How do you fight a god? Four gods?

[ruleslawyer]

Oops!

To address your original question:

I use a "heroic" point buy IMC (38 points), and I find that treating your PCs as ECL +1 works just fine for purposes of generating encounters. In this case, you have a slightly large-ish party, so I might go with effective party level = average party level +2. That gives you a current EPL of (8/5 +2 =) 3.6. I'd round down, and assume that EL 3 encounters are balanced for this group. However, I also suggest that you add creatures to generate higher encounter levels rather than using more powerful creatures. Low-level PCs with high stats are still "eggshells with hammers"; they can dish out serious hurt using good tactics, but often will die quickly against a series of singular, powerful attacks.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The easiest way to rebalance your encounters for characters with high stats is to give the monsters stat boosts too - don't use the default three 11s, three 10s, give them extra points of Str, Dex, and Con - or whatever they use for their special abilities.

Actually, they use another array of abilities with some monsters (usually those who are 1st-Level warrior and are suitable as PC race.). Look at the kobold or hobgoblin (or gnome, or halfling....). It says that "the x warrior presented here had the following ability scores before racial adjustments: Str 13, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 8.

Seems that the NPC array is 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 now. Just give them the elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) or something like that.

Yet more proof that a point-buy system is the fairest means of generating characters.

You say it. I almost begged the DM of our d20M Star Gate session to use point-buy, arguing that he could control our power, and if he's concerned that we will be to weak, he can give us a higher point allowance. No, he decided we roll (4d6, drop lowest, roll 7, discard lowest, improve a single non-18 by 1 point). I ended up with 18, 17, 14, 14, 14, 13 and topped the 17. That's 55 point-buy.
When I talked about him later, telling him "told you", he admitted that he hoped we wouldn't roll so well. (This is one of the few times I really got "prod-buttocks stats", I usually got OK stats before)

Have the big chief in the temple geas them and use them for evil missions

Make them really hate him ... while the populace hates them!

You know, I thought of a really evil wording for geas: "Go and kill your family and anyone who knows you" But I think it doesn't fit here.

 

[Endur]

Don't up Monster Stats

I would not up the monster stats. Instead, let them fight the normal monsters and have fun crushing the normal monsters.

I would have everyone, monsters, npcs, etc. acknowledge these PCs as the chosen saviors of the world and most powerful characters in town.

After all, it was the dice that chose them as the chosen ones.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Re: Don't up Monster Stats

I would not up the monster stats. Instead, let them fight the normal monsters and have fun crushing the normal monsters.

I would have everyone, monsters, npcs, etc. acknowledge these PCs as the chosen saviors of the world and most powerful characters in town.

In other words: Booooring

No, really: If the monsters cannot fight back, it ceases to be fun (of course, after what Ave wrote the enemies showed that they can still fight back, and the PC's showed that they aren't the chosen and the most powerful characters in town... )