Hello
For example, with a single spell the Magus on 10th level boosts his AC to 38. A CR 9 Dire Crocodile, who has very little going for it except a powerful melee attack only has +18 to hit - thus missing the Magus as often as a 1st level commoner. Ditto for the Frost Giant, a fairly common foe. A CR 10 Fire Giant will hit more easily, but still needs to roll pretty high just to hit with the first attack, while the rest are pretty much guaranteed misses. And this is using melee monsters as examples, those who have more spell-like abilities or other ways to attack generally have so low to hit there is no point in trying.
Armor stops secondary attacks, it is assumed the primary hits when people say AC stop working. AC is sup[posed to make 1st attack hard to hit so they can't power attack, etc.
CR 9's are below you, you can kill multiple in a day according to CR guidelines before even sweating. So, of course, minions have trouble.CR 10 is equal so he can hit. The Fire Giant follows this perfectly.
Plus, 38 at level 10 means Tank AC: 20 + 1.5 Level; with that spell he surpasses good and becomes a Tank.
Sure, the party's Wizard and Rogue has less AC, but my philosophy is that a melee monster needs to have a certain chance of hitting the main tank. Having a whole bunch of Fire Giants attack the party will probably endanger them, but we're talking level 10 here - they shouldn't really be able to take out a EL 14 (4 fire giants) that easily. And remember the spellcasters will make use of battlefield control spells to make those giants a lot less challenging and have ways to protect themselves like Mirror Image, Invisibility or simply a Fly.So if I ever throw in a monster that is a "brute" sort that can challenge the party I need to use increasingly high CRs - CR 14-15 easily. The problem here is that such can easily one-shot the PCs with low AC (low means less than 30), have other abilities that might be overpowering, or just give them to damn much xp.
I realize that at level 10 normal city guards are not going to be a problem, but even the most elite of...
Does that Fire Giant have any buffs? Like a masterwork +1 Sword, remember NPCs even Fire Giants get money for gear. Yeah, 300 more gold and he gets a better hit rate.
Then Add flanking. Boom +2 hit.If you aren't properly equipping the Giant his CR drops by 1 according to Pathfinder rules.
Heck, NPC levels are not associated so you can add 1 warrior, Adept, Expert level without upping CR.
Adept means Bless: adding +1 to hit, or +2 if you change out one of their feats for extra traits.
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The magus may have a huge AC, but his CMB is likely not so good. So a giant can happily sunder, bull-rush or overbear the little twerp. Once he's prone and pinned, he's a bit easier to deal with.
There are some classes (magus and monk, notably) which can get obscene ACs - often at the cost of useful offence - but for most classes it's the other way round.
There's a rule in the game that no character can spend more than 25% of their WBL on AC boosting items. Since this rule makes no in-world sense, it's often ignored.
A house rule I tried which helps to mitigate this problem a little.
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Even following the guidelines (not a rule)*, a character can attain a high AC relative to the attack bonuses of their foes. The "AC becomes less important" crowd are usually those that skimp on AC to pump DPR as high as possible, creating a self-fulfilling prediction. Depending on the character choices, it's possible to have both good AC and good DPR (i.e., weapon and shield-bash two-weapon fighting).
Of course, a good normal AC doesn't always protect against touch attacks (without specific armor abilities like ghost touch and mirrored), area of effect attacks, etc.
* - "Characters should spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level should spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins. Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items."
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I'll note that your experience matches mine. The 'conventional wisdom' that AC ceases to matter at high levels has never seemed to quite bear out in my gaming experiences.
1. Is this common? Does melee combat just become a thing of the past after a certain level?
Nope. It gets more and more difficult (and expensive) to layer on AC as you go up in level. And ACs of quite as high as you talk about are never common.
2. What are good ways a human-based evil organization can challenge such a group? I'm using Golems etc now, but I feel like I'm stretching the Suspense of Disbelief the tougher monsters I send at them.
Bards and other buffing characters are godsends. A single 7th level Bard can give an entire encounter +5 to hit casually, all by himself (Good Hope + Haste + Bardic Performance). A Cleric can do almost as well with a little more time (Blessing of Fervor + Bless + Prayer), and let's not even get into what an Evangelist Cleric can do.
