Help challenging my party.


Advice


I have never been the kind of Gm that says we need a balanced party whatever you feel like playing as long as we have the source books to support it is fine. Now that has caused an issue, the latest campagin I began to run I have 7 pcs no biggie adjust encounters with things like max hp for notable npcs and add more mooks and sometimes tougher mooks.

The problem was that after everyone one prepared their characters the shake down ended up as follows.

1 human vanilla paladin twf sword and board
2 human paladin hospitaler
3 monkey person ranger sorry cant recall name of that right now
4 human gunslinger/inquistor
5 human brawler
6 human illuluiosnist
7 teifling gunslinger

The problem is the about of damage they throw down is just crazy.
they quickly wipe crs of them +6-8 with little problem. Any suggestions on how to keep things chalenging for them? I'm not try to utterly destory them as they are level 8 I dont plan to throw a cr20 their way, but In dont want them to be bored with such easy combat.


Being general here for a starting point, but spell casters, neutrals to undermine the paladins, high will saves to undermine the illusions, with high ACs. I'm sure others can come up with more specifics.

You know, now that I think about it, there's nothing wrong with this group that several golems/constructs couldn't fix.


Moar mooks.

Also, when the party is that big, and nearly all of them close-range types, AoE can be fun.


Other than more targets, more health, and stronger (templates can be fun) ...

(1) Environment, specifically environment that gives tactical advantage to the baddies or negates your party's tactical advantage. Battles on cliff faces, within antimagic fields, in dark rooms with a Sphere of Annihilation randomly rolling around (my personal favorite), etc. Let the environmental challenge be something that they couldn't prepare for so they need to adjust.

(2) Heavily increase the damage output of your baddies so they are put on the defense more than I suspect they currently are.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Put 'em in a maze with a bunch of Blink Dogs and other such critters.

Where is your god now, Paladin?

Grand Lodge

You are taking their APL +3 for the even CR right?

So if they are all level 3, their APL is considered 6 for how easy a given CR is (7 for challanging, 8 for epic)

Everyone is human, except the demon spawn and the monkey, so adventures in the dark will help even the playing field.

MORE MOOKS

Neutral/good foes to weaken the power of smite.

MORE MOOKS

Dexterous foes to help negate the 2 gunslingers (also, depending on the level of firearms, some good anti firearm items)

MORE MOOKS

High will saves (so a few enemy casters) to help negate the illusionist.

MORE MOOKS

oh, and probally the biggest issue, MORE MOOKS. It becomes a lot of book work for you to track the 16 foot soldiers, the 4 commanding officers and the leader of any given encounter, but that will make sure each of your guys (21 in total) will have 2 buddies when they tackle the party.

If you guys like it, the random social/non kill it all encounter would be good. You have 2 pally and an inquisitor, they should be able to handle it.


Just checking that your using the latest errata for the paladins. First printing of the core Rulebook (if anyone has one that hasn't fallen apart) was nerfed very soon after it's initial release.


DMJB83 wrote:

I have never been the kind of Gm that says we need a balanced party whatever you feel like playing as long as we have the source books to support it is fine. Now that has caused an issue, the latest campagin I began to run I have 7 pcs no biggie adjust encounters with things like max hp for notable npcs and add more mooks and sometimes tougher mooks.

The problem was that after everyone one prepared their characters the shake down ended up as follows.

1 human vanilla paladin twf sword and board
2 human paladin hospitaler
3 monkey person ranger sorry cant recall name of that right now
4 human gunslinger/inquistor
5 human brawler
6 human illuluiosnist
7 teifling gunslinger

The problem is the about of damage they throw down is just crazy.
they quickly wipe crs of them +6-8 with little problem. Any suggestions on how to keep things chalenging for them? I'm not try to utterly destory them as they are level 8 I dont plan to throw a cr20 their way, but In dont want them to be bored with such easy combat.

There are a couple important things at work here. You need to be aware of all of them, and manage it.

First off the basics: The game assumes you will have one primary combatant and maybe one or two secondary combatants. In your party you have 6. They probably put out as much damage as 4 'standard' parties. If they are optimized or have better then a 15 point buy the disparity will be even greater.

