My party consists of 5 10th level PCs: 1 Illusionist, 1 Drow Void wizard, 1 Half-Elf Magus, 1 Rogue and 1 Cleric (Freedom based Deity).
They have a lots of high-powered magic items, both looted from enemies and crafted themselves. Front line PCs have AC between 37 and 31, the rest are generally either invisible or has mirror image active when they expect fight.
The Illusionist generally does battlefield control, the Void wizard summons or buffs/debuffs, the Magus does tanking and direct damage, and the Rogue has also become something of a striker, sometimes dealing more than 100 damage in a round.
No, Im not saying these are extreme munchkins, just that I have difficulty challenging them with enemies that are not several levels higher than themselves, they recently beat an enemy group of level 13-15.
Oh and they just picked up 2 Iron Golems as "loot", taking control of them with a magic device, making them far more powerful in stand-up fights as well.
Now they are about to undertake a long journey by ship, so what kind of challenges can I throw at them that will still be interesting? A typical pirate ship will just give them that ship as loot, and typical sea monsters can get tiresome after a couple.
How did they get a magical device that lets them control golems? Is this a custom magic item?
100 points of damage a round is not really too hard at level 10, but how is a rogue doing it? Is it using the archetype that allows it to double sneak attack damage?
I will discuss the crafting in another post I make.
Also give an example of them taking on enemies that are "level(maybe you meant CR") 13-15.
Under the sea.
Under the sea!
Fights are more dire
Without the fire
Plus, hard to see!
Get the heroes into the drink
Watch as their golems quickly sink!
A new perspective
Laughs and invective
Under the sea!
Had to; but yeah, the biggest threat to a party like that may well be the ocean itself. With plenty of aquatic critters, you can even sketch out an adventure if they work out the problems of playing in the pool.
How did they get a magical device that lets them control golems? Is this a custom magic item?
100 points of damage a round is not really too hard at level 10, but how is a rogue doing it? Is it using the archetype that allows it to double sneak attack damage?
I will discuss the crafting in another post I make.
Also give an example of them taking on enemies that are "level(maybe you meant CR") 13-15.
Yes, it's a custom magic item used by their enemies to render control of their own Golems to militairy personell. This gives one of the players the abiltiy to give verbal commands to these two Golems as if he was the creator, but unbeknownst to them the real creator could easily override that at a later point ;)
I didn't really think they would matter much until they tore down a Cannon Golem (CR 15) in 1 round or two.
The opposition was premade NPCs, of those levels I mentioned. That pesky Illusionist managed to get off a Phantasmal Web before the enemies could act, affecting almost everyone including the enemy wizard. If not I think those enemies could have been dangerous, especially if the enemy did a maximized fireball or two on them. Strangely enough blast spells are their greatest weakness.
The Rogue deals the most damage when his enemies are flat-footed (Sap Master), but even with normal sneak attack and good weapons he can dish out 4 attack doing about 20-30 damage each, not counting crits. He still struggles against high AC opponents though unlike the Magus (+5 weapon due to class ability). The latter relies on 15-20 crit weapon and spells like Shocking grasp or Vampiric Touch.
So far the highest level NPC they killed was a 16th level fully equipped Diviner made by Ravingdork. It was an extremey tough fight which made two PCs into glass, but he was shot down in Dragon form (after killing the Drow with his breath weapon) by two high level pirates with Ballistas and Improved Vital Strike.
Under the sea!
Fights are more dire
Without the fire
Plus, hard to see!
Get the heroes into the drink
Watch as their golems quickly sink!
A new perspective
Laughs and invective
Under the sea!
Had to; but yeah, the biggest threat to a party like that may well be the ocean itself. With plenty of aquatic critters, you can even sketch out an adventure if they work out the problems of playing in the pool.
Nice one! They actually did fight underwater against Reef Golems once under the sea (and two ships).
Generally fights with more enemies are harder then fewer enemies, it prevents the "surround & pound" tactic.
Drop an angel on them, or somethign else that can fly and has a lot of spells.
A GM party is a truly fun battle worth an entire session, a party of characters whose level is similar to that of the players.
Players know how to deal with enemies that come at them in groups, try changing your tactics. For example. Try locking them into a combat that seems routine or below the usual challenge threshhold, something tough but trivial like a bunch of Sea trolls. Then spice that fight with a suddent dragon attack 2-3 rounds into the battle.
