What would be a good encounter for my party?

[King_Namazu]

So my party is lvl 9 and consists of a NG human harpoon wielding Weapon master fighter, a CN Dhampir Musket Master Gunslinger with bolt action rifle, and a CN half elf Ranger with a longbow and a wolf companion.

They all do some REAL: high damage. good fort saves and reflex saves but have got crap will saves, so I was thinking something along the lines of an anti-paladin or a enchantment wizard to mess with them while they dodge fireballs but lemme know your inspired ideas on some interesting and challenging encounters I can throw at them

[Ryze Kuja]

Juvenile Dragons are CR9-10ish

[Secret Wizard]

Here's a good encounter: several of them.

Make them use their resources and strain them. Each CR9 encounter should drain 25% of their resources.

[*Khan*]

A almost no magic group - all with ranged weapons. Low will saves and difficulty with condition removal. Be careful with enchanters or all your party will be NPC or dead.
A Black pudding encounter could be fun. Slashing and piercing dm. just split it up.
They need more options - perhaps this could teach them without killing them.

[Meirril]

Any kind of burrowing creature to emphasize that maybe they need a few melee weapons. I like the idea of a 'pod' of Advanced Bulette(CR 8 individually, add enough to get the CR you want) so there are enough opponents they feel pressured.

If you want them to sweat bullets, invisible stalkers natural invisibility should give the entire group a big scare.

And swarms. If nobody has a swarmbane clasp you should throw one to the party before you have them run into a Swarm Druid and pals.

[Danny StarDust]

Have them face themselves. Create a party that consists of the same classes and have them fight eachother. That will show them how annoying they can be as a ranged party :P

[JiaYou]

Won't one glitterdust basically just shut them down?

I'd echo what Meirril said though.

[Ryze Kuja]

One well placed Glitterdust could be a TPK though, it's better to just blind one of them. It's annoying and offers quite a challenge to overcome without truly endangering the party :)

[ShroudedInLight]

Set up a fog cloud and send in a group of Goz Mask wearing rogues.

[I am Nemesis]

ShroudedInLight wrote:

Set up a fog cloud and send in a group of Goz Mask wearing rogues.

have the rogues' in question attack from range using bows. while the pc's are occupied with them, have your melee rogues come in from behind.

another good strategy is to have 2 fog clouds, one on the archers, one for the pc's. have the the archers shoot from the other side of pit-traps for when/if the players decide to charge the archers.

or a prepared battlefield with areas that provide cover in the fog cloud. only problem is using the cover triggers the pit-traps.

whats in the pits? rust monsters.

[Scott Wilhelm]

The thing that sticks out for me is that you have a party of characters who are all Chaotic Neutral and 1 character who is Neutral Good. For the NG character, it must be like holding the leashes of 3 dogs that all want to go in different directions.

How much does the party actually roleplay? It seems like there is a lot of room for fun, here.

[Brolof]

This seems like the perfect group for a hunting quest, so throw them a quest where they're being sent to hunt something. A pair of dire bears would be CR 9, but also likely a breeze for them to blow through. It's just set up for the bigger issue, the fact they made the local hermit, a level eleven druid, very mad. So it becomes a game of guerrilla warfare against a druid in his element. Random attacks by summoned animals, sleet storms, trees coming to life, in general making their lives suffer until they either manage to get back to town, or kill him. Throw in some extra fey friends if you want more flavor.

[Pizza Lord]

I suggest a druid backed up by an aranea. Druid uses wind wall (possibly extended with a rod or something) for defense. This will stop the archer, but only have a 30% of stopping the firearms or harpoon attack (which is fine, don't want to negate everything completely).

I always suggest this, but here it is again: Have the aranea use web (replacing invisibility as its sorcerer spell known) and have the druid use aqueous orb and roll around between themselves and the party and over them. The web will grapple the targets (grappling prevents two-handed actions, like reloading) and also provides cover after a certain distance, making the party have to close (at half speed).

The aqueous orb does non-lethal damage (so you don't have to kill them), but also provides penalties to firearms firing through water. It also prevents firing if the gun is underwater and possibly will wet down any powder or cartridges unless they're specially-made, preventing easy firearms use. It will also dispel fire effects and since fire spells become steam under water, the party can't burn away any webs in its area. The orb also entangles, which stacks with the grapple of the web, greatly and hugely diminishing their Dexterity, which greatly and hugely diminishes their ranged capability. Additionally, remember that moving the orb is a move action. This means the druid can move it on his turn (possibly engulfing a PC or two) then Readying an action to move it should a PC try and move around it or move to an angle to fire at them (either moving to intercept or block the attack or moving it over the PC). Remember that the orb is restricted to 30 feet of movement per round however, so you have to save some movement for the readied action.

While the PCs are slowed down or hindered moving through the web, the aranea (which has mirror image and likely cast mage armor on the druid as well, is casting charm person on the PCs. They have poor Will saves, but this is fair too, since they'll likely have a +4 bonus from being attacked, assuming the aranea cast web on them and it wasn't in place before hand and they blundered into it.

Then you just need to add something else, like an animal companion to the druid for some extra combat defense or blocking or a 3rd-level wand of magic missiles in the hands of a minion or something. Replacing one of the aranea's 1st-level spells known (likely sleep or silent image with magic missile works too).

The druid will also have cast hide from animals on all involved. It will drop if the targets touch an animal or attack anyone, so it won't last very long, but at least if the ranger goes first and orders his wolf to attack, it will likely just stand there and look confused. The ranger player will probably also be confused (and probably think you're cheating) since he can clearly see the targets and not understand why the animal isn't obeying, since it has no idea what it wants him to attack. Charm animal or dominate animal on the wolf can also come into play if the druid has an action available during the encounter (or has an apprentice druid).

[Toolbag]

My first thought was Rust Monster but then I realized that Rust Lord would be better yet.