those players that don't like this style and would rather be playing either a SOLO game where they know all the information...OR those who want to play an open information game. These may demand that you show them the stats or whatever. On the otherhand, playing with a closed information game normally adds to the suspense and lets you modify things in accordance with the players a LOT easier. Some would say this is an old school game type approach, but as long as you are a GM that is there to make the game FUN rather than a GM that plays against the players, closed information games work the best (as long as the GM understands the innate balance of it all and has the goal of letting the others have fun) at keeping things challenging, but not overwhelming....
Our GM has had this issue in our WotW game he offered to run so the normal GM could get some player time in.
Called them the Mist Weavers (as every adventuring group needs a name right?) and gave a little background about how they followed up the troubles along the coast until they heard about what was happening at the spire, the various people going/not coming back, talking to the npcs who managed to escape, etc. They threw together what funds they had left after gearing up and hired a druid to cast Control Weather in the area outside the spire to cause natural fog to roll in. The spire has no outside doors amusingly enough so eventually the lower levels filled with fog.
The PCs couldn't see through it and the NPCs would go in after several hours to "explore" the spire pretty much unopposed. The 3 npcs were more than enough to challenge our 5 min/maxed characters given the circumstances. It should have been a party wipe the way it unfolded (the GM didn't play them as well as they probably should have which allowed us to get down 2 of the 3 after a long long fight - we were able to eventually "corner" them one by one).
Moral of the Story: Environment can make a huge difference and often times is not something players plan for as it gets hand waved most of the time. Concealment foils sneak attack damage as well as giving a flat out % to miss making the +20 to hit 8th level characters still miss on occasion. It prevents AoO from movement. My ranged character was pretty much screwed as anything past 5' I couldn't target. We earned our XP/gold that time around. And the best part about it was, it didn't single out any one character in the group to be "countered" so people weren't feeling picked on by the GM.
We are playing tomorrow. I created a adventure just for them,the lowest CR on the entire thing is APL+1 and the highest is APL+5. Mostly the +5 ones are CR 11 with traps or tons of lower CR monsters.
We will see how it goes.
I did use some terrain to the monsters advantage and even placed some ranged ones way out of melee(up on balconies ect)but didn't do that a lot.
I based the adventure off Dungeon Bastards Flaming Deathpits of the Minotaur Mage,so really just had fun with it.
Worst happens is, I come back tomorrow night and tell you guys I killed them all and the idea didn't work out or I suck and they still just beat the snot out of my dungeon.
Either of those and I know we would still have a good time.Who knows though,maybe it will be challenging enough for them to win but still put the fear in em!
|
The "easiest" way is to just ramp up. Make the average encounter APL+5. Boss battles APL+6.
This is the approach currently being used by my Carrion Crown GM. Average encounter is anywhere between APL+5 to APL+8 with more HP tossed into the melting pot on top of that for good measure. ... We are still pretty much smoking the AP. We've gotten into a few rough spots but no real deaths as of yet to speak of. As it stands, we are roughly six sessions from completion.
So yeah. There are parties out there that look at fights rated "impossible" and proceed to administer the pimp hand.
Ugg APL+5 for the average? Well,lets hope that isn't needed or the guys are just gonna smoke my adventure!
Ah well,guess we will see tomorrow.
Repeating what's been said above...they may just be after feeling Epic. If that is the case--it doesn't (as much) matter what numbers you throw at them. Describe the encounter in an epic fashion, make the enemies memorable. This is something you need to know. If they come to the table wanting to be Badass, describe them as Demigods with the World Underneath Their Feet. You can amp the challenge up just enough that they feel they've earned it, but...
They. Are. Badass.
...so see if that's what they want.
More general advice: Memorize action economy. Become very familiar with the types of actions allowed in a round and the type of action each thing they do requires. Review which cause AoOs and which do not. I've found this quite small stumbling block is where many errors end up triggering. What sort of action is fetching a metamagic rod out of a pack? A haversack? And so on.
Minmaxers are also fond of summons. Recall that dispelling just 1 of say, 3 summoned tigers dispels all 3 tigers.
But do look into action economy, then memorize it.
OTOH, if they're wanting to go Badass...you might also be more lenient and remember to handwave for Epic Happenstance.