An 11th level Barbarian with NPC wealth could easily have +26 to hit on a charge, add +5 to that and the Magus's AC doesn't look so all-encompassing, does it now?
Now, most melee characters of that level aren't gonna be quite that high, but BAB alone plus Str, Enhancement, and the bonuses all melee characters get goes to around +20 for most melee characters of that level or so. A +5 on top of that, and, well, things start happening.
Targeting Touch or Flat footed AC is also doable in various ways, and tends to hurt quite a bit. And doing things that target Saves is also a viable option.
3. Any possible houserules that can fix this problem? I considered letting "goons" automatically hit on a 19-20 when they gang up, but that makes investing in AC almost pointless. Giving enemy soldiers arbitrary high attack bonus yet keeping their hit points and damage low?
Coordination. Have the enemy groups built like a well-built party of PCs, having them all be the same class is not ideal in terms of effectiveness, have several melee combatants backed up by Clerics, Wizards, Bards, and so on laying buffs and debuffs down as appropriate.
4. It might just be they have become too high level for the campaign plot. Ideally enemy goons would be easily dispatched, yet should be threatening in numbers. Some enemies i made (10th level fighters with SR and some shadow-jump ability) were challenging, but I doubt they are anymore.
Again, this is a workable situation. Just one that requires serious brains and coordination to deal with.
Anyone ever chart how AC ramps up as a character levels? I have found that a moderately well armored character can do well against most monsters attack bonuses until sometime around level 8-10. By that point AC barely creeps up by 1/level, but monsters attacks seem to bump up by 2-3 points. But then a couple levels later, monsters attacks seem to level off again...
I have found the best way to challenge high AC is by variety, and masses of attacks. If you roll them enough, eventually the dice do the killing for you.
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...but my philosophy is that a melee monster needs to have a certain chance of hitting the main tank...
This philosophy risk invalidating the character creation choices of your players. Will you raise SR by 2 if the wizard is an elf.
If this is the case just tell the players that they are better derved by all having tha same AC because the tank raising his AC Will endanger the others since baddies Will hit harder to compensate.If you want the croccodiles to be a proper threat let them figth them under water. And remember just having High AC only make you har to hit, to be a tank you need to drage attention in a Way that allow the lower AC guys to survive as well.
Edit: how is he getting AC 34 without buffs? I Can only seem to make it work with generous stats, lots of gold, archtypes, dips and/or defensive figthing is he also worth it on the offense?
First, I'd double check that your players are calculating their AC correctly and remembering that you can't stack actual armor with Mage Armor or bracers of armor, or shields with Shield, etc.
That said, if you have players who are legitimately pushing 40 AC at level 10, and you aren't being unusually generous with loot, clearly they really care a lot about avoiding damage, and they're dumping an insane amount of resources into getting there. So I say let them reap the benefits. Worst case scenario, anyone still lands a hit with a natural 20.
Oh and yes, humanoids with class levels are basically never challenging once a party gets up around level 8 or so. You are largely expected to move on to more exotic threats by that point.
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First, I'd double check that your players are calculating their AC correctly and remembering that you can't stack actual armor with Mage Armor or bracers of armor, or shields with Shield, etc.
Actually...for a Dex Magus, especially a Kensai who manages to net Mage Armor, that's not an unreasonable AC. Especially if Fighting Defensively.
I mean, +7 Dex, +5 Int, +4 Mage Armor, +4 Shield, that's 30 right there. +2 Ring, +2 Amulet, +1 Jingasa, +1 Ioun Stone, and we're at 36 off the top of my head, and could easily be a fair bit higher with some thought. If he were a Tiefling, Armor of the Pit will net that remaining +2 with a single Feat. Now, that assumes good stat rolls or +4 Headband and Belt, but the former is possible, and the latter's very affordable with the use of Craft Wondrous Item.
So...this is very possible.
That said, if you have players who are legitimately pushing 40 AC at level 10, and you aren't being unusually generous with loot, clearly they really care a lot about avoiding damage, and they're dumping an insane amount of resources into getting there. So I say let them reap the benefits. Worst case scenario, anyone still lands a hit with a natural 20.
