So I have an idea start a campaign around lvl 10-15, maybe with extra wealth (you will see why) and start the PC's on an adventure with the assumption that they are high level professional adventurers.
The twist is that they get transported to either another plane (and can't plane shift back for whatever reason) and this plane is basically another material plane. Or to another timeline.
Either way they can't get back the thing is about their environment is that in comparison to the PC's everyone is weak (comparatively). And not just the people that are good, the villains are just not strong in comparison. It would be interesting to see what they would do with that kind of power.
The problem is how would you handle the issue of challenge. Effectively all challenge would be gone, or nearly.
What could I change about this that would keep the spirit of the concept intact, but would allow for challenge?
You could make it a competition. Everyone is weak--except the other three groups of adventurers from other planes who also got transported to this Plane of Elemental Weakness.
Then you have to wonder... who's responsible for sending four groups of powerful extraplanar adventurers to rampage through this world of nebbishes? Why pit them against one another? Why set them up to rule over a land of the wheezy and easily bruised?
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Challenging scenarios for such characters:
Save lots of people. A high-level group can generally protect and save themselves reliably. Are they capable of saving communities? Trying to keep 100 or more low-level NPC-classed alive people alive is not easy.
create water takes care of water, although it takes a bit to produce enough every day for more than a hundred stomachs. Then try feeding them. Shelter. Encampments at night in dangerous territory.
Then there's wandering monsters. Something the characters considers a scrub, such as a manticore, can wreak utter carnage when it has so many juicy targets at which to fling tail spikes and maul.
Then there's "APL appropriate" encounters. 6 or 8 manticores, a 'pack' of hungry ankhegs, wyverns ... or wild hippogriffs. Let alone something truly fearsome such as a dragon of sufficient age to have frightful presence, which will scatter them to the winds in terrain perhaps not so well suited to fleeing in mind-numbing panic.
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Also, politics.
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I would like to second the mad comrade's idea, the idea of trying to protect and provide for a settlement sounds amazing, don't split the party would go out the door, if you ever left someone would have to stay behind capable of protecting your people. Blend this with Quibble's idea but not competition have 2/3/4 parties like yours in the world, have them each react differently, have on do what your party does, one become tyrannical rulers, one group become glory hunters who are revered as living gods, one muscle their way into high level politics. And see how your PCs react, give everyone who was ported an identifying feature, like an arcane mark so they can tell who to watch out for.
Interesting suggestions. Thanks for all the ideas so far.
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I would like to second the mad comrade's idea, the idea of trying to protect and provide for a settlement sounds amazing, don't split the party would go out the door, if you ever left someone would have to stay behind capable of protecting your people. Blend this with Quibble's idea but not competition have 2/3/4 parties like yours in the world, have them each react differently, have on do what your party does, one become tyrannical rulers, one group become glory hunters who are revered as living gods, one muscle their way into high level politics. And see how your PCs react, give everyone who was ported an identifying feature, like an arcane mark so they can tell who to watch out for.
Mix that with Smilodan's politics ....
So, overhaul Kingmaker, only the PCs are Strangers in a Strange Land instead of first level pukes.
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It's also kind of like a Supers campaign.
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Supers are supposed to be all about saving civilian bacon.
Mmmmm .... bacon .... nnggrrrlllll ....
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Well, it's not like I have any intention of starting this campaign anytime soon, I'm GMing 2 games already, no intention of starting another until I've completed one.
If you're asking for a challenge, the pat answer (related toward what the Comrade was mentioning before) is, "find things that high level characters in general, and your PCs in specific will find challenging" - that's not a very good answer (as it has no concrete concepts), but that's the basic gist, and it encapsulates the kind of thing that also includes MC's suggestion, above.
Now, for a hopefully more interesting answer: what engages your group, in specific? NPC interactions? Character choices? Clever riddles? Unusual traps? Hordes of foes?
In this instance, it may be that you use these things - things that attend little personal risk, but permit them to engage in the sorts of things that they, as individuals, find fun.
You're discussing a world with loooooooooots of weak, little people, and that's super fair, but let's look at what we can do (and have done) in the real world: generally speaking, we're really good at flinging a ton of people at a problem.
"If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough of it." as the saying goes.
The other way we handle things is by infrastructure and technology. This allows weaker individuals to do a lot of weird stuff that's frankly way beyond their capability. How fast can you do math? Doesn't matter - calculators are faster . How fast can you wash laundry? Doesn't matter - clothes washers allow you to do other things while your laundry is running. How much can you lift? Doesn't matter - cranes, loaders, lifters, and so on can left far more than any human or group of humans can. And so on.
Then you get into the really weird stuff: electrical systems channel (figurative) lightning into a useful resource, computers use that harnessed "lightning" to change math into memorized data, and communications lines allow us to ship that stored data through copper () wires to allow us to have interesting conversations about esoteric nonsense in worlds that don't really exist.