...look forward to hearing the report. :D
|
|
Throw in lots of enemies with spring attack and trip feats. Trust me, you will make your party come across the table and strangle you. >) Alternatively, you could send them up against some whip specialists that just unload with combat maneuver after combat maneuver from fifteen feet away with lunge.
To the original poster,
First off, there has been a lot of good advice rendered in this thread already, so what I have to say won't come off as anything earth-shattering.
Assuming that your players are willing to play through more challenging adventures... Every fully optimised character (min-maxed or otherwise) has weaknesses that you can exploit. You need to know the weaknesses of each character. Ideally, the party as a whole will be able to cover one another, but that's not always possible. Think "Justice League: Doom", if you're looking for inspiration. The trick is to take full advantage of their weaknesses while keeping them all busy enough that they can't really help one another. Divide and conquer, if it resorts to that.
Secondly, you could always consider running non-mythic characters against mythic opponents. This is a dirty trick that could potentially backfire, especially if your players feel that they should gain mythic power. It has the potential to become an arms race of sorts, where you finally cave in and give the players mythic power, then you have to resort to going back to +5 or +6 to every CR just to keep things interesting.
Lastly, you may wish to consider consulting your players and letting them know that you wish to run a low-magic campaign, which can dramatically change the challenge levels of the game, particularly if their foes have better access to magical gear than they do. In order to keep things on an even keel, make most magical items have limited potency. Wands have limited potency (charges), as do potions. Give the +3 holy doomslayer mace enough magical power to make 12 strikes (2 of which were used by the foe that they got the mace from), which would give your players pause. They would want to make sure that they need to save their best tricks for when they're truly needed so that they're not caught up short when they really need assistance. Don't waste one of the strikes on the annoying goblin, save it for the demon.
This encourages your players to think much more tactically without significantly altering any power curves. The battles that are the ones that they really want to win, they'll still have the potential to breeze through, and the ones that don't matter as much will be tougher. The only trick is... You have to be stingy with the magical gear. Magic shops probably aren't an option for getting anything other than reagents, and maybe low-level potions or wands once in a while.
This might also place limits on what kinds of characters are allowed. Straight up wizards and witches should be a rarity, though maguses might be more common. Clerics might also be less common, but inquisitors more so. Magical item-crafting feats might be restricted to high-level NPCs to prevent characters from making their own magical items or having any followers do it for them.
Best wishes!
Look for really annoying Creatures: Swarms, Shaddows ... what else is a really nasty critter?
Avoid the Max. Attack the Min.
Whatever their optimization is, make them work to bring it into play. Get in the caster's face, while forcing the melee monster to cross Walls of Fire and Acid Pits to reach his target. If the sorcerer casts Haste, hit them with Slow. Confound blasters and archers/gunslingers with mists and fog.
I'm reading all this late. Has anyone thought to organize a GM support group. I'm not joking. I've had the same problem. Usually a player metagames and plays debate games or to the sympathies of the group as a whole. You, the GM, ends up being the bad guy for trying to run a fair and fun game. I would love to offer my services for free to become an equalizer. Character assassination of a different kind. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
You as a player fudged your ability score rolls, or at least maximized the point buy system. You are guaranteed to be raised from the dead or resurrected at least as many times as your CON bonus allots. You then insist on playing something the game world (campaign world) would not have let out of the womb and you make me..the bad guy.
I would love to have a place to submit character sheets and have a rules legal, RAW/RAI execution squad just line up to take out their frustrations on said character.
Some of the monsters should be fun to min-max, such as trolls with protection from fire or fighting hoards of small creatures in areas where medium characters have to squeeze. Be sure to set up some tactical traps, where the whole idea is to draw them in and then surround them.
For a BBEG, a diviner that has enough charisma and mundane information gathering skills to be useful could be really interesting. Sets up his underlings to fight the group, just to see who wins and how. Gives information he gathers about the group to their enemies. Loves to treat others as pawns in a game of his creation.
Best of all, it allows you to run a BBEG who is smart with some underlings who are tough but just fodder as far as BBEG is concerned.
I look forward to hearing how they do.
|
You know its very easy to beat power gamers, first of all basically it has to do with mindgames, first you need to make some easy encounters to check on their abilities then you will see how powerful they are. When you are aware of that you will see his strenghts and weaknesses
Thte part people forget about min max is about the min part. Min maxed characters are usualy overspecialized and have one or two tricks, normally they try to supplement each others weaknesses. Splitting the party and having them in situations they are not normally used to is the way to go.