One Feat, some stat boosters (which are useful offensively as well as defensively), and 13k in GP isn't that invested. That's with CWI of course, but that's hardly a purely defensive Feat...
Oh and yes, humanoids with class levels are basically never challenging once a party gets up around level 8 or so. You are largely expected to move on to more exotic threats by that point.
This is simply untrue. Humanoid enemies are very viable all the way up to the end-game. They don't do well as solo encounters, but neither does anyone else.
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I've in general found the opposite.
The party is walking around with ACs in the high 20s/30s at 14th level for me, meaning that yeah, the CR 10 and 11s I throw at them hit them on 17 or 18+ at best, less if the rogue's offensive defense thing goes off and makes him damn near unhittable by whatever poor schlub he just sneak attacked (Rogue basically shut down two hamatulas thanks to that. The poor bastards couldn't even grapple him when he got a +7 to his AC/CMD from the rogue trick). Those are folks who are CR-3 though, so it makes sense that they shouldn't be as much of a challenge.
That being said, the usual complaint from players is that their ACs quickly get overwhelmed when fighting appropriate encounters for their level. Anything big and stompy tends to march around with a ridiculous +22 or something to hit, or larger.
What rankles the players in my group is that they come by their ACs 'honestly.' They have to wear armor, get gear, spend gold on items. Meanwhile something like a Colossal Purple Worm comes along and he just has a ridiculously high natural armor just because.
I didn't read through the whole thread, the first thing that comes to my mind though is that your using creatures of too low a CR. CR = APL isn't even supposed to be challenging, you're supposed to be able to fight 4 APL fights a day with little risk.
So, if you have 4 characters of 10th level, you need 4 CR 9 enemies (or 1 CR 10) to represent something that isn't challenging at all, accoridng to CR guidelines. Personally, I've always found CR not very representative. In that, optimized players/groups can handle higher levels of CR as if they were 1 to 2 levels higher. I personally suggest you set the baseline of enemies for "routine challenges" to APL+1 and see how that works out for you. Difficult encounters should be APL+3 and truly challenging encounters (with a serious risk of PC death) should be APL+5.
You missed the point. Im not throwing single cr 9 creatures at them. Im pointing out they dont work even in numbers. And fyi 2 cr 9 is one cr 10. 4 is supposed to be cr 11 iirc.
Last encounter I used a rakshasa and a night hag. It worked because the PCs didnt recognise them (shapechanged). The former even wounded them, but the hag couldnt hit anything.
Meh, you missed my point as well. CR as presented in the CRB doesn't work well, especially not for optimized groups. The actual math doesn't matter, because adjudicating CR versus challenging is much more art than science. It's about finding what works for your group rather than keeping your party on a strict CR diet. My point was, your using creatures of too low challenge, so raise the CR. As the GM, you get to do those things. In general, raise the minimum enemy to CR=APL+1, and rather than rachetting up the CR of an individual enemy (which has a higher chance of 1 shooting a single PC) add more enemies instead. Also, I didn't really specify single creature or not in my original post, though single creatures are bad.
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I have found that a moderately well armored character can do well against most monsters attack bonuses until sometime around level 8-10. By that point AC barely creeps up by 1/level, but monsters attacks seem to bump up by 2-3 points
There is a small dip in AC gains at mid-level when the cost of the next +1 AC requires a substantial investment on the characters part. This quickly disappears as the wealth available to characters explodes after level 10, making is possible to leapfrog AC back up to near unhittable levels.
Last encounter I used a rakshasa and a night hag. It worked because the PCs didnt recognise them (shapechanged). The former even wounded them, but the hag couldnt hit anything.
If the Night hag was swimging after the PCs? You May want to reconsider the tactics of your bad guys. I know that DC 14 and 16 is not great but look at the dear ladys at will sla's level 10 is the last level where Deep slumber makes sense but it is still evil at level 10.
And the rakshasa is also more caster than boxer.Edit: i had quotes wrong.
