My current party at max strength is steam rolling everything I throw at them.

[McDaygo]

So my current generation game has 8 party members. That sounds like a lot of action economy management is a strong point of mine so it goes fast. My issue is challenging them at full strength. Its a deadly game so choices a matter and some players are on their 3rd characters already. issues is last game for example they steamed rolled at level 4: two rust monsters, immediately followed but 2 shadow mastifs and a large fire elemental (5 cr 5s); the wizard was able to social him and the elemental off of the board then a level 10 mesmerist arrived and was able to s$#~ down half the party with a permanent symbol of laughter on her chest but the remaining 4 kept beating the will saves and killed her.

Yes 7 (8) level 4 pcs essentially defeated a CR 12 encounter. I was impressed but it was a easy fight and they were not even optimally geared. Anyone else find this ridiculous

[McDaygo]

Party breakdown:

1) Skald
2) Cleric
3) Barbarian
4) Fighter
5) Rogue
6) Kineticist (wood)
7) Wizard
8) Ranger (w/animal companion)

[Algarik]

8 Players is madness. I've done it once back in my youth when everyone wanted to played World of Warcraft d20 cause it was novelty and, frankly, it convinced me i would never attempt such folly again.

As for ridiculous? I don't know, i don't know much about mesmerist, but they don't sound like the thoughest bunch, if the group made their save and had ways of dealing with her shennanigans, then sure. Although half of the group succeeding multiple Will saving throws on what was probably a DC 19/20 is pretty unlikely yeah.

As for the rest:
- Rust monsters are pretty weak and being only two mean they probably got obliterated in the first round. Did they even manage to do something?
- Shadow Mastif&Elemental looks like a medium challenge for 8 characters, but if i'm getting this right the wizard pretty much nullified the encounters.

[VoodistMonk]

Need more enemies. A lot more. Need to completely engulf their action economy. Make them have to wait as crowds of enemies tee off on the party. The enemy force, as a whole, needs to be able to completely soak at least one round of damage from the party... if everyone in the party deals max damage in a round, your enemy force needs more, way more, communal HP than that number. Probably start at twice that number as a minimum.

Take everything you know and hold dear about the Challenge Rating system, and throw it in the garbage... CR is only accurate for a party 4 piss-poor players with zero optimization. It isn't really linear, so doubling to account for double the party size doesn't scale correctly.

You could look at each member of the party as their own CR-appropriate encounter... you have 8 level 4 players... so 8 CR~5 players... 2 CR3 enemies is "equal" to 1 CR5... that's a minimum of 16 CR3 creatures being thrown at the party... and that's just the minions... anything meant to see Round TWO will be built equal to the players' characters without remorse.

[McDaygo]

Algarik wrote:

8 Players is madness. I've done it once back in my youth when everyone wanted to played World of Warcraft d20 cause it was novelty and, frankly, it convinced me i would never attempt such folly again.

As for ridiculous? I don't know, i don't know much about mesmerist, but they don't sound like the thoughest bunch, if the group made their save and had ways of dealing with her shennanigans, then sure. Although half of the group succeeding multiple Will saving throws on what was probably a DC 19/20 is pretty unlikely yeah.

As for the rest:
- Rust monsters are pretty weak and being only two mean they probably got obliterated in the first round. Did they even manage to do something?
- Shadow Mastif&Elemental looks like a medium challenge for 8 characters, but if i'm getting this right the wizard pretty much nullified the encounters.

They killed the mastiffs but the Wizard self sacrificed himself via offering servitude to spar the party. Basically sold his soul to the elemental plane of fire.

Rust monsters definitely did not get an attack off due to crap initiative rill

[Mark Hoover 330]

Wait... are you saying that a wizard selling his soul and disappearing from being a PC is "steam rolling" an encounter? That is straight up character retirement right there meaning that one part of that fight took 1/8th of the party out permanently.

Also, what is the experience level of the players? 4 PCs, say level 3 and above, who are well optimized by players that understand things like the need to concentrate fire, the use of terrain and the importance of Flanking and Charging and most fights will boil down to either the PCs winning or a TPK.