Also min maxers usually get cocky fast if you bring esy encounters they wont expect a really difficult encounter nor they will be able to answer to a difficult encounter. Normally I include what i call "Mister hat" on all of my games. What is mister hat? Mister hat is an NPC a very high level NPC, this npc may be good or bad, a killer or not he will be better than them he will always be a step ahead due to deus ex machina and acccess to divinations. Mister hat will beat the pcs on a regular basis, he will never kill them for one reason or another, he will provide a recurrent villian, he is not the big bad and eventually the pcs will beat him. But he works as a control tower for the plot and also due to punishing the pcs so much his mere presence will make things harder for them and will keep the paranoid and on alert, this will make them make mistakes. So play a mister hat, use it to challenge your player. Remember when dealing with min maxers you have to challenge the players, not the character builds.
I have a highly speciffic piece of advice here, which can help out.
If you use 3rd party or 3.5e material, there's a trick that produces pretty mean monsters for cheap CR. The trick is using either the 3.5 supplement called Tome of Battle, or the 3pp pathfinder version called path of war. They have something called initiator levels, which are like caster levels, except they actually determine how high-level powers you get. The key here is that you add half your existing HD to this number.
Consider the Redcap. It's an 8hd fey, CR 6. Giving him a characetr level makes him CR 7. If we went with a barbarian level, he'd have rage, which is nice, but ultimately not of much consequence. The Advanced simple template might serve better.
If however, we give him a warlord level(from PoW), we can give him the elite array, and he gets an IL of 5, which means he gets 3rd level maneuvers. These include such things as dealing double damage as a standard action attack, dealing up to 8d6 additional damage if the foe is at 1/3th hp, and dazing a foe on a failed save of you hit.
Path of war is availible on the d20pfsrd. I suggest slapping a level of one of the three classes onto all monsters with more HD than CR.
Edit: ElementalXX's suggestion does not sound like fun. It sounds like beating pcs into submission.
|
This is a pathfinder Cleric build that I have always wanted to play in pathfinder but I have had enough problems justifying the cleric of Calistria but this cleric is an absolute monster. Behold the Cleric of Badass. So I stated him out as a 9th level cleric but this build requires level 8 to work. Sadly this is mostly pfs legal might not be able to afford the fullplate of speed by this point but most of it you could. Also you would have to change the alignment to LN. This guy is a dps monster he does 9d6 to everyone DC 18 for Half while healing himself 9d6 each time. He has a spiked chain to threaten and with certain boosts he is a monster. He can also heal himself with the neg energy with his undead allies as well. You can swap out the Darkness domain for Law if you wanted to be able to create undead. This version is more of a attack in the dark type of guy with his shadows.
CLERIC OF BADASS
CR 8
XP 4,800
Male human cleric of Zon-Kuthon 9
LE Medium humanoid (human)
Init +0; Senses eyes of darkness (4 rounds/day), Perception +5
Aura aura of evil, aura of law
DEFENSE
AC 22, touch 12, flat-footed 22 (+10 armor, +2 deflection)
hp 75 (9d8+27)
Fort +11, Ref +6, Will +14, +2 trait bonus vs. charm and compulsion effects.
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft.