Last encounter I used a rakshasa and a night hag. It worked because the PCs didnt recognise them (shapechanged). The former even wounded them, but the hag couldnt hit anything.If the Night hag was swimging after the PCs? You May want to reconsider the tactics of your bad guys. I know that DC 14 and 16 is not great but look at the dear ladys at will sla's level 10 is the last level where Deep slumber makes sense but it is still evil at level 10.
And the rakshasa is also more caster than boxer.
Edit: i had quotes wrong.
Swinging not swimging :(
Your point is wrong, I'm not using creatures of too low CR. I'm instead forced to use high CR monsters. Do you mean use CR11 creatures and lots of them? Not that many that fits tbf. If you're in a city hunted by an evil organization with an actual army it's kinda hard to throw Hezrous at them (who can still easily miss).
I would use NPCs if it wasn't for the fact that they can take a while to make and gives the PCs more loot.
My point is wrong? OK™.
But seriously, you admitted your using APL-1 creatures, and they get slaughtered. That's exactly what is supposed to happen. Your complaining that your monster aren't challenging enough, but your using creatures below APL. The solution is using higher APL enemies. If you are in a setting where having random creatuers out of the bestiary as enemies doesn't make sense, then you will unfortunately either need to create NPCs, or use the NPC Codex. If the NPCs use NPC wealth by level instead of PC wealth by level, you shouldn't have to worry about ratcheting up their wealth. Especially when they're going to be selling those items at half price. Which is probably the case, since they should have better gear than what the NPCs are carrying. Also, recognize that they items they drop are the loot for that encounter, you don't get the items they drop as well as some random pile of gold in addition based on the CR of the encounter.
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Hm. NPC Codex versus AC 38. Let's try fighters. The CR 11 Fighter has +21/+16/+11 so hits on a 17/20/20. The CR 12 Fighter can manage +24/+19/+14. He needs 14/19/20. Unlikely to do much damage before going down, despite his very expensive equipment.
What about barbarians? CR 11 gets +19/+14/+9 when raging. CR 12? +21/+16/+11. CR 13? No better. CR 14? +22/+17/+12. So he has a one in five chance of hitting on his first attack of the round. Still a minion level threat even though CR 14 is supposed to be the equal of a level 10 party.
How about a monk? The CR 14 monk gets +16/+11/+6. You'd have to go up to CR 17 to get a +24 to hit, which is about what you need for any kind of challenge.
The AC here does sound very high but you are also trying to challenge the player against his best defense (and the most common, that is true). I've found that CRs don't always work at higher levels.
It also doesn't take much to make those encounters tougher and only add a little to them. Use the advanced template, give the giant a level of fighter...or barbarian, that would add 5-6 to its attack roll at only +1 CR. Or a bard...or other buffer classes. Or debuff the magus's AC with magic or other attacks, there are lots of ways to deny Dex bonuses.
Creatures with one big attack and nothing else are pretty weak in the big scale of things.
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Hm. NPC Codex versus AC 38. Let's try fighters. The CR 11 Fighter has +21/+16/+11 so hits on a 17/20/20. The CR 12 Fighter can manage +24/+19/+14. He needs 14/19/20. Unlikely to do much damage before going down, despite his very expensive equipment.
What about barbarians? CR 11 gets +19/+14/+9 when raging. CR 12? +21/+16/+11. CR 13? No better. CR 14? +22/+17/+12. So he has a one in five chance of hitting on his first attack of the round. Still a minion level threat even though CR 14 is supposed to be the equal of a level 10 party.
How about a monk? The CR 14 monk gets +16/+11/+6. You'd have to go up to CR 17 to get a +24 to hit, which is about what you need for any kind of challenge.
I think this analysis focuses too much on challenging one player, instead of the whole party. Also, it does remind me that the NPCs in the codex are horribly underoptimized.
The Magus has optimized his AC to high levels, if not the highest level possible. This was his goal. It also likely means his offense is not as strong (though the magus class feature could allow him to Nova a few encounters).
If you cannot hit the magus, hit the rest of the party.
Or ask the magus to tone back his AC boosting.
