DM Tricks to Challenge Tough PCs with Weaker Enemies

[Kid Charlemagne]

Take advantage of some of the basic player/PC mistakes - players and their PC's feel the need to be fully involved in every fight. So give them an initial target that isn't the true threat, and then counter with the real attack a short while later, after they've fired teh big guns.

An example of this would come from an old game of mine - the PC's had captured a major NPC and there were a couple of very powerful NPC's who wanted to get him back. The PC's were transporting the NPC across the forest to a nearby city, and the NPC's got a group of orcs and ogres (paid off) to attack the PC's, with a goal of getting the PCs to use up their big spells, like fireball, etc, and get spread out. Then, the NPC's cast a web to seperate the NPC's and charmed the PC guarding the NPC and made him bring the prisoner to them. The PCs couldn't regroup in time.

 

[Brimshack]

When the characters are sigificantly more powerful than their enemies, I see it as a chance to project some of the role playing into the battles. Give them something else to do while they are hacking away at the enemy. Literally combine the battle challenge with something taking more finesse.

E.g. The orcs may not be a challenge for the PCs, but if the PCs are trying to keep a 5 year old girl safe, then it isn't enough to kill the orcs, they have to ensure that the girl is kept out of reach. It will only take one strike to kill her. Oer perhaps they end up wasting buff spells on her, also dillutes their powers. And oh look, she's scared and running away. Better catch up before the orcs do...

 

[Wraith Form]

A couple of obvious defences spring to mind

*snipped to save space*

Thank you. I'll be using some of these excellent ideas very soon. Like, in 4 days.

** YOINK **

 

[Celebrim]

While energy resistance might help a troll live longer, wraithstrike + power attack will end a fight much faster.

Many of us would consider wraithstrike to be obviosly broken, and thus not really worth mentioning. I would be like advising DMs to dip into ill-thought out 3rd party splatbooks to find uber-combos. I would certainly work, but its rather outside the spirit of the request.

Of courious many could quite rightfully make the same objection to tanglefoot bags, which in general I would not encourage one to allow as written

You mean like Tucker's Kobolds?

http://www.tuckerskobolds.com/

'Tucker's kobolds' have always struck me as much like the goblins in Skip's Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. They achieve their meaness not so much by being clever as 'cheating' - special rules that allow NPCs to act according to different mechanics than exist for the pc's and/or special equipment not available to the PC's (and in quanities that simply can't be explained by the text). They get access to the DMs full meta-information about the PC's and PC's actions and always perfectly adjust thier responce, the whole tribe appears to know the location of the PC's at all times, and kobolds can appear where they are most needed instantly, and so forth. I can't say that all of that was going on, but from the description it certainly sounds like a good chunk of it because 12th level characters would otherwise make mince meat of the silliness described. Magic Missile? Sleep? Web? Protection from Normal Missiles? Cloudkill? Who prepares fireball when going underground anyway?

I don't like the adversarial tone of most of this advice. I much prefer a "how would an orc plausibly defend its lair" article to a "How a GM can use advanced templated orcs to kill PCs" article. I think it's best to focus on tricks a monster might come up with, rather than on how to build the uber monster with the lowest CR per the RAW.

I've written about that before too. It seems like there is a thread involving a noble salamander around here somewhere. But running a monster well is almost a case by case basis. If someone was particularly interested in a particular monster, I'd be willing to come up with ideas.

I can sorta sympathize with your complaint, in that while I employ these tricks, I tend to eyeball what I consider the effective CR/EL and award experience according to the actual challenge and not merely what the book says it should be.

 

[Stalker0]

Lots of space + lots of spread out ranged attackers.

Numbers actually become an issue when they are spread out enough so your artillery can't blast them all. Toss out groups of archers with a good spread and have them target the casters, especially right before they cast.

Toss in a couple of casters with some dispel magics to soften up the party. Further the pain with mud or other movement slowing devices.

Also, as has been mentioned, terrain effects that provide continuous damage are always good. Fighting a frost worm is one thing, fighting one when your taking cold damage every round is another factor.

 

[S'mon]

You may enjoy How would you defend your subterranean kingdom?, which explores this proposition.

Great stuff, thanks.

I mostly do "monsters as they would actually behave" scenarios with one-shot PCs, as it's not much fun for the player having his Wiz-20 PC killed by a staged roof collapse in the orc caves. Can be good to remind them that high level PCs aren't invincible, that it only seems that way because scenarios are usually constructed to make them look good.

Use of terrain is a favourite trick - IME no human PCs will willingly go into the 4' tunnels. Even if the monsters are themselves medium-sized, use of (say) 3'x3' crawl tunnels as the only access can greatly increase the threat level, especially if you put a short drop at the end of the crawl tunnel. Goblins could logically have crawl tunnels totally inaccessible to medium size PCs without shape-change magic. Logically, no tunnels intended for defense by medium size creatures will be more than 5' wide. 10' tunnels are purely for PC convenience.

 

[phindar]

I don't like the adversarial tone of most of this advice. I much prefer a "how would an orc plausibly defend its lair" article to a "How a GM can use advanced templated orcs to kill PCs" article. I think it's best to focus on tricks a monster might come up with, rather than on how to build the uber monster with the lowest CR per the RAW.

I have to agree. I think the trick is (or at any rate, one of the tricks is) to run a frankly punishing encounter that the players still find fun. Having enemies hit-and-run the party so that the characters never really get to hit back, or hounding them relentlessly so that the casters can't regain spells are good tactics, but its not that much fun for the players. (Though I do agree with frank, in that I consider camping in the bad guy's lair to be bad tactics on the part of the characters, and so a little relentless hounding is justified there. You can't break into someone's house, loot the living room and kitchen, barricade yourself in the den and sleep the night, and then go upstairs to kill them in the morning.)

