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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4980630" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think Malkav666 gives generally good advice, whereas Joseph Rossow is more useful as a reverse barometer.In my experience, most players if faced with a straight up challenge will triumph easily.  Most players with sufficient knowledge about what is going on will quickly and efficiently set up a devestating plan and ruthlessly implement it, with the result of dead monsters in a hurry.If you really want to challenge players, you have to put them in situations where the player is themselves confused, uncertain, and fearful. However, I should say that you shouldn't be trying to do this all the time.  In most encounters, you want the PC's to triumph.  The PC's triumphing is the expected result.Things not to do:1) Don't up the damage your enemies produce.  Don't try to get into slugfests with your party.  This will lead to one of two things: players changing their tactics to scry/buff/teleport and fleeing on the second round of combat or TPKs.  Neither is fun for anyone.2) Don't try to compensate with a single big foe - you'll lose big time in the action economy.3) Don't cheat - you'll regret it when the character has a run of bad luck and you cause an unnecessary player death.Things you should do:1) Use terrain to push the characters out of their comfort zone.  Force balance checks by making the room slippery.  Have them fight it out on a glacier covered with crags, or on a narrow mountain trail next to precipice, or on a rope bridge, or in the limbs of a tree, or at the base of a roaring waterfall, or inside at an active volcano.  Put the enemies behind cover.  Put the enemies behind obstacles that force the characters to engage in a pure missile exchange.  Put the characters in a confined space to force everyone into melee and grappling immediately.  Drop the fight underwater, or put it in a windstorm, or in fog bank that limits visibility and gives both sides concealment.  2) Outnumber the characters 2:1 (or more) so that they 'waste' alot of damage on overkill and blowthrough.  3) Use mixed parties of brutes and artillery that work in cordination.  Give them alot of targets.  For example, a mixture of frost giant barbarians (holding a line), advanced Qorrashi (providing artillery), and ice mephits (flanking and providing distractions) could give them tactical fits (especially in the right terrain), while providing an extended combat with lots of targets no one of which is utterly overwhelming, but each of which represents a threat.4) Introduce a Nemesis.  In this case, if they go Nova alot, I'd introduce a powerful illusionist (Paxcreeg from the link in my sig might be an interesting choice especially if your team has a lawful bent, but a human foe is often more personal) who is always one step ahead of the players, taunting them, manipulating them, outsmarting them, and above all getting away.  You definately do not want to do this with every foe and never with every encounter, but every campaign needs to have one well hated nemesis.  The challenge of the nemesis does not need to be surviving the nemesis, because the nemesis's primary goal is not destroying the PC's but escaping from them.  Thus, the nemesis always has a plan for escaping, even if it means he may be forced from the stage early.  It's best if the Nemesis doesn't use the same escape plan again and again, both because your PC's will find a way to counter and because they'll get frustrated if the same plan keeps working despite their best efforts.4) Mooks are good.  The trick is having a mook that is just tough enough to represent an obstacle, but not so tough that they become a major threat in themselves.  Look for creatures with attacks that bypass AC, or which still do damage even on a miss.  If they can defend themselves somewhat, even better.  Those make good mooks against high level characters - the aforementioned mephits are some of my favorites but shadows (as you've already found out) and wraiths work pretty well too if the don't have a cleric to blow them away.  5) Make sure you are using good tactics.  Alot of the time when I see a DM struggling to handle the PC's, its because one or more of the PC's is a much better tactician than they are.6) Reskin the monsters.  If PC's can't recognize what they are facing and don't know its capabilities, they are much more likely to waste actions doing the wrong thing.  Take a stat block and apply it to a monster that looks differently.  Give monsters templates and class levels so that they have unexpected abilities.  Players get much easier to handle when they don't have perfect knowledge.  Do this sparingly though.  You'll be amazed by how much some groups come apart when faced with something that they don't understand.  I've generated alot of player deaths in fights that the players should have easily one because the players became confused, disoriented, disorganized, and paniced.   Start out small and see how they handle surprises before dropping them in a EL+4 encounter that has surprises in it.7) Lay ambushes.  Have a trap between the players and the monsters (wide pit trap, reverse gravity, wall of fire is errected, etc.).  Have a second group of monsters arrive behind the party just as they are engaging the first group.  Have the monsters come into the fight with significant preperations and defenses - they've quaffed potions, have had low level spellcasters buff them (invisibility, aid, haste, etc.), are hiding amongst illusions, and so forth.</blockquote>

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