my players rolled chars standard way and they are kind of unstoppable i mean therehave been a couple of death scares lately but most of those have been because a trend (started by the paladin continued by the barbarian) of whenever theres doubt charge and power attack that door
so i have two questions should i implement a point buy sistem (next adventure nothing i can do to stop these juggernauts) and how do i make things harder (we are playing rise of the runelords)
1. Yes.
2. Bear in mind that, generally in PF, no one encounter is supposed to really pose THAT big a threat by itself. It's attrition that does you in.
More info on character builds would be helpful, as well.
The APs are, IIRC, designed with a 15-point buy in mind.
big bad barbarian double axe half orc two weapon fighting line of feats
fighter great sword really high ac really hard to hit
bard good supp char
cleric of sarenrae with healing and fire domain really good band aid(the only reason those death scares were only scares)
our pally moved out of the country so he doesnt play with us anymore
The APs are, IIRC, designed with a 15-point buy in mind.
IIRC?
Without spoiling the AP and to echo Aido's post, it seems like creating tactics for some caster enemies that include Will saves for the tanks will force the bard and cleric into a tough spot, depending on where you are in the AP.
As a GM, you should feel free to alter an AP or module to appropriately challenge your players. Nothing is scarier than having one (or two) of a party's big damage-dealers taken out by suggestion or a similar spell.
It might sound cheap, but this will ramp up the action for the party when they are forced to abandon the smash-kill-heal-repeat cycle and also allow for the support cast to play a larger role here and there
And swarms. And innocent bystanders.
You could also draw some ideas from fiction or myth that aren't yet in Pathfinder. Here's a couple that come to mind:
Anyway, you could toss in something like any of those that seem like death traps. But are survivable, provided your party can think of something other than brute force.
So, the demon with a ward-pact against swords is still vulnerable to arrows or axes. Something like Bellrung is done for if you figure out what it's one (not entirely obvious) weak spot is. And the Obsidian nasty could be reasoned with, if you know what you can offer to do for it, or those it serves.
I know that was kind of long winded. But I hope that gives you some ideas about how to keep your party from being really, really, really unstoppable.
my players rolled chars standard way
Well there's the first issue. Standard rolling is probably the worst stat generation method kept around only to satisfy the folks who claim "Rolling stats is more fun!" There's been a million discussions on it.
As for ways to make encounters more interesting,
1. Don't use APL+3 or +4 enemies. Use many APL+2/+1/=APL enemies. Even a horde of APL-2 enemies is a tougher encounter for most parties than an APL+3.
2. Weather conditions. Traps in the middle of combat. Battlefield control enemies aka casters with those kinds of spells and enemies with reach.
3. Tactics. RotRL often has the adventurers going into the lair of the enemy. Said enemies should have tactics in place for dealing with intruders. Retreats, alarms, and patrols are all suitably reasonable expectations to have in place. Encounter lasted too long or someone was able to retreat deeper into the dungeon? Patrol arrives to reinforce in a few rounds(1d4).
my players rolled chars standard wayWell there's the first issue. Standard rolling is probably the worst stat generation method kept around only to satisfy the folks who claim "Rolling stats is more fun!" There's been a million discussions on it.
As for ways to make encounters more interesting,
1. Don't use APL+3 or +4 enemies. Use many APL+2/+1/=APL enemies. Even a horde of APL-2 enemies is a tougher encounter for most parties than an APL+3.
2. Weather conditions. Traps in the middle of combat. Battlefield control enemies aka casters with those kinds of spells and enemies with reach.
3. Tactics. RotRL often has the adventurers going into the lair of the enemy. Said enemies should have tactics in place for dealing with intruders. Retreats, alarms, and patrols are all suitably reasonable expectations to have in place. Encounter lasted too long or someone was able to retreat deeper into the dungeon? Patrol arrives to reinforce in a few rounds(1d4).
i have befing up bosses and using surviving enemys beefing them up and pairing them with the boss of other dungeons example tutso survived so i gave him more monk lvls gave hive him some gear and paired him up with Xanesha
A few bits of advice, if it may be helpful.
1. Reroll the stats for some of the more important enemy NPCs?
2. Add more minions when appropriate.
3. Let the PCs roll over a few challenges if they enjoy it. Some players like challenge, others just want to feel empowered.