Second, you have alot of players. Action economy matters in pathfinder, like alot. You also have a wide variety of damage dealers. Paladins are generally good at taking down a single target, brawlers can lay down hurt against multiple targets, gunslingers are ranged, the ranger might also be ranged (you didnt specify). So any single thing you do wont necessarily make the encounters more challenging.

My advice:

Step 1. No single enemy encounters. Heck no encounters with fewer then 5 enemies. And that doesnt mean throwing in 'mooks'. There should be at least 5 meaningful enemies in every fight. With 2 paladins and 2 gunslingers, you simply dont have the option of a single big bad guy in a fight. There should be 4 of them. Of equal or near equal strength. Have the big bad guy and his 4 powerful leutenants. Mooks are fine, but they wont extend encounters. You need multiple enemies in every fight that are a meaningful threat. That way, one round of full attacks from 2-3 characters cant wipe out the primary objective of an encounter.

This also has the advantage of bringing the action economy back towards your favor. And it is among the better ways to beef up encounters for lots of players. Each bad guy is the same threat to any individual party member, where as buffing one or two bad guys to try to survive against a 7 person damage dealing party is going to lead to disaster. So build your encounters to a CR of around APL+5 or +6, but do it with at least 5 opponents having crs right around APL.

Step 2. Consider your party's standard operating procedure in combat. Every group has one. They are a team after all. Try to come up with situation that disrupts that somehow. Dont outright negate the characters, just require a little bit of extra trouble to get into position, or otherwise bring their badassery to bear. Paladins in armor have trouble with difficult terrain, acrobatics checks, gaps to jump over, etc. Ranged characters might have trouble with concealment in fog that blocks line of sight past a certain distance, things like that. This will not only make encounters more challenging, but they will also allow different characters to shine more at different times.


justaworm wrote:

Other than more targets, more health, and stronger (templates can be fun) ...

(1) Environment, specifically environment that gives tactical advantage to the baddies or negates your party's tactical advantage. Battles on cliff faces, within antimagic fields, in dark rooms with a Sphere of Annihilation randomly rolling around (my personal favorite), etc. Let the environmental challenge be something that they couldn't prepare for so they need to adjust.

(2) Heavily increase the damage output of your baddies so they are put on the defense more than I suspect they currently are.

More health is pretty boring.

It's pretty annoying for the players as well. They've spent time and effort making their ultimate death machines. Going 'oh well, I guess y'all should all have made Sword 'n board fighters instead' can come off as a little... You know how sometimes, you get the feeling that the DM is just arbitrarily raising the bonus on saves, DC, and ac so you need a 12 to hit/save/for the enemy to fail?

Like that. That crap is crap.

A thing to remember, it's unlikely to be important, but still: think about if the players would have more fun if they had more challenge. If adding challenge substracts from fun, don't add challenge. On the other hand, if it does add fun (and it will for most groups, I think), then go right ahead. Or if you're bored, and want fun too, dammit, well, the tarrasque is right here.

Also, I didn't see a rogue in that party, how is their trap spotting/disarming skills?

Make traps that impose negative levels on the whole damn party, then spring the ambush a few minutes later. That party will also need outside help to deal with blindness, curses etc., depending on the paladins' mercies(can't remember what they cure off-hand.)

Their will saves are only so-so. The paladins' touch ac is bad. You know this; it can be abused. They also have little access to dispel magic.

Long-range battles with stuff that is faster than them? Flight works too, I think. Low on dispel and fly, right? Guns only target touch out to first Range increment, 20ft for pistols, I think. Long corridors with a wind-wall in the middle and a wizard with fireball in the end could work. Difficult terrain or long distance ensures he gets away. If in a dungeon, rinse and repeat. + traps.

Sovereign Court

Get a bad guy with a heightened, persistent, murderous command and cast it on the gunslinger.


Best spell for powerful parties: confusion and dominate. Paladins can make that difficult though.

