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It sounds like the possibility of losing their characters is preventing your players from enjoying the game. You could either try to change your players' perspectives, or change the rules on death and dying. Changing the rules is easier than changing people's minds, so I recommend you try that first.
There are two easy ways to bend the rules. One is to give them access to Hero Points, so they can choose to spend a resource to Cheat Death. The upside of this method is that it gives the PCs a crutch to learn how to be less afraid and more daring, by tempting them to spend Hero Points on doing cool things instead of saving them up to avoid death. The downside is that if they know they have less than 2 Hero Points, they'll probably go back to being scared again.
The other way is to just tell your PCs that they will no longer die. PCs who reach -Con HP can't be healed during the battle, but they aren't dead. The players may still be captured and have to escape, or may fail a quest because they were unconscious, but their story won't end because they rolled poorly- it will only take a different path. This isn't how Pathfinder is meant to be played, but it seems like your party isn't enjoying "Pathfinder as it's meant to be played", so you may as well try something different.
You should also talk to your players and ask them why they're so timid. I suspect it's because they've become so attached to their characters that they don't want to "lose" them. If so, this can be a good thing! It means you have very strong emotional buy-in for your story. If it's for another reason, then the problem may be something different.
Trying to encourage the rest of the party to be less scared as a fellow player is harder than doing it as a DM. Try being adventurous and brave and engaging with the DM's plot-hooks, and gain the rewards. Then other players may see the benefit of doing that and follow your example.
I can understand that attachment to the character. I'm pretty sure that ALL of us have been there at one point or another. What your characters (not the Players) NEED is motivation. The Players need to feel that if they do NOTHING, their characters are going to die anyway.
Here's what I suggest: Start messing with their character's lives. Those quests they've failed? Let there be consequences that tie into some events that related DIRECTLY to their characters. Start small. Rumors of disturbances near by. A caravan gets attacked. Things start to get dangerous around the town and it begins to endanger the lives of the NPCs the characters have become close to. Make their characters feel like they need to protect their favorite place. Then ... you escalate the danger. The characters NEED to leave because the bigger danger is still coming and they can't protect everyone.
You can do that... Or have your players retire their current characters and make new ones.
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Making someone who's paralyzed with anxiety more scared doesn't help them have fun, though.
Can you clarify exactly what the problem is here?
Possibility #1: You aren't having fun, as a GM. This shouldn't be trivialized, but it's not paramount.
Possibility #2: Some of them aren't having fun, but others are. This is mostly an OOC issue, and it's difficult to solve because there may not be a solution.
Possibility #3: Most/all of them aren't having fun, but they're paralyzed by fear. Most of the suggestions here are geared towards this, and you'll probably need a mix of in game carrots and in game sticks to fix it.
For possibilities #1 and #2, I'd consider changing the style of the campaign. Tradition dictates that people go out and slay dragons and find treasure, but if people have just as much fun in a quest to brew the perfect beer (send them to find special ingredients from the woods/sewers/neighboring towns) or solve a murder mystery (the tavern runs out of beer because the brewer got murdered and his recipe stolen noooooooooo), that's a fine way to spend the afternoon. Or the tavern catches fire and the party needs to help save it.
Basically, moderately dangerous noncombat encounters. Like someone posted above, it helps when there's an emotional connection to the quest - the bar being in danger or their precious beer being taken away. They could also find out a sad backstory to one of the bar's degenerate regulars - a man who drinks himself to a stupor every night because 30 years ago the love of his life was supposed to meet him at this bar and never showed up. Instead of epic "save the world from demon lords" campaigns, you have "dude lets get Bill laid" quests, but if that's what people have fun doing, that's what people have fun doing.
Making someone who's paralyzed with anxiety more scared doesn't help them have fun, though.
You can't fix cowardice. You either succumb to it or you rise above it. I was merely offering options on how to push the characters/players towards one side or the other without being overtly confrontational about it. Adventurers will rise to meet it and push on. If they don't, its time for them to become NPCs or it is time to play a different kind of game (within the system or without).
As far as I can see it, this isn't an issue that will be fixed mechanically.
