Malar's Cow said:
I try to catch the PC's unawares as often as possible, although the terrain through which they're traveling is lightly rolling hills/near-tundra in mid-spring. The troll caught the party by surprise, knocked the fighter unconscious, took out the druid's wolf companion, knocked out the fighter again (after the cleric had healed him) and then died without further ado. I don't think a single spell was cast.
I'm surprised they were just knocked out. The first claw shouldn't drop the fighter and the second hit + rend usually kills second level fighters. 4d6+21 is a lot of damage.
One thing that may be important: The majority of the party is mounted on war horses, and uses them to attack.
Well that explains a lot. All other things being equal, warhorses are generally as handy as 2nd level fighters in combat--sometimes handier. All being mounted on warhorses makes the party MUCH tougher.
In another post, you mentioned that the fighter has a 20 strength and an 18 con. Even if all of his other stats were 6's or 8s, that would be 32 point buy right there. I would guess the character is more like 45 point buy. If other characters are in the same ballpark, that's more reason why they're mowing through everything. The rules are balanced on the iconic party with iconic array stats (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). Higher stats make it easier. IME, 36 point buy is worth about a level in terms of offensive capabilities. Stats like the half-orc may even be worth two levels.
So all of this adds up to a party that will hit like a 4th or 5th level iconic party but doesn't suck up the hits much better than a 3rd level party. That's going to make proper balance hard to find but things will get easier as they go up in level. The nearly all fighter type balance that the party has at the moment works well at lower levels but becomes increasingly disadvantaged vis a vis parties with wizards and sorcerors as you increase in level. Similarly, warhorses are very effective at low levels but start losing their luster by 6th level and are mere fireball and cleave bait by 8th level or so.
For your next campaign, however, I would recommend taking a close look at ability score generation. If your current method is generating 45 point characters, it's going to result in an overly powerful party that is hard to balance for. If it generates 45 point characters for some players and 28 point characters for others, party balance is going to be very hard to maintain. (At some point, it's almost not worth bothering to try and compete with the 45 point character who is simply better at everything he tries to do). I'd look into point buy or standard array stat generation to try and come up with a more managable party.