If you players allways get the drop on an enemy then that enemy isnt as hard as he's written up to be.
On the other hand you can also task the players with an enemy or even a whole factino that is above their power grade. with enough preparation the players ought to be able to beat them even if the odds are unfavorable. This is where stuff like Bane weapons are useful.
Golems are not good challenges for their CR but as free meatshields they are not bad. Due to the party's level it makes sense for whoever they are after to attempt a preemptive strike. The purpose is to destroy the golems and gather information on the capabilities of the party. I am going to suggest 2 or 3 archer rangers with clustered shots and a wizard or sorcerer who can teleport away.
Have them fight Gesalt characters. Use a bunch of minions who are dressed to look super important so they don't target the BBEG right away.
Throw out some Advanced Giant templates on some Rust Monsters. Add templates to everything and use Turn Resistant undead as well.
Use the Monster Codex book for Trolls, they have one who is about their level and is called a Troll Matron? she's a witch with 27 CON, give her 1 level in Sorcerer and take the Orc Domain, Now she's a Orc too, then obviously she takes Scarred Witch Doctor archetype for witch levels giving her massive CON bonus to all her spells/hexes DC's. Use hexes/curses to really hose the party. Curse of Burning Sleep will really really hose the spellcasters if they need to sleep.
Sounds like they'll bulldoze beatstick encounters, but if they walk into a prepared ambush by spellcasters... an antimagic field to negate their magical items and their spellcasting, Silence cast on a bolt fired into the party to further hinder spells, ranged attackers ignoring the frontliners while the controllers focus less on hitting the frontliner and more on isolating them...
Also AC is only one defense, something like Combat Maneuvers will likely hurt a magus plenty, so a tetori monk or stealing pirates could hit them in a hurtful way, even if it doesn't kill or cripple them, stolen items could lead to more challenging encounters as a kind of set-up for down the road. I assume by level 10 they have some renown, and thus people who know of them will have an idea as to abilities or tactics and counters.
look into creatures/demons etc That won't be fooled by invisibility or mirror. Basically you know this group identify there goto strengths and build encounters that take those away
Rust Monster + Disenchanter Beast = PC's worst nightmare! Unless they're a Monk. Still, sic that combo on them and watch them run for the hills. I might post more later, I am going to go nap in a bit.
Oh, instead of using a bunch magic items you can have the environment provide the boosts. Say, a cavern creates a darkness that only can be countered with an edible fungus that the protagonist has eaten.
Crystals in the walls can soup up certain spells as long as they are left alone and only the bad guys know which spells. Maybe the crystals absorb and nullify illusions or evocations or something.
A grove of trees provides spores or pollen or something that boosts the bad guys and not the good guys.
And maybe you can just say to the group that they are too powerful and see if they will voluntarily go down to wealth by level to make the gaming experience better in the long run.
Fiendish Advanced Giant Invincible (All templates) treants...they specialize in breaking magic items, just keep trampling them and breaking their gear. Good game everybody.
As for the crafting they need time to craft. If they are adventuring they can't craft nearly as fast so give them less down time. Now since the crafting feats are basically trading feats for loot, I am not saying to never give them time to craft, but if you think they have too much loot having them on a time sensitive missions for a few levels will bring them back in line.
When they travel, do they fit in a fireball? I think some dazing fireball might be a good idea, the only person with a high will save is the rogue, the magus might have a good one if he's dervish dance.
Grappling monsters/black tentacles would be nice, if not for the pesky freedom cleric. Well pesky clerics can't activate their domain if they are dazed.
A civilization of sahuagin would be fun, they could sink ships from beneath and collect their loot from the ocean floor surrounded by dire sharks and giant octopuses. Make the raiding party low to mid level barbarians and rangers, clerics and druids.
Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Sunder attacks of their weapons and armor.
Sneak attacks by beefed up rust monsters or disenchanters, sent by their arch-nemesis.
Those are the kind of things that can cut them down to size, but... all the players I've known in the last 30 years have had an almost obsessive attachment to their gear. Many would rather die and start a new character than give up even one cherished item. So it's a dicey strategy.
Aside from that, you simply have to raise the CR of their adversaries. Average CR +5 or more... plus multiple opponents rather than single boss-type encounters.
This said, around 10th level is where I personally start loosing interest, both as a DM and as a player. The PCs begin to get too powerful, and any really challenging encounter takes *hours* to prepare and more *hours* to run. But if you're into the high-level stuff, your only real answer is to use ever more challenging encounters.