In light of the characters already choosing to run rather than protect the village, I think it is time for several of the NPCs of the town to start showing displeasure at the characters and even have a small band of NPCs start becoming famous for standing up to the threats when the main character chose to run away. Cowardice should have consequences. They do in the games I run. Shame the characters. It might make the Players decide to do something about it.
They already failed a ton of quests
This stuck out for me.
Do they ever succeed? That is usually pretty important as a motivating factor. If I am going to risk death, I want to believe I have a chance of winning. Risking all and fighting heroically, only to fail over and over again is pretty demoralizing.
Give them a few wins, probably via quests that are more straight forward and see what happens.
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It sounds like you're giving them challenges that are too hard for the players.
Make things easier for them.
Then, after making things easier, do NOT cheat.
That should give them the appearance of risk without there actually being a lot of real risk.
When they become used to winning all the time they'll start to become a lot more proactive.
when 5 Skelletons (cr 1/2) attacked the village, they still just ran away, ignoring the fact, that they're 4 Players of level 3
Wow.
Would it have helped to show them the skeletons' character sheets? i.e., Could they have thought the skeletons were way more powerful than they were?
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Your players don't trust you. That is a real issue. And I think they have some good reasons for that ('railroad','imprison','force'.) Who knows what will happen to their poor characters if they venture out of their safe tavern? When the one win is from being 'forced' it is easy to see why they don't feel super empowered.
What you need to do is first off, think about your GM style and what is working and what isn't.
Second, and most importantly, you need to have an honest discussion with your players about what kind of game they would like, what would motivate them, and what makes it fun for them, and really listen to them.
I kind of feel that you like complex story lines and very serious opposition, and there is nothing wrong with that sort of game, but there is also nothing wrong with a game where you primarily beat up on monsters and take their stuff and everything is basic and straightforward. Where there is a problem is when the players want one thing, and the GM runs another. Usually there is some middle ground where everyone can be happy and have a good time.
Hold a beer festival in the village. That is what I did.
In Lords of Rust, the 2nd module in the Iron Gods adventure path, my players had to enter Scrapwall, a 3-mile-mide junkyard that once served as a bandit camp and now was a shanty town for former bandits, people hiding from the law, and other refugees, in order to investigate a gang there, the Lords of Rust. They had a clever idea to enter Scrapwall by pretending to be refugees themselves.
Thus, the adventure started slowly with the PCs determined not to give away their true identities as heroic adventurers from Torch. Nevertheless, the daily necessities of the PCs forced some actions on them. First, they needed a place to live. A reclusive cleric who was an old friend of their teacher lived in Scrapwall, so they went to see her immediately. Since they skipped talking to the other Scrapwall residents, no-one warned them about the cleric's automated defenses. Once past them, the cleric welcomed them for they worshipped the same uncommon god, Brigh. And they wanted to not be a burden on the cleric, so they ran errands for her. Every errand had a chance of a random encounter with the wandering monsters that also lived in Scrapwall.
The module was written for a series of encounters and did not have the daily life of the Scrapwall dwellers, so I had to invent it. I had one gang brewing their own beer. They held a beer festival. Because people don't spend their entire life hiding from wandering monsters and fighting rival gangs. They have crafts and trade and social events.
That inspired the bard's player. She held a music festival. Arranging it kept the party busy for a game session. Socializing during it gave them contacts with potential allies. The weaker gangs in Scrapwall had noticed the party's combat skills against monsters, and begged favors (with payments from very limited funds) from them against sadistic local bullies.
Yet the party avoided the Lords of Rust, their mission. They had learned the locals' opinion of the Lords, the strongest gang in Scrapwall, that no-one messed with the Lords of Rust. The players were having fun interacting with the nicer Scrapwallers, but the adventure path itself stalled.
So long as the players enjoyed themselves, I did not mind the slowdown. I kept up the little combats against monsters and bullies, and threw in an ogre rading party from out of town of them to stop, and lured them into one of the module's side quests, and the party leveled up from 4th level to 7th level. Then they felt confident enough to face the Lords of Rust.
