DM Tricks to Challenge Tough PCs with Weaker Enemies

[Jhaelen]

Ive used:

Shadows, enhanced 1 CR by giving them touch attacks instead of melee, a swarm took down a 14th lvl party. Also, they're incorporeal, so even the best BAB misses 50% of the time, especially when strength gets nickle and dimed away.

Yup. Incorporeal creatures work quite well - it increases both their survivability and their chance to hit. Next session I'll experiment with a couple of worg riding 'elite' goblins equipped with displacement potions, led by a half-dragon dragon shaman. I'm curious about the effectiveness of using the mounted combat rules, as well.

Jhaelens Party: If you want to use many low CR monsters like goblins or kobolds without too many class levels, use hit&run tactics. You'll have casualties but you might succeed in wasting the wilders and psios PPs as well as the druids spells.

After the surprise round, their initiative bonus of +5 made it fairly easy to go first in the round, able to Run away at a speed of 400ft (thanks to their Run feat) avoiding AoOs because the victims are flat-footed.

I've tried hit&run tactics with mixed success. The party is very good at spotting enemies in advance and it's typically difficult for enemies to get away after attacking. I haven't thought of the 'Run' feat, though, that might be a feasible option. Gotta try this
It's a similar tactic to what I mentioned about 'waves of encounters': If I can hide the true number of enemies from the party it's possible to trick the psionic chars into using up more PPs than they would otherwise.

Again, thanks for the good suggestions!