The more teamwork feats they have, the less real feats they have. Unless they're going to crazily overspecialize and leave holes in their party composition, which would be even better for you.
I love the flooding the dungeon idea.
How about a dungeon without an atmosphere? Or a dungeon in which, for some reason, the air is pure oxygen or something else which will explode?
My favorite monster ever would work in this situation...
A Cat with nine lives, each stronger than the last. the ninth and final life basically a chimera with one head...
This can of course be upgraded to a different monster, but cats just make sense with the nine lives thing. But a dragonne or a sphinx are sufficiently cat like to go with.
Or a dungeon in which, for some reason, the air is pure oxygen or something else which will explode?
And as an added bonus, Pure Oxygen is highly poisonous when breathed for prolonged periods of time.
If you fill it with undead and constructs, you can have the air be filled with various poisons. This works for isolated chambers too, actually.
You could also make it a maze. The area seems to be completely white, but in reality, it's filled with illusory walls and stuff. Mirrors show you things that aren't in their proper place, and there are walls that you can't see through, and then illusory one-way screens.
A new DM friend of my once let the power level of his level 7 evil group get out of control. He couldn't challenge them with encounters that were ECL+5. He asked me to build him a BBEG (BBGG?) to challenge the party.
My solution was another party. I created a 6-man good party to hunt down the 6-man evil party, and make them pay for their crimes. They were legal builds, or adapted from 3.5 material, and had the same WBL as the party, (which is to say the wealth of level 12 characters. Like I said, my new GM friend let things get way out of control.)
I also built in roleplaying weakness to compensate for the Good NPCs very high power level and coordination, and gave them warning/background by having the evil party stumble across a town that held these 6 adventurers as town heros. Predictably, the evil characters pillaged the town, and only one player paid any attention to the giant statue of 6 NPCs in the town center, or the background the villagers were giving before they all got slaughtered.
Anyway, the party was:
A Half-Orc Paladin who had sworn a vow against doing lethal damage, only non-lethal. Provoking him into lethal damage causes him to fall and become an ex-Paladin.
A ranged specialist Ranger, who was naive and trusting to a fault. She would let you "surrender" even without laying down your weapons, only to let you get close and attack her.
An evil Cleric who had messed up summoning a demon and was accidentally possessed by an angel instead. I used 3.5 rules for demonic possession, only reversed. The evil party could freed him from angelic possession and flipped him to their side with anything that banished good outsiders, or even using protection from good on the cleric.
A Synthesis Summoner that looked like a wolf, pretending to be ranger's animal companion. Perception check to reveal it as a non-normal wolf.
A neutral Dwarf Wizard who felt overlooked and overshadowed by the rest of the party. He would have betrayed the party if the evil party made him a good offer.
A Druid who prefers to shapeshift into an owl (pretends to be the wizards familiar), and cast spells while flying above.
The first fight, the Good NPCs caught up with the Evil party as they were breaking camp in the wilderness. The NPCs were given a chance to surrender (or pre-buff), as the good NPCs shouted at them from 60 feet away. The evil party thought they were fighting 4 NPCs (not 6) and thought it would be a cake-walk. like everything else they had encountered. so far. They were wrong. They were quickly knocked unconscious and put in jail. My friend ran a few sessions where they broke out of jail, got their gear back, and, in traditional villain fashion, kidnapped the Half-Orcs loved ones.
The second fight, they were prepared for the Good NPCs, used good tactics, and it was close. But they still lost. They were once again thrown in prison.
Finally, for the third encounter they set up a well planned ambush and managed to kill the wizard in the 2nd round, leading to the evil victory. I was disappointed that they never used the roleplaying hooks I tried to provide, but they still enjoyed the challenge.
Moral of the story:
A well planned party with good tactics (the good NPCs in this case) will have a significant advantage.
In order to challenge them, you will need to match them in planning and number of actions. You can't match 6 move, standard, and quick actions a round with 1 BBEG. Either the BBEG needs powerful minions to back him up, or make your BBEG another adventuring group.
Huh. I'm a bit confused why people are so annoyed at the DM not looking at player sheets. I mean, most DMs I've seen don't look at player sheets anyway. Pbp is a little different, but then pbp isn't the common thing.