On the other hand 8 noobs running characters they threw together night before and using feats and classes where the names "sounded cool" can be obliterated by a challenge equal to their APL. It comes down to how well your players understand combat and the mechanics of PF1.

Finally, yes... VM is right and I've had to grudgingly accept that the CR system is not an accurate gauge for building encounters.

Like, 4 level 6 PCs are supposed have an "average" fight against 2 CR 4 monsters. This would suggest to me that these monsters should deal about 40% - 45% of their avg damage before dying, right? Well, the "average" CR 4 monster is supposed to have a +8 good attack meaning that you'd then figure a level 6 martial PC to have, what, about a 20 AC?

I got characters UNDER WBL in my megadungeon game, they're right on the verge of turning level 7, and the freaking WIZARD in the party has a 20 AC. The lowest among the other 3 PCs is a 24. This means if I throw 2 "average" CR 4 monsters against this party neither of them are even likely to hit ANYONE in the party before they're destroyed.

So yeah, CR is meant as a good gauge against 15 point buy characters with minimal to average levels of optimization. If you're talking 8 characters with 20 point buy and strongly combat-focused builds? Yeah, the CR system has waved "bye bye" to you long ago!

[VoodistMonk]

Put the party in close proximity to a level 5-ish Nagaji Mesmerist that knows Color Spray... between the Nagaji FCB for Mesmerist and the Mesmerist's Mental Potency, anything under 7HD in a 15' cone can be written off if they fail the DC~17 Will save. That DC is swinging above its weight class... CR~7 DC's packed into a level 5 enemy, that is arguably only CR~4.

Make/use enemies that will always hit, even if they don't hit hard. Constant damage is demoralizing to the party and drains their resources.

Make/use enemies that Sunder the party's equipment. I have some archers specifically for this if you want some inspiration.

Make/use enemies that impose conditions on the party. Even if they aren't deadly, themselves, diseases and poisons can have lingering effects. How do you feel about ability damage/drain/neagtive levels?

TERRAIN... I cannot stress this enough... terrain should be absolutely crippling the party at the low levels. They should be moving at half-speed through difficult terrain, and failing Climb checks made in combat. They can't fly, yet... as a GM, enjoy it while it lasts.

[Sysryke]

With a big party even at low levels it's difficult to not have every battle feel like a coin flip. Honestly, the best we've come up with (party of 7 gestalts) is to use house rules to buff enemies up. Either adding enough HP to let them linger for a while, or adding extra abilities to let them influence combat in ways besides direct damage.

However, you did mention you excel at action economy and streamlining combat, so extra bodies on the field is always helpful.

The other thing I can think to do is create more of what I call "puzzle combats". Have multiple objectives of challenges in play that must be addressed simultaneously. Give the enemies special imunities (sp?) and/or specific death/defeat conditions that require something other than straight forward damage.

As always, as long as everyone is having fun your doing fine. My biggest challenge with groups of this size is not to over scale when you want to make a "real" challenge. With that in mind, just make sure enemy casters aren't too many levels above the party, or at least not with a combat optimized spell list. Make sure more martial type villains have at least one defensive number that the party can reasonably hit. The converse is true if you want to pump up your easier encounters.

[McDaygo]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Wait... are you saying that a wizard selling his soul and disappearing from being a PC is "steam rolling" an encounter? That is straight up character retirement right there meaning that one part of that fight took 1/8th of the party out permanently.

I honestly didn’t consider character retirement. Instead I gave the fiery template and a permanent gias on him to obey his new elemental overlord.

[McDaygo]

Also let me clarify. Max strength in my opening statement isn’t optimized characters its meaning full party. I tell my group I will run with as little as three players all the way up to max of 8. They know of they miss a session they miss out on potential loot but I do mile stone advancement vs. exp.

Next session have with full party I’ll do an experiment of just way more minions with a boss monster or follow advice of extra abilities to make sure no more one round monster kills.

