Balancing higher level encounters?

[NewJeffCT]

Well, I once saw an encounter involving 3 elder para-elementals, each with 5 lvs of martial adept (each cr16, together EL19). The DM remarked that they seemed tougher than their cr let on, in that they were more than a match for a group of 6 ECL20 outsiders (it was a one-shot). Granted, we know that astral devas are weak for their ECL, but it seems to suggest that mid-cr monsters with a few lvs of martial adept can still make for challenging foes.

They could deal good damage, enough to get your players worrying but not quite enough to 1-shot them. They had excellent defenses (a lot of hp, fair AC, able to circumvent some popular attacks such as forcecage/maze and decent saves - not factoring in diamond mind).

The various MMs have a few high-cr melee foes. Have you ever tried those?

One problem I have is that I have a large group of PCs, so they have a very diverse ability to deal with foes - the have two melee tanks (dwarf fighter & goliath barbarian) and 3 "spell" casters in a cleric, sorcerer and psion. Plus, a rogue/spellthief and an elf paladin/fighter/champion of Corellon for finesse. Plus, an NPC cleric/paladin that can cause a lot of damage in melee as well and they recently had another high level fighter NPC for melee, too.

So, any single foe is not going to last in melee, but is also threatened at range as well. I was thinking of a dragon that continually hits & runs against them, but they could just teleport away to avoid the encounter (the psion & sorcerer both have teleport, and the cleric has a special teleport item) Unless I make it a psionic dragon & give it Trace Teleport... but, it's also why I'm considering the 3 spellcaster foes at once - a level 19/20 sorcerer, cleric and psion.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, for any boss fight with a party that size, I reccommend several boss enemies in a team, never just one powerful foe or even one guy with much weaker minions.

Even in my last game, gestalt with a 4 person party, I almost never used a single boss NPC. Most of the time, it was 2-4 strong enemies, occasionally with some low levels as extra support. With so many high priority targets, I found IME that the party actually tended to leave the minions alone, allowing them to actually live long enough to do some damage when I used them. Of course, that party was very much geared towards focused fire, too.

For spellcasters and other monsters, go for things to extend their lifespan over the one-shot death abilities. For example, I loved the sorcerer variant in Dungeonscape that lets you burn a spell slot as an immediate action to reduce damage taken. The NPC with that was a gestalt Paladin//Sorcerer with disgustingly high cha and the Pal variant from that same book, fighting with the spirit of healing filling in his wounds each round as well. Even though he only had one moderately powerful ally in that fight, it lasted well over a dozen rounds between the two abilities effictively giving him 100's of hp of damage soak. And...massive saves if they dared to try a save-or-die.
/tangent
Anyway...the great thing about that sorc variant isn't just that it's increasing survivability greatly. It's also costing immediate actions each round. Which in turn means no swift action for extra spellcasting (The C.Mage feat allowing a sorc to apply metamagic at no time increase thus allowing Quicken Spell). Look for things that will annoy and stymie the party rather than kill them really fast.

 

[Shin Okada]

Yeah, for any boss fight with a party that size, I reccommend several boss enemies in a team, never just one powerful foe or even one guy with much weaker minions.

I agree with StreamOfTheSky. For a showdown fight, "Evil Party" is much better than single boss or single boss plus minions. An encounter against single strong opponent (or two) tend to end up as a one-side game. Either straight win by PCs or the opposite. Minions may work. But experienced players tend to find minions to be either ignorable or can be easily nuked.

This is especially true when a PC party is large. No matter how strong the main villain is, all the PCs can concentrate their fire power onto one foe and eliminate it quick.