Sneak attacks by beefed up rust monsters or disenchanters, sent by their arch-nemesis.
Those are the kind of things that can cut them down to size, but... all the players I've known in the last 30 years have had an almost obsessive attachment to their gear. Many would rather die and start a new character than give up even one cherished item. So it's a dicey strategy.
Aside from that, you simply have to raise the CR of their adversaries. Average CR +5 or more... plus multiple opponents rather than single boss-type encounters.
This said, around 10th level is where I personally start loosing interest, both as a DM and as a player. The PCs begin to get too powerful, and any really challenging encounter takes *hours* to prepare and more *hours* to run. But if you're into the high-level stuff, your only real answer is to use ever more challenging encounters.
Good luck!
This is pretty much the same for me as well, which is why I am asking for advice from the rest.
To the rest of you, there are some good suggestions there, but remember I don't want a TPK, and I'm not really planning on trying to steal or destroy their items (the latter is easily fixed by magic anyway). I think having a series of low-loot encounters should fix the item imbalance after awhile.
As for items, they are not divided evenly in the party as the Drow and the Cleric came in later and started with less loot than the rest. It's more the fact that they have stuff like headband of int, wis +6 and belt of dex, con +6m which they have looted from high level NPCs.
They have not actually had time to craft in a long while, and some of them have never had any time for crafting (said drow wizard and cleric). Since they are going in a sea voyage in their own magical ship (custom item/minor artifact) they will spend downtime crafting on board, which I don't mind overly much.
Things I have already started with:
1. Use NPCs with high class level but very low HP and reduced class abilities to lower the CR - for example a 10th level "fighter" with only 12 hp and a lot less feats, but can still actually hit their AC (adjusted to CR 5).
2. Use more single use items, often before combat. Oil of greater magic weapon +3 instead of +2 weapon for example.
Sea trolls: yeah I could do some of those, the normal trolls are pretty much useless though (+8 attack vs AC 30+). Using trolls, I'd have to use something like this just to have a chance to wound them:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-10/hurek-and-durek
And that gets tedious fast due to regeneration and lots of hit points, not to mention giving them more loot anyway.
Sauhuagin city thing is interesting, but in the end it could lead into big fights and the PC looting their king or something like that.
Demons, Devils and... angels? Would probably work, but there should be a reason they are attacked by such by travelling on the sea where normal merchants do travel. I'm considering throwing a militairy vessel or two at them (war galley with 50-100 marines) maybe using some sort of formation or mob rule (swarm?) to allow them to be hit by a rain of arrows or mass of swords. In fact such an encounter would be more fun if the PCs believe they are dangerous (and really they should, even to 10th level party), and tries to bluff or negotiate with them.
Pirates can be done of course, and they will travel through a strait that is famous for pirates, but still can be a bit dull, and again to challenge them I'd need magic items.
A whole city would be a time sink,you could put it on the other side of a portal to the plane of water or an abyssal river, or otherwise make the place too dangerous to be interesting to them.
Seems like you want a loot sink or to level them without treasure? Look into expensive spells to cast and throw problems at them which require those spells (ex target them with scrying). Most sea monsters have little in the way of loot.
What about Weather? Some challenges can be relatively mundane but made more complicated/complex by the inclusion of something you can't "fight" back against. Even spells like "Control Weather" take time to cast and then more time to go into effect.
Having a typical CR 10 battle during a maelstrom while at sea could prove to be a new challenge for the group?
Or you could Titanic them. Ice bergs ahead enjoy your new skill challenge. The water is filled with [insert threat] so when the ship goes down you have hypothermia AND [threat] to deal with while swimming.
Environmental effects during the encounter can also make things more difficult.
Encounter at night during a major storm -
limited visibility
High winds
Lots of rain
Unstable platform (ship pitching up and down at sea)
Random effects (OK, not so random but you can pretend) of sails ripping/falling down, lines snapping, ship crew needing rescuing, etc.
Most of these won't have much effect on the party but they can take a party member out of action by requiring they do something on their turn to help out the ship.
Just not sure what type of encounter would be good with a major storm at sea.
------
Outsiders, specially Demons can be very nasty.
Have immunity (or good resistance) to most elemental damage. Shutting down a bunch of the Magus spell damage.