[Scavion]

Single enemy encounters should basically never ever happen. Doubly so for such a large party. Anything that's supposed to challenge a party of 8 players solo would basically one shot kill people.

[McDaygo]

Minions definitely need to be a thing

[TxSam88]

McDaygo wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Wait... are you saying that a wizard selling his soul and disappearing from being a PC is "steam rolling" an encounter? That is straight up character retirement right there meaning that one part of that fight took 1/8th of the party out permanently.

I honestly didn’t consider character retirement. Instead I gave the fiery template and a permanent gias on him to obey his new elemental overlord.

So the Character is still in the party, but now with a Fire template? So has DR vs fire damage, and causes fire damage, and gains darkvision? Sounds like you are helping your players build powergamer PCs. No wonder they steam roll the bad guys.

[strayshift]

Rule 1: ALL CHARACTERS HAVE A WEAKNESS. E.g. Someone will have a crap will save. Probably more than one. Confusion/Domination/Misdirecting them to attack each other.
Rule 2: The biggest threat to a PC is another PC.
Rule 3: Divide and conquer.

Also it is entirely possible for optimised characters to punch above their weight, the key is to vary the challenge. E.g., a Paladin will be less effective against neutral enemies. They will also morally struggle against good aligned enemies...

In short WHAT ARE THE WEAKNESSES IN THE PLAYER'S PARTY? Target them. No apologies.

[zza ni]

McDaygo wrote:

So my current generation game has 8 party members. That sounds like a lot of action economy management is a strong point of mine so it goes fast. My issue is challenging them at full strength. Its a deadly game so choices a matter and some players are on their 3rd characters already. issues is last game for example they steamed rolled at level 4: two rust monsters, immediately followed but 2 shadow mastifs and a large fire elemental (5 cr 5s); the wizard was able to social him and the elemental off of the board then a level 10 mesmerist arrived and was able to s+++ down half the party with a permanent symbol of laughter on her chest but the remaining 4 kept beating the will saves and killed her.

Yes 7 (8) level 4 pcs essentially defeated a CR 12 encounter. I was impressed but it was a easy fight and they were not even optimally geared. Anyone else find this ridiculous

so, just asking. why did the man at level 10 walked out to the party with his permanent symbol instead of say, charm a 10 year old kid to run around the party while weaving that symbol at them?

"hey kid, wanna see a neat trick? show this to people and they won't stop laughing!"

[Mark Hoover 330]

You're the GM. You have ALL of the tools to make encounters. ALL of them.

If you have 8 PCs enter an open space facing a handful of Rust Monsters at a distance from which the characters can see and target them at, that round of combat is basically a gimmie for the characters.

On the other hand if you march them into a vast, open cavern, with galleries behind flowstone walls, stalactites, stalagmites, uneven areas of the floor slick with puddles, and so on, then POPULATE that area with a variety of, say, kobolds who each individually are only built to CR 2 but this gives them either 3 PC levels or 5 NPC levels, then mix in CR 1-2 pit traps, net traps, and perhaps even a couple patches of super-slick slime (make it a CR 1 Hazard), suddenly the PCs have a bit more strategy to use.

Drop a Mesmerist 10 with the laughter symbol into this and the kobolds are all worthless. Wait a couple rounds however and drop in a vanilla Sorcerer (Red Dragon Bloodline) 10 lobbing fireballs at any PCs that are trying to form a "rear guard" for the party however and now the characters should be sweating. With VERY LITTLE optimization that's an average of 40 Fire damage carrying a roughly DC 19 Ref save.

Want to up the danger level even more? Build some of the kobolds as Swarm Fighter types, then build some of the periphery kobolds as pure support types like Adept 5. A well-built Kobold Adept 5 with a flying Familiar having the Valet archetype can cast Bull's Strength, have their familiar fly out, deliver it, then fly back to them in the same round, and they get 2 2nd level Adept spells/day.

