Advise them that perhaps it might be good idea to multiclass to be able to counter a wider range of foes.
Certainly there might be magic items that can remedy the problems they have, Swarmbane clasp being an example, but the basic source is in fact they are all melee.
A group of flying invisible archers would likely wreck them. And sure, everything has a counter, but martial characters have to rely on magic items to do that, and having the right magic items on hand is rather difficult if you don't know what you're going to have to deal with.
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Don't worry about it.
There are items and class features that every character you listed could take to deal with every problem you listed if they want mechanical solutions. A group that intentionally steered away from spellcasters might do so because they want a game where they get to use clever ideas to overcome problems instead of use spell B to bypass type A obstacle.
There's a group of flying invisible guys? Generic party casts invisibility purge. Your party might run into a building to force them to come down to engage, then throw flower in the air to make them visible. Maybe they grab the curtains from inside and run across the room holding them out to catch the invisible enemies. Now you have an interesting cinematic encounter, one they might remember, instead of the normal stand there full attacking affair. Encourage them to use imaginative solutions and you may find this game is a whole lot more fun with a non-balanced party like you have.
This is a group of physical adventurers, so give them physical challenges. And I don't mean fights. Let them climb walls, swim raging rivers, Give them cool action hero stuff that you normally don't do because wizard just casts dimension door or something and bypasses the situation.
I guess ultimately I agree with the idea of "Don't change what you're going to do."
Either the players will decide to multiclass to help deal with the challenges, or they'll come up with inventive solutions, or they'll use magic items to bridge the gap, or maybe they all die.
Even though the last case isn't particularly desirable, it would teach a lesson about thinking and working as a group (including building characters).
If you're running an AP I wouldn't really modify it.
If you're running a home brew, I suggest you still throw stuff at them like you would if they we're a classic adventuring party of fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric.
Let them figure out how to deal with the problems.
There's a group of flying invisible guys? Generic party casts invisibility purge. Your party might run into a building to force them to come down to engage, then throw flower in the air to make them visible.
I'm not saying this doesn't work, but did you really have this in mind? :D It might be easier with flour.
Generally, I'd say fighting in a dead magic zone or something similar is a good way of challenging them constantly.
To challenge without devastating the enemies need to be either optimised in melee, or they use ranged stuff which the PCs can counter but with difficulty. Examples of the second are the BBEG spellcaster behind a screen of mooks, or archers on the balcony.
I’m a big fan of terrain for challenging parties.
For example, from a recent game I played, the PCs are on one side of a bridge over a 40’ ravine, the opposition (gnolls) are on the other.
The bridge is half collapsed, so requires a skill check to get over.
The melee gnolls have organised themselves in a shield wall at the far end of the bridge, and have archers in embrasures in the ruins behind them.
Do.you use ranged weapons, charge the bridge (and if so climb carefully or leap the gap), try and navigate the ravine, or something else?
Another trick from the same GM - give your monsters teamwork feats. A dozen kobolds are not dangerous to a L5 party, a dozen kobolds with tower shields and the shield wall teamwork feat are untouchable.
In a straight up fight, the party annihilates even tough foes, to the point I worry they might get bored.
I'd double the HP of any foe. This has numerous benefits: They can still enjoy dealing high damage since you don't reduce their hit chance. Even the last PC in initiative will get to do something. Both sides have a higher chance to show off their abilities. If PCs can't beat up foes quickly, players must make compromises between offense and defense - which can be way more interesting than "I add even more DPR to win before they do anything serious".
This is meant as a complement to the other proposals. If you use swarms, incorporeal creatures etc., keep in mind not the entire encounter has to consist of them. This allows you to increase difficulty by a lesser degree.
I'll provide a trick that I did on occasion to make combats more interesting, but don't use it all the time.
The enemy has no hp. Instead, the players must land 3 successful attacks on the enemy and then it's dead.
It's easy to implement but can really deal with players who hyper focus on dpr by supplanting the normal paradigm a bit.
This sort of thing works extremely well against player characters who can dish out a lot of damage without making it seem too extreme.
This works extremely well for mook type characters that don't have high HP, but could serve you well if your players just deal stupendous damage in general and you want to make enemies last a bit longer.
Why not just increase the difficulty of the encounters they're breezing through?
As for the difficult ones, I don't think there's anything wrong with a tactical retreat. If the party just can't find any way to deal with the threat, even running away, then it comes down to needing to work on encounter design.
Can you outline some of these encounters for us?