True Sight negates the illusions abilities of the party
Decent SR gives a chance that spells will fail against them.
Some can Fly!
This would work well with a Warship or two with a high level Summoner on the warship. Party would be at range and no LOS on the Summoner.
Start off with a chase scene at very long range. Then go into a long range ballistae dual. Long range spells, Short Range, then a boarding action.
Under the sea!
Fights are more dire
Without the fire
Plus, hard to see!
Get the heroes into the drink
Watch as their golems quickly sink!
A new perspective
Laughs and invective
Under the sea!
GM: "You are surrounded by singing crustaceans. Give me a Will save, please. Those of you who failed your saves now join in the singing."
Under the sea!
Fights are more dire
Without the fire
Plus, hard to see!
Get the heroes into the drink
Watch as their golems quickly sink!
A new perspective
Laughs and invective
Under the sea!
Had to; but yeah, the biggest threat to a party like that may well be the ocean itself. With plenty of aquatic critters, you can even sketch out an adventure if they work out the problems of playing in the pool.
And here I thought I was clever for coming up with a perverted version of "My favorite things" on the fly yesterday. You are my hero!
Have some master thief type or band of hooligans steal the party's spellbooks at a time when the players don't have them on their persons.
Maybe make it a Formal Celebration Ball or something a leader is throwing and they've been invited to. Dressed appropriately of course, meaning No Armor (unless it's clothing/parade armor), no weapons (unless a dagger/rapier/katana type stuff), no pets, bags/backpacks....
Make this celebration a real RP/Social thing, with many obvious clues that varying noble houses want the party's patronage etc..., little mysteries and rumors run amok. Also throw in some drunken trysts with a nobleman's spouse/betrothed, a small drunken fistfight with or w/out a party member, several challenges to duels that may or may not happen and enticing propositions of employment. Make sure that nobody in this city is an Arcane caster of any kind, so that it makes the party a really highly sought after commodity and it makes the following very hard...
So, one nobleman group or a freelance scoundrel is fearful of a major imbalance to the status of the certain ruling nobles. This antagonist breaks into the party's rooms and steals most of the stuff they're not wearing. Mainly the spellbooks of the magus/wizards and spell components pouches. Use the rules listed in the CRB for how spellcasters must pay for spells to inscribe in their spellbooks to drain resources from the party. Also make the party pay for things like information leading to clues on who took what and where the items are found. Let them find some items the first day after the party, then roughly every other day and the spellbooks come very last. Make it so the spellbooks aren't recovered until the spellcasters have spent a lot of money making a new spellbook with the spells they had previously memorized while at the celebration.
You can have some challenging encounters during this time. Focus on depleting resources of the party and getting them separated for a bit. Get the rogue framed and temporarily thrown in jail overnight but have all charges dropped within a day or so. Try the same with the cleric but keep him busy with something like a small contagion spread from the celebration in one noble house and he's the only person qualified to help. This keeps him from casting divination spells to help the spellcasters find their stuff easily.
Make every little detail about making their books again a challenge. Like there isn't any paper of a quality to be found in the city for at least a couple days, maybe it'd be a few days until a book could be bound for them.
Hopefully you'll get some ideas from this rambling of mine.
Demons, Devils and... angels? Would probably work, but there should be a reason they are attacked by such by travelling on the sea where normal merchants do travel. I'm considering throwing a militairy vessel or two at them (war galley with 50-100 marines) maybe using some sort of formation or mob rule (swarm?) to allow them to be hit by a rain of arrows or mass of swords. In fact such an encounter would be more fun if the PCs believe they are dangerous (and really they should, even to 10th level party), and tries to bluff or negotiate with them.
You will have guaranteed hits. Remember that with a nat 20 on a roll it is an automatic hit, with 100 NPC's firing bows 5 will hit every round on average. You could run encounters like these with percentage rolls instead of attack rolls. if they have greater weapon oils or high dex, work out what each of their % chance of hitting is against each npc. Then roll % die for the entire group, and everyone who rolls within their chance to hit hits.
even if they only hit on a nat 20 there is a 5% chance of hit.
One of the funkiest things I have heard of is this... Pretty horrible. Basically a study on how horrible can you go while technically keeping with the CR rules according to monster building rules. Not one of my own.
(Also: a big enough dragon with an antimagic field is pretty bad-ass.)