I suppose I can equip some monsters slightly better. I routinely give my human goons mw gear, and the 10th level ones had magic weapons, however I dont want to bloat the party wbl more than I already have.Also, if a fire giant is supposed to be decked out in magc gear why isnt that in the Bestiary stats? The whole point of using B. Monsters is that I dont have to spend 30 mins equipping then. Also, if every fire giant in the world has magic gear it makes the game a lot more high magic than it would otherwisw be. So i generally stop at MW unless said monster has class levels.
It is: Treasure standard (half-plate, greatsword, other treasure)
So... it looks like they don't even have all their treasure listed.
So, yes, you can't run them from the bestiary as is: they get their NPC wealth.
I didn't say magic (but it probably should be, Masterwork adds +1).
How low magic is your world?
Have a multitude of level 2 pole arm master mooks. Have them all aid another. Enjoy an additional +36 attack for the actual attacker.
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I Think you need to ask your self what Does it take away from the game that one if the heroes have High AC. Remember the bad guys dont know who consider him self a tank and if he dosent intercept, bullrush folks away from the softer heroes he is no tank he is just hard to hit.
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So... it looks like they don't even have all their treasure listed.
So, yes, you can't run them from the bestiary as is: they get their NPC wealth.
I didn't say magic (but it probably should be, Masterwork adds +1).
How low magic is your world?
I don't think that is how the game is intended to be balanced. Under the monster design guidelines it tells you to include any gear you give it, from it's wealth, in the CR calculation based off of average statistics.
If you give a dragon all his wealth in items and enchantments it most certainly ups it's CR from what is presented in the beastiary.
Edited for clarity
What I have my monsters do, is after 1 or 2 swings they realize they can't hit the guy in front of them w/o a 19 or 20, so they stop and move on to the squishier ones. Chances are the Magus isn't much of a threat to the monsters, since he puts everything in defense his offense is probably lacking.
If you have intelligent monsters that are minions of the BBEG or the PCs are known quantities since they're level 10 and probably knee deep in the adventure by now, your monsters should just avoid the impossible to hit guys. Enemies in my game completely avoid targeting the Paladin. His saves are too high and his AC is astronomical, but he doesn't do that much damage. They're much more likely to go after the Ranger (w/ abysmally low AC) or the wizard. Your PCs would kill the wizard before the Fighters, why can't the enemies do the same?
Amusingly enough, he's not built for tanking. He's built for DPS if anything, often one-shotting enemies when he crits with his Keen Scimitar. He got the first AC boost by.. loting my NPCs. Since then he probably invested more, also they had quite a bit of cash - maybe too much. They have enough creation feats to make all items half price.And to challenge the rest of the party I need quite a lot - we have two wizards who are good at battlefield control and summoning, but can't really do much offensive. Challenging them means enemies with True Seeing, stealth attacks or simply other magic users (dispel magic). I have no trouble justifying enemy mages.
But a character with good saves, extreme AC and defensive spells is a tough nut to crack, especially since he does the most damage in the party by far as well.
Would you be kind enough to provide the full character for the magus in question?
I would love to see the other characters as well, however the AC you are talking about is as far as I know on the high end of the optimization curve and I would be interested to see how he did it while maintaining good DPR, Skills, and Saves.
I am not doubting you just curious. Also the more information we possess the better advice we can offer to help with your dilemma.
As the poster above me said allowing inflation of WBL via crafting feats can become very problematic, especially if it is exacerbated by over WBL loot and savvy players.
I at one point had a group of players one round a Marilith at level 12, (I think it might have been 13), simply due to the fact that they had way over WBL gear. She did not even get to act.
Past lvl 10 you should be using magic to supplement your more threatening bad guys. If they aren't fighting caster characters then you are obviously setting yourself up in a situation where their party (which has quadratic wizards) will easily defeat your linear martials.
You should also be looking at targeting Touch AC, CMD, or Saves.
Like other people pointed out, it just sounds more like your own sub par tactics.
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Hm. NPC Codex versus AC 38. Let's try fighters. The CR 11 Fighter has +21/+16/+11 so hits on a 17/20/20. The CR 12 Fighter can manage +24/+19/+14. He needs 14/19/20. Unlikely to do much damage before going down, despite his very expensive equipment.