Thus, Aximes's party can have a non-dangerous event right in the village itself. Is the village still threatened by the skeletons? Then the mayor can recruit the party to guard woodcutters in the forest, because the village will build a pallisade wall. Is the village safe? Then it will hold festivals. Are the party members short on cash to pay for their room and board? Given them interesting jobs to earn a little cash. Are the party members so rich they don't have to worry about expenses? Then they attract the attention of locals who like to flirt with rich people. And maybe the girl who likes the party barbarian has a former boyfriend who thinks he can defeat the barbarian in a fistfight.
Just have some fun in the village until the party levels up enough to have the confidence to run one of the dangerous missions. If the village is too small, have the villagers abandon their undefended hamlet and move to a defended town.
My players pulled the same incognitio stunt again in the 5th module, written up in my post, Inconspicuous PCs Unmotivated in Palace of Fallen Stars. That is the problem with making the game interesting at a slow pace. They might decided that that was fun enough to try again.
Making someone who's paralyzed with anxiety more scared doesn't help them have fun, though.You can't fix cowardice. You either succumb to it or you rise above it. I was merely offering options on how to push the characters/players towards one side or the other without being overtly confrontational about it. Adventurers will rise to meet it and push on. If they don't, its time for them to become NPCs or it is time to play a different kind of game (within the system or without).
As far as I can see it, this isn't an issue that will be fixed mechanically.
In light of the characters already choosing to run rather than protect the village, I think it is time for several of the NPCs of the town to start showing displeasure at the characters and even have a small band of NPCs start becoming famous for standing up to the threats when the main character chose to run away. Cowardice should have consequences. They do in the games I run. Shame the characters. It might make the Players decide to do something about it.
This works, too. Or rather than shaming them immediately, have the NPC adventurers who rescued the village from the skeletons recruit the PCs. If the PCs pull their weight in the following adventure, then have the NPCs return home without them ("Sorry, the scroll send by the king conjures only four Phantom Steeds. The king must not have heard of you joining us. Still, it was nice working with you." If the PCs don't pull their weight, then they deserve whatever shame the NPCs heap on them.
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In reality there's a lot of other reasons people act cowardly, but this is a fantasy game where the point is to do foolishly brave deeds. The reason players flee from an obviously easy encounter is that they've learned that such things are traps. They've come across too many ducks in a dungeon, so they see one and go nope, not falling for that again.
Your players learned to be this way due to their experience in playing. Maybe it is their experience with a previous GM, or maybe it is you. If it was a previous GM, then you need to show and tell how you aren't them. If it is you, then you need to change how you run the game. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is really hard to unlearn, and its going to take some time.
In reality there's a lot of other reasons people act cowardly, but this is a fantasy game where the point is to do foolishly brave deeds. The reason players flee from an obviously easy encounter is that they've learned that such things are traps. They've come across too many ducks in a dungeon, so they see one and go nope, not falling for that again.
Your players learned to be this way due to their experience in playing. Maybe it is their experience with a previous GM, or maybe it is you. If it was a previous GM, then you need to show and tell how you aren't them. If it is you, then you need to change how you run the game. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is really hard to unlearn, and its going to take some time.
This is great. QFT
I would add that it is very rare that a GM believes their challenges are too difficult. It’s not surprising that you feel this way also but players who are confident in their ability to deal with the GM’s challenges and reliably experience success don’t fear adventuring. There is a disconnect between how you view your game and the behaviour your game illicits from the players.
The players don’t want to go anywhere or do anything because they are afraid. The solution, IMHO, is to make the game easier. They need to steamroll some things for a while to gain some confidence in themselves and some trust in you. Even you think it is easy enough already, the players, through their inaction, are telling you that it is not.
I dunno if too difficult is necessarily the problem; the one example of an encounter we've had was five regular skelebros at a level in which such an encounter is very nearly trivial. It's possible the OP has ran some other more excessive encounters that spooked their players, of course.
