Help! Think my players taking advantage of my kindness


Advice

The Exchange

I'm running Giant slayer and my PCs are just too overpowered I believe they are not over geared just all min/maxed all level 12,25 point buy, 2 traits, and all races open. I am an experienced player but never ran one before and believe they took advantage of that. The group consist of a Paladin,Witch,Summoner,Kinetisist,Rogue,and barbarian!


What are the specific problems you are having?
What have your players done? It's just that the AP is being too easy for them?
Being a bit more specific would allow people here to provide better help.


Six player party.

Are you increasing the encounters by roughly 50% more Exp worth of critters or so? AP's are typically created with 4 players in mind. If you're running the encounters straight out of the book with no modification, a six player party should walk right through almost every encounter.


I haven't played or GMed Giant Slayer, but I've read somewhere that it's a very easy AP.

Plus, you have six players when the standard is 4.

Scarab Sages

Jacob, the AP is set for 4, 15 pt buy characters with core races. Without looking at their builds we don't know if they are breaking any rules. Are you familiar with all of their characters to know if something is broken or not?


And 25 point buy is also higher than expected.

The best you can do, as suggested, is to fix the encounters so they are more complicated.

Add more minions and maybe give some bosses Advanced template or something similar.

The Exchange

HavokReigns wrote:

Jacob, the AP is set for 4, 15 pt buy characters with core races. Without looking at their builds we don't know if they are breaking any rules. Are you familiar with all of their characters to know if something is broken or not?

know the AP and point buy and what not and I adjusted the encounters. And not really I apologize. I'm sure they are not breaking rules just min/maxing and I'm just trying to have them have a challenge a fear of loss and fear of death. I'm trying to looking into possible magic traps and or curse type things to affect them and can't think of anything worth the try.


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My philosophy has generally been to let players have whatever toys they want (classes, feats, spells, etc...) and then just increase the threat level to match.

APs are balanced on the assumption of a four player party with indifferently optimized characters. If you've got six optimized characters you'll need to beef up the opposition.

6 players vs. 4 is supposed to be worth +1 CR. Generous character creation rules (25 point buy, lots of options open) might be woth another +1. Optimization can be worth a lot as well.

APL of 12 + 1 for six players, +1 for generous character creation, +1 for optimization, +3 for a serious but not deadly encounter gives you a CR 18. Try throwing an advanced Rune Giant at them and scale up or down from their. If they wipe the walls with it, that's a good data point, try CR 20 next time. If they are forced to run, that's a good data point too, try a CR 16 next time.

AC 34, 310 hp, Str 45, and a 20d6 breath weapon should keep them honest. Limited mobility and action economy should stop it from triggering a TPK. Worst case scenario it kills one or two and the rest of the party bounce.


There's nothing wrong with juicing up the encounters to make them more challenging for your players.

But if you give us more detail about the players, we can give you more detail on how to challenge them.

The Exchange

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

There's nothing wrong with juicing up the encounters to make them more challenging for your players.

But if you give us more detail about the players, we can give you more detail on how to challenge them.

the witch is a enchantment one who hexes to lower saves then controls it through enchantment or other spells so mind control. Barbarian not big deal just big damage dealer night will and A.C. annoying but easy to deal with. Archer paladin hits everything and average damage so again not bug deal unless smite but thats also easy enough. The summoner who is party buff but mostly his Eidolon with huge Ac, attack rolls, and damage from each of the attacks. And the kinetist fire who is always flying and shrouded in smoke. I believe that is mostly summing it up.

Dark Archive

If encounters are easy I'd suggest doing stuff to debuff the party.
Use a few baddies with a bestow curse SLA to drop their stats or give them big penalties. Poisons are lovely on finger-wigglers. Have an enemy bard use dirge of doom for a no save shaken to lower their saves and hit them with the longer-term debuffs. Then give the regular "good at fighting straight up" bad guys their shot.

The most important bit of advice for making encounters challenging for PC: Make sure you have enough encounters in a single day. If the PCs only face one or two groups of bad guys in a day, they're going to blow through them.
Keep hitting them until they're out of gas. Maybe even hit them once after that (lightly, so they don't actually die).
PCs aren't going to fear character death until they're nearly out of resources (spells, pool points, what have you)

Plus, I find that many encounters with a satisfying finale makes for more fun fights than a singular CR+4 creature that drops melee unconscious in a single full attack.

The Exchange

Ectar wrote:

If encounters are easy I'd suggest doing stuff to debuff the party.

Use a few baddies with a bestow curse SLA to drop their stats or give them big penalties. Poisons are lovely on finger-wigglers. Have an enemy bard use dirge of doom for a no save shaken to lower their saves and hit them with the longer-term debuffs. Then give the regular "good at fighting straight up" bad guys their shot.

The most important bit of advice for making encounters challenging for PC: Make sure you have enough encounters in a single day. If the PCs only face one or two groups of bad guys in a day, they're going to blow through them.
Keep hitting them until they're out of gas. Maybe even hit them once after that (lightly, so they don't actually die).
PCs aren't going to fear character death until they're nearly out of resources (spells, pool points, what have you)

Plus, I find that many encounters with a satisfying finale makes for more fun fights than a singular CR+4 creature that drops melee unconscious in a single full attack.