4. Leverage, on rare occasion allow the enemy NPCs to threaten the PCs by holding hostage some McGuffin item or allied NPC (using PCs this way should be done very carefully and sparingly if at all).
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Anyway, you could toss in something like any of those that seem like death traps. But are survivable, provided your party can think of something other than brute force.
you just doomed my party to death
you just doomed my party to death
Anyway, you could toss in something like any of those that seem like death traps. But are survivable, provided your party can think of something other than brute force.
Well if you still want to make encounters challenging for a party that tends to brute force things, waves of enemies does well in that regard.
Your party is designed to beat up low level encounters. They are going to beat up low level encounters. Traps, knowledge checks and social situations are going to bother them later, and the weird flying magical crap in the later modules will too. Play the whole game before you make judgements on how good they are, what seems overpowered at 4th level might be terrible at 14th.
Well if you still want to make encounters challenging for a party that tends to brute force things, waves of enemies does well in that regard.you just doomed my party to death
Anyway, you could toss in something like any of those that seem like death traps. But are survivable, provided your party can think of something other than brute force.
Nah i dont like waves they can get a bit dull, ill just try and challenge their intelect or maybe boobytrap a door or two see what happens when they charge at it
Most AP's are not particularly difficult. Well-optimized parties are unlikely to have much trouble with them, but it can be tricky to adjust the encounters without going too far. Especially with characters that have optimized damage but not much else it's very easy for one bad roll to utterly ruin them.
I generally increase the difficulty by adding more encounters, and playing them more aggressively. Groups of enemies quickly respond to the sounds of commotion, and an escaping foe will alert others. Players can often expect to have many encounters in rapid succession.
The APs are, IIRC, designed with a 15-point buy in mind.
The pregenerated characters presented on the last page of many AP's use the heroic array (which, although technically equivalent to 15 point buy, is a pretty terrible distribution). They're also poorly optimized on top of this. So I'd agree that AP's are generally balanced around poorly-optimized 15 point buy characters.
Nah i dont like waves they can get a bit dull, ill just try and challenge their intelect or maybe boobytrap a door or two see what happens when they charge at itWell if you still want to make encounters challenging for a party that tends to brute force things, waves of enemies does well in that regard.you just doomed my party to death
Anyway, you could toss in something like any of those that seem like death traps. But are survivable, provided your party can think of something other than brute force.
That's why I was suggesting some of the nasty things I did. You can beat them if you know the not-so-obvious trick. Or if they can't be beaten; you have to parley and defer to their greatness sort of thing!
Actually that happened in the game my brother's GM-ing. A party of EIGHT! Three of whom were tough fighters, like your players, each of whom can do buckets of damage. We meet a succubus who has been chained up in this tomb for centuries. Tells us if we free her, she'll just leave. So of course we attack her. Charms all three of our fighters onto her side. She then summons a demon with high DR and fast healing.
We did enough damage to the demon to take out several platoons of Orcs and just gimped up the demon's leg a bit. The Succubus; well, we couldn't even muss her hair up.
We had to parley. We released her. She was gone, so was her demon and that was that.
The chance brute force would work was so slim it may as well have been impossible. We all survived, albeit battered, because we parleyed and abandoned brute force.
Something like that may or may not work with your group.
Is everyone having fun being awesome? If so, I don't see the problem.
Your players are heroes, and at the end of that AP they face a level 20 wizard that can smoke them all.
What level are they? It seems to me that the barbarian and the figther, with the support of the other two are the problem. A bit up in level they loose some of there glamour and the lag of a arcane full caster is gonna hurt like a hurtfull thing.
And also remember the heroes are supposed to win.
yep the fighter is specially strong but they are nearing the fight with the black monk wich could get interesting even without the need for will saves
Personally, I still like the idea of a party encountering something or someone way out of their league and it requires fast-talking or promising to do something for the nasty in question.
One good story hook is meeting an intelligent creature of some sort who has been trapped for centuries or millennia. It should be obvious that trying to fight the creature has written all over it. However, if they help release creature, a side-adventure in its own right, he/she/it will be ever so grateful.
