How do you fight a god? Four gods?

[Ave Rage]

So I've taken the group from my brother and am DMing it for as long as he needs a break from DMing. This is fine and all and told him to roll up a character.

12,14,14,16,16,18. A strong character but he chooses a wizard so he only gets a better dex/con than most wizards. He chose to be a sunelf so his Int is 20 making his saves very high. Choosing a necromancer route, all he can do for right now is remove at max seven strength from an opponent. A good character. Strong, but not overly strong.

My next two players are both new and so I made them be fighter classes until they could learn the rules a little better from the other players.
Girl gets: 18,18,17,13, 11, 5. She chooses to be a half orc so she has 20 str but 3 cha/9int! She draws a fantastic picture of a half-orc which even a blind orc would have trouble seeing.
Guy gets: 18, 16, 16, 15, 14, 12. Not as uber as the girl but only slightly and with none of the drastic drawbacks as the girl. He chooses Half-Orc as well so they're Great sword/axe weilding powerhouses. The girl is a barbarian while the guy is a fighter.

The next player is a dwarf cleric with 20 con, 18 wis, 16 str. his other stats I can't remember but for a cleric that's all he really needs.

The last player has yet to roll so we'll have to see.


So, after all that background info, we can get to my question. How do you 'up' the challenge for these power houses? With thier strength bonuses, they easily bypass even the toughest armor. The Wizard can immobilize weak wizards and greatly reduce the effectivness of a fighter. The cleric is tough with his ability to heal himself as well as having tons of HP to soak damage.

I tried just bumping the CR up 2 but that seems a little too strong. The only thing I can think up is putting same level prcs to fight them.

Right now they have a huge bounty on thier heads so of course bounty hunters will be after them. This is the only ace up my sleeve as whoever the fight will know who they are and a clue to thier weaknesses (Half orcs = low will save)

Any help advice would be great and thanks for reading.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The roll-11-dice-drop-8 method?

-Hyp.

 

[clark411]

I've heard tale that Piratecat had an interesting method of bumping ecls for stats well beyond the norm. I never found out exactly how it works, but I'm sure someone knows / can search a link..

 

[Olive]

How on earth did you end up with those stats?!?!?

 

[sithramir]

I have no challenge challenging them with CR's equal to their party level nor would I with a CR of 1 less. Its called tactics. Fast moving creatures that make the fighters lose full round attacks, archer types will destroy them, a nice first level spell or 3 I can think of that will take them down quite easily. Things like sleep, hypotise, etc from a wizard. A higher ac monster so they don't hit all the time.

Goblins are smart. Probably smarter than the characters "in game". Make them use reach weapons and surround the party. Fighters can't get to hit one without incurrong attacks of opportunity from one or 2 of them just to get into reach.

I DM with characters taht have high stats but it doesn't really affect the CR challenge to my monsters, but I make sure to play them smart. They know that half-orc is big so they won't just try to fight them hit for hit unless its some big guy with as much strength. If so, make him grapple, trip, disarm and your characters won't be able to do huge damage just fight him, etc.

 

[Ave Rage]

I thought that CR would replace my having to use tactics to a great degree but thanks Sith. I'll just have to make them tougher myself (and thankfully that can be deadly )

They got thier stats by rolling 4d6 drop the lowest. : /

 

[drnuncheon]

The easiest way to rebalance your encounters for characters with high stats is to give the monsters stat boosts too - don't use the default three 11s, three 10s, give them extra points of Str, Dex, and Con - or whatever they use for their special abilities.

J

 

[cptg1481]

UBER STATS

I agree that up-ing the stats of the baddies a few points here and there to even things out. I mean there are above average specimens for all races right.

Let the PCs have their fun though every once and a while they should be able to mow down a mob of average Joes fo the fun of it.

I recently ran into this problem with one of my PC's the one whom I agreed could play a mind flayer (ok, ok, I know already, but who am I to deny his dream right) ala savage species monster class (currently 12). Were a few sessions in and I finally get the char sheet and subtract the wicked racial bonuses and shoked by the math his base rolls were 12,16,16,16,16,16.....as I choke on my soda I (feeling taken advantage of for my char gen allowances) begin to further strip the guys character down, once again he's got the boots of striding and sprining (2nd Char in a row).

So I tell him that since his before racial mods are +17 he will henceforth for all purposes...well not all but encounter generation, EXP computation and wealth distribution anyway be regarded as a character 3 levels higher than his current ECL. This is his penalty for being a stat mongering power gamer of the worst sort and to help balance my game.

The reason I feel slighted is I let the players pick thier stats until now I've been much pleased with the results usually my guys are really fair. This guy is just power hungry. OH well he will die soon in a horrible way.

Anyway, I digress, I say either bump up thier ECL by a suitable # or bump up the baddies +2 in the case as you stated it seems about right.

 

[Pax]

12,14,14,16,16,18.

Oni No Snippage wanders through ...

Girl gets: 18,18,17,13, 11, 5.

Oni No Snippage wanders through again ...

Guy gets: 18, 16, 16, 15, 14, 12.

Oni No Snippage wanders through yet again ...

20 con, 18 wis, 16 str.

Yet more proof that a point-buy system is the fairest means of generating characters.

 

[Gellion]

Im just surprised a girl picked a Half-Orc.