Having trouble scaling encounters to make them challenging

[LogantheBard]

I'm having a pretty difficult time making encounters challenging for my party. I need your help! They're a pretty optimized group, and nothing I do seems to challenge them. I'm using PF rules only for them, no 3.x stuff.

My party consists of (all just dinged level 8):
Human Fighter 4/Barbarian 4, all the good 2-hander feats, armored hulk archetype, your typical hulk smash fighter.

Elf Ranger, Crossbow Archer, Guide Archetype; all the right feats, does great damage (I added a couple of 3.x feats for her, so she didn't get stuck with a gimp weapon type)

Gnome Oracle, Heavens Revelation; buffs/heals/crowd controls/light nuking. This guy gives me the second most trouble. Focus (Illusion) and Greater Focus (Illusion) makes hypnotic pattern/rainbow pattern a beast to combat.

Gnome Bard; general support character, focuses on light healing and summoning.

Gnome Summoner; This guy gives me the most trouble of all. His pet is ridiculous! Fly, Pounce, 4 attacks, took focus (claw), power attack, and death from above as feats. Ever since we added the summoner to the party, the fighter has been pretty upset. He gets outshined in every combat situation by the pet. And all the other summoned monsters that gets thrown out there, I don't know what to do!


We're running Serpent Skull, if anyone is familiar with it, and we're on the fast xp track. We all enjoy the fast levelling aspect, so I'm putting them on the fast track, and scaling up the encounters to make it challenging to them, our hope is the module will take us to 20 instead of just 14.

Sunday night's game just showed how incredibly easy the fights were for the party, and the last fight was Roagru, the Charau-ka cleric of Ydersius. I levelled him up to cleric 10, which with his racial levels made him 13 HD, CR 11. I gave him two-weapon fighting, a pair of distance returning daggers, the channel smite chain of feats, and made up a feat that let him use channel smite on ranged attacks. I also gave him the theologeon archetype for scalykind, so his pet snake was full druid level. He heard the fighting in the room before, so had time to fully buff up himself, his pet, and his two Charau-Ka Rogue 4 lackies in the room. He was even on top of the elephant statue in the room, staying out of the fighter's reach.

Well, this is how the fight went:
1. Summoner bulls strengths the pet, charges with the pet, takes roagru to 40%
2. Fighter charges and one-shots one of the rogues (Rage, Bull's Strength and Enlarge Person still on from last fight)
3. Roagru goes, 3 attacks, all channel smiting (I let it use it as a free action, and it still didn't matter!), and just barely kills thet pet. Roagrus snake moves into position behind the squishies.
4. Bard starts singing, summons a wolverine next to roagru, takes him to 35%.
5. Ranger makes Roagru his mark, shoots, takes him to 5% (very unluck roles, very much expected him to die)
6. Oracle twiddles his thumbs
7. Rogue Chara-ku charges fighter, misses (rogue archetype with charging sneak attack).
8. Summoner summons 4 wolverines surrounding roagru, kills him.


This was a CR 11, two CR 5s against a level 7 (at the time) party. One round and one turn and the BBEG was dead. I felt so let down. How can I make the fights more challenging without blindly pumping stats?

 

[Spatula]

You have three gnomes in the party! No wonder the group is so powerful!

I've only seen a little bit of the summoner in action, and from what I've seen I'm not surprised the fighter feels a little overshadowed by the eidolon. Not sure what you can do about that, really.

As for the rest, I have a few suggestions.

1) Give important NPCs maximum HPs. You spent a lot of time creating them, right? The only way to see them get more actions is to make sure they are alive to take them. You could possibly replace "max HP" with "insane defenses".

2) Spend less time making NPCs. Making up numbers is fast, but can be tough in 3e/PF, since you don't know what numbers a monster "should" have for its CR. Without making stuff up, you can still stick to basic feats and spells to speed up NPC creation.

3) Throw in more combatants that are a threat in order to draw PC fire. This will probably slow down combat, which I assume is already pretty slow thanks to all the summons/pets.