I think that, assuming that you really aren't just massively overtuning your encounters, you just need to give your players a talk and make sure they know you're not trying to run Tomb of Horrors here. The baseline assumption of Pathfinder is it being a narrative game about heroes; AP's are written so that the risk of character death is relatively minor outside of certain pivotal events because if you get invested into roleplaying your character it isn't very fun to have to replace it. Your players seem to be in some sort of Gygaxian nightmare where nothing you do matters and any decision is going to lead you to trashing your character sheet and writing up a new one. I'm not really sure how they came to that conclusion but... probably they can be convinced it isn't reality?
If you're having trouble because your players are playing too safe, I'd say taking a little break from the main game and playing a couple one-shot adventures (with pre-gen characters or new ones they made themselves) might be a good idea. This lets them be as heroic and fool-hardy as they like since their characters won't survive past the end of the session anyway, and will (hopefully) get them out of the habit of being "safe".
You can of course take this to the opposite extreme (which would be equally bad), but just giving them a little time flexing their muscles and throwing their characters into the fray could give them that confidence boost they need.
If you don't want to take time off from the main campaign, you could throw in some under-levelled encounters to let them show off their powers. A small band of kobolds/goblins holding some prisoners is a way to get them to act without putting the PCs in real danger.
Basically, break the habit of having to be careful all the time.
Your players have told you they are scared of dying. Do you think they are scared of dying because the game is too easy? Does that make sense?
That said, perhaps they need to make some different characters with built in motivations that are appropriate to the kind of game you are running. Without the characters doing something, there is no game. We once had a fellow make a character who could turn into a shark. When the going got tough, he told us all he could just turn into a shark and swim away. We said, ok cool, what’s your next character? The game is not going to be the adventures of shark boy swimming away; it’s the adventures of these guys over here doing heroic stuff so you need a character that actively wants to be with these guys over here doing heroic stuff....
It’s possible cowardly rogue doesn’t want to beat stuff up. Maybe he wants an intrigue game where he never leaves town and there’s lots of roleplay, character and NPC’s social interactions, investigation and problem solving. There’s nothing wrong with that unless you don’t want to run that kind of game. If you’re not running a game like that and your expectation is for adventures and beating stuff up, maybe cowardly rogue is not a suitable character. Or maybe the game just needs to end as Kimera757 suggests.
Possibly the players are not scared of their characters dying. Instead, they could be scared of their characters looking stupid.
I had a newbie player in my campaign that the other players talked into playing a fighter. And he was always worried about an ambush or a trap or a trick around the next corner. At least, he always talked about such a possibility and how his fighter was always ready for it. And if his fighter didn't feel ready, then he acted like a coward.
In a two-year campaign, the fighter faced many situations and I learned his motivations. That player liked to win and hated to lose. Even being useless in a combat while another party member with the right abilities handled the danger felt like losing to him. Therefore, he tried to optimize his fighter, including by multiclassing and buying obscure magic items, to be able to handle everything that I could throw at the party.
As a newbie, he really did not know the vast breadth of options a GM has at hand, but he thought he knew. We GMs have to throw a variety of challenges against the party. If we limit the challenges to what makes the party confident, then they will overspecialize, dominating against those kind of encounters and failing against other kinds of encounters. Therefore, a good game does not pamper the players. However, since my experienced players had good information skills, they had a clue when something upexpected was ahead. That one boastful yet secretly cowardly fighter was dragged complaining into the new encounter by the rest of the party, so the game continued.
Skeletons are annoying, due to their DR 5/bludgeoning; immunity to cold, and other undead traits. Give then a special ability or class levels, and the party can look ineffective against them.
Add in that at least one character, the halfling rogue, is deliberately roleplayed as cowardly. That means that the halfling will suggest retreating and if the players are unsure about the challenge, then they will take the advice. Like if the corsair suggests sneaking about a ship to steal weapons, and the other party members realize that they are bad at sneaking, so they could mess up by sneaking poorly and look incompetent.
Perhaps give the halfling rogue a Cape of Effulgent Escape or Cloak of Fiery Vanishing or a Wand of Vanish, so that he or she can escape easily. Then the halfling might stop suggesting a cowardly retreat.