I'll keep that in mind I appreciate the help


Charming/Mind-controlling the Barbarian usually works.

How well does the Paladin shoot while Blinded? There is a kind of Orc in the Bestiary where they almost all have Scent. If there were a heavy infantry unit of those, you might also give all of them Blind fighting, and give the unit commander an Eversmoking Bottle, Blinding everyone they fight while operating effectively themselves.


The issue of some of the PCs doing a lot of damage can be blunted by just shifting the monster hit points closer to max. Instead of average for their hit dice, you can boost to 75% to 100%.

For the witch, whose powers tend to be more save-based, you could generally swap out a lesser-used feat for Iron Will to give opponents a 2 point improvement on their most likely targeted defense.

If you're finding PC ACs too high as well, you could wrap a lot of this up by using the simple Advanced template in the Monster Manual. That boosts just about everything by +2 (die rolls, damage, DCs) and hit points by +2/HD.

Dark Archive

Are you and your party expecting different things?.

It seems like your party is having fun going through the ap. Maybe they don't want a random difficulty boost by adding things not in the ap.


Halek wrote:

Are you and your party expecting different things?.

It seems like your party is having fun going through the ap. Maybe they don't want a random difficulty boost by adding things not in the ap.

Fair to say: if a good time is being had by all, then that means you are a success as a GM. Why do anything different?


The simple Advanced Template is your friend...Put that on everything.
And add an extra mook or two to take count of action economy.
But as others have said Adventure Paths are for 4 PCs at 15 point buy.


You may find this to be helpful when it comes to challenging your players.


I wouldn't call that taking advantage from what you've said so far, you gave them a toolbox and they used it.

Maybe they made some janky ass OP build but so far it sounds like epic fantasy with 2 extra players is the problem.


Most AP are designed for 4 players with a 15 point buy. Might be your problem there.


Well, from what I've heard, giant slayer is very "Dungeon crawly" and they have a bunch of big hitters. I would suggest giving enemies max HP per HD, That'll probably make things feel a little bit better.


You created a problem when you gave them a 25 point buy.

You have to adjust all of your CRs by APL+1 at a minimum.


Giants are also very one-trick enemies. I ran book 6 for PFS and it was a total steamroll. When possible, elide encounters together to up the difficulty.


Simplified to balance -

Give everything the 'Advance Template'. That roughly means adding +2 to everything; +2 initiative, +2 to hit, +2 damage, +2 AC, +2 to all saves, 2 levels more of health.

Double the number of minions they are fighting and give the bosses a "hard core" setting. Hard core = going twice in a round.


As Matt2VK said, most AP's are usually designed for:
A) only 4 PC's
B) 15 point buy
C) standard races
(and in my opinion this last is the big one)
D) assume near beginners or at least not a high level of system mastery

I normally find I have to scale up almost everything in published material with experienced players.

Also, as Serisan said, giants are mostly just big slow damage dealers. Though I'm not familiar with that AP. Even with a fairly consistent opponent type (giants), there are things you can do to up the difficulty and introduce some unexpected problems.

Agree with the advanced template.

Give a few of them some caster levels. Grease, obscuring mist, pilfering hand, create pit, web, pyrotechnics, mad monkeys, summon swarm, etc... can cause the party just as much trouble as the bad guys.

Instead of just tacking levels onto the singleton boss subtract 1 level but make it 2 of them.

Give one a long hammer, boost to dex, and combat reflexes to make use of that reach.

Give the fire giant a ring of cold resistance to take away one of his big weaknesses. Or better yet, maybe he is the chief's enforcer, so give him level of the winter witch sorcerer bloodline. Bet they won't expect that.

Give them some fast and sneaky allies or pets. Kobold poison assassins, goblin alchemists, dire monitor lizards, or whatever...

Also remember not every encounter needs to be an edge-of-your-seat-fight-to-the-last-man-standing kind of thing.


Brother Fen wrote:

You created a problem when you gave them a 25 point buy.

You have to adjust all of your CRs by APL+1 at a minimum.

I'm more inclined to think it's the 2 extra characters than a few extra stat points. Right in the module it says "Battle of Bloodmarch Hill” is designed for four characters and uses the medium XP track. So it's not the players taking advantage so much as Bocaj tioneb not checking the material. Then you add in the the AP's are generally geared towards casual play and it no wonder things get obliterated.

So it looks like he need to boost things by 50%. That means he can be pretty free with the buffs. Add extra levels to bad guys across the board. Add a pile of expendable fodder as the group isn't focused on area attacks: Ratfolk work great here as they can swarm to pack in the minions and with the bonus to INT and dex make great alchemists, witches, rogues, ect. Sneak attack + swarm means easy extra damage, scent means attacks in darkness/blindness. Or you can always line up a bunch of 6th level gunslingers with Double hackbuts each doing 2d10+dex on 2 ranged touch attacks.

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