4) Most importantly, throw out the CR rules for monsters with class levels. I would treat PC class levels as dragon HD, perhaps, depending on the class (while restricting access to high-level abilities - maybe it would just be easier to give double HP for class levels). The fact is, PC class levels don't do all that much for survivability, unless we're talking lots of wiz/sorc levels (but that has its own drawbacks, like lack of HP and BAB). PCs are generally glass cannons, capable of dishing out far more than they could ever take. And when you set a single NPC glass cannon in front of a party of 4-5 PC opponents, it's not going to last long. Monsters need to have more HD than the PCs do in order to stay in the fight.

You could also experiment with 4e-style "boss" monsters that have extra health and extra actions.

 

[Friend of the Dork]

I'm having a pretty difficult time making encounters challenging for my party. I need your help! They're a pretty optimized group, and nothing I do seems to challenge them. I'm using PF rules only for them, no 3.x stuff.

My party consists of (all just dinged level 8):
Human Fighter 4/Barbarian 4, all the good 2-hander feats, armored hulk archetype, your typical hulk smash fighter.

Elf Ranger, Crossbow Archer, Guide Archetype; all the right feats, does great damage (I added a couple of 3.x feats for her, so she didn't get stuck with a gimp weapon type)

Gnome Oracle, Heavens Revelation; buffs/heals/crowd controls/light nuking. This guy gives me the second most trouble. Focus (Illusion) and Greater Focus (Illusion) makes hypnotic pattern/rainbow pattern a beast to combat.

Gnome Bard; general support character, focuses on light healing and summoning.

Gnome Summoner; This guy gives me the most trouble of all. His pet is ridiculous! Fly, Pounce, 4 attacks, took focus (claw), power attack, and death from above as feats. Ever since we added the summoner to the party, the fighter has been pretty upset. He gets outshined in every combat situation by the pet. And all the other summoned monsters that gets thrown out there, I don't know what to do!


We're running Serpent Skull, if anyone is familiar with it, and we're on the fast xp track. We all enjoy the fast levelling aspect, so I'm putting them on the fast track, and scaling up the encounters to make it challenging to them, our hope is the module will take us to 20 instead of just 14.

Sunday night's game just showed how incredibly easy the fights were for the party, and the last fight was Roagru, the Charau-ka cleric of Ydersius. I levelled him up to cleric 10, which with his racial levels made him 13 HD, CR 11. I gave him two-weapon fighting, a pair of distance returning daggers, the channel smite chain of feats, and made up a feat that let him use channel smite on ranged attacks. I also gave him the theologeon archetype for scalykind, so his pet snake was full druid level. He heard the fighting in the room before, so had time to fully buff up himself, his pet, and his two Charau-Ka Rogue 4 lackies in the room. He was even on top of the elephant statue in the room, staying out of the fighter's reach.

Well, this is how the fight went:
1. Summoner bulls strengths the pet, charges with the pet, takes roagru to 40%
2. Fighter charges and one-shots one of the rogues (Rage, Bull's Strength and Enlarge Person still on from last fight)
3. Roagru goes, 3 attacks, all channel smiting (I let it use it as a free action, and it still didn't matter!), and just barely kills thet pet. Roagrus snake moves into position behind the squishies.
4. Bard starts singing, summons a wolverine next to roagru, takes him to 35%.
5. Ranger makes Roagru his mark, shoots, takes him to 5% (very unluck roles, very much expected him to die)
6. Oracle twiddles his thumbs
7. Rogue Chara-ku charges fighter, misses (rogue archetype with charging sneak attack).
8. Summoner summons 4 wolverines surrounding roagru, kills him.


This was a CR 11, two CR 5s against a level 7 (at the time) party. One round and one turn and the BBEG was dead. I felt so let down. How can I make the fights more challenging without blindly pumping stats?

To be honest, as long as the entire party has something to do and are equally challenged, there is no real problem. If so, "blindly" pumping stats works fine, the party generally won't know which level your NPCs are anyway. I can see the Summoner might be a bit of a problem, which of course will only be exacerbated in the following levels. A good choise might be to target the Summoner rather than his pet, as he should be much squishier.

Another way is to add confusion or misdirection - let the bad guy have more minions. Maybe even a handful of 1st level warriors could help out without actually increasing the CR of the encounter much - what if the summoner's pet charged one of them? It would essentially be overkill and a waste, allowing the BBEG to live still. Against this group lvl 4 rogues won't do much better anyway, and only 2 of them against 5 party members is a bit low. Having the rogues upped to 5-6th level helps a bit, and let them gulp down potions of invisibility (I'm assuming your party does not have See invis constantly) would allow them one sneak attack each before they get killed.

