I'm running the Ruby Phoenix Tournament.
Group just walked over the first combat. I need to challenge without a TPK or it will get boring.
The PC's:
1/2 Drow ranger 1 / gauntlet witch 9 - generalist, back-up melee, some buff and debuff spells, high AC and saves, likes web/drow theme spells
Gnome sorc 5 / dragon disciple 5 - fire blaster, decent AC and saves, usually starts with greater invis and flying
1/2 Orc paladin 10 - archer build from guide, high saves and damage
Human inquisitor 10 - very optimized tank, with buffs AC is in the 40's, saves are also very high, CMD is also pretty high, damage is only moderate, but very difficult to hurt.
Dwarf druid 10 - (new player, don't know well) primary caster, fire domain, opened fight with Spike Stones to fill almost entire arena, likes elemental shapes.
3 of the PC's are slightly above WBL on average, the others are new PC's right at WBL. But mostly standard big 6 purchases.
I don't want to completely invalidate the PC's. But they are up against intelligent trained competition that will research, observe what they do, and try to counter it.
In describing opposition teams I mentioned a group of halflings riding lizards and a 'nature' team of druids and rangers. But if there are better ideas, I can just say those lost in the early rounds.
Since they are caster heavy, I was considering a counter speller. But he could only counter 1 each round and they have 3 primary casters. With the Spike Stones (I think that will be common for him), anyone that closes will take huge damage from crossing that many squares. Any one that tries to stay back is likely to get mauled by 3 primary casters and an archer. Not entirely sure how to proceed and challenge without overpowering them.
I'm looking for help building teams and tactics to fight them. Ideas?
Haven't played Ruby Phoenix yet, so not sure if any of the below would be outside of bounds for the rules of the tournament, but...
A group of halflings on Velociraptors sounds pretty freaking cool, to be honest. Especially if you have some as sylvan sorcerers, some as inquisitors, and some as druids to mix it up a bit more.
The "all nature" group could be cool, especially if all of them had some sort of way to fly. I can see the rangers providing great ranged support while the druids go into various elemental forms to cast effectively and chase down enemies who move away from their support.
Other fun thematic things could be:
A group of paladins who maintain a network of shield other spells on each other so that none of them ever takes full damage from any attack and all damage that is divided amongst them is easily mitigated by a single channel energy. Make a few of them the right flavor of aasimar with see invisibility and the "auto win" of being flying & invisible isn't as prevalent.
A group of intelligent undead might also be interesting. Maybe a necromancer or dark cleric of some sort with a group of juju zombies with class levels.
An all kobold or ratling group with gunslingers, cavaliers, etc. who specialize in selective fire and removal of debuff effects / visibility issues. Maybe with their own specialists for terrain hindrance or cover.
A "monstrous adventuring company" of lower CR creatures with class levels from a distant land. Use some non-standard classes / archtypes, etc. Maybe some 3PP stuff that you've pre-vetted for balance.
If you can, maybe have some old enemies / rivals show up with new friends - that often gives a bit more investment from vet players and they can tell the new player why that particular NPC is significant.
-TimD
What about a group of barbarians and ninjas or Shadowdancers with teamwork feats?
A group of melee warriors protecting a summoner.
An all-brawler team. Some are Snakebite Strikers with the Jabbing Style, some are Steel-Breakers with the Pummeling Style and some are standard Brawlers focusing on Grabbing Style.
A team who's character makeup closely mirrors their own(forces them to think outside the box).
An all divine group, worshiping the same god. This includes a cleric, a warpriest, and inquisitor and a paladin, as well as one random alchemist to confuse everyone.
These are all I have for now, good luck with your campaign!
On a more specific level,
Quite a lot of the pc''s are vulnerable to being silenced. If you combine that with some battlefield control to keep them inside, they'll have trouble.
Grapple them. I like a squad of assassin vines and some low level druids.
Target their touch AC. I bet you can hit that inquisitor all day with scorching rays or searing light.
While the party is solid vs. Darkness, smoke and fog will hurt them.
Wind wall will shut down the archer.
A group of erinyes, with maybe a fiendish harpy would be quite dangerous. Use those readied actions to hurt spellcasters, unholy blight them at will, and drop those ropes of entanglement. They can also see the gnome.
Liberal use of dispel magic. Turn off magic items for fun.
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Make use of minor globe of invulnerability, globe of invulnerability, and silence spells to limit the options of the spell casters. As stated above, wind wall shuts down the archers as will almost any wall spells used to create cover. Any characters with burrow as a movement will mess with them too.
Since the PCs are now a known quantity, have opponents bring energy resistance to the fight to counter the PCs known preferred damage spells. A pack of any humanoid creature with SR (like a group of drow with the noble feats) to limit the usefulness of spells is also a sure way to force a change to the combat.
a group of rifle and pistol armed goblins; as firearms attack touch AC. Aside from being a very dangerous challenge, watching a goblin explode when he gets a misfire using an oversized gun adds humor to any game.
Basically anything that disrupts the party's standard tactics while still letting them control their actions will challenge them and make it fun. Especially seven goblin gunslingers with spaghetti western music in the background.