Advanced Young Succubus Ghost Antipaladin 2 CR 11
CE Small undead (incorporeal)
Init +9; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect good; Perception +25
Defence:
DEFENSE
AC 34, touch 34, flat-footed 25 (+9 Dex, +14 deflection, +1 size)
hp 196 (8d8+2d10+140)
Fort +33, Ref +29, Will +30
DR 10/cold iron or good; Immune electricity, fire, poison; Resist acid 10, cold 10;
SR 18 ; Incorporeal ; Channel Resistance +4 ; Undead Traits
Offence:
OFFENSE
Speed fly 30 ft. (perfect)
Melee corrupting touch +20 (11d4, DC 29)
Special Attacks corrupting gaze(DC 29), Frightful Moan (DC 29), Smite Good
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12th)
Constant—detect good, tongues
At will—charm monster (DC 28), detect thoughts (DC 26), ethereal jaunt (self plus 50 lbs. of objects only), suggestion (DC 27), greater teleport (self plus 50 lbs. of objects only), vampiric touch
1/day—dominate person (DC 29), summon (level 3, 1 babau 50%)
Statistics:
STATISTICS
Str -, Dex 29, Con -, Int 24, Wis 20, Cha 39
Base Atk +10; CMB +18; CMD 50
Feats Agile Maneuvers, Combat Reflexes, Iron Will, Weapon Finesse, Flyby-attack
Skills Bluff +27, Diplomacy +27, Disguise +25, Escape Artist +17, Fly +25, Intimidate +23, Knowledge (local) +18, Perception +26, Sense Motive +18, Stealth +38;
Racial Modifiers +8 Stealth, +8 Perception
Languages Abyssal, Celestial, Common, Draconic; tongues, telepathy 100 ft.
SQ Change Shape (alter self, Small or Medium humanoid), Aura of Evil, Touch of Corruption, Unholy Resilience
YOU as GM gave them the loot, and allowed crafting.
DON'T PUNISH THE PLAYERS FOR IT!
With that said... You said the chars are well equipped... How well? If they only are a bit over the limit, don't go to extremes to remove their loot.
Are your players having fun? If yes, don't break it.
How to challenge them:
Use environment
Use terrain
Use mooks
Use intelligent tactics for intelligent foes
Remember that bringing Golems when teleporting ain't easy...
How do the chars arrange sleeping?
How many encounters do you use between rests?
Golems are secretly not hard enemies to fight. Their saves are awful so they scoop to anything they have to save against. Also they can't really handle any battlefield control.
They are ok as mooks to a real dangerous enemy but on their own they are useless.
YOU as GM gave them the loot, and allowed crafting.
DON'T PUNISH THE PLAYERS FOR IT!
With that said... You said the chars are well equipped... How well? If they only are a bit over the limit, don't go to extremes to remove their loot.
Are your players having fun? If yes, don't break it.
How to challenge them:
Use environment
Use terrain
Use mooks
Use intelligent tactics for intelligent foes
Remember that bringing Golems when teleporting ain't easy...
How do the chars arrange sleeping?
How many encounters do you use between rests?
You mentioned AC.
How are their saves? Touch AC?
Woah, take it easy bacon. No on said anything about punishing the players. I allowed crafting because I generally allow the core rules of the game. They got the loot because they fought for it and took it from really powerful NPCs mostly, or sometimes stole/confiscated stuff (100k gp letter once).
As i said I want to give them encounters that have little or no loot for awhile to get them back to more ordinary levels.
Intelligent tactics are all well and nice if the enemy can get the drop on the group, but they often don't due to high Perception skills and generous use of See Invisibility and the like. My players are also smart and extremely experienced (we're talking 20+ years of D&D each) in combat tactics and dealing with pretty much anything.
I also strive to keep my game reasonable, that is not just throw encounters and monsters at them for no good reason and because the game says x encounters between rests. If they decide to take on 1 encounter and then rest, they will as long as they take means to protect themselves during the rest.
Last game was essentially a dungeon crawl full of intelligent enemies working together, many of which had magical abilities or SR. I'd say they were fairly challenged as they wasted some good spells on mooks, and 2 of the PCs were severaly depleted on hit points in some of the fights. And the cannon golems really scared the wizards who were shot at before they brought in Iron Golem reinforcements, so they are not invulnerable.
However, I have used the same kind of enemies against them a bit too long now, and now I have the chance to have encounters completely unrelated to the main plot/BBEG.