What about barbarians? CR 11 gets +19/+14/+9 when raging. CR 12? +21/+16/+11. CR 13? No better. CR 14? +22/+17/+12. So he has a one in five chance of hitting on his first attack of the round. Still a minion level threat even though CR 14 is supposed to be the equal of a level 10 party.
How about a monk? The CR 14 monk gets +16/+11/+6. You'd have to go up to CR 17 to get a +24 to hit, which is about what you need for any kind of challenge.
The NPC Codex NPCs are...not precisely optimal. And even just going with them, the Bard (or Cleric) I mentioned previously can give a +4 or +5 to all those numbers, making them much shinier.
NPCs without buffs =/= PCs with buffs and never will (even monsters have trouble with buffed PCs if they aren't buffed). Whether those buffs be from spells or items, the enemy needs some to be effective.
Ooh, good point. Guns! They hit Touch AC in 1st range increment.
The Magus has optimized his AC to high levels, if not the highest level possible. This was his goal. It also likely means his offense is not as strong (though the magus class feature could allow him to Nova a few encounters).
If you cannot hit the magus, hit the rest of the party.
Or ask the magus to tone back his AC boosting.
Amusingly enough, he's not built for tanking. He's built for DPS if anything, often one-shotting enemies when he crits with his Keen Scimitar. He got the first AC boost by.. loting my NPCs. Since then he probably invested more, also they had quite a bit of cash - maybe too much. They have enough creation feats to make all items half price.
And to challenge the rest of the party I need quite a lot - we have two wizards who are good at battlefield control and summoning, but can't really do much offensive. Challenging them means enemies with True Seeing, stealth attacks or simply other magic users (dispel magic). I have no trouble justifying enemy mages.
But a character with good saves, extreme AC and defensive spells is a tough nut to crack, especially since he does the most damage in the party by far as well.
The enemies have one big thing going for them: surprise.
They decide when to attack. They have the round or three of buffing for a battle that the PCs don't get. Use it.
Your party has battlefield controllers? Toss that back at them. Use spells, weather, and other things to make the players dance to your battle plans. Have a lesser summoner go and neutralize the summoner in your party. Some of the PCs summons get past, but most are taken out of combat by dealing with your summons. Miss chance is a great boost to AC for anyone. Give that somehow to your NPCs, and suddenly they last longer. They are no more effective against the PCs, but because they stick around longer, the fights are tougher. Swarms are great against spellcasters. Protection vs. <alignment> can protect against spellcasters and summons if they match up right.
/cevah
Crafting feats might unbalance things yes. However the faq implies that you should not lower wbl to compensate for crafting discount as that would lower the usefulness of the feats.
That said I will probably just ban crafting next campaign.
Some good advice here to beef encounters though. Bards (officers?), potions of heroism or bulls str. And spellcasters buffing I could use more often.
Actually, IIRC the developers have stated that a GM should not allow the crafting feats to help anyone other than the crafter (that is they should see no benefit in terms of increasing their effective wealth by level) and that taking the crafting feats should only increase the effective WBL of the crafter by 25% per feat, up to a 50% total increase.
That's not what is stated here:
FAQ wrote:PC Wealth By Level (page 399): If a PC has an item crafting feat, does a crafted item count as its Price or its Cost?
It counts as the item's Cost, not the Price. This comes into play in two ways.
If you're equipping a higher-level PC, you have to count crafted items at their Cost. Otherwise the character isn't getting any benefit for having the feat. Of course, the GM is free to set limits in equipping the character, such as "no more than 40% of your wealth can be used for armor" (instead of the "balanced approach" described on page 400 where the PC should spend no more than 25% on armor).
If you're looking at the party's overall wealth by level, you have to count crafted items at their Cost. Otherwise, if you counted crafted items at their Price, the crafting character would look like she had more wealth than appropriate for her level, and the GM would have to to bring this closer to the target gear value by reducing future treasure for that character, which means eventually that character has the same gear value as a non-crafting character--in effect neutralizing any advantage of having that feat at all.
—Sean K Reynolds, 01/14/12Where did you get the 25% thing from? In this party we have several characters with craft wondrous item (probably the most unbalanced crafting feat) and 1 with craft arms and armor. Everything except Rings and Wands are 50% for the party as the crafters do it for cost.