More than that, really optimize the Sorcerer 10 as a blaster caster. Crossblooded for more damage; spend 2 of their feats on Spell Focus: Evocation, Greater Spell Focus: Evocation. Give the sorcerer a familiar, give it the Sage archetype, build it as a wand wielder, then have it shooting charges from a Wand of Scorching Ray every round.

This fight COULD be an all out brawl, or it could be wave after wave of HP balloons for the characters to pop. The choice is yours.

[Claxon]

I didn't read everything in the thread, but my first thought is that you want to have roughly an equal number of NPC enemies as there are PCs. Yes that means individually each enemy is weaker and that's fine.

If you can't break the party size down to cap at 4, then you need to at least have a number of enemies that is at least # of players - 2.

And honestly my experience with a group of optimized players is that CR isn't worth much. I would typically run CR+2/3 fights against the party for what I considered an average challenge, and I also typically maximized and doubled the health of enemies. Of course, this was more at higher levels, I didn't have to go to this extent at level 4.

Ultimately, ignore the CR building guide. It's a rough guide at best, and only works well under specific circumstances that you're not close too.

Start building encounters with a number of enemies close to the party numbers and you can always have more enemies join mid battle to amp up the challenge.

[Algarik]

For CR system being useless i feel like this is a case of expectation. As other as mentionned, the CR system is there for PCs with 15 points buy that aren't well optimized.

Instead of bucking my head against trying to find a way to make the CR system work for uber-pcs, i decided to go the other way around.

I might come off as a controlling GM, but my player's character are all 15 point buy, loot is rather scarces and there's a limit to optimization i'm willing to allow in my campaign until i ask the player to dial it down.

Since i've changed my approach i find the CR system to be a lot more sane and players are still having fun.

[VoodistMonk]

The CR system isn't terrible if you use it to design individual encounters for each character in the party, separately... then combine those into one big encounter for the whole party. Level 4 PC with PC class levels and PC gear... given even a minimal level of optimization, that is a CR4-5 character... alone. And you have eight of these CR4-5 characters working together.

Party breakdown:

1) Skald
2) Cleric
3) Barbarian
4) Fighter
5) Rogue
6) Kineticist (wood)
7) Wizard
8) Ranger (w/animal companion)

1) two CR3 enemies... maybe an NPC with Silence, and/or something targeting Reflex saves
2) two CR3 enemies... maybe an NPC with Silence, and/or something targeting Reflex saves
3) two CR3 flying enemies
4) two CR3 flying enemies
5) a wet napkin is an appropiate challenge for most Rogues (joking... two CR3 enemies, with concealment if cRogue)
6) two CR3 enemies that are NOT undead
7) two CR3 enemies... maybe an NPC with Silence, and/or something targeting Fort saves, possibly something that grapples
8) kill the Animal Companion... if it cannot fly, kill it with flying enemies...

[Mark Hoover 330]

To back up what Algarik and others have said, the avg monster, based on Monster Creation guidelines, for CR 4 is:

AC 17, 40 HP, High Att +8 (avg 16 damage), Low Att +6 (avg 12 damage), Primary Ability DC 15, Secondary Ability DC 10, Good Save +7, Poor Save +3

Now, all of you optimizers in this thread, think about your characters and their attack and damage capabilities, defenses and so on for your 20 point buy characters at level 4.

A 20 point buy martial could easily have melee attack +11 (1d10 +10), AC 20, 38 HP and a good save at around +7 or more, and that's JUST off the top of my head while thinking about a vanilla Fighter. That means this 20 pt buy martial can soak several rounds of high attacks since their AC is so high, while dealing over 1/3 of the monster's HP in damage every round, beating the monster's avg AC 75% of the time and so on.

I bet all of you could EASILY build an even better martial with higher numbers than the above with a 20 point buy. Considering this we can see that with a 20 point buy and just avg optimization, the CR challenges begin to break down after about CR 3.

If an avg fight against AVERAGE, 15 point buy PCs at CR 4 is meant to eat up between 10% to 20% of the party's resources and your APL 4 party is breezing through them after 2 combat rounds without using a single spell or HP... then ignore CR and just plan around your characters.

