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Having trouble scaling encounters to make them challenging
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<blockquote data-quote="LogantheBard" data-source="post: 5740549" data-attributes="member: 70039"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>My party consists of (all just dinged level 8):</p><p>Human Fighter 4/Barbarian 4, all the good 2-hander feats, armored hulk archetype, your typical hulk smash fighter.</p><p></p><p>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)</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Gnome Bard; general support character, focuses on light healing and summoning.</p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Well, this is how the fight went: </p><p>1. Summoner bulls strengths the pet, charges with the pet, takes roagru to 40%</p><p>2. Fighter charges and one-shots one of the rogues (Rage, Bull's Strength and Enlarge Person still on from last fight)</p><p>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.</p><p>4. Bard starts singing, summons a wolverine next to roagru, takes him to 35%.</p><p>5. Ranger makes Roagru his mark, shoots, takes him to 5% (very unluck roles, very much expected him to die)</p><p>6. Oracle twiddles his thumbs</p><p>7. Rogue Chara-ku charges fighter, misses (rogue archetype with charging sneak attack).</p><p>8. Summoner summons 4 wolverines surrounding roagru, kills him.</p><p></p><p></p><p>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?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="LogantheBard, post: 5740549, member: 70039"] 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? [/QUOTE]
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Having trouble scaling encounters to make them challenging
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