As for the amplified rage trick upthread, that is a fun thing to do, I adapted it to the giant smurfs once, gave them a barbarian level each, was good times.
Archers can really mess a spellcaster's day up by shooting when they try to cast.
Gunslinger 5/Fighter 1 with vital strike isn't particularly optimized, but can still be fun if you put 3 of them with double hackbuts into turrets spread out across a dungeon room(put lots of chasms and height differences in there, will force them to spend resources on flight), while you spice it up with some (flying) melee dudes to keep the party occiopied.
I once saw a 6th level summoner delay a cr 8 demon for several rounds by summoning five ponies and clever positioning. Having disposable chaff that can get in the way of angry cavaliers out to hurt your dear monsters is a good idea.
As for when you really want to make them sweat, turn the tables on them with action economy.
AoE in cramped conditions is one way to do this.
If the subject is 1st level, it takes 2 points of Constitution drain instead (if this would reduce its Con to 0 or less, it can't be raised)
Trolls with the Half-dragon template (red dragon) and potions of immunity to acid damage, use in multiples/ stack some levels of barbarian (invulnerable rager?) to up the pain if needed.
Or trolls with potions of invisibility. If the surprise round has your party engaged in melee combat with several trolls, you're going to be in for a rough ride.
Is there a list somewhere of monsters with horrible group killing synergies?
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Angel with a covey of pet basilisks. Angels are immune to petrification.
Grimtooth may be able to help...
Trolls are too weak to be a threat to 9th level optimized characters - and besides, they'll just drop them far enough into the negatives that they can just leave them behind.
Trolls are too weak to be a threat to 9th level optimized characters - and besides, they'll just drop them far enough into the negatives that they can just leave them behind.
Not if they are half-dragons, have potions of immunity to whichever of acid and fire their dragon didn't give immunity to and toss on some levels of barbarian for extra pain.
Not if they are half-dragons, have potions of immunity to whichever of acid and fire their dragon didn't give immunity to and toss on some levels of barbarian for extra pain.
Half-dragon trolls? Hows that work out on their mothers side?
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Become vary familiar with swarm tactics for small to tiny creatures. Swarms of rust monsters is always an evil thing to do to PCs.
Become very familiar with environmental conditions. Wind stops any archer build. Water stops most speed builds. Sand bogs down almost anything, dust makes vision impossible past a few feat.
Give the BBEG a staff that has Disjunction as a spell so he can readily and easily attack their crazy magical equipment a lot. Players guard their equipment zealously, trash it all.
I had a friend volunteer to GM for a mid level party; any character build was allowed. This party of 5 9th level characters was eating him alive and he asked me how to handle them. I told him, let me GM for two months (we played every week) and he can bring in any 9th level character he wanted. I then drug the 6 of them into Ravenloft, put them up against the lich Azlan (20th level necromancer), and disjointed them at the start of every game session to strip off the crazy excess of magical equipment. They had a blast because suddenly they were being challenged but I wasn't throwing stuff designed to kill them each encounter. Few things just ran up to slug it out with them. Evrrything sniped from a distance or snuck up on them through walls (you can't hear ghosts sneak very well) and challenged their abilities without neutering the actual characters.
In simple terms, I carefully read Azlan's spell list, and played him and his minions as very, very smart and cautious antagonists to make the module a challenge. And every so often sent swarms of advanced skeletons and zombies at them just so they got to have a few good fights. Got to keep the melee types happy with some raw meat every so often; and then challenge them to catch or stop everything else. It was fun; and as close to GMing a party blind as I've ever come.
Swimming against shadows. Strength drain makes Swim checks harder.
Sneak attacking archers while climbing (most PCs lose Dex bonus to AC when climbing). Combine with ranged touch attacks, like produce flame, scorching ray, ray of frost, acid splash etc.
Poisonous fungus coating the walls, floors, ramps, etc.
Use lots of conditions, like confused, stunned, nauseous, etc.
And remember to make the fights FUN not just HARD!!!!!
An annoying grudge match with lots of ineffective attacks gets really boring and unfun fast.
Use a lot of variety. Don't make every room a 30 foot cube.