But does the party think it too easy, or is it just you? Remember this is not a contest but a cooperative game - the players should feel challenged, but having some combats go heavily in their favor is not too bad. In my game the 6 4th level PCs took down a 12th level dwarven Figher/Rogue/Shadowdancer/Assassin in just 2 rounds. Granted, he was alone, but I never expected him to go down that fast without hurting the party much. My players enjoyed it immensively though, and even the party's Druid managed to shine by successfully using Bardic music to Facinate the enemy.

Overall, it was fun, and that's what it's all about. Next time though I'm not about to let such a high-level foe be surrounded alone . The one time my party actually was challenged it was simply by having a couple of 3rd level fighters maximized towards high str, 2-h weapon and Trip - some in my group thought it a bit too much (and I did make the mistake of allowing Greater Trip for a 3rd level NPCs), but it made the fight more exiting in my book. When they actually met the local "boss", the party actually fared much better thanks to luck. Minor things like initative can matter alot in a combat.

In a game I'm playing in right now out most challenging combat was against 6 NORMAL human zombies. We had 4 party members then, but these CR 1/2 enemies were rolling very high, and got several critical hits with their x4 weapons (Heavy Picks), dealing 4d6+16 damage against a level 2 party.... We barely won the combat with 2 combatants down, ALL our cleric healing expended, all my Lay on Hands expended except 1, and most of us heavily damaged. This game, and others based on d20 are very reliant on luck, and I'm sure your combat could have gone very different indeed if the rolls had been in favor of the enemies.

Although one more point: I don't know your bosses race, but I'm pretty sure a human 12th level Cleric would be far more dangerous than him, as racial HD are much much weaker than actual levels, especially when combined with spellcasters. So CR 10 might be more appropriate, depending on racial abilities (Ogre Mage HD would be much better than Bugbear HD).

Just think what a Harm spell doing 60-120 damage could do, combined with a quickened inflict light wounds... , or simply a Word of Recall after the cleric took too much damage.

Well, those are my thoughts anyway.

 

[Friend of the Dork]

Damn double post... slow connection today

 

[BuzzardB]

I would like to say that I know EXACTLY how you feel, even to the point where I was going to make a post myself asking the same thing.

My situation is that my party only consists of 3 players and according to the rules I should drop the CR for an encounter to compensate.

Well three level 4 players were able to take down
2x Coffer Corpses CR 3
1x Cinder Ghoul CR 7
1x Level 4 Cleric CR 4

So I mean according to the rules this fight should be pretty much impossible and is way beyond epic in difficulty.

Well they just destroyed them without too much of an issue, party suffered some energy drain but no one really came close to dying.

Level 4 fighter with 21 Strength + Enlarge Person + Bulls Strength + Glaive + Full Plate = one man army. How the hell do you make a challenge using the official rules against a guy like this? Sure I can make a challenge no problem but it will make them level up every fight using fast paced rules.

 

[EUBanana]

damnable lag

 

[EUBanana]

If you want to put the pressure on pounce, which seemed to do a lot of damage, then use some reach weapons. If his bodyguards had long spears, combat reflexes and improved trip, the melee would be battling quite hard to get up to him, and that includes flying melee if the guy with the pike is right next to the target. If the cleric is himself enlarged he may well get an AoO before the melee guy gets in range, and break the charge with a trip. Which wouldnt be too hard if he's fully buffed, see below. Fly and death from above are really pretty trivial to stop, just have them fight indoors. I think almost all of our fights tend to be indoors anyway, and dungeons are traditional after all.

I'm curious what his AC was if he was taking damage from wolverines of all things. If he was fully buffed then he has to have had an AC of, say, 24 (buckler +2, breastplate +2, dex 14, dodge feat. Before any real buffs, thats with magic vestment +2s. A wolverine would be needing, what, 19+ at the very best? You can pretty much ignore summoned critters that much weaker than you. If you wanted to give him more on the cheap, heavy armour proficiency and banded mail, AC 27 then before magic items and short duration buffs. Even the eidolon isn't going to hit that easily without death from above, which he will only get if you as a DM allow it, essentially. Cruel DMs can add potions of barkskin as required for another couple of points, each point becomes all important as the target number approaches 20.