If I could their items at full price wbl wise they will all lose out and the feats are useless except for easier access.
There are no rules against crafting cheaply for others, and such should be handled in-character anyway. Since they all help each other crafting they all benefit from not charging extra.
Adjusting Character Wealth by Level
You can take advantage of the item creation rules to hand-craft most or all of your magic items. Because you've spent gp equal to only half the price of these items, you could end up with more gear than what the Character Wealth by Level table suggests for you. This is especially the case if you're a new character starting above 1st level or one with the versatile Craft Wondrous Item feat. With these advantages, you can carefully craft optimized gear rather than acquiring GM-selected gear over the course of a campaign. For example, a newly created 4th-level character should have about 6,000 gp worth of gear, but you can craft up to 12,000 gp worth of gear with that much gold, all of it taking place before the character enters the campaign, making the time-cost of crafting irrelevant.
Some GMs might be tempted to reduce the amount or value of the treasure you acquire to offset this and keep your overall wealth in line with the Character Wealth by Level table. Unfortunately, that has the net result of negating the main benefit of crafting magic items—in effect negating your choice of a feat. However, game balance for the default campaign experience expects you and all other PCs to be close to the listed wealth values, so the GM shouldn't just let you craft double the normal amount of gear. As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.
If you are creating items for other characters in the party, the increased wealth for the other characters should come out of your increased allotment. Not only does this prevent you from skewing the wealth by level for everyone in the party, but it encourages other characters to learn item creation feats.
Example: The Character Wealth By Level table states that an 8th-level character should have about 33,000 gp worth of items. Using the above 25% rule, Patrick's 8th-level wizard with Craft Wondrous Item is allowed an additional 8,250 gp worth of crafted wondrous items. If he uses his feat to craft items for the rest of the party, any excess value the other PCs have because of those items should count toward Patrick's additional 8,250 gp worth of crafted items.
Sorry, I forgot the correct source. It was actually printed in Ultimate Campaign.
So, as I said the recommendation is up to 50% increase in Wealth By Level, and doesn't benefit your ally unless you want to spend some of your WBL increase on it. Also, for further information Ultimate Campaign came out after the FAQ/quote from SKR.
Your problems are probably that you have at least one very optimized character, and probably everyone at nearly double WBL. In Pathfinder, WBL = Power. If you don't control it more strictly you will end up with the problems you have now.
Crafting feats might unbalance things yes. However the faq implies that you should not lower wbl to compensate for crafting discount as that would lower the usefulness of the feats.
That said I will probably just ban crafting next campaign.
Some good advice here to beef encounters though. Bards (officers?), potions of heroism or bulls str. And spellcasters buffing I could use more often.
You can correct WBL to the correct amount.
If I read correctly, you have 4 players at level 10.
Lets say the two wizards have two or more crafting feats.
Lets say the magus has one crafting feat.
Lets say the rogue has no cafting feats.
Total this up: 150%, 150%, 125%, and 100% of WBL for an average of 131.25% WBL.
10th level WBL = 62,000 gp (CRB p399).
This means this party should have an average of 81375 gp each.
Any more, and you are over WBL as adjusted by crafting feats.
Audit your players to see what their wealth is. If it is +/- 50% of standard (non-crafting) WBL, you should be OK. Crafting pushes you closer to the high end. If they are more than 50% over (93,000+ gp), then you need to scale back the total wealth. This is not a penalty for your players as they still are better equipped than non-crafters that most APs expect.
Best let your players know that the audit and wealth adjustment is to bring the characters more in line with expectations of the module and bestiary. This should help with the buy in.
Do not count wealth invested outside of the party, like a business or ship. These things help RP, but not much combat. Extra here is OK.
/cevah
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Oh and yes, humanoids with class levels are basically never challenging once a party gets up around level 8 or so. You are largely expected to move on to more exotic threats by that point.
Could you please explain how the humanoid party of PC's are a threat at this point in the game then? I am assuming that parties of humanoid PC's don't take class levels so that they don't fall under the 'never challenging' part of your description.
And what do humanoid PC's in your parties take instead of class levels? Based on what you have said, I get the feeling that I'm doing it all wrong!
:)