You don't need something as powerful as Rhynn and Kwll from Moorcock's Corum novels. But the story of how and why Corum released the brothers Kwll and then Rhynn could give you ideas on how to liven things up a bit.
Kwll and Rhynn, if you've not read the Corum series, were … interesting.
Kwll was going to just bugger off, once he duped Corum into releasing him. But Corum annoyed Kwll by saying he was just as idiotic as the gods. So, naturally, Kwll and his brother Rhynn, once released, killed all the gods (good, evil and anywhere in between) just because the now-reconciled brothers thought the gods were all a bunch of bozos.
No need to use something powerful enough to kill gods by the dozen single-handed. But it should be pretty easy to come up with something where brute force is suicidal. And that should be plain as day, so they don't go ahead and try that option.
1. What did they actually roll?
2. What books are you allowing? Allow everything and optimized PCs get far more powerful.
One thing to be aware of is that Pathfinder is generally 'easier' than 3.5 was, which was in turn 'easier' than AD&D 1st and 2nd (they were about the same in terms of player lethality).
Whether this is good or bad is certainly debatable, but if you are expecting an 'out of the box' difficulty of earlier edition, you won't find it. Most of it isn't the stats either, it is all the other bonuses tacked onto the classes, so while a point buy will help a little, it won't help out very much for published adventures.
Power attacking the doors you say? Grimtooth has several answers to that. I know my party stopped kicking in doors the first time the monk punched through a rotten one and got his arm grabbed by a blood golem.
Don't use XP -- use the suggested leveling points for the AP, but have them trail by one or even two levels.
This is the best method for the least paperwork.
The APs are designed to be newer player friendly and result in relatively few PC deaths. The exception is the boss fights which range in success.
I almost always throw somewhere in the neighborhood of CR +4 to the party level sometimes even higher, my optimizing 5 player murderhobo table occasionally gets challenged by this but mostly muddles through just fine.
Usually I'll max all HPs, throw in some minions, and/or throw in some battlefield conditions that make it either take more rounds to reach my monsters or makes it so range attacks really are the only appropriate choice for attacks. The big thing is make the players fight outside their comfort zone. Another thing to try is make the fight in the air with bad weather which makes them have to do flying checks (if they can fly)or get forced out of melee combat, this also makes ranged weapons less effective depending on just how much wind you are using.
Something people often forget is that this game is designed around several often wrong assumptions. Especially when it comes to the adventure paths. They are designed around a 15 point buy 'classic' party that isnt particularly optimized.
The classic party is:
Guy who fights
Guy who kind of fights and has skills
guy who kind of fights and casts divine spells
guy who casts arcane spells.
The more you deviate from that, the more you have to adjust.
Your party has 2 guys who are very good at fighting, backed by a bard, who is a force multiplier. Basically your party does around twice the damage a 'standard' party does, and it was even more dramatic when you had the paladin in the mix too. You had 3 primary combatants, and a secondary combant/mass buffer. It isnt that any individual player was too powerful, its that the combination was too powerful combat wise, particularly at low levels (at higher levels, the lack of arcane magic will hurt a fair bit as compared to a party with a competent wizard pulling strings on the battlefield).
Power attacking the doors you say? Grimtooth has several answers to that. I know my party stopped kicking in doors the first time the monk punched through a rotten one and got his arm grabbed by a blood golem.
so far they have fallen into pits, walked into a room full of giants, sprung traps, and almost gave a heart attack to some old man who was just reading a book, i dont actually have a problem with them charging at a doors i find it hilarious
Controlling the battlefield controls the battle and as the gm you usually get the chance to dictate exactly what the battlefield is like. Usually the only exceptions is when the PCs set up an ambush or take the time to groom the battlefield to their liking and then lure their enemies to it.
I think your party is going to be in for a bit of a rude surprise when they get to the haunted house....Nah i dont like waves they can get a bit dull, ill just try and challenge their intelect or maybe boobytrap a door or two see what happens when they charge at itWell if you still want to make encounters challenging for a party that tends to brute force things, waves of enemies does well in that regard.you just doomed my party to death
Anyway, you could toss in something like any of those that seem like death traps. But are survivable, provided your party can think of something other than brute force.
already happened, it was funny to say the least