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Yeah, you can still challenge them. You just have to find the right way to. With a well made party, it is quite hard.
In my group, I have a sorcerer who is good at controlling the battlefield too, 2 ranged martials, 2 melee martials, a mounted combat dude, animal companions that are built competently, and a buffing wizard. Challenging such a group is hard. Some tips include:
Attacking the group from multiple sides and in waves. Do not have them trickle in one at a time making the control wizard's AOE powers useless. That is denying a player fun. Instead, have a few groups be bunched up to let the fireworks fly. The later waves saw their allies get AOED, so now they can try to not bunch up as much.
Do not throw windwall and line of sight blocking effects everywhere, but do it just enough that the archer cannot just gun down everything he sees. He should have to tactically maneuver too.
Also, in any competent group, less is not more. Having them fight a few strong enemies is asking for an easy encounter. A few strong enemies with not so few (lower level) mooks to back them up is better.
Are these mooks having problems hitting? You can help them out a little with teamwork feats and allowing them to buff beforehand if possible. Include a low level enemy cleric if possible, as they can boost accuracy very well. They won't be able to tell he is a cleric until he starts casting spells (prayer, bless), since he should be wearing armor like the rest of your NPCs. Bards are a worse option than clerics because their song won't stay around long after death (lingering performance only adds 2 rounds after death), but can still help out in those first few rounds.
Classes that are very accurate even at lower levels are fighters, barbarians, and cavaliers. For spellcasters, even low level spellcasters have access to spells that don't require high save DCs to be awesome. Grease and entangle are great!
Also never underestimate the net. The net goes against touch AC. It is an entangle effect with no save. A random level 3 human fighter with exotic weapon proficiency: net, weapon focus: net, quick draw, point blank shot, and rapid shot can put out 2 nets a round against touch AC.
Don't be afraid to use fiendish and celestial creatures too. Spell resistance is cool! Also a prepared cleric who casted communal energy resistance is awesome!
Is the druid pounce charging and decimating foes? Thats fine and cool. He can do that. The thing is, you know the power of your NPCs and he does not. That dude he pounced and killed could have been a tough party level barbarian, or just a low level barbarian. They both look the same. The net dude from earlier is a threat, but he is easily dispatched. However dispatching the net dude means his boss took one less attack.
What's your party roles/functioning outside of combat like?
And how do they handle unusual situations (like perhaps when they are only secondary targets- escort missions, preventinga assassinations, hostages, etc)?
IMHO, the best way to challenge the party is with situational effects.
Put them in terrain that favors the baddies and see what happens. In a fireworks factory filled with smoke, I'm not sure that they would want to use their favorite fire spells. Put them in a room with an invisible floor filled with pits -- or if they're flying, in an arena filled with invisible obstacles to run into -- and watch their mobility drop dramatically. This also has the advantage of providing new tactical puzzles so that the encounters will be memorable and fun.
Another trick I've used is to separate the goal from the monsters. For example, give them a room full of hundreds or thousands of low-level vermin, but the point is not to kill the vermin, but to get across it and throw the lever that will flood the place with insecticide. The fighter can have fun for a few rounds pretending to be an immersion blender, but will eventually realize that, fun though it is, all he's doing is getting himself covered in spider guts. (On the other hand, if he doesn't do that, the spiders will overwhelm the casters and that would BE BAD.)
The above suggestions are good. Also, any combination of:
- Timers on events
- Competing parties
- Moral dilemmas / "No Win" situations (be careful with this one, but it can be an effective device if used with a deft hand -- also, they may surprise you and find a way to win.)
- Enemies they can't kill without major social implications
In other words, challenge them on roleplaying / moral fronts, at the same time you're challenging them on mechanical fronts. Just don't forget that they're heroes and want to feel like such, at least from time to time. :)
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25 point buy is always asking for trouble if you still want to challenge PCs. Having more than 4 PCs also drastically reduces challenge. When running a published adventure, remember
the levels it claims to be for is for a party of 4 players on a 15 point buy. Either run a higher.level adventure or modify the one "on level."
Make your enemies equally competent. Divine casters that buff ranged attackers from a ledge while the players have to deal with the melee in their face.
