Characters have huge ACs and low attack bonuses

[Stalker0]

Also, at those levels straight up fighter opponents become less and less effective. I've found if an opponent doesn't have some magic either in the form of allies or personal power, he's not going to do well against a high level party anywya.

 

[szilard]

Barbarian 17
Attack bonus
+17 BAB
+7 Strength (base strength 18, raging for 24)
+1 Weapon Focus
+2 Charge
-----
+27 attack with no magic or funky feats used. That will hit AC 40 a reasonable portion of the time. Add in Bulls Strength and a +2 weapon (a minimal amount of magic for a 17th level character) and get +31 - you're hitting more than half the time.

Am I missing the problem?

-Stuart

 

[blargney the second]

A laundry list of things that will help your NPCs hit the PCs:
-prone
-flatfooted/denied Dex
-flanked
-stunned
-higher ground
-aid another (this is a big one)
-blinded/invisibility
-Dex damage
-entangled
-fatigued/exhausted

Most of those aren't that hard to pull off, and they stack very nicely.
-blarg

 

[Imperialus]

I'd echo blargney's suggestion of aid another. Especially for mooks. 5 or 6 grunts plus one guy to do some real damage can put some serious hurt on PC's. I learned to love this stratagy in RHoD. My players were all around 5th or 6th level and thought they could laugh at these CR 1 hobgoblins charging them. They learned... they learned.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Other people have mentioned a lot of helpful hints. Here are a few new ones (and a few old ones repeated because they're good):

1. Support your NPCs. At 17th level, it's nothing for a group of NPCs to have a 7th (or even a 12th level) cleric supporting them. Similarly, an 8th level bard is hardly noticable in your EL calculations. However, a recitation spell for +3 to hit (your NPCs will be the same religion as the cleric) and a bardsong for +2 to hit (+3 if you use inspirational boost) will help a lot.

(12th level orc barbarian: base strength 15 +4 race +3 level= 22 strength, +6 for greater rage=28. Attack bonus: +12 BAB, +9 strength, +1 weapon Focus, +3 weapon (said 12th level cleric ally cast greater magic weapon on his sword)=+24 base. With recitation and a +3 bardsong, that's +30 to hit. Let's say someone cast haste on him. +31/+31/+26/+21. Not bad. If he's flanking... +33/+33/+27/+22. Let's say he jumped on a rock, table or other piece of set dressing to get a higher ground bonus too. +34/+34/+28/+23. That's pretty good odds to hit the PCs.

2. When you can't hit a character because of a shield... sunder the shield. Sundering a shield is an opposed attack roll and that's much easier to succeed at than hitting ACs like your characters have.

3. Don't forget to trip and grapple the PCs. And hit them with tanglefoot bags, waves of exhaustion, and/or curse of impending blades.

4. And if their AC comes from spells, PHB II's Chain Dispelling and Spell Compendium's Reaving Dispel are both great additions to the mix.

 

[Gort]

First off, grappling won't work because every character has a ring of freedom of movement. (thanks, horribly broken grappling rules!)

Secondly, mooks don't survive more than a round against the warmage and the druid - the more enemies there are the more damage their area spells do. And the warmage will NEVER run out of spells. He has a huge compliment of offensive firepower, and he's got a ring of wizardry 3 to give him 14 fireballs, just in case he runs out of awesome spells.

I think Stalker0 has put it best so far - straight up fighter opponents just don't work too well at these levels. Even the "max attack" barbarian build from earlier, who can hit a character 50% of the time isn't going to last very long against the whole party. Plus, I'd rather not have to make every footsoldier maxed out for hitting power just so I don't have to roll a natural 20 to hit...

Ah well, I guess at these high levels you have to work in a fair number of buffs and tactical choices, you can't just have them make attack rolls and hope to hit...

 

[Nail]

Ah well, I guess at these high levels you have to work in a fair number of buffs and tactical choices, you can't just have them make attack rolls and hope to hit...

Right.

In a past campaign I played a Clr all the way to 21st level. By level 15 or so, simple classed humanoids were just easy XP for us. ...A road bump, nothing more. By that level the disparity in equipment between NPCs and PC is so large that it's impossible to ignore. (And for straight-up Ftr's, it's even worse. Talk about 'equipment dependent'!)

It's a major failing of 3.xe D&D.

The things that continued to give us trouble at high levels were huge monsters coupled with high CR Outsiders (demons, devils, etc). It sounds to me like your campaign could do this: there are plenty of demons in medieval literature to draw from.

 

[werk]

....
Has anyone else had this problem, and how did you deal with it?

Just yell WHIFF! every time a player misses on an attack. They'll catch on.

 

[shilsen]

Ah well, I guess at these high levels you have to work in a fair number of buffs and tactical choices, you can't just have them make attack rolls and hope to hit...

Personally, I think that's a good thing, since just making attack rolls and hoping to hit is boring as heck, as player and as DM. That being said, I think you're underestimating how easy it is to hit them if you really want, with minimal tactics.

And you can do that with much lower level enemies. Consider a 12th lvl orc barbarian, all of 5 levels lower than the party.

BAB: +12
Str 24: +7 to hit
Raging: +3 to hit
W. Focus feat: +1 to hit
+1 weapon: +1 to hit
Potion of Bull's Strength: +2 to hit

That's three attacks at +26/21/16. Since it's presumably a few 12th lvl orcs rather than just the one, there should be some flanking going on, so up that to +28/23/18, or +30/25/20 if they have the Vexing Flanker feat (PHB2).

Now if you actually wanted a little buffing, throw in a friendly orc bard of 12th lvl too, who's giving the orcs a +2 to hit/dmg with bardic song and another +1 on top of that with haste. Now the attacks are at +33/28/23, and this is just for 12th lvl NPCs, and not even heavily optimized ones. An optimized CR15 enemy will be able to hit them 2-3 times per round. With really good tactics and buffs, he'd auto-hit on the first attack and very probably hit on the others.

 

[nittanytbone]

It seems like they're using lots of spells to enhance AC.

If they used as many spells to give bonuses to hit I think the situation could be quite different. Bless, Prayer, Bull's Str, and all those other buffs really do add up.