This is my last piece of advice for the OP: actually look at the numbers your 8 PCs can put up. Design your encounters around those.

If 5 of them are martials who all have about a +11 on their best attacks and with those attacks put up an avg of about 15.5 damage per round, pitting these characters against anything less than 1 avg CR 3 monster, PER martial, is like wasting your players' time.

Using the actual CR system as an XP budget, 5 CR 3 monsters is supposed to be a 4,000 XP fight which is already somewhere between a CR 7-8 fight! The 5 CR 3 monsters though probably have at least a snowball's chance of actually hitting and therefore threatening these characters individually, while it'll take each martial a couple rounds of successful hits to defeat the foes.

THEN you have to account for the other 3 PCs in the party. Look at their numbers, how they win fights, what their defenses are. Plan your challenges around those numbers.

[McDaygo]

TxSam88 wrote:

McDaygo wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Wait... are you saying that a wizard selling his soul and disappearing from being a PC is "steam rolling" an encounter? That is straight up character retirement right there meaning that one part of that fight took 1/8th of the party out permanently.

I honestly didn’t consider character retirement. Instead I gave the fiery template and a permanent gias on him to obey his new elemental overlord.

So the Character is still in the party, but now with a Fire template? So has DR vs fire damage, and causes fire damage, and gains darkvision? Sounds like you are helping your players build powergamer PCs. No wonder they steam roll the bad guys.

But I also now have the ace card of a permanent gias on him so a little DR on a glass cannon isn’t a stressor.

The issue was finding a challenge with a group that big

[McDaygo]

Oh I have been using 15 point buy for players and magical gear as been scares. The problem has been me trying to keep to CR rules. So per the rules encounters should be cr 5 level or up to plus 3. Last game was an experiment hense the 12. I’m sure if I put a geared leveled fighter or something that didn’t relay on save or suck the 10 could have solod the party.

I agree to throw out those rules and just make the numbers high enough for how I want a fight to go.

This issue is only when there are all 8 players. Sometimes its down to 3 average 6. Some of these players are in their 3rd character this game .

[Agénor]

Another thing to keep in mind is that most characters has resources that regenerate each day usually, those are spells, powers and the such, even H.P. indirectly.

Your group should be facing several challenging encounters by between two regenerations. If they don't feel they have to make choices when it comes to expending those resources, then they aren't challenged enough times over the course of a day.

[Melkiador]

There's no really good solution. Mathematically, the best way to balance is to increase the number of monsters in the encounter. But realistically that's going to give you ridiculously long combats. But you can't go the other way either. Making the enemies stronger will just increase the chances of a party member being killed in a single round.

Personally, if I were stuck in this situation then I'd just let the combats be too easy. Rely more on the story to make up the difference. But the general advice here is to not have a party of 8 players. The game balance already starts struggling at 5 to 6. 7 and up is just asking for problems.

[McDaygo]

Gen two of this story will definitely not be 8 people lol

[Mark Hoover 330]

McDaygo wrote:

Oh I have been using 15 point buy for players and magical gear as been scares. The problem has been me trying to keep to CR rules. So per the rules encounters should be cr 5 level or up to plus 3. Last game was an experiment hense the 12. I’m sure if I put a geared leveled fighter or something that didn’t relay on save or suck the 10 could have solod the party.

I agree to throw out those rules and just make the numbers high enough for how I want a fight to go.

This issue is only when there are all 8 players. Sometimes its down to 3 average 6. Some of these players are in their 3rd character this game .

Ok, so I must be dumb b/c I'm still not tracking. You had all 8 PCs in the session from the OP, which we're agreeing is unusual. However, in the actual fight with the Mesmerist 10, the foe was defeated by only 4 of those 8 PCs.