Have them set ambushes behind doors the party though they explored already. Use invisibility to sneak up on the back line. Have the enemy use control spells as well to control the party fighters.
Truthfully, as a GM, you get into the habit of gimping the enemies the players face. After all, you don't want to kill the players right? You want them to feel like death is a very real possibility, but you don't want to be killing them off. When you have a competent, well designed party, you get to take off the gloves.
The NPCs get to use narrow entry ways, prepare for the players to whatever extent is reasonable. The rogues get to attack from behind. Your NPCs get to act like PCs who are very much interested in not dying today. Try combining traps and normal encounters. The NPCs should know where the traps in their own domain are, and should be more than glad to draw the PCs through them.
Of course, the other side is simple raw stats. The players have the advantage in every way there, and it sounds like they have a numbers advantage. One of the easiest ways in my experience to balance the scales on the fly is to simply give a bit more HP. If they can't seem to hit the party, give them a bit more bonus to hit. If tanky monsters are just getting butchered, give them some more AC. Obviously, ideally you have your campaign balanced beforehand, but with a new party that can be very difficult to do. Sometimes something that looked challenging on paper isn't in real play. The only thing I don't recommend is giving more damage as that can easily end up amplified to the point of one-shotting. We all know the greataxe crit at level 2. If you buff the damage of a monster just a bit, and they get a crit, you can drop a player fairly quickly.
Lastly, have your enemies use consumables. If the enemy fighter-type has a potion of bull's strength, why is he not using it if he knows the group that is about to engage has already cleared out a few groups of his allies? Why is the archer not using the potion of cure moderate wounds on his allies to keep them up?
It would be nice if you could travel to the past and give the players 15 point buy. That's not likely to work out unless you run into Dr. Who though. Being a "Time Lord" could still help your cause though. What you need to do is prevent the PCs from resting and push them through the dungeon at a steady pace.
Perhaps each level could have a 24 or 48 hour timer on it. When the timer expires something bad happens. Possibilities might include:
- Level floods
- Level floods with acid
- Level collapses
- The "Cleaners" show up. Perhaps they're enormous gelatinous cubes. Perhaps they're Balor janitors who burn the filth away with their flaming brooms. Perhaps they're endless swarms of some weird little monsters the PCs can't kill until they've obtained some special equipment from one of the final levels in the dungeon.
- Each level has a room/inn/garden of earthly delights where the PCs can rest and perhaps even trade treasures for new equipment. If they try to use the same level's rest area more than once the Banshee alarm clock makes them regret it.
- As a simple option, maybe once you open a level its inhabitants quickly learn of your presence and will harass and harry you if you try to rest even on the next level up.
The idea is to make the PCs more conservative with their daily powers. This should make easy fights a little more challenging if folks don't want to "waste" powers. At lower levels adding heaping helpings of ability damage can help too though some players could find it oppressive.
Considering the Deathtrap Dungeon sort of theme I'd also consider incorporating traps into encounters, especially having traps which go off just before or as initiative is rolled. This can be as simple as a floor which collapses into acid filled pit with acid resistant monsters in it or something absolutely diabolical.
It would be nice if you could travel to the past and give the players 15 point buy.
Meh. 15 point vs. 25 point doesn't make that much of a difference. The primary difficulty is always the SAD primary casters, and it's actually harder to challenge low point buy wizards than high ones, because they'll still optimize for the 20 Int but now they've got lower Constitutions, Dexterities, and similar things that give them staying power. The "glass-cannon" effect, where you can't challenge them without killing them, is more pronounced, not less, at lower point buys.
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Variety, and test the players as well as the PCs.
Of course, if you've got good players as well as good PCs, then kudos to them, however if the players are arrogant about their PCs and think they can cake-walk anything then there are plenty of modules out there to catch them out. Frog God Games are notorious for tough adventures and the stuff that I write (http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/f/fourDollarDungeons) is also quite challenging I think.
Richard
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Challenging well-made PCs with good stats is actually pretty easy: Put them up against APL +3 or +4 CR encounters, have said encounters be well-built (meaning rarely against a single opponent and utilizing multiple encounters to wear the PCs down). For monsters being well built might mean good gear selections, or a few levels in PC classes.
