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I don't know how to search for this, so if it's been asked and answered before, I apologize.
Theoretical situation.
There is a creature guarding a hallway, it doesn't matter what creature it is.
There is no way around it, the party has to go through it to get into the rest of the dungeon.
There is a door that the party has to go through in order to enter the hallway.
The creature is tasked, magically or by its superiors, to guard this hallway and attack anyone who enters this hallway.
The party, realizing that the creature is just going to attack them as soon as they enter the hallway, do not enter the hallway and instead take ranged attacks from outside the doors until the creature is dead.
In an alternate situation, the creature has ranged attacks and attacks them whenever they open the door but it has limited ranged attacks and the party works together so that one person closes the door after every ranged attack by the PCs.
How do you solve this? Is there some kind of warding spell that prevent the party from attacking the creature unless they are in the hallway? Let's say the creature is a construct; does that make it easier? Is there any difference if the hallway were a bridge instead?
Now, you are saying that the creature could charge and attack the party as soon as they begin attacking the creature. However, how far do you take that? The party keeps moving away through hallways, rooms, tunnels, caves, even outside, continuing to use ranged attacks. The creature never really gets close enough to use it's attacks.
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The hallways turns.
Multiple enemies with different talents.
Concealment/Cover/Miss Chances due to environmental or magical means.
Use Fighters with Combat Reflexes, Cut From the Air, Power Attack, and Smash From the Air.
Use Monks with Deflect/Snatch Arrows.
Charge them as soon as the door opens... use Rhino Charge to ready a charge for as soon as the door opens.
The guardian is an illusion, and interacting with it sets off a trap.
Dimension Door behind them.
Bar the door from inside the hallway.
Waterfalls. Wind Walls. Minions/hostages...
Don't make it a long hallway, and if the party runs the guardian can chase them. Make it fast by giving it a 50ft movement. I doubt the entire party will be that fast.
If they try to nickel and dime it to death give it fast healing. As for the hallway, put a door behind the guarding. Put traps or some magical ability on the door it's guarding so it's not easy to get past it.
Be sure to add an alarm so that if the party gets to the door while the guardian is away it knows to return. It doesn't have to be an audible alarm.
That way if the guardian decides to hide, and ambush them it has the option to do that instead of being stuck by whatever it's guarding every time. Now the party will be having to watch their backs, and can't just use an overly simple tactic.
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Hmmm
I thought there was a once size fits all solution for this but I guess not. I will provide details.
Party composition: Level 9, Cleric with Good and Heal domains, Fighter (Shielded archetype), Alchemist/Master Chymist, Aether Kineticist.
I am running the City of Golden Death module, modified and upgraded for my campaign. In entering the city itself, the party first enters a kind of map room. Through a doorway out of the map room is a walkway or roadway that is 40 feet wide and an undefined length ending at a bridge, 30 feet wide and 60 feet long, crossing a river of gold. The city is on the other side of the bridge and the bridge is the only way into the city. The whole area is in dim light due to green phosphorescent algae on the ceiling. On the bridge is supposed to be a guardian. I want to replace the original Golden Guardian with a Juggernaut with the Fiery Template but it's domain powers removed. Either creature is going to have the same problem I mentioned above. The party will see them and, between the kineticist's kinetic blast, the alchemist's bombs, the fighters bow and the clerics spells, they can just stand back in the map room and snipe it with ranged attacks.
I have any number of options as, in my campaign, the entire city was once occupied by an ancient group of very powerful beings known as the Wind Dukes of Aaqa. In leaving a guardian to protect their city, they would have considered that someone could stand back and take pot shots at their guardian and come up with a way to counter it. I'm just not sure what would be a good counter for this situation.
I do like the idea of an alarm spell when the party enters the map room. Upon consideration, the module does not specify that there are doors between the map room and the bridge area so if I make that a 20 foot wide doorway, the juggernaut could get through it to attack the party anywhere. If the juggernaut sits at the close end of the bridge and the walkway is only 40 feet long, it could get to anyone in the doorway in one round and roll over them.
Have hallways with multiple turns... have multiple guards stationed periodically throughout the hallway. The first guard falls back, keep kiting the party deeper into the hallway...
The guards will take damage, sure. But they fall back to reinforcements... who fall back to reinforcements... who fall back to... each time your guards fall back, they draw the party further into the hallway.
Then a gate closes behind the party once they reach a certain point. The remaining guards scurry through the last door, and out steps your champion guardsman. The party is face to face with this monster, nowhere to run, no options to snipe or plink away... time for business on the champion's home turf.
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This isn't about a specific situation that needs a specific solution. This is about encounter design.