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Give them a Conan vs. Thulsa Doom and cohorts encounter. Something where they face overwhelming odds, the kind that just by looking at it, they know they can't win in a straight up brawl. Then place it in a crumbling castle, or other location with lots of spaces that they can get creative with; choke points, crumbly towers to push over, ceilings to collapse, moats to bull rush peeps into, etc...encourage them to be creative and let them be creative (you can set this up semi-organically by building a few ready made features and explaining them that doing X at so-and-so spot will result in Y, and that these are just a few options to get them into it), then turn them loose to beat back this unstoppable horde by using ingenuity, teamwork and pure shenanigans!
I also like to greatly increase the out of the box thinking by giving my players wondrous items. Everyone here is always talking about getting the biggest + for their gold to keep up with the Trollses, but I never hear(read) anyone here advocating for some of the cooler wondrous items. When's the last time anyone here has read about a party using a Cube of Force to some great delight, or Decanter of Endless Water? Those are the items I love and I love to give them to my players, WBL be damned, and seeing what crazy things they can do with them. Heck in one game, I gave each player a non-weapon/armor artifact to play with and then put them in some seriously crazy fights and let them figure out what to do with their toys to get to victory.
I like to give players odd wondrous items too, but players will almost always turn around and sell them at their earliest opportunity to purchase more pluses on their static plus items, which makes me sad.
My PF1 group switch to ABP and never looked back. Now we do keep interesting wondrous items because there is no big six to buy anymore, all those types of bonuses disappeared.
Literally items no longer provide Resistance bonuses to saves, no enhancement bonuses to ability score, no enhancement bonus to weapons or armor, no deflection bonuses to AC, no enhancement bonuses to natural armor.
Items that sort of did one of those things plus something else should probably have their cost prorated, like a Cord of Stubborn Resolve should probably have the price decreased because it's no longer going to provide a constitution bonus. A belt of +2 con is normally 4000 gp, while a cord of stubborn resolve is 7500 gp. So maybe you reduce the price to 3500. Maybe you come to the price some other way as a GM.
Regardless, since your players can no longer buy these bonuses they (in my experience) will tend to hang onto more interesting items because there wont be too much worth buying most of the time.
Remember you get to control what is available for sale. Unless they start crafting, and even if they do typical adventures can make it difficult for crafting to produce everything the party wants because it takes a lot of time unless the use a lot of build resources to produce a crafting character.
You have a slayer, swashbuckler and a paladin, to me this suggest an intrigue based campaign. Booth the swashbuckler and the paladin are going to have good CHA and have a lot of social skills as class skills. The slayer has a lot of skill points so could also be helpful in dealing with people. Make a good number of the challenges be more than just beating up the enemy. Even the barbarian has a fair number of skill point so could easily put some into skill that are more useful in an intrigue based campaign.
Claxon is spot on about the ABP and you should really consider using it if you are not already doing so. The paladin is a spell caster so your party is not total without magic. It might be a good idea for one of the party to invest in UMD to get access to what the paladin cannot handle.
With limited magic the party may need to start using more mundane solutions.
A little UMD and some wand keys rings (gives a +10 bonus to UMD to activate wands/scrolls of specific spells) can go a long way.
A lot challenges a martial party need to magic to overcome can be had as scrolls and wands. Energy resistance, condition removal, water breathing, dealing with invisibility (glitterdust), etc.
The conditional removal spells may have difficulty if they only buy the minimum caster level scrolls, but you might consider (for this specific party) to let the scrolls function at a caster level equal to the character level of the person using UMD. Really all you're letting them do at that point is save some money, but consumable items shouldn't count against long term wealth anyways.
I like to give players odd wondrous items too, but players will almost always turn around and sell them at their earliest opportunity to purchase more pluses on their static plus items, which makes me sad.My PF1 group switch to ABP and never looked back. Now we do keep interesting wondrous items because there is no big six to buy anymore, all those types of bonuses disappeared.
Literally items no longer provide Resistance bonuses to saves, no enhancement bonuses to ability score, no enhancement bonus to weapons or armor, no deflection bonuses to AC, no enhancement bonuses to natural armor.
do you do that for items with situational bonuses? Like something that gives a bonus to save vs. a specific effect or spell?
We just started using ABP in our most current game and we've left those alone for the most part as a lot of little items, that is about all they do, and when you half WBL, those little items end up being mostly the only thing you can give the party at lower levels. Everything else (stats, AC, weapons/armor bonuses) we get rid of, but the specific save items have made the cut so to speak, not that it's a big issue, I think there are two such items floating around the group.
I like to give players odd wondrous items too, but players will almost always turn around and sell them at their earliest opportunity to purchase more pluses on their static plus items, which makes me sad.
well then when the poisonous mist starts to fill the room, they can swing at it with their +1 better weapon instead of blocking it with their Cube of Force and living...and then a lesson will be learned!
I like to give players odd wondrous items too, but players will almost always turn around and sell them at their earliest opportunity to purchase more pluses on their static plus items, which makes me sad.My PF1 group switch to ABP and never looked back. Now we do keep interesting wondrous items because there is no big six to buy anymore, all those types of bonuses disappeared.