Melee chain +2 (spiked/spell storing) (two handed) +12/+7 ((two handed) 2d4+5)
Special Attacks bleeding touch (8/day), channel negative energy (9d6, DC 18, 7/day), touch of darkness (8/day)
Domain Power Spell-Like Abilities Bleeding Touch (8/day), Touch of Darkness (8/day)
Cleric Spells Prepared (CL 9th, concentration +14):
5th—slay living D (DC 20), spell resistance , summon monster v (summons 1d3 shadows)
4th—aura of doom UM, infernal healing, greater ISWG, protection from energy (communal) UC, shadow conjuration D (DC 19)
3rd—animate dead D, blessing of the mole UM, deeper darkness , invisibility purge , resist energy (communal) UC
2nd—aid , blindness/deafness (blindness only) D (DC 17), bull's strength , effortless armor UC, protection from good (communal) UC, silence
1st—divine favor , entropic shield , infernal healing ISWG, murderous command UM (DC 16), obscuring mist D, protection from good
D Domain spell; Domains Darkness, Death
STATISTICS
Str 14, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 20, Cha 14
Base Atk +6; CMB +8; CMD 20
Feats Armor Proficiency, Heavy, Blind-Fight, Command Undead, Extra Channel, Improved Channel, Quick Channel, Weapon Focus (Chain (Spiked))
Skills Acrobatics -3 , Climb -1 , Diplomacy +12 , Escape Artist -3 , Fly -3 , Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +5 , Knowledge (Religion) +12 , Ride -3 , Spellcraft +12 , Stealth -3 , Swim -1
Languages Common
SQ aura, aura of evil, aura of law, bonus feat, death's embrace, eyes of darkness (4 rounds/day), orisons, skilled, spontaneous casting, weapon and armor proficiency
Gear mithral full plate of speed, chain +2 (spiked/spell storing), phylactery of negative channeling, ring of protection +2, cloak of resistance +3, ioun stone, pale green prism - cracked ~ attacks
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Aura (Ex) A cleric of a chaotic, evil, good, or lawful deity has a particularly powerful aura corresponding to the deity's alignment (see the detect evil spell for details).
Aura of Evil (Ex) You project a strong evil aura.
Aura of Law (Ex) You project a strong lawful aura.
Birthmark You were born with a strange birthmark that looks very similar to the holy symbol of the god you chose to worship later in life.
Bleeding Touch (Sp) As a melee touch attack, you can cause a living creature to take 1d6 points of damage per round.
Bonus Feat Humans select one extra feat at 1st level.
Channel Negative Energy (Su) You can unleash a wave of negative energy dealing 9d6 (DC 18 for half) 7/day.
Cleric Extra Channel
Death's Embrace (Ex) You heal damage instead of taking damage from channeled negative energy.
Domains
Eyes of Darkness (Su) Your vision is not impaired by lighting conditions, even in absolute darkness and magic darkness.
Orisons You can prepare a number of orisons, or 0-level spells. These spells are cast like any other spells, but they are not expended when used and may be used again.
Scholar of Ruins (Knowledge (Dungeoneering)) From the moment you could walk and talk, the ruins of ancient civilizations have fascinated you. Because of this, you have special insight into geography as well as expertise in exploring lost places. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Knowledge (geography) and Knowledge (dungeoneering) checks. One of these skills (your choice) is always a class skill for you.
Skilled Humans gain an additional skill rank at first level and one additional rank whenever they gain a level.
Spontaneous Casting You can channel stored spell energy into inflict spells that you did not prepare ahead of time.
Touch of Darkness (Sp) As a melee touch attack, you can cause a creature's vision to be fraught with shadows and darkness.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency Clerics are proficient with all simple weapons, light armor, medium armor, and shields (except tower shields). Clerics are also proficient with the favored weapon of their deity.
I honestly don't really see why that build uses a spiked chain. Also, optimized melee guys will tear him apart in a round.
That's another thing. Massed, spread out archers so they don't get caught in an AoE.
If you can stage it, a fight consisting of 3 hillgiant/Warlord 1s, and 8 ranger 1(guide archetype, maybe)/fighter 2/slayer 1 archers at safe distance (~100ft) and well spread out is one hell of a fight.
They have a routine of about +8/+8, and deal 1d8+9 damage on each hit.
Considering there ought to be 16 of those attacks each round, and on top of the hill giants, that's one hell of a fight right there, suitably challenging to a party of 6 powergamed level 8 characters. They'll handily win, but the archers might walk away to fight another day, if you're lucky.
|
|
The spiked chain is for reach and free AOE. Also the spell storing will have bestow curse on it to nuke a mele as it closes in. The problem is the mele guys wont be able to see him. He can see in perfect magical darkness and he is laying down a 4th level darkness spell. Neither mele or ranged are going to be able to get close. Then his minions the shadows come in to drain the mele guys str as well. He makes a great villian and a painful Area of effect. This guy is a fight in darkness and tear them appart. If he fights in the open sure he is going to take some serious range damage but even and obscuring mist can make them close into mele. With the two resist types he can put on his minions he can avoid most spell damage.
He also gets the spiked chain for free due to his god so I thought it would be nice flavor.
Spiked chains don't have reach in pathfinder, sad but true -.-'
Otherwise nice build, and a very annoying/outside the combat zone attrition encounter in a dungeon or other situation with multiple encounters per day.