Or the really, really, really weird stuff, like, you know, turning dirty rocks or various liquids into harnessed fire, and that fire (or, alternatively, lots of water pressure from fake lakes, or various forms of poison including poisonous light) into a fake version of that same harnessed lightning to do all this nonsense. Or, even more ridiculous, we use alchemically refined versions of those liquids to create tiny sustained and controlled explosions in order to move little carriages made of metal about without things like horses at speeds faster than any living creature (oh, and also we make the air inside cool, and listen to music, and let said still not living carriage tell us how to go places). I mean come on. That's just stupid.
See, we use really clever and obscenely obscure concepts to do stuff that makes no sense - even by the standards of magic.
Railroads? That's insane - no titan, or dragon could haul those kinds of loads, no matter what spells or magics you came up with (outside of, say, ludicrous loops).
Now, what's the purpose of all this?
To point out: when you don't have much personal power, you come up with ways to mitigate that, and the most primary way is lots of people, and the secondary way is infrastructure, with a tertiary in technology (though infrastructure itself is a kind of technology, so...).
These might be methods you have to build opponents or challenges.
Also, you'll likely want to look at the Ultimate Intrigue book (and maybe Inner Sea Intrigue) - these provide lots of interesting options for limits on spells, and methods of interacting with people and organizations. Use these as advanced limits that help make things more challenging without decreasing their personal power. ([ooc]That said, as the book warns, using such things will likely slow everything down substantially, so you'll need to be extremely well versed on said rules - extremely well versed - in order to keep things running smoothly.
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Another way to make weak foes a brutal challenge is in the use of troops, kind-of-like swarms but for people.
Keep in mind that troops cut both ways. Get enough followers via Leadership, you have the makings of troops under your own command. ;)
As I'm not intimately familiar with the troop rules, I can't actually comment on them, however: that's kind of what I was alluding to above, with the large numbers of people. I was thinking more along the lines of the mass combat rules, which, from my understanding, or at least similar to the troop rules, but I am uncertain of the exact rules and directions of the two systems, either in similarity or difference. But yes, I want showed hell, presupposing a daddy is in the roughly CR 36 category, a series of mass combat demons of lesser elk could reasonably, by the rules, destroy said daddy. Hence, justifying by rules the narrative of Curchannis' death at the hands of demons by way of Lamashtu.
Oh! Also, I didn't necessarily mean to suggest you use *our* technology, in my earlier post, either. I mostly just meant to give examples of how ridiculous our tech is when explains to others in PF terms. From my understanding, this world has magic - you might want to look at things like Eberron or just take a look at adept spell lists for car trips and first and second level spells to get some really cool ideas for how to make magitech devices that, given proper infrastructure, can make a fascinating high-tech/low power world.
Also, keep in mind the various "minor" dragons as potentially-iconic creatures for such a setting: dragon turtles, Wyverns, behirs, cetus, gorynych, gowrow, tatzlwyrm, and so on - basically anything with a limited habitat and/or below CR 13. You could even have a few more powerful ones as basically gods of this setting - especially obscure ones like a Shen (as a god of dreams and desires), or jabber wok (as a god of destruction), or elder wyrm (as a god of magic or over-deity). Or not. Just a things to keep in mind!
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/dragons/
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Tacticslion - it seems like what you're trying to say is like Clarke's Third Law (Arthur C. Clarke): Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And a lot of our current technology is 'sufficiently advanced' from a Golarian adventurer's point-of-view.
To some extent, but, Mr. Clarke's oft-cited law aside, I'm also trying not o point out how stinkin' weird "our" tech is - and as a GM, how that gives you permission when world-building to make similarly "weird" (but internally consistent) things - this is a method by which you can apply challenge (of a sort) to those who couldn't othwrwise be challenged.
Also, pointing out the rather banal power of infrastructure and masses doing stuff together.
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Firstly RP challenges. High level players can kill pretty much anything. Even on level encounters rarely last very long. RP challenges can be extremely difficult. You already have a fun challenge built in. If the players are significantly more powerful than everyone else everyone will want them dead or on their side. Also I could definitely see plenty common people trying to kill them out of fear. Commoners would send the women and children to hide whenever the players approach. Regardless of how the players act, their sheer power would cause people to act differently around them
2nd large quantities of creatures. Casters run out of spells, high rolls/aid another still fight fighters, and CLW don't cut it when there is no releif
3rd everyone else being lower CR means that the world lacks powerful magic items. That means they have to craft any powerful gear they want
4th Artifacts. Some artifacts are powerful enough to make their user a challenge regardless. Also its not hard to make some up if need be
5th Threats from other planes
6th Anyone can do occult rituals
7th Enemies could deliberately target class weaknesses. I don't recommend this be a regular thing(unless it has been made very public) but it is a way for smaller threats to take down higher level folks