When You Can No Longer Reasonably Challenge the Party...

Retreater

Legend
I've decided that since I can no longer reasonably challenge the party, I'm going to wrap up my Pathfinder campaign next session. Perhaps you'd like to toss in your 2 coppers to help me create a climactic encounter.

The party is 7th level (though they are functioning basically at 11th or 12th level thanks to having good ability scores and 7 party members). They are preparing to enter the castle of a rival lord and assassinate him. (He's been constantly attacking their lands and is responsible for many deaths, so even the good aligned characters feel justified in doing this.)

They have secured the help of the leader of a resistance movement into showing them a secret entrance into the castle. They plan to walk in and kill him almost without a fight (which is exactly what would happen if I were to continue running the 10th level module as is.)

So here's what I have to contend with:

1) A very large party
2) Two dedicated healers
3) Extremely high ACs (for their level)
4) High HP
5) An evocation specializing sorcerer who tosses out fireballs

Requirements of the combat:

1) The villain must at least resemble a human male.
2) He can't be overly prepared for the fight (no ambush of 15 hill giants in his bedchambers)

Let's see if you can come up with any ideas.

Retreater
 

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Resistance movements are notoriously prone to infiltration by the authorities. The leader of the movement my be on the up-and-up but chances are he has followers who are not and who may have fed info to the castle. Have the operation betrayed and the castle setting a trap.

One important thing to keep in mind. A 7-member party is really like 2 parties when dealing with base assumptions of adventure design. Any pre-set encounters would have been designed with 4-5 PCs in mind. You need to redesign like there are 2 parties involved. Doubling the opposition would probably be a reasonable quick fix.

By the way, what module is it?
 

A lot of it depends on the base assumptions of magic.

For instance, at 7th level to be attacking a lord, the campaign sounds fairly low magic.

When the party goes to kill him, they discover his corpse. It's freshly dressed and looks like it's ready to get up and move around. Those who are clerics or trained in religion, have an odd sense of something and one of the players discovers that the body is actually a phlacter of a lich.

The lich senses his puppet ruler's distress and arrives to put the players in their place. No one must know that the ruler is not alive, much less the puppet of a lich.

Or the ruler is slowly on his way to subjecating the local region not for his own use, but rather, as a sacrifice for his demonic masters and when the players come for him, he sacrifices his wife and children as a last ditch effort to summon demonic aid.
 

The module is "Blood for Blood" of the Kingmaker Adventure Path. They have breezed through everything up till now as well. Even despite my doubling the number of monsters, adding advanced templates, etc.
 

My suggestion really depends on what you want to do. If you really want to wrap it up, you can do anything. I'm a fan of traps, so either booby trap the way in, or better, have a magical deadman switch that turns on the traps and they must fight/engineer their way out.

A new kind of golem to intended to serve as a police force (think Steel Clan from Gargoyles) could be waiting for them and activated at a magical alarm.

Another deadman tactic is the classic explosion. Of course, the explosion does not have to be aimed at the party. It could be aimed at some one essential to their movement. Kill the lord, the prince regent dies sort of thing. That means subdual damage or other means of trapping the lord.

Alternatively, if you have a map with pre-planned encounters based around a find-the-bomb scenario, you can split the party. I know this goes against conventional wisdom, but it can work. Enact a six-second timer for decisions. Roll off to determine what group goes first. Have two battlesheets. Have the movement get wind of the deadman effect, and then you now have parties that are a lot easier to deal with.
 

I've decided that since I can no longer reasonably challenge the party...

If the party are only 7th level and you can't reasonably challenge them, I'm afraid you're doing something wrong. There's always a bigger fish...

Hit them with higher-powered monsters. Hit them with greater numbers of monsters. Don't hold off on those rust monsters/immersion in large bodies of water/energy-draining undead/save-of-die, and all the other things you've not been using because you want to be 'nice'.

Requirements of the combat:

2) He can't be overly prepared for the fight

Whyever not? He's a high-level NPC facing off against a group of PCs who are well-known in the world (being the lords of a neighbouring region) and against whom he has picked a fight. Of course he should be prepared for the combat! Moreover, he should have studied the PCs reputation, and should be aware of their tactics.

So...

The entrances to the castle (all of them) should be guarded. There should be alarm spells all over the place. His guards should be liberally using low-level potions (bear's endurance, bull's strength, haste) to get every edge against the PCs. There should be spellcasters firing off heat metal and similar all over the place.

The BBEG should have spell immunity up, to nullify those fireball spells. Oh, and he should have at least three escape plans, including one for when he can't move.
 

Like I said before, consider putting the castle in a more alert standing on the assumption that the resistance has been infiltrated.

[sblock]If you don't want to do that, put a hill giant or two in the wine cellar. When the PCs encounter them, they can put up enough of a fight and a ruckus to alert the rest of the castle. And it's not exactly like putting the giants there makes no sense. The baron keeps the giants happy by indulging them with food - and a barrel of wine would certainly attract them as well.

Put the baron in his mistress's chambers with his regular 8 (or more) guards alert outside. That raises the difficulty of them getting right to him and the challenge of the encounter necessary to kill him. And Quintessa can buff the guards quickly when a fight breaks out.

Change out a few of Imeckus Stroon's 3rd level evocations to fireballs so he can counterspell your player's evoker. Chances are the reputations of the PCs precedes them. Any wizard who uses a lot of fireballs will probably be known for it... and face reasonably prepared opposition.

Keep in mind that Drelev is currently paranoid and withdrawn. His security shouldn't really be lax. That wouldn't be very paranoid. Imeckus can cast alarm spells around the castle (if you put that in his spellbook) that will alert him silently and enable him to raise the alarm.[/sblock]
 
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Can folks add some spoiler tags in this thread? I know the thread started off innocently enough, but there is some more specific info about the AP starting to show itself on here without much warning for those who would like to avoid it.
 

Unless the secret entrance goes right into the lord's bedroom, how are the PCs going to get into said bedroom without getting past the guards on the door?

Is it established what class and level the lord is?
 

If the party are enemies of some other faction, have them plan to kidnap the lord for their own reasons. The pcs learn that this is going to happen and have to beat the rival party to it. Could end up with a mexican standoff in the throneroom.
 

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