First, it sounds like this isn't a very exciting or well thought-out encounter. It's very close to a fight on in flat, featureless void in terms of decision points or features/elements for the players to interact with.
Second, that's not always so terrible. Not every single fight *needs* to be a desperate struggle for survival. Unless that's the kind of game you're running, of course.
But my point is: it's okay for your players to "get away" without X% of their resources on a given challenge. Featherfall and Spider Climb are hard counters to a cliff. A rogue with plenty of time on their hands is a hard counter to basic traps. In these situations, the players have to spend minimal resources to overcome a threat or challenge. And that's fine. You don't always need to make the situation harder or more complicated so everyone is struggling equally. The wizard who prepared Spider Climb and the rogue who maxed out Disable Device made informed choices. Those choices should pay off. Otherwise, what's the point?
I think the same goes for these players. If they can find a way to take on this opponent with minimal effort/spent resources, then good for them. They earned it.
Though, to be fair, I would definitely say that (1) someone sworn to guard a bridge wouldn't just stand there like a dope and get pin cushion'd because their foes "aren't on the bridge". That's too literal even for a golem. And (2) having to constantly give ground and backtrack through other areas is a significant cost to the party, even if they never get hurt. That sort of things wastes time and alerts other foes in the area of their presence. If I was speaking into some scary temple or whatever, I'd probably choose to take my lumps with this bruiser and finish him quick than wake up half the other dudes who want to kill me trying to guerrilla this one to death.
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1. Congratulate your players on cleverly beating the challenge you’ve put before them. That is their job after all.
2. Learn from the encounter and avoid leaving the same loophole. It’s not fun for the players if they can just keep using the same tactics to overcome enemies over and over again. That’s your job!
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If the creature has a intelligens of its own, it will change tactics if the orders doesn't work. Like ready a action to make the ranged attack when the party opens the door. Or charge the party to prevent their sniping.
If the guardian is a construct or undead with no intelligens, then it depends on the intelligens of the one who gave the order. Did the order include alternative strategies? Perhaps retreat and give warning to others if brougt to half health?
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1. Congratulate your players on cleverly beating the challenge you’ve put before them. That is their job after all.
2. Learn from the encounter and avoid leaving the same loophole. It’s not fun for the players if they can just keep using the same tactics to overcome enemies over and over again. That’s your job!
I can't agree with this more.
A good encounter shouldn't have one solution. When I design an encounter, I make sure that I can think of at least a couple, to make sure that it's possible, then I work on making it interesting.
This encounter could have been bypassed by dimension door, for instance. Or using Sense Motive to realize the guardian was magically compelled and then dispel magic to drop that. Or invisibility and Stealth. Or a couple clever illusions. Or a fighter type who's good at Grapple holding the guardian while everyone else goes past. Heck, I could imagine myself using a Bluff ("hey, we are your superiors only we had our appearance changed by an enemy caster") just for amusement.
Point is, there's a huge pile of ways this (or almost any) encounter could be bypassed. That the players chose "murder the monster from far away" is just them picking one. That's a good thing.
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the heat needed to create a river of gold creates a permanent wind gust effect over the bridge, making anything short of siege weaponry ineffective. Fighting against this powerful updraft can also make crossing the bridge dangerous for smaller (read; non juggernaut) sized creatures.
otherwise
If powerful beings left a guardian over the entire city that could be sniped by a bow without repercussion and a high chance of success, either they weren't that powerful or the reason they are long gone is that they were incredibly stupid and probably swallowed their own elbows. Adjust accordingly.
Please note, a single person cannot open/close a door after every attack, only on his turn or as a readied action. But yes, allow the bad guy to use a readied action to fire back. or simply have him move to engage.
Any time the PC's can ambush their prey, they will. So this comes down encounter design.
You can make your guardians immune to "far away" ambushes with room and hallway design that forces the PC's to get within 40-100ft before the ambush starts. Or have a resummoning/respawning of that "Hallway Guardian" whenever someone physically enters and/or re-enters that hallway, even after they've defeated it-- with the true counter to this being that this hallway keeps respawning/resummoning a guardian until a dispel magic or mage's disjunction is cast upon the hallway itself. It doesn't have to be an enchanted hallway either if you don't want, maybe you have to dispel a specific bauble or gem hidden in the hallway? Or maybe even dispel a statue that is tucked away in an alcove within that hallway? Whatever you choose, just make sure that the PC's can't dispel it from max range. Force them to get close to it with narrow corridors and turning hallways to reach the "Dispel target", but in order to get within Line of Sight/Effect, they get into combat with the guardian.