Furthermore, you're confirming here that these PCs are starting from a 15 point buy and are under WBL for level 4? Were you taking it easy on them or something? What was the fight area like? Could the Mesmerist not use Cover, or fly, or Climb, or do ANYTHING else but use Will save save-or-suck effects while standing out in the open where the 4 PCs that kept making their saves could attack the foe freely at their leisure?

Using the CR mechanics, a group of 4 PCs with a 15 Pt Buy and standard WBL should consider a CR4 monster an Average challenge. This would suggest that a single Level 4 PC can be reasonably assumed to handle 300 XP worth of foes while using very minimal resources. I get to that by taking a CR 4 encounter (1200 XP) and dividing it by the number of PCs in the party (4) to budget what XP value each individual PC can handle.

By that reasoning, 8 Level4 PCs should be able to handle 2400 XP worth of monsters, or a CR 6 foe, as an "average" fight. Of course it's absolute folly for a single CR 6 foe to square off against EIGHT characters, so you'll want a mix of foes.

Now it gets tricky. Dropping 12 CR 1/2 monsters, no matter how diverse their combat roles are, is an exercise in futility since no single one of them poses any serious threat to an individual PC. On the other hand 2 CR 4 monsters are just as easily beaten by PC action economy as one CR 6 foe is.

Also... remember that terrain which is advantageous to the foes but not to the PCs is actually supposed to raise the CR of the overall fight by +1. Also if you add any passive obstacles - traps, terrain hazards, haunts, etc. with their own CR rating, the XP value of these elements will eat up XP from the budget for the fight.

In short, again... at EIGHT PCs the CR mechanics are not really useful.

This is why I say you come back to the individual PCs and their averages. Is the fighter more of a generalist or do they specialize in one weapon?

A vanilla, 15 point buy Human Fighter 4 has 6 feats and likely starts with an 18 (16 +2 Racial) Str. This PC, specializing in Greatsword and following WBL has a +1 Greatsword, +1 Armor, and a +1 Resistance item along with their mundane gear. Figure this fighter for an 18 AC; +1 Greatsword +10 (2d6 +15); Weapon Focus/Specialization: Greatsword, Power Attack, Furious Focus, Dodge, Mobility.

This particular generic greatsword wielder, not even very optimized, hits an AC 19 monster a little more than half the time and delivers an avg of 22 damage per successful hit. This means a 40 HP monster with a 19 or lower AC dies to this character in 2-4 rounds of melee.

However...

This same fighter is weak against ranged attackers, has a very low Will save and has no means of locomotion other than base move speed. Without the help of a consumable or another party member they cannot spot foes in Stealth and its near impossible for them to detect Invisible foes. Swarms are a significant threat to this PC, and so on.

So, forget CR, or at least just use it as an entry point and focus more on what your PCs do well and do poorly.

[TxSam88]

McDaygo wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

McDaygo wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Wait... are you saying that a wizard selling his soul and disappearing from being a PC is "steam rolling" an encounter? That is straight up character retirement right there meaning that one part of that fight took 1/8th of the party out permanently.

I honestly didn’t consider character retirement. Instead I gave the fiery template and a permanent gias on him to obey his new elemental overlord.

So the Character is still in the party, but now with a Fire template? So has DR vs fire damage, and causes fire damage, and gains darkvision? Sounds like you are helping your players build powergamer PCs. No wonder they steam roll the bad guys.

But I also now have the ace card of a permanent gias on him so a little DR on a glass cannon isn’t a stressor.

The issue was finding a challenge with a group that big

I assume you mean Geas, And depending on what the instructions of the Geas is, it may or may not hinder the player. It technically can't be to "Obey his new overlord" as he only needs to do that once and the Geas is broken (I know you said permanent), but even with that, unless the elemental is hanging around all the time giving order, it's a non issue.

[McDaygo]

TxSam88 wrote:

McDaygo wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

McDaygo wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Wait... are you saying that a wizard selling his soul and disappearing from being a PC is "steam rolling" an encounter? That is straight up character retirement right there meaning that one part of that fight took 1/8th of the party out permanently.