Literally items no longer provide Resistance bonuses to saves, no enhancement bonuses to ability score, no enhancement bonus to weapons or armor, no deflection bonuses to AC, no enhancement bonuses to natural armor.
do you do that for items with situational bonuses? Like something that gives a bonus to save vs. a specific effect or spell?
We just started using ABP in our most current game and we've left those alone for the most part as a lot of little items, that is about all they do, and when you half WBL, those little items end up being mostly the only thing you can give the party at lower levels. Everything else (stats, AC, weapons/armor bonuses) we get rid of, but the specific save items have made the cut so to speak, not that it's a big issue, I think there are two such items floating around the group.
So it's all about the bonus type for what didn't make it over in item form.
If the item provided a bonus of one of the types mentioned above it no longer does that. If that was all the item did, then it no longer exists. Such as an ring of protection. For other items that did one of those things but also did something else, the item still exists but doesn't provide that bonus anymore. To compensate prices should be reduced, but exactly how much is more of an art than science.
Typically I just remove the straight cost of the removed bonus and have found that to work well enough.
If you have specific items in mind that give a bonus against a specific spell or something I'd take a look at tell you my opinion on it.
I like to give players odd wondrous items too, but players will almost always turn around and sell them at their earliest opportunity to purchase more pluses on their static plus items, which makes me sad.My PF1 group switch to ABP and never looked back. Now we do keep interesting wondrous items because there is no big six to buy anymore, all those types of bonuses disappeared.
Literally items no longer provide Resistance bonuses to saves, no enhancement bonuses to ability score, no enhancement bonus to weapons or armor, no deflection bonuses to AC, no enhancement bonuses to natural armor.
do you do that for items with situational bonuses? Like something that gives a bonus to save vs. a specific effect or spell?
We just started using ABP in our most current game and we've left those alone for the most part as a lot of little items, that is about all they do, and when you half WBL, those little items end up being mostly the only thing you can give the party at lower levels. Everything else (stats, AC, weapons/armor bonuses) we get rid of, but the specific save items have made the cut so to speak, not that it's a big issue, I think there are two such items floating around the group.
So it's all about the bonus type for what didn't make it over in item form.
If the item provided a bonus of one of the types mentioned above it no longer does that. If that was all the item did, then it no longer exists. Such as an ring of protection. For other items that did one of those things but also did something else, the item still exists but doesn't provide that bonus anymore. To compensate prices should be reduced, but exactly how much is more of an art than science.
Typically I just remove the straight cost of the removed bonus and have found that to work well enough.
If you have specific items in mind that give a bonus against a specific spell or something I'd take a look at tell you my opinion on it.
the ones our group has that we left alone were the Aegis of Recovery (+2 on saving throws to overcome ongoing effects) and the Mind Sentinel Medallion (+2 bonus on mind-affecting spells, abilities, and effects). Looking at them though they are resistance bonuses, which wouldn't stack with the resistance bonus provided by ABP...hmmm, might just house rule those so they are still useful. But if the bonus was say a morale, luck, cat bonus?
the ones our group has that we left alone were the Aegis of Recovery (+2 on saving throws to overcome ongoing effects) and the Mind Sentinel Medallion (+2 bonus on mind-affecting spells, abilities, and effects). Looking at them though they are resistance bonuses, which wouldn't stack with the resistance bonus provided by ABP...hmmm, might just house rule those so they are still useful. But if the bonus was say a morale, luck, cat bonus?
Looking at those items, since they are limited circumstance in which they apply and wouldn't stack with the bonuses as you gain them from ABP I would be inclined to allow them at their regular price.
For instance, it could be valid to have a cloak of resistance +1 and have a Aegis or Recovery. The Aegis doesn't help you on most saves, but helps on lingering effects. In this analogy we would replace the cloak of resistance with the bonus from ABP. I think that all works fine, but only because of the limited way in which these items function.
However, if they were a different bonus type then I would say it wouldn't even be up for consideration to remove them.
The whole idea of ABP is to remove the big six and give your characters more interesting options to buy.
I think it's important to point out that an encounter is not a combat and "combat encounters" aren't (or shouldn't) be a thing.
Encounters are scenes that ask questions. Combat is one way to answer some (or many) of those questions.
If we could see some of the encounters that have been too easy/too hard for these guys, we could maybe offer some guidance as to encounter design.
I'm not really sure I understand. I don't disagree with you. My previous statement didn't, either. So I guess I'm unsure as to what you are responding to.
I think that making the mistake of designing a "combat encounter" will lead to poorer encounter design than if you don't. And I think a more specific example of the issue would help us all provide more useful feedback.