When Encounter Levels go wrong...

[Ridley's Cohort]

Nothing wrong with that. Its one of the downsides to bringing cohorts adventuring. Besides, they are replacable. Heck, it might not even be true if the cohorts are only one level lower than the character with the leadership feat. The cohorts from the example weren't, but the cohorts from the example should be falling over dead left and right on the kind of adventures that party can handle.

Yup.

Those cohorts are so weak that they really are nothing more than walking meatshields to buy the casters a round before being overrun.

A 3rd level cohort implies a Leadership score of at most 5. 9th level PCs would have a base Leadership score of 9. -2 for having a familiar. So either those PCs have very poor Charisma scores or someone has been earning negative rep modifiers for using cohorts as disposable speed bumps.

Squire James is correct. If you want small creatures to drain resources you will need to methodically keep the players guessing about the power level they are up against. Do not let them assume that the goblin is less powerful than the ogre.

Those PCs are optimized for standing back and vaporizing the opposition. They know they are in a world of hurt if someone brings the fight to them; that is why they are so quick with the blaster spells.

If you want to cause these guys real trouble make them fight in fog.

 

[Henry]

Although I know it's the supposedly wrong way to look at it, your party translates to roughly an EL 10 or maybe even 11. Comparing that to a bunch of 1st and 2nd level humanoids, it's going to be a slaughter. Twenty percent resources is being generous. Now, had the opponents used better cover and possibly grappling tactics, perhaps things might have gone a little more challenging. But it is a good rule of thumb to state that numbers of foes less than one-third the party's level would not offer much resistance.

 

[poilbrun]

A good way I found to piss a group of high-level PC is to put them against a real nasty opponent and several kobolds. When they focus on the major opponent, the kobolds use the two alchemist's fire they have each, setting the PC's clothes on fire...

 

[James McMurray]

Heck, my players would immediately kill the kobolds. They know if they're facing kobolds at their level I must have something up my sleeve (probably classed kobolds with epic levels )

 

[Hakkenshi]

Re:

Oh man, this is just like a situation I had in one of my campaigns a couple years back. 5 seventh-level PCs were travelling in the desert and had had a few encounters with Gnoll raiders. Now they were used to the standard Gnoll, knew more or less how many hits it took to drop one, so they were getting a bit confident they could take the raiders down.

Only the next party that came after them was made up of half a dozen or so Gnoll Rangers, level 2, dual-wielding longswords. The elven archer starts plucking an arrow into a couple of them during the round where both parties were aware of each other and moving in. The surprise on the party members' faces when the Gnolls didn't drop was priceless.

Since the raiders moved in immediately charging on camel-back, the party had a LOT of trouble. The wizard was taken out when he used Fly to get up and get a better perspective... critical hits from a longbow can HURT. One of the fighters was being taken apart, and was killed by a fellow party member who missed a bowshot into melee.

Since that experience, they've learned to be careful of weaker creatures, and saying "creatures with class levels" is enough to make them panic

 

[ForceUser]

Biggs - Fighter 3 (Cohort)
Wedge - Fighter 3 (Cohort)

ROFL!!

Anyway, it depends on how large a number of wimps we're talking about. In one of the games I play in, our group is composed of the following:

5 Cleric
5 Druid + wolf companion
5 Sorceress
4 Fighter/1 Wizard
3 Rogue/2 Cleric
2 Fighter/2 Rogue/1 Barbarian

In our last session, we encountered a large clan of goblins infesting some old dwarven ruins (done to death, but still an old favorite). We had skirmish after skirmish, and after a couple days in the dungeon had a huge knockdown-dragout brawl with, heck, it must have been all of em. Let me tell you what the above group was capable of defeating in a single melee:

30 one-HD goblins (yes, thirty)
2 four-HD goblin rogues
4 four-HD goblin fighters
1 four-HD goblin cleric
1 six-HD goblin ranger

So that's 38 goblins in one fight for a 5th level group, and those leveled ones were a bitch. Big fights can be fun, and PCs can weather a lot, especially if they are prepared for combat.