I honestly didn’t consider character retirement. Instead I gave the fiery template and a permanent gias on him to obey his new elemental overlord.

So the Character is still in the party, but now with a Fire template? So has DR vs fire damage, and causes fire damage, and gains darkvision? Sounds like you are helping your players build powergamer PCs. No wonder they steam roll the bad guys.

But I also now have the ace card of a permanent gias on him so a little DR on a glass cannon isn’t a stressor.

The issue was finding a challenge with a group that big

I assume you mean Geas, And depending on what the instructions of the Geas is, it may or may not hinder the player. It technically can't be to "Obey his new overlord" as he only needs to do that once and the Geas is broken (I know you said permanent), but even with that, unless the elemental is hanging around all the time giving order, it's a non issue.

How I plan to do that is he has a foul brand on him where his master can communicate to him telepathically. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but the elemental was a minion of Dahak so unknowingly the player will be self sabotaging the party in the while he is given small orders to do trivial things. Normally Dahak wouldn’t care but the party has fallen into a dragon holy war with a cult trying to summon Tiamat. Dahak seeing his mother as an ally is helping in small ways vs. the full church.

Any instructions will be under the guise of burn this and burn that as fire elementals love to burn things. This will be a mixture of innocent and important things to not draw suspicion.

[McDaygo]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

McDaygo wrote:

Oh I have been using 15 point buy for players and magical gear as been scares. The problem has been me trying to keep to CR rules. So per the rules encounters should be cr 5 level or up to plus 3. Last game was an experiment hense the 12. I’m sure if I put a geared leveled fighter or something that didn’t relay on save or suck the 10 could have solod the party.

I agree to throw out those rules and just make the numbers high enough for how I want a fight to go.

This issue is only when there are all 8 players. Sometimes its down to 3 average 6. Some of these players are in their 3rd character this game .

Ok, so I must be dumb b/c I'm still not tracking. You had all 8 PCs in the session from the OP, which we're agreeing is unusual. However, in the actual fight with the Mesmerist 10, the foe was defeated by only 4 of those 8 PCs.

Furthermore, you're confirming here that these PCs are starting from a 15 point buy and are under WBL for level 4? Were you taking it easy on them or something? What was the fight area like? Could the Mesmerist not use Cover, or fly, or Climb, or do ANYTHING else but use Will save save-or-suck effects while standing out in the open where the 4 PCs that kept making their saves could attack the foe freely at their leisure?

Using the CR mechanics, a group of 4 PCs with a 15 Pt Buy and standard WBL should consider a CR4 monster an Average challenge. This would suggest that a single Level 4 PC can be reasonably assumed to handle 300 XP worth of foes while using very minimal resources. I get to that by taking a CR 4 encounter (1200 XP) and dividing it by the number of PCs in the party (4) to budget what XP value each individual PC can handle.

By that reasoning, 8 Level4 PCs should be able to handle 2400 XP worth of monsters, or a CR 6 foe, as an "average" fight. Of course it's absolute folly for a single CR 6 foe to square off against EIGHT characters, so you'll want a mix of foes.

Now it gets tricky. Dropping 12 CR 1/2 monsters, no matter how...

Battle fiend layout. They were fighting in back ally ways on slum flip map in the open square near a well. Didn’t take it easy but that fight the four who kept resisting were just rolling well. I designed the mesmerist as a social Assassin vs. flat out combat so the symbol did shut down half the party. The only offense spell I gave her was poison. The rest were enchantments (babble, confusion, memory lapse, things like that) and rays.

The strategy was her hide in shadows and use her stares as they fought the mastiffs (3/8 beat the panic howls) but eventually the mastifs died fast (daylight to pop them out of shadows so they can no longer stick and move). In game there was a lot of running through ally ways and falling down laughing to reduce the effective party numbers. Some were rolling super well on saves. I was using all the abilities offered on the monsters so I wouldn’t say I was going easy.