I'll post a couple of examples not from a game I ran, but from games where I was the player.

The Grimlock Chimney: This was in a friend of mine's game. (Kestrel, who posts here). We're in a dungeon, fighting grimlocks, and we come to this chimney that's essentially an 80' pit, with a corridor continuing on at the bottom. About halfway up on the other side are a trio of grimlock archers. It was a nightmare, in part because we were a melee-heavy party with one arcane caster who wasn't built for blasting (hey, our fault, but we'd been doing pretty good up until this point), and also because those [bleeping] grimlocks were rolling 20's on every other attack (open rolls too, so no impropriety there). That encounter was a nightmare, but it was also a blast. We still talk about that chimney, and those [bleeping] grimlocks (and we never refer to them any other way).

The Bullywug Swamp: Years ago in 2e, in my old GM's game, the party of 1st level adventurers set off across a swamp for reasons I can't recall. Honor and glory. We get into some fog, then run afoul of some bullywugs, and the 'wugs are leap charging in with spear attacks, and when they get wounded, leaping out of combat. (Again, 2e, so no AoO's and fog you could see a good 30' in.) What made it cool for me as a player wasn't so much that we were getting our [bleeps] handed to us (which we were), it was the sense that this was exactly how froggy humanoids would conduct themselves in a swamp. It wasn't just good tactics, it was well-roleplayed tactics.

For my money, I like terrain, weather, and lighting conditions for the wildcards. (Fighting grimlocks is one thing. Fighting grimlocks in a cavern where a goblin shaman repeatedly drops darkness spells to cancel the party's light sources is another.) Advanced monsters and monsters with class levels are kosher, because much like every human being isn't a level one Commoner, neither is every goblin a level one whatever the MM says (warrior?).

It isn't so much about beating the pc's as it is about really making them earn their victories.

 

[shilsen]

It isn't so much about beating the pc's as it is about really making them earn their victories.

I don't think anybody here is really in disagreement with you about that, though some of the posts may have come off that way. After all, beating the PCs is hardly ever a challenge, and probably not the aim of the game for most DMs. It's the latter that is really fun for both sides. And a major aim for this thread is to discuss ways to do that with weaker enemies. That's all.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

One tactic that always sets the PCs on edge but is usually a lot of fun is to take advantage of the natural tendency for the fighters to separate from the spellcasters. Present a group of tough melee foes in front of the party (ones that won't immediately fall to area of effect and the barbarian's charge) and wait for a round or two for the tanks to separate from the wizards, sorcerers, etc. and then hit the party from behind with something even worse. This scenario can become even deadlier by having the second wave of monsters have level draining or the ability to erect a Wall of X. Another variant is to hit them with two groups: one that attacks the spellcasters and another group of melee monsters to hit the fighters from behind, cutting them off from the spellcasters and getting all kinds of flanking.

I also agree that special attacks and teamwork can be incredibly effective. I ran an encounter once where the party was against a bunch of knolls led by a handful of flinds and two gnoll leaders. The gnolls and flinds would descend on a party fighter in sets of three or four and use aid another, their flind bars, and the bonus improved disarm feat that I granted them to attempt to disarm a party member. The best part? When the flind succeeded one of the gnolls would grab the weapon and run out of combat. I had fighters running out of combat head first to tackle gnolls and get their weapons back. This scenario can be made even deadlier by mobbing a fighter that is silly enough to run away from the combat alone.

Good stuff, and a great thread.

 

[Gold Roger]

Looks like your strategy for a challenging fight is as much power for as little HD as possible.

I can't say I can really agree with that. I've been reading your story for some time (sadly don't have the time anymore) and while it's highly enjoyable and I usually agree with you on good design, it can be seen there to: Most of your hand-crafted opponents are paper tigers.

Sure, the fights are hard, challenging and "lethal" (of course, your PC's can't die) and that's generally a good thing. But they are also often furiously short. Because you put all the effort in offensive power and I can't quite understand that.

Why underline how you challenge the PC's with "low CR" opponents when in the end it doesn't matter. All you show is that the CR and EL system can't allways be an accurate indicator of an opponents challenge. In what way is an combat that takes out half the party below their challenge level outside of pure mathematics and a strange sense of pride on beating those mathematics (this may come of as an attack. Please understand that this is meant as constructive critique).

I could understand if you didn't want your PC's xp to skyrocked, while still offering them great tactical challenges. But as far as I remember you don't use traditional xp anyway.

Maybe your idea of encounter design is so hard to understand for me because I've taken the exactly opposite approach. I've found the best way to challenge my players is to create higher HD/CR opponents that are build for durability and style far more than raw power.

And with this, we come to my second point of disagreement.

You say putting a scare into the players with higher CR creatures is easier-no contest there. But that does by no way mean challenging them with those creatures is easier.

Quite the opposite is true, especially if you don't want to have a safety net in your game that keeps PC's from dying.

I've gone thrugh a lot of TPK's, total defeats of the PC's and more dead PC's than you can hit with a fireball till I've learned it. Luckily my group didn't mind character creation.

A well done higher CR/EL encounter that puts the players on the edge without more than one death/PC going down is just as hard to craft as a similar encounter with lower hd opponents. The difference is that this encounter takes longer, as the opponents are far more durable. In my more recent campaigns there was rarely a battle that lasted less than 8 to 10 rounds.

I don't want to mark your approach as badwrongfun. I just believe that by just looking at one end of the challenge spectrum you rob yourself and your players of a fair amount of extra fun. I know that you are sometimes using NPC's of a far higher CR. But whenever you did it was pretty much out of the book, optimised for power. And it either showed in the number of PC's going down, or they had some extra help for this encounter.

Or maybe I just felt a bit Pood because your post felt like my approach was made out as "lesser"