Some extra info I might not have mentioned:
The PCs have a magic ship (cog) that can be held in one hand or made into full-size at command. The hold of the ship essentially works as a pocket plane, and it is crewed by ghostly apparitions that works almost like Unseen Servants, but of course have no earthly needs. This was a gift by a large pirate organization they helped earlier.
I have not yet decided how tough this ship is, or if it is as easily destroyed as a normal ship, although obviously it is a magic item. Capsizing it because of plot isn't something I want to do though.
-PCs generally sleep normally, although some probably have rings of sustenance and they generally have a watch.
-Golems are not easy to teleport, but quite possible as it has no SR and golems are willing. They need probably two spells to move everyone though.
-encounters between rests: Normally 0. I don't plan lots of encounters and then parcel them out like prescription pills, but encourage them to press on if they are in the middle of clearing a "dungeon" or some such due to time limits.
-Saves are good for Will, some have ok fortitude, and the rogue has good reflex of course. But nothing extreme for anyone.
-Touch AC: Helps a lot against most of them. Greater Wraiths are bad news for them, unless they are prepared with spells. Normal Shadows will generally miss them, except for the cleric.
The answer, as always, is the Tomb of Horrors, my friend.
Unless they do something cute like get the golems to dig them a tunnel straight to the final boss (the real one). Also, they are almost high level enough for AMF to be available. Demiliches just lose to that (all of their abilities, including flight, are supernatural). If they don't have AMF, bagging the demilich in a bag of holding work and destroying the bag work well too.
Tomb of horrors won't work well against exceedingly paranoid,lateral thinking prone and genre savvy players.
YOU as GM gave them the loot, and allowed crafting.
DON'T PUNISH THE PLAYERS FOR IT!
With that said... You said the chars are well equipped... How well? If they only are a bit over the limit, don't go to extremes to remove their loot.
Are your players having fun? If yes, don't break it.
How to challenge them:
Use environment
Use terrain
Use mooks
Use intelligent tactics for intelligent foes
Remember that bringing Golems when teleporting ain't easy...
How do the chars arrange sleeping?
How many encounters do you use between rests?
You mentioned AC.
How are their saves? Touch AC?
Woah, take it easy bacon. No on said anything about punishing the players. I allowed crafting because I generally allow the core rules of the game. They got the loot because they fought for it and took it from really powerful NPCs mostly, or sometimes stole/confiscated stuff (100k gp letter once).
As i said I want to give them encounters that have little or no loot for awhile to get them back to more ordinary levels.
Intelligent tactics are all well and nice if the enemy can get the drop on the group, but they often don't due to high Perception skills and generous use of See Invisibility and the like. My players are also smart and extremely experienced (we're talking 20+ years of D&D each) in combat tactics and dealing with pretty much anything.
I also strive to keep my game reasonable, that is not just throw encounters and monsters at them for no good reason and because the game says x encounters between rests. If they decide to take on 1 encounter and then rest, they will as long as they take means to protect themselves during the rest.
Last game was essentially a dungeon crawl full of intelligent enemies working together, many of which had magical abilities or SR. I'd say they were fairly challenged as they wasted some good spells on mooks, and 2 of the PCs were severaly depleted on hit points in some of the fights. And the cannon golems really scared the...
No worries... I was only yelling because I found most of the advice in this thread to be advice to screw over your players.
As I read your post you need to consider a few things...
1: do you mainly want ta challenge you party in combat or out of combat?
-in combat:
allowing 1 encounter days is very beneficial to some player types. They can get used to spending their most powerfull abilities at first chance because "we can just rest afterwards..." So once in a while hitting the party with 3-5 low cr encounters can be more challenging than 1 high cr
Attack during rests. The range of darkvision/alarm spell/ see invisibility etc. Give the watch 1 or 2 round maximum to rouse the rest of the party... Also remember the penalties for sleeping in armor, or the time to don armor...
Determine APL: you said in topic they have too much loot (for now) - if that extra loot is usefull in combat the party might count as +1 or +2 level remember this when designing encounters
- out of combat
Mysteries are great, also at high levels
When designing mysteries I try to think of any way to find the solution, and then counter the solutions in the mystery design
(an example I used resently: a young man hires the party to find out why his dead father named an unknown uncle heir instead of him... The uncle wad ofc the bad guy who wasn't in family I know my party uses "speak with dead" often, so the dead father was buried somewhere in the forest and a random dude was killed, and made to look like the father with "sculpt corps" and buried in his stead...)