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32

Invisible vampires.


use charm and dominate effects to get them to attack each other, use hold person like spells to reduce the number that can work effectively.

Try splitting the party, either using battlefield tactics like entangle or they have to be in two different places at roughly the same time. If you split the party be well prepared and run the action in parallel.

Make closing to melee difficult or dangerous.

Try a few damage reduction enemies, or enemies that are good at grappling or things that can swallow whole, use flyby/hit and run tactics.

But also play to their strengths, ie neigh endless horde of zombies they have to cut their way through, it might not be threatening at first but eventually resource exhaustion will occur.

Give them goals that can't be solved by killing the mook (either because the mook is much stronger then them or they would get in trouble with the local laws etc).

Sovereign Court

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Christopher Dudley wrote:
Invisible vampires.

But then you have to cast glitterdust on them to see them and it degrades into "Twilight" and then your campaign sucks.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I don't know about that. Getting to kill sparkly vampires sound like a fun mini-game, at least.

Also, paladins kind of demolish evil undead.


Wow, Lots of responses where too start. Yes I have accounted for three extra players when caluating acl but was only adding a +2 for it.

Example fight was a cr 15 that involed a high level cleric plus his two luetiants and assasian with improved feint and a agumented dire ape antipaladin. Readied actions team evil: cleric summons a shadow demon antipaladin smites sword and board pally assasian moves to get in flanking postion with antiplaladin. Then int rolled slingers win and both go off on cleric he dies and demon disappers, palladins double team antipaladin, and ranger pin cushions assasian. so and encounter thats billed as cr them +5 wiped in one round.

Traps they can spot easliy due to high perception score have some trouble disarming and noone to disarm magic traps.

The only mild succes i have seen was the level6 barbarain nilbog I threw their way, but they caught on qucik grappled and soon healed him to death, also swarms have proved a slight incovience

Golems: the slingers laugh at them as on has scattershot.

It seems most people are saying more magic and larger enemy.

Thanks everyone anymore ideas keep them coming.


DMJB83 wrote:
Golems: the slingers laugh at them as on has scattershot.

I'm not familiar, but just THAT manages to bypass say DR 15/adamantine?


Randarak wrote:
DMJB83 wrote:
Golems: the slingers laugh at them as on has scattershot.
I'm not familiar, but just THAT manages to bypass say DR 15/adamantine?

Sorry typing on fly while at work I meant clustered shot. So yeah they get dr but only once off four shots.


Maybe something "out of the box" that you don't normally find in PF? Some things that come to my mind are:

  • Ward-pacts, as per the demons in the Elric. An absolute immunity to one thing, like swords. No swords of any kind will affect such a creature, but still vulnerable to everything that's not a sword.
  • Sort of invincible; heaps of DR, fast healing, and all that fun stuff, however, he/she/it is easily killed per one fatal flaw. So, with a borderline silly example: something that weapons just seam to bounce off of, but if you toss salt on it, that does LOTS of damage. Of course, you do want to give them some hints, including red herrings, about how to overcome such a nasty critter
  • Something that is absolutely impossible to overcome in a dust-up. On the other hand, it's highly intelligent and needs something the party can provide, so they can get by it by negotiation without any fuss. An example that comes to mind is The Wind of the Gods in the Obsidian and Blood series. A "gas giant" composed of obsidian shards of varying sizes. Try to hit it and weapons just pass through it harmlessly. But it can effortlessly slice to ribbons anything made of flesh and bone with microscopic precision, meaning it can cut apart leather and get through openings in armour. Very nasty. However, it's amazingly intelligent and if you know how to negotiate with it and prove you're not an enemy of the gods, it will let you pass and be on your way.

    Basically, try to come up with something that can be overcome with the little grey cells, and not brute force.


  • so they are level 10? EDIT, saw they are level 8, most of this is still within scope though.

    enemy casters should be taking advantage of miss chance, concealment, cover, without line of effect they can't be hit by most things. Walls of stone or ice will be an effective barrier.

    Outsiders like demons and devils have an excellent suite of SLA and sometimes caster levels, and greater teleport at will lets them move around the battlefield without much hassle.