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A group of melee warriors protecting a summoner.
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LOL, actually I did that for the finals at the local tourney to gain admittance to the Ruby Phoenix tourney.
All the rest of that is good ideas from all of you. I'm not sure if the undead or monsters would qualify as entrants. I will have to think about it.
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I would suggest a group of supplicants to the local beast of interest.
Perhaps an all Kobold party, with some having minor tweaks to racial modifiers due to being more draconic than some of their brethren.
Let's start with a party of 4.
I would suggest an Earth-based Dragon Disciple with a dust mephit familiar, who will be able to combat some of the crowd control/throw some back, and deal with archery problems, using his familiar to trigger various prepared consumables to deal with particular problems that may come up from their studies. He should be able to present some issues for those who stay in the back, the full casters and the archer. Have him attempt to stay nimble and out of reach, as he will easily be the squishiest of the group, even with greater false life and a con boost.
A Cleric of Dahak, I could see the flavor of the Solitude subdomain applying to Dahak, even though the other protection parts of the domain do not, and it would be fairly beneficial. Mirage Arcana is a fairly interesting and odd spell to apply to an arena battlefield. Can lower their saves a bit, provides lots of buffs, antimagic field and shield other are powerful save your bacon spells, particularly with an allied Dragon Disciple. Has access to invisibility purge, channels to tank through resisted fireballs, dispels as they come up. Pick up the Scalykind-Dragon subdomain for your second domain, have a tanky dragon throwing off buffs and disrupting their magic in the pit. Seems cool.
He will be powerful defensively, and he should have lots of resistant buffs up, but he has a low hp pool that can be exploited if you land a good hit through his tough hide. I suggest a Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier so that he doesn't get cheesed by just one critical.
A Thug/Scout Rogue/Cavalier, mounted on some sort of large lizard, or maybe even a Wyvern, and have him try to deal with the tanky guy. Use a sap or something from the back of his Wyvern and try to put the scare in the tank, then when it seems that stops working, fly off and crowd control a bit more. Don't pump his intimidate too hard or it will work too well. Have him rush in with a true strike on to get one good hit on the tank. Order of the Dragon means that he can be a bit more supportive than normal. Have him be a low damage threat, with some buffs and controlling abilities. Maybe some surprise consumables, or mean little things like unarmed strikes and gloves with glass vials in them. They're new ACG items, but I can't remember the name for the life of me at the moment. Make this one a bit sturdier than most kobolds naturally, but dumber. Hit with dex. Don't give him dex to damage, and his level ups to make his strength twelve. Good time hitting, particularly with the inevitable buffs, but low threat. Mostly exists to buy time.
For the last bit I would go for a Kensai Magus, with the traits that reduce metamagic cost by 1 each, and reflavor the Wayang Spellhunter as the gift of Dahak. Spend them on Bladed Dash, and have him prepare two quickened Bladed Dashes. It's a brutal tactic that will allow him to get an attack off, then go spell combat after. For this one in particular, I would definitely reshape the stats of the Kobold into a more draconic form. +2 Strength, +2 Intelligence. He'll be a bit MAD, but that's fine because he's naturally a bit strong. Have him use a reach weapon, in an arena like this I'm a fan of the Flying Blade. This one should be a heavy hitter with lots of buffs cast on him, kind of presented as Dahak's Champion and protected by the cleric. Have him do normal magus stuff after pouncing like spell combat shocking grasp or something. Buff his physical stats, leaving his int at 16 base with a headband so he can get that third fourth level spell.
I would suggest keeping all their charisma decent, as shown by my suggestions before this one, and try out performance combat if you're interested. Or just show them off as being impressive crowd favorites.
Create them as level 11's, and give them wealth that is ~10% above NPC wealth for consumables.
I haven't statted them out or anything, but I can do that if you wish. I could also tone them down a bit, as is they actually end up pretty strong. What do you think of this?
There are so many options for this. Maybe you should tell us what they walked all over, so we can get an idea of what they faced.
Any amount of Master Summoners pretty much ends this party.
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my group of 3 rogue/shadowdancer mixed levels would have eaten those guys alive at 10th level... (not so much at 6th). HIPS + bookoo high stealth (shadow armor, skillz, darkness) and some sniper goggles (2 were primarily ranged rogues, one was "more melee" with str crits)...
It beats throwing some Red Mantis Assassins at them... that is for sure. lol (we took the title "Red Mantis Assassin Assassins" after a while in Korvosa).
If you want to challenge them: make them fight themselves (the old "you have been copied"), or make them fight someone who could kill them but choose to capture them for someone else (like a highly trained group of invisible / shadow dancing ninjas (they never know if See Invisible works or not... but get hit with 3-6 poisoned shuriken every round... etc...)).
The problem that the "NPCs" in the campaign I was going through eventually had is that most "mook" type fighters can't see for crap (seriously, lvl 16 fighter with +4 perception... no way they are seeing a stealth based character until it is too late). One of the times we got into trouble, though, involved high level fighters and a anti-magic sphere... This would work pretty well against a casting party like this as well. Couple grapple mooks with an anti-magic mage boss...