Throw in some foggy weather, start off with a couple drake attacks, maybe a sea monster, and end with pirates... Ghost pirates on a ghost ship, no treasure there.
In our Way of the Wicked game, the GM asked me to help with a similar issue. We are veteran players of the game so tend to work togethe/make character that play off each other well, etc.
I believe we were 8 or 9th level, had an anti paladin archer, two Path of War characters as well as a sorcerer. We tended to romp things as he was playing right from the AP. He wanted to throw something at us that would be a challenge and there were already a few themed groups in the AP so I created a party who all had enough levels of Oracle to gain sight in fog and knew obscuring mist, and they hired an npc druid to control weather... It was a very simple but horribly effective way to ruin all our days once he threw them at us. Darkvision didn't matter, ranged attacks were pretty much ruined, and when we did burn off some of the mist, they just replaced it with the spells they had. It put us completely on the defensive.
Point being, environmental effects can be very effective. Especially if one of the groups is ready to take advantage of them.
It sounds like you already do this a bit but one tactic I have seen for higher levels (really any levels) is to have valuable and interesting but not particularly powerful magic items as loot. Everyone will value them - but they are a bit less balance changing.
For example for my reign of winter campaign I gave them an intelligent magic item - but it is a cursed handy haversack - lots of fun, technically actually really valuable but more of a role playing device than a purely mechanical one.
In terms of challenging a level 10+ party I would say they should be on the cusp of dealing with world changing events and / or starting to deal across multiple worlds. Given your pirate focus perhaps you can let them start to build up a home base - give them something to value and defend (and not incidentally expend resources for). Then make them defend it.
There is the Skulls and Shackles adventure path which might be a good source of inspiration and not an rpg product but the TV series Black Sails could be another source for inspiration about how to make a home base personal and worth effort to protect and defend.
Mechanically I would pay a lot of attention to the effects of spells and attacks on ships as well as what moves with a ship and what does not - ship to ship or ship to ocean (or air) combats have unique environmental effects to track and use to make what might otherwise be a simple encounter far more challenging.
Instead of bending over backwards to challenge them with "CR appropriate" encounters just throw tougher stuff at them. Sounds like their capabilities are closer to that of a party of 12th level characters so throw a CR 16 challenge at them. Maybe a fallen Planetar or an Ancient White Dragon in the middle of a whiteout blizzard.
Once I threw a CR 11 Wickerman* at a group of 6th level PCs and most of them survived. They still talk about how epic that was.
* Admittedly the terrain favored the PCs a little but you get the idea.
Having goblins, kobolds, or a juvenile delinquent swipe the golem control thingy and take the golems for a joyride through a seaport sounds like a hoot.
I'd also not make the device universal. Maybe the occasional "input password" is required, with 3 wrong answers leading to the golems trying to splatter the controller. It seems like that kind of thing would have a new code required every few months and it only work for golems created by that particular mage or nation.
Having goblins or kobolds swipe the golem control thingy and take the golems for a joyride through a seaport sounds like a hoot.
Holy crap that sounds like fun. Especially if (for some reason), they can't kill the kobolds or goblins without breaking local laws.
I edited my post to add the possibility of some brat from a port town doing it, too. A small gang of adolescents that the PCs probably shouldn't outright murder in the streets yet are wrecking the place with golems might make for a fun sidetrek.
Maybe a flunked-out wizard's apprentice and some rogue types for backup. That should allow for some sniping from rooftops and a merry chase through trapped sewer tunnels. Since the kids know the turf so well and have presumably stolen a bunch of the PCs junk, they should have higher wealth by level than normal and have plenty of ways to make life more difficult for people than one might first expect.
If the PCs start busting out reach weapons, clanking around in full plate, or tossing fireballs at kids the guard will likely come after them. They might well be blamed for the golems, too, rather than those poor, misguided kids.
Fun ideas in here, but I have to tell you the device for controlling the golems are not in the party's hands. It was too heavy to lug around, so they simply had the golems smash it up before they left.
It's not the only one of it's kind though, so if they try to use them against another enemy base they could be in for a suprprise ;)
The golems also continually chant "Ragor", the name of the wizard who controls them now, as the rogue who UMD'ed the device wasn't quite sure how to do that :) It's basically a magic mouth chanting in the rogue's voice, as golems don't talk.