    At level 10 they certainly have access to fly but that's nothing a dispel magic can't fix, and they likely don't have a redundant source, plummeting 100+ feet hurts.

    Use multiple encounters a day, have the first few not be so much challenging but exhausting, hit them with poisons, diseases, curses, negative levels, ability damage, get them to expend their channels and consumables.

    Spells like solid fog, acid fog, darkness, make strategy and teamwork difficult.

    Introduce weather effects, range becomes either difficult or nearly impossible, if they can only see 60 feet around them in a blizzard they will have trouble locating the casters(who are flying above) especially as mooks come charging at them.

    throw more AoO spells at them, little bits of damage will add up and also spread unevenly as some make more saves then others.

    Enemies with a high DR that only some of them can overcome will encourage them to split up, use polymorphs or illusions to bait and switch the enemies they are fighting.


    Trimalchio wrote:

    so they are level 10?

    enemy casters should be taking advantage of miss chance, concealment, cover, without line of effect they can't be hit by most things. Walls of stone or ice will be an effective barrier.

    Outsiders like demons and devils have an excellent suite of SLA and sometimes caster levels, and greater teleport at will lets them move around the battlefield without much hassle.

    At level 10 they certainly have access to fly but that's nothing a dispel magic can't fix, and they likely don't have a redundant source, plummeting 100+ feet hurts.

    Use multiple encounters a day, have the first few not be so much challenging but exhausting, hit them with poisons, diseases, curses, negative levels, ability damage, get them to expend their channels and consumables.

    Spells like solid fog, acid fog, darkness, make strategy and teamwork difficult.

    Introduce weather effects, range becomes either difficult or nearly impossible, if they can only see 60 feet around them in a blizzard they will have trouble locating the casters(who are flying above) especially as mooks come charging at them.

    throw more AoO spells at them, little bits of damage will add up and also spread unevenly as some make more saves then others.

    Enemies with a high DR that only some of them can overcome will encourage them to split up, use polymorphs or illusions to bait and switch the enemies they are fighting.

    They just hit lvel 8 so acl is 11


    Others have made excellent suggestions regarding using the environment and other spells. I suggest changing the nature of some of the encounters a little bit, coming up with things that force your players to get creative with their playing and take on challenges other than pure combat. For example:

    * The Grand Duke has received word that the Assassin's Guild plans to kill him during a military parade. The Grand Duke is unwilling to forego the parade, so it's up to the players to handle security for him. The Assassin's Guild isn't going to rely on one assassin (or group of assassins) to kill the Grand Duke. This "encounter" actually begins with prep, where players with interaction skills (they did remember interaction skills, right?) try to gather information about the potential assassins. Then you can give your players a map of the city (along with a parade route), and they can plot out how they're going to prepare. Some of them might want to stand guard on rooftops, some might want to be near the Grand Duke, and so forth. With the party split, you can come up with customized teams of assassins (or diversionary teams!) who can challenge the players.

    * Chase Scenes. Paizo has wonderful rules (and some wonderful cards) for chases, which are a great way to combine combat with skill rolls. It's somewhat abstracted, in that you put obstacles in front of your players and they can only overcome them with skill checks. They get into combat only if they can get to the same card as their quarry.


    This guide is helps alot with this exact kind of thing.


    Ever think of giving the baddies some mythic templates? I did a mythic campaign as a player and mythic enemies can really throw you for a loop

    Grand Lodge

    A thought came to mind with the invisible vampire suggestion.

    Why do the vampires need to be evil? Yes, the template says they do, but we have enough literary examples (besides twilight) to say not every blood sucker has to be spawn of satan evil. In fact, one of the main enemies in a home game of mine is a CN Drow Noble Vampire Synthesist Summoner. The party first encounters her needing to save her, later learning she is actually a greater threat then anything else they will find (except cthulu, who she is the high priestess of).


    Dragons using aerial attacks. They never have to land to fight, just strafe them.

    Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Help challenging my party. All Messageboards

    Want to post a reply? Sign in.
    Recent threads in Advice