Get copies of the PC's characters sheets -- seriously, nobody does this. Do it. Then stare hard at them.
I promise you, ideas will start bubbling away. Hey, Alice has a crap Reflex save! And Bob has no CMD at all. He uses Dim Door as grapple insurance -- but what if he couldn't? Hey, you know, the party ...
I understand what you are saying here. But I try to avoid that. It feels too much like player vs. GM to me.
I'm trying to come up with realistic teams that would enter the tournament and be reasonably competitive so the PC's have to work to beat them.
Then once I have a team, how could that team reasonable be expected to adjust their tactics based on what they observed from the PC's? The might be able to switch prepared spells and buy a few consumables.
But I don't want to build NPC's specifically to fight the PC's.
Okay, fair enough. But I think it *would* be fair to have rival parties studying the PCs in combat and preparing accordingly. If someone's signature move is an empowered Fireball, the rivals would have Resistance to Fire up; if one PC is an archer, Deflect Arrows. And so forth. ...
But I don't want to build NPC's specifically to fight the PC's.
Absolutely! That is exactly the kind of feel I am going for.
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If you don't feel like spending a couple of hours crafting your own parties ...
Not a problem, I enjoy creating characters. And I should have a fair amount of time between now and the 10th.
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I linked to my all-energy blaster monkey above ...
If evil antagonists are allowed, I have a couple of level 10-ish evil characters worked out in some detail as well. ...
But from 30,000 feet, I would say that lots of suck-or-sucks and mass debuffs are the way to go. Once the PCs are slowed, entangled, intimidated, grappled by black tentacles, and dazed, they'll be oh so much easier to deal with. ...
Yes, evil people can enter the tourney.
I liked your blaster. I think it is going on the list.
Prior to this, debuffs didn't work well since they rarely failed a save. Most debuffs have little to no effect if a save is successful. But I have been looking at the few that still have significant effects on a save like Icy Prison.
Ok, a few of you asked for more details. I will give them in a spoiler.
The arena is a 40' x 80' rectangle with Walls of Force for the boundaries.
The module doesn't say anything about pre-buffing that I can find. So for the qualification I let them have some unknown time to buff while being introduced. I rolled a d4 and they ended up with 3 rounds to buff before the door opened. For the first round I said the officiating clerics cast a bunch of targeted Dispel Magic to bring down any buffs prior to the start.
I was planning to change the amount of buffing allowed each time.
For the qualification bout there was a summoner, a sneaky monk, and 3 enlarged fighters with trip weapons. It took them a while to win due to the trips and summons, but they were never in any real danger.
The first fight was 5 monks level 9. 2 with meteor hammers to bring/keep the squishies up next to the monks. 2 with monk spades to do damage. 1 with a seven-branched sword to reduce defenses.
The second fight is written as happening on a cliff face with everyone wearing slippers of spider climbing. A fighter 9 with a nodichi and damage build. Plus 4 monks 9 to trip people to fall off the cliff.
The 3rd fight is written as fighting while standing on hot coals against 5 bard sound strikers 9 that trip with whips while supporting each other with spells and chants.
The 4th fights is written as in a swamp with leeches against a witch bloatmage with SoS spells. It doesn't give any assistants for him but it should still be a team of 5.
The 5th fight is bare arena against a ninja/alchemist acid bombs or vanishing for sneak attacks. With generic monk supporters.
The final is a higher level monk with standard monk supporters. Trip and damage builds.
I expected them to win the first fight pretty easily. But it was even easier than I expected and I don't see them having much trouble with any of the others written into the module.
Their AC, CMD, and saves are all pretty durn good. They really concentrated on that this campaign.
The druid opened with Spikes Stones filling most of the arena. Anyone close through 60' of spike stones will take 12d8 of damage unless they have a way to ignore avoid it. I had the monks use acrobatics to jump over most of it so they only took 1-3d8 based on where they moved and how they rolled to jump.
That 1 spell will hammer most of the written opponents and only 1 of them includes a caster to try and dispel it.
I don't think kobolds, undead, or other monster should be allowed to enter the tourney based on the way it is described.
I like the halflings on dinos, but the spike stones would destroy them unless I also include a caster that can get rid of it.
I really like the team of paladins with shield other in place. I think I will go with that but make one of them a cleric for more spell might. Maybe lobbing stones with silence on them ahead of their advance to interfere with the casters. Maybe with some teamwork feats like shake it off and shield wall.
Yes others will have seen the archer so I will use a wind wall at least once.
First off, if the druid is opening with Spike Stones frequently, potions of fly and invisibility will become really common in the opposition.
Second, consider misdirection in higher level opponents. Are there ways to confuse the party as to who they are fighting vs. who they are seeing?
An invisible master summoner can drop threats all day, doubly so if he's a stealth halfling. You could drown the party is PA'ing Earth Elementals.
Druids can summon cyclopes at that level, which are spectacularly "WAAAAA!" summons against any party that isn't running monk-type tricks.
You're in a little arena. How do poison clouds and poison immune duergar sound?
Overlapping heightened darkness spells?