To use a real example from a game I ran: A Troll Barbarian 2 with a breastplate, Str 29, Dex 16, Con 31 when raging (resulting in 125 HP, and AC 21 or so), Power Attack, Combat Reflexes, and a Cloak of Resistance is only CR 7 and a hell of a thing to do to 5th or 6th level PCs as part of an encounter...
They won, but they sure knew they'd been in a fight.
@Orfamay Quest - I see the problems with low Dex and Con you mentioned as controls to encourage more balanced characters rather than as flaws. If the defenses of the PCs aren't challenged then there's little reason to focus on anything besides encounter ending offensive power. Anyhow, the groups I play with usually seem to enjoy it when somebody has dumped an important stat and has to suffer the consequences. Once in a while that player is me...
@Deadmanwalking - That seems like a pretty tough fight. I customize things a lot too. I try to stick to the APL to APL+1 range, but sometimes I get a little carried away with tweaking stuff and produce a monster which is nastier than the CR implies. Anyhow, I've been thinking that the next time I run I'll probably just use an AP. I'm sure the AP monsters will go down way easier than my custom built stuff, but it seems like that shouldn't be too much of a disappointment since I can just turn the page and find the next encounter already prepared for me.
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@Devilkiller -my new group usually uses 32 point buy. They decided to tone it down a bit for this new campaign with 25pt buy supplemented by a custom background that gives a +2 to one stat(max of 20 after racials) and 2 custom paths that each give a +1 to a stat. Each path gives access to 5 or so traits that we get to choose 2 traits from.....So a 25 pt buy with a total of +4 extra ability points and 2 free traits. I don't even know how this is gonna work.
@Fake Healer - Wow, that's a lot! You won't have me there breaking stuff though, so maybe it will turn out fine even if somebody does take a level of Monk. I just figured that lower point buy might help with the OP's goal.
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@Fake Healer - Wow, that's a lot! You won't have me there breaking stuff though, so maybe it will turn out fine even if somebody does take a level of Monk. I just figured that lower point buy might help with the OP's goal.
The GM keeps rolls hidden and so far it looks like drama regulates how much people are getting hit and when the baddies start critting more. blech.
I agree that a lower Point buy is what the OP needs.
Honestly you run into the issue where you need to make better encounters, but that is going to be hard if the PCs are not facing intelligent opposition who is aware of them in the long term to plan against them.
Ability Drain is great, but avoid having monsters that all target the SAME ability or you end up with people dying on the first monster round regardless of how well they are built.
Negative levels should only be used POST level 1, meaning level 2 and on. This is because at level 1 is means someone Will die in all likelihood. I've had a DM decide to, against a level 1 part of 4, to fill an entire dungeon with Wights. It ended with my Conjurer wizard running for his life out of the dungeon after all of the rest of the party died from negative levels. When that same DM said, "Hey guys, I have a new dungeon" we all had better things to do.
Never underestimate the power of spell-storing armor. Especially if Big-Bad is a powerful Necromancer who can craft things. Also, amulets of Detonate to an element the bearers are immune to. Bloody Skeletons wearing (cold) detonate collars that activate each round they can when in the presence of "life" can be really dangerous.
Most of all, don't underestimate the power of illusions. Permanent silent images covering openings are super effective. The best part is that they are not "doors" since there is nothing there to open. The PCs either are searching the room's walls and their hand sticks through or they are not likely to find them.
The PCs have thrown together a fairly good group. Ranged Paladin, TWF Ranger, Life Oracle w/ good melee and combat familiar, a good control Wizard and a front-line Druid. They have stats that might reflect a 25 or even 30 point buy.
The two easiest ways to 'challenge' smart, well-built characters is to:
1) Have them face, at least occasionally, smart well-built foes.
2) Always have 'waves' of mooks available to send in once combat has started, keeping them coming until you feel the characters have been adequately challenged or have exhausted an appropriate amount of resources. Its an easy trick that can go a long way, and oftentimes, sending in 4 more goblins/vrocks/whatever can go a long way.