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Message: <blockquote data-quote="scrubkai" data-source="post: 4804116" data-attributes="member: 9766">You don't need to just throw raw powerful creatures at them to take the pcs down a notch....Here's a few suggestions that have worked in our group:1) Give them a situation with a coupl elite creatures that does not act as they would expect....  For example in the past we ran into an inteligent, magic using troll that regenerated from Fire and Acid.  So when we saw it was a troll we charged right in and blasted away with fire, however when it started dropping mini-fireballs on us we all scratched our heads. Then it started regenerating from the fire and we got concerned. By the point that it started turning invisible and taking pot shots at us while it flew from tree to tree we knew it was time to run and do some research into what the heck this thing was.  (It ended up being about the same power level as us but it was affected only by cold, and that took us a long time to figure out.)2) Give your players a goal that looks simple and is guarded by creatures that they can obviously beat, but put it in a situation that the terrain obviously heavily favors the monsters.  Then actually play the monsters as if they were intelligent and did some basic pre-planning.For example: The players figure out they need to reach a tower on a goblin infested island.  Most of the shoreline of the island is steep cliffs that the players would have to climb up while the goblins drop rocks on them from above.  The only obvious beach is well guarded with difficult terrain and goblins who can shoot down on the beach from a number of protected bunkers. Then add in some hidden traps and a few other surprises. (For example: a Dam that can be broken to wash the off the path up to the island and back to the beach).Now run this a few times with sample characters and see how YOU would try to assault this.  Pick your monsters tactics to counter what you would do.  Make it hard enough that the PCs don't die immediately, but should realize they are in over their heads pretty quickly.  You are defending so let them retreat and try this a few times.  You the same basic tactics every time so that the characters start to know what to expect, but if they focus on taking out some of the defenses be reasonable in what you can repair while they are gone.  Eventually they will wear the defenses down and get through, but a bit of planning and some inteligence can make even small monsters very scary.3) Focused fire....  You will be amazed at how fast even 4E characters go down if the monsters all manage to go after a non-defender character.4) Take the characters out of their comfort zone.  If you have mostly ranged strikers put an area that is foggy so they can't shoot from a distance.  Does your defender normally run ahead and pull all the monsters from the back rank? well lock down the defender (grapple with one creature) and then have a swarm of creatures go after the back rank.  Do the characters normally shift around a lot, well fight on difficult terrain, or make the area unstable so that every square moved has a chance of something bad happening.  (like a rotting wooden deck of an old ship, where every step has a % chance of falling into a crashing sea below.)   If your players can't use the tactics they are used to, a standard fight can become a scary must run ball of nastiness.</blockquote>

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