Last night, I had a CR10 Nymph, Katiyana from Jade Regent, square off vs 5 8th level party members. Katiyana was slaughtered.
The main problem was a Ninja who could invisibly walk 150 feet in two turns and get 3 sneak attacks in on the Nymph doing almost 80 points of damage.
Once the Ninja was visible, Kat attempted Gale Aura to keep the bastard away, but the Ninja had a bat cloak allowing him to fly above the evil boss and drop down on her for an attack.
The rest of the party used their summoned beasts to take her out......it was anti climatic.
How do I keep up with my super powerful party members and make combats more interesting?? Help!!!
i am not familiar with the adventure path, did you have a single monster to fight against five players? No supporting enemies to slow down the PCs or anything?
She had 2 Babau Demons and Two Servants immune to physical damage. The Wizard but a dent in their abilities with a confusion spell.
ok, how did the ninja get the three sneak attacks? invisibility turns off after the first swing and no more sneak attack or flat footed AC after that, right? or was that over the course of three rounds (plus the two turns moving, so five turns total which is a normal combat length to me)
I am not sure on the details now....
I am going to just have to research the rules more carefully going forward. I need to take a lot of time to understand my PCs and the game rules.
That can be tough ... since I am also prepping the game session....
- Minions. PCs can't solo adventures; neither can the monsters.
- Contingency Plans. What's a monster to do when things go south?
- Equipment. Good equipment - the sort that the PCs use too.
there is that, its not about you killing off the PCs (though that should be a possibility it just shouldnt be the bar for things going well)
Other than that, one shot magic items are useful or if you know the PCs all have flight or always use the same tactic than mix up the encounters so their tactic of choice doesnt always work.
It also sounds like there was some confusion on how some things are supposed to work. Its very hard to get sneak attack bonuses on every hit without very good flanking support. Your Ninja did almost 80 damage from three hits, so maybe 25 per swing? where does that come from? Remember hit penalties for using multiple weapons, reduced strength bonus to off hand weapons, after you land a hit on somehting they generally know where the attack came from and there are no more sneak attacks to be had.
I do need to understand the PCs better so I can be sure I know the rules. We have 5 adults and 1 16 year old in the group. The 16 year old doesn't necessarily cheat but is sloppy with his record keeping and always seems to roll very high on his D20....
I am least interested in the crunchy rules of Pathfinder and most interested in the story and the experience.....I want to rely on my players to understand and follow the rules...and I think I can with the one exception.
Use more minions when you have an important battle. PCs will always one shot your best baddie when they can!
NOTE since several people have said it was a single CR10 monster, OP has clarified it had at least 2 Babau demons and two more servants (without specified CR) so it wasn't a single encounter.
NOTE since several people have said it was a single CR10 monster, OP has clarified it had at least 2 Babau demons and two more servants (without specified CR) so it wasn't a single encounter.I missed that, but the enemies where still outnumbered with PCs using summon spells and under CR'd.
Now I'm starting to wonder if the OP and his players knows how SA, invisibility and DR works, as the nymph would have had to be hit by either cold iron or for almost 110 damage (unless this nymph deviates from the DR10/cold iron) in three attacks which most likely only one was a SA.
The Babau can see invisible and should be able to react within two rounds to the ninja.
Guess I should say that you really should max out all enemies' hp and not go for the avg they stat in the books. A CR10 monster should even be able to have above 200hp by then.
You make some interesting points here - I think I need to do more research on the bad guys. I don't see that she could resist cold iron though.
I also agree, I need more than one enemy. But I also didn't realize 5 PCs at level 8 equal a CR of 12.
So a lot of my issues come with my own ignorance of the rules. What i did to prepare was read through the chracter sheet, then write down on a sheet of not paper a quick summary of how all of Kat's spells worked so I could quick reference them. What I realized after the battle started though was it was difficult to keep the pace of the battle going while also trying to read through Kat's spells and picking the best one. In my haste to keep things going, I may not have made the best decisions or forgot to use her healing scroll.
Yeah, being a DM is a lot of work. You basically learn new characters every week back to front and then watch them get murdered, then do it again. While preparing for NPC talks, puzzles, narrative, yadda yadda... You have a lot on your plate, while players are only responsible for what their character does. But! You also have to know their characters back to front as well or better than they do, so you can call them out if they make a mistake or, as can happen, they try to fudge something. It's really crucial to know every itty bitty detail of the PCs so that you can confidently throw things at them with the knowledge that it'll either be a challenge or a cakewalk.
I'd recommend sitting down and going over every character sheet. If you don't already, try to replicate it on a program like HeroLab or something that'll give you errors if something is wrong. Get as caught up as possible on DR, spell resistance, dodge bonuses, spells, whatever you need to make sure that the monsters are working at the capacity they're meant to. Knowing all of the rules for a given session is going to be super helpful in the long run, and you can always run over to the Jade Regent AP messageboards and read the book-by-book questions threads or see how other DMs are handling things. Also, a party of five is going to be 25% stronger than a party of four. Remember that when you're looking at encounters; maybe give the monsters maximum HP, throw in another creature or two as extra bodies to mitigate action economy losses, etc. You can even cheat the bosses a little and let them have their buffs already prepared or even give them a special attack that's a swift action if you're finding the monsters are getting totally trashed and want to challenge (not beat) the players.
On that topic, it's ok not to pull punches as a DM. If the players have a the means to resurrect a fellow party member then that's part of the game. Don't just try to annihilate the party, because that's boring and petty, but if you get a solid crit on a character that has 10 HP, send it home. Also, you mentioned a player that might fudge rolls sometimes. If you don't already have one, my group uses a little hexagon tray thing that we call the "Colosseum" to roll dice in. Only dice that end up in that count, and it means that dice rolling between players is 100% visible. One of those might be a nice investment, and they do help keep dice from flying all over.
Really though, the biggest thing here is to make sure you go through the players' sheets with a fine-toothed comb. Players have a penchant for adding a skill point or forgetting that they didn't get a bonus feat or need a prerequisite. It happens, no big deal, but you just have to know when it happens. And knowing what everyone is capable of as well as they do will help tremendously in preparing encounters for them.