Fully buffed, well. For a 10th level cleric that could be the kitchen sink. At a bare minimum I would assume that is a summoned critter (lantern archon, hound archon, babau), divine favor, bless, bulls strength, owls wisdom and prayer timed to go off in the first round, when the PCs are just starting to deploy. If you're really going for it though, then theres righteous might which gives DR - very useful against huge numbers of attacks coming in, and reach, and more strength, masses of summoning for things to get in the way and spam their 'at wills', aid on everybody cast by the aforementioned hound archon, silence cast on one of his minions to charge and disrupt bards and spellcasters when battle is joined...

So it's gonna be more like...

Summoner buffs eidolon, if he's lucky and the babau in the shadows doesn't counterspell him, eidolon runs into flying lantern archon because its in the way, kills it presumably as its runty, but still has to make save for archon aura from the nearby hound archon. As does everybody else.
Fighter charges, kills a pleb, thats his job.
Bad guy casts prayer, all PCs get weaker by a level, all bad guys get better by a level effectively
Bard sings, summons a wolverine which can't actually do anything to the big bad, and theres that silence spell out there maybe.
Ranger shoots, does some damage, but surely not that much because bad guys are in the way and with prayer and cover the bad guys AC is now 32
Oracle twiddles his thumbs
Minion engages fighter
Cleric goes to dismiss eidolon with Dismissal, DC is gonna be 19 at a conservative estimate (wisdom 16 + 4 with owls wisdom) and as this is presumably a quadruped if it has pounce, its will save is a base of +2, and he's debuffed with a prayer, unlucky
Summoner summons 4 wolverines, assuming the babau doesn't counterspell him, cleric laughs hysterically as none of them can really hurt him anyway
Eidolon, in the unlikely event that it's still here, moves to attack cleric, gets AoO'd due to reach on the way in and maybe/quite possibly with divine favour/bless/bulls strength up tripped, thus breaking the charge
Fighter moves in, maybe the big bad doesnt have combat reflexes and so ends up tangling heroically with him as fighters are supposed to do, but is going to find it pretty hard going against a buffed cleric without backup and with prayer and maybe archons aura debuffing him while a hound archon spams aid on the cleric

...etcetera.


So he'll be worn down - which you want - but not immediately made the partys toy.

A lot depends on just how much the BBEG knows about the PCs and how well tailored he can justifiably be to challenge them. Dismissal is the sort of thing that might need a bit of roleplaying justification. But nothing else in the above strategy does. In fact I think it's basically pretty bog standard to be honest.

 

[LogantheBard]

I appreciate the advice. Maxing HP for the baddies I will definitely start doing, maybe even doubling them. I'll have to keep practicing to keep them from just being bloated bags of hp. The party was just as disappointed as I was. The suspense level was pretty high leading up to the bbeg, so they expected something a little more epic.

Good point about the racial/monster HD. Counting 3 levels of the cleric as Charau-ka HD didn't add much of anything. Luckily they've still got Issilar to deal with, and I'll make him a little more challenging.

 

[EUBanana]

oh and CR for xp and such, I'm amazed anybody uses those rules. I've played RPG for years and never in one group ever did the xp for monsters get formally worked out.

Their estimates are either terrible or they assume very un-optimised characters. EIther way, if you're going to houserule anything, just throw the whole concept of CR in the bin and give out xp according to what speed of progression you'd like and monsters according to whatever is required to provide a challenge.

 

[LogantheBard]

As far as the Wolverines go, they seem pretty boss-awesome to me.

3 attacks at base +4, +2 for augment summoning, +2 for bardic performance, +2 for flanking bonii, so that's 3 +10s, at 4 wolverines. Even against an AC 23 bbeg, they've got pretty good chances. Add in an alignment template for extra smite damage (for this case, Entropic or Celestial), and he's golden.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the summoning rules, he gets to summon them anywhere within close range (45' for level 8), and they get to full attack immediately, getting all of the buffs that affect the square they're standing in. If this isn't right, that'll be another issue I'll have to address.