[Matthew Downie]

Often an 'easy' encounter is one where the party rolled well on their saves and so weren't rendered helpless, or where the party had the right protective spell prepared, or where the enemy attacked in waves instead of all at once, or the boss enemy failed a save. That doesn't mean the contents of the encounter were too easy, just that the situation came out favorable for the PCs. Run it again and it might easily go the other way.

[Nyerkh]

It is hard to overstate how much of a number's game PF (and others) can be.
Numerical superiority is huge. A tremendous threat can die in a flash if outnumbered.
As long as your players outnumber their foes 4 to 1, you're gonna have a hard time challenging them, and doing so is likely to require opponents that have a more than decent chance of one-shoting a couple of them (and still die quick).

I'd worry more about having them face more enemies at the same time than about throwing higher CRs at them.

Also yeah : some glaring holes in their defenses if you want to target their weaknesses, Will saves being the most obvious one. But only going after that is not really fun, so take care not to abuse it.

With such a big party, you're bound to have long fights but that's not exactly avoidable.

[Ryze Kuja]

The most PC's I ever had was 7. #neveragain

[VoodistMonk]

Next time I run an AP, I think I am going to limit it to 3 players... just to try make the printed material relevant without too much rework.

I followed some online guide for a 6-player Kingmaker overhaul... THEN went through and adjusted the 6-player version of Kingmaker for gestalt... there were only 4 players in the party, and they still killed the BBEG in single-digit rounds.

As soon as they were, well, not DEAD after Nyrissa nuked them using Spell Synthesis... I knew it was over for her. I knew there was literally nothing I could do to increase the challenge of that boss fight short of "rocks fall, party dies"... they even had to cut her head off TWICE... completely steamrolled. I get it.

Granted, level 19 party... $#!+ happens pretty fast.

One thing I have learned from just trying to run an AP is, to pretty much write off every single encounter with a single enemy as a foregone conclusion. It's pretty much over before it even starts, so prepare for what is going to happen after the party kills this poor thing in 12 seconds, flat. What interesting event takes places after this CR-appropriate speedbump?

And, literally any time an encounter calls for minions... double them. Every. Time. If it is old scar-eye and six bandits in the book, make it old scar-eye and a dozen bandits on the board. Every. Time.

[Mark Hoover 330]

In one of my previous megadungeon campaigns, my players called it the "murder train." See, as a GM I run almost exclusively homebrew stuff and like the absolute fool that I am for like, 10 years after I first picked up PF1 I tried desperately to adhere to the CR rules.

If my party is, say, APL 3 then I design a set of encounters between CR 2 to CR 4 for most of the dungeon area they'll be encountering, then there'll be some mid-boss or boss level fights that are CR 5-7. Being that I cleaved to the CR rules religiously, I'd also adjust the CRs by 1 for an environment that favored foes over PCs, so a CR 3 fight in a partially flooded cavern might only have a small water elemental and a reefclaw with the Young template since the water added +1 CR.

So... the "murder train."

This would happen b/c my players would scout ahead, figure out where their first encounter with a monster or monsters was likely to be, then they'd get as close to that area as they felt comfortable and cast a bunch of buff spells. They would then proceed to blitzkrieg their way through that encounter and as many others as they could survive, not stopping to inspect for clues, pick up treasure or whatever.

It was a Diablo-like sprint to slay any foes in as little time as possible before their 1 minute/level buffs all ran out. The players would literally mimic a train whistle and then smash through as much as possible. A couple times I "derailed" them through traps or a single really big foe but the fact of the matter was simply this:

When players take the time to really think out their buffs, optimize their characters, then get all geared up and finally go against fights that match their APL or are APL +/- 1, the reality is that they are significantly more superior than the monsters as written in the Bestiaries. Bear in mind, these were just 20 point buy characters, APL 3 at the time, and it was a 4-person party.

PCs are just better killers than the foes they face. Period. The only time I find this not to be the case is when I'm dealing with extremely inexperienced players or I've purposely optimized their foes for combat. If I had to deal with TWICE that size party?

"Woot